The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends!

We stand today under the sign of a grievous memory and we shall by all means place what is to be the content of today's lecture within the sign of this grievous memory. Those of you who were present then will remember how the lecture I was permitted to give just a year ago in our former building [Note 75] followed a path which led from the description of earthly, natural conditions upwards into the spiritual worlds and into the revelation of these spiritual worlds out of the starry script. You will remember how it was possible, then, to link the human heart, the soul of man, the human spirit, and all that belongs to it, with all that can be discovered on the path outwards into not only the wide realm of the stars but also into what depicts the world of the spirit through the wide realm of the stars, like a cosmic script. The last thing I was permitted to write down on the blackboard in that hall which was taken from us so soon afterwards, that last thing was intended to raise the human soul up into spiritual heights. On that very evening the link was made with that to which our Goetheanum building was to be dedicated in its whole being. So now, as though in a continuation of that lecture given here a year ago, let me begin by speaking about that to which the link was then made.

If in the times before the burning of Ephesus men spoke about the Mysteries, then those who in their heart and soul understood something of the nature of the Mysteries said, in essence: Human knowledge, human wisdom has an abode, a dwelling place in the Mysteries. And if in those olden times there was talk of the Mysteries among the spiritual leaders of the world, that is if there was talk in super-sensible realms about the Mysteries—allow me to use these expressions even though they describe only figuratively how thoughts are sent down from the super-sensible realms and how the super-sensible works in the sense-perceptible realm—if in super-sensible realms there was talk about the Mysteries, then what was said went, in essence, like this: In the Mysteries, human beings set up an abode where we gods can find those human beings who bring us offerings and who understand us in their act of offering. For indeed those who knew about such things in the ancient world were generally aware that in the Mystery centres gods and human beings encountered one another and that all that carries and maintains the world depends on what takes place in the Mysteries between gods and human beings.

But there are words which have even come down to us in external history. These words handed down through history can deeply move our human hearts, especially when they can be seen taking shape out of very special events, when the shape they take is formed as though in letters of bronze, visible in spirit only for a moment and written into the history of humankind. Such words are always seen when one looks in spirit towards the deed of Herostratos, [Note 76] the burning of the temple at Ephesus. In the flames the ancient words stand out: The envy of the gods.

Among the manifold words that have come down to us from olden times, which can be seen in the life of those times in the manner I have described, I do believe that this is one of the most terrible to be found in the physical world: The envy of the gods. In those olden times the word ‘god’ was used to describe anything that lived as a super-sensible being without ever needing to appear on earth in a physical body. And in those times people distinguished between many and varied races of gods.

But those divine spiritual beings who are so closely linked with mankind that the human being in his inmost nature has come into existence through them and has been sent by them on his journey through the ages, those beings we sense in the majesty and in the minutest appearances of outer nature, those divine spiritual beings cannot become envious. Yet in olden times the envy of the gods denoted something very real. Following the human race in its development up to about the time of Ephesus we find that indeed the more advanced human individuals had taken for themselves much of what the good gods had been glad to give them in the Mysteries. It is quite right to say that an intimate relationship exists between the good human hearts and the good gods, a relationship made ever more close in the Mysteries. Thus the realization came about in the souls of certain other luciferic and ahrimanic godly beings that human beings were being drawn ever closer to the good gods. And thus arose the envy of the gods towards man. Again and again we hear in history that a human being striving for the spirit; if he meets with a tragic destiny, is described as having been a victim of the envy of the gods.

The ancient Greeks knew of this envy of the gods and they traced much of what took place in external human evolution back to this envy of the gods. The burning of the temple at Ephesus made it obvious that a certain further spiritual development of mankind is only possible if human beings realize that there are gods, that is super-sensible beings, who are envious of the further progress of humankind. This has coloured the whole of history since the burning of the temple at Ephesus, or I could say since the birth of Alexander. [Note 77] And a proper conception of the Mystery of Golgotha, too, must take into account that we look into a world that is filled with the envy of certain races of gods. From soon after the Persian wars the atmosphere of soul in Greece had been filled with the consequences of this envy of the gods. And what was then accomplished at the time of Macedonia had to be carried out in full awareness of the envy of the gods reigning over the face of the earth in the spiritual atmosphere. Yet it was carried out courageously, boldly, in defiance of misunderstandings on the part of both gods and men.

And there came down into this atmosphere filled with the envy of the gods the deed of that God who was capable of the greatest love that can possibly exist in the world. We see the Mystery of Golgotha in its true light only if we can add to everything else also the image of the clouds in the ancient world, in Hellas, Macedonia, the Near East, North Africa, Southern Europe; the image of those clouds that are an expression of the envy of the gods. Wondrously warming, gently gleaming, there falls into this cloud-filled atmosphere the love that streams through the Mystery of Golgotha.

This interaction was, if I may describe it thus, a matter which at that time took place between gods and human beings. Now, in our time, in the age of human freedom, it is something that has to take place down below, here in physical human life. And the manner in which it takes place can indeed be described. In olden times, down on the earth, one thought of the Mysteries thus: Human knowledge, human wisdom finds an abode in the Mysteries. But among the gods it was said: When we descend into the Mysteries we find there the offerings of human beings, and in the human being who makes his offering we are comprehended.

The burning of the temple at Ephesus marked the beginning of the age in which the Mysteries in their old form gradually began to disappear. I have told you how they continued to endure here and there, sublimely, for example, in the Mysteries of Hibernia, where the Mystery of Golgotha was celebrated in the divine cultus simultaneously with the actual physical event over in Palestine. They knew of it solely through the spiritual communication that existed between Palestine and Hibernia. There was no physical communication. Nevertheless, in the physical world the Mysteries receded more and more. The external abodes, which were places of encounter between gods and human beings, increasingly lost their significance. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had lost it almost entirely. Those who wanted to find the way, for example to the Holy Grail, had to know how to follow spiritual paths. In olden times, before the burning of the temple at Ephesus, the paths to be trodden were physical paths. In the Middle Ages the paths were spiritual.

In particular a spiritual path had to be followed by one who sought instruction in the truly Rosicrucian way from the thirteenth or fourteenth century onwards, but even more so from the fifteenth century. The temples of the Rosicrucians were profoundly hidden from any external physical experience. Many true Rosicrucians frequented the temples, but these temples could not be found by any external, physical human eye. But it was possible for pupils to find these aged Rosicrucians who lived here or there like hermits of wisdom, hermits of the holy human deed. They could be found by those who could comprehend the language of the gods speaking out of gently shining eyes. I am not talking figuratively. I do not want to speak in pictures. I am telling you of an actual reality which was extremely significant at the time to which I am pointing. The pupils found their Rosicrucian teacher if they had first gained the capacity to understand the language of the heavens speaking out of gently shining physical eyes. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Central Europe these remarkable personalities were to be found living in the most modest surroundings, in the most unassuming human accommodation. They were filled with the divine spirit; in their inner being they were linked to the spiritual temples which existed but to which access was truly as difficult to find as was that to the Holy Grail described in the well-known legend.

Looking at what took place between one of these Rosicrucian teachers and his pupil, we can overhear many a conversation that describes in the form appropriate for more recent times the divine wisdom as it exists on the earth. The instruction was profoundly concrete. A Rosicrucian teacher was discovered in his solitude by a pupil who had enthusiastically endeavoured to seek and find him. A pupil gazed into the gently shining eyes out of which flows the speech of gods and, modestly, he received something like the following instruction.

Look, my son, at your own being. You bear with you that body which your external, physical eyes can see. The very centre of the earth sends to this body the forces which make it visible. This is your physical body. But look around you at your own environment on the earth. You see stones; they are permitted to exist on the earth; their dwelling place is on the earth. Once they have taken on a shape, they can maintain it through the forces of the earth. Look at the crystal. It bears a form and through the earth it retains this form of its own nature. Your physical body is incapable of this. If your soul departs from it, then the earth destroys it, it dissolves it into dust. The earth has no power over your physical body. It has the power to shape and to maintain the transparent, wonderfully formed shapes of the crystal; but it has no power to maintain the shape of your physical body; it has to dissolve it into dust. Your physical body is not of this earth. Your physical body is of supreme spirituality. To Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones belong the form and shape of your physical body. Your physical body does not belong to the earth; it belongs to those spiritual forces which are the highest as yet accessible to you. The earth can destroy it but never build it up.

And within this your physical body lives your etheric body. The day will come when your physical body is taken in by the earth in order to be destroyed. Then your etheric body will dissolve into the widths of the cosmos. The widths of the cosmos can dissolve this etheric body but they cannot build it up. Only those divine, spiritual beings belonging to the hierarchy of the Dynamis, Exusiai and Kyriotetes can build it up. You unite with your physical body the physical substances of the earth. But that which is in you transforms the physical substances of the earth in such a way that within them there is no longer anything resembling whatever is physical in the environment of your physical body. Your etheric body moves everything in you that is liquid or watery. The juices that stream and circulate are under the influence of your etheric body. See your blood: Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes cause this blood as a liquid to circulate through your arteries. You are human only in your physical body. In your etheric body you are still animal, but an animal enspirited by the second hierarchy.

What I have been saying to you compressed into a few words was the subject of long instruction by that teacher in whose gently shining eyes the pupil heard the speech of heaven. Then the attention of the pupil was drawn to the third member of the human being, which we call the astral body. The pupil was shown how this astral body contains the impulse to breathe and to be involved with everything that is aeriform in the human organism, with everything that pulses as air through the human organism. The earthly realm may endeavour, for ages after the human being has stepped through the portal of death, to rumble about in the aeriform realm. For years the clairvoyant eye can discern the astral bodies of those who have died rumbling about in the atmospheric phenomena of the earth. Yet the earthly realm with all its environment is incapable of doing anything to the impulses of the astral body except dissolve them. The beings of the third hierarchy, Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, alone can form it.

Thus, deeply moving the heart of his pupil, the teacher said: In your physical body, by taking in and transforming the mineral kingdom, by taking in the human realm and working on it, you belong to Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. In so far as you are an etheric body, you are animal-like in the etheric realm, but you belong to the spirits called the spirits of the second hierarchy, Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai; in so far as you weave in the fluid element you do not belong to the earth but to this hierarchy. And by weaving in the aeriform element you do not belong to the earth but to the hierarchy of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai.

Having undergone sufficient instruction in this way, the pupil no longer felt related to the earth. Going out, he sensed, from his physical, etheric and astral bodies were the forces that joined him through the mineral world with the first hierarchy, through the watery earth with the second hierarchy and through the encircling air with the third hierarchy. It was clear to him that he lives on the earth solely through the element of warmth which he bears within him. Thus the Rosicrucian pupil felt the warmth he bears within him, the physical warmth, to be what is actually the earthly, human element in him. And he learnt increasingly to feel that this physical warmth is related to warmth of soul and warmth of spirit. Human beings living in later times have increasingly forgotten how their physical content, their etheric content and their astral content is related to the divine world through the solid element, the fluid element and the aeriform element. But the Rosicrucian pupil knew this full well. He knew that the warmth element is that which is truly earthly and human. At the moment when the pupil of the Rosicrucian master realized this mystery of the connection between the element of warmth and the human, earthly element, he knew how to link his human element with the spiritual world.

Before entering those often quite unassuming dwellings inhabited by such Rosicrucian teachers, the pupils were shown, usually without their seeking it and in a seemingly miraculous manner—the one in this way and the other in another way, often coincidentally, so outwardly it seemed—they were shown that they must seek to link their own spirit with the spirit of the cosmos. And when the pupil had received from his teacher the instruction about which I have just been speaking, then, yes then he could say to his teacher: I now depart from you having received the greatest consolation possible on earth; by showing me that warmth is truly the element of earthly man you have enabled me to link my physical aspect with the realm of soul and spirit; I take the soul element not into my solid bones, not into my liquid blood, not into my airy breath, but into my element of warmth.

In utmost peace those who had received such instruction departed, in those days, from their teachers. And out of the peace in their countenance which expressed the outcome of that great consolation, out of the peace in their countenance there developed gradually that gentle glance through which the speech of heaven can resound. Thus profound instruction in the realm of the soul was available right into the first third of the fifteenth century, hidden away from those events of which external history tells us. An instruction took place which encompassed the total human being, an instruction that permitted the human soul to link its own being with the sphere of the cosmos and of the spirit.

This spiritual mood has entirely drained away during the course of the last few centuries. It no longer belongs to our civilization. A superficial civilization, estranged from the gods, has spread itself over what were once the dwelling places that saw what I have just described to you. Here one stands today with the memory, which can only be called up in the light of the astral world, of many a scene resembling the one I have described. Hence our basic mood when we first look back to those ages that are often described as being so dark, and then look out into our present time. But when we look back in this way our heart is stirred—through the spiritual revelations that can once more be received by mankind since the final third of the nineteenth century—by a deep longing to speak in a spiritual way once more to human beings. And this spiritual way of speaking is not dependent on abstract words alone; it calls for all manner of signs in order to be all-embracing. And a language needed for those spiritual beings who are to speak to modern mankind, such a way of speaking existed indeed in the forms of our Goetheanum, burnt down a year ago. Truly these forms were to have spoken out into the world the ideas told to the audience from the platform. Thus in a certain way the Goetheanum was something that could, in an entirely new form, remind us of something ancient.

When the one approaching initiation entered into the temple at Ephesus, his glance was drawn to that statue about which I have spoken during these days, that statue which called to him in words of the heart: Unite with the world ether and you shall see the earthly realm from etheric heights. Thus did many a pupil at Ephesus view the earthly realm from etheric heights. And a certain race of gods grew envious. But centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha courageous human beings nevertheless found ways, despite the envy of the gods, to carry forward—weakly, perhaps, but not so weakly that it remained without effect—that which had worked since the days of ancient and holy human evolution right up to the time of the burning of the temple. And if our Goetheanum could have been finally completed, then once again, as we entered from the West, our glance would have fallen on that statue which would have challenged the human being to know himself as a cosmic being placed between the forces of Lucifer and the forces of Ahriman with the inward, divinely sustained equilibrium of his being. And when our glance fell on the forms of the pillars, the architraves, they spoke a language that was a continuation of what was expressed from the platform in the ideas which worked as though interpreting the spirit. The words continued to resound along the sculpted forms. And up above, in the dome, were scenes to be seen, scenes which brought human evolution closer to spiritual sight. In this Goetheanum there was indeed, for those who had a feeling for it, a memory of the temple at Ephesus.

But that memory grew terribly painful when the burning torch was applied to this very Goetheanum in a manner that was not at all dissimilar to ancient times, not at all dissimilar especially as regards the moment of evolution in which the Goetheanum was, of itself, to have become the bearer of a renewal of spiritual life.

My dear friends, our pain was profound. Our pain was inexpressible. But we formed the resolve to continue our work for the spiritual world unhindered by the most sorrowful and most tragic event that could possibly have come upon us. For in our heart of hearts we could say that in the flames rising up from Ephesus was written the envy of the gods, at a time when human beings still had to follow rather more without freedom the will of good or evil gods.

In our day human beings are organized more towards freedom. And a year ago, in the night of New Year's Eve, we saw before us the devouring flames. The red blaze shot skywards. Dark blueish, reddish-yellow lines of flame curled through the seething sea of fire, generated by the metal instruments contained in the Goetheanum, a gigantic sea of flame containing the most varied shades and colours. And gazing into this sea of flame with the coloured lines darting hither and thither one could not but read words which spoke to the pain in one's soul: the envy of human beings.

Thus what speaks from epoch to epoch in human evolution comes together, link by link, even in the greatest of misfortunes. An unbroken thread runs from the words that give expression to the greatest misfortune at a time when human beings still looked up to the gods without freedom, a time when they ought to have been making themselves free of this unfreedom. An unbroken thread of spiritual evolution runs from that misfortune which bore, inscribed in the flames, the words about the envy of the gods. This unbroken thread runs right through to our own misfortune in a time when human beings ought to be finding the strength for freedom, a misfortune in which the flames bore the incription: the envy of human beings. In Ephesus the statue of the goddess; here in the Goetheanum the statue of the human being, the statue of the representative of man, Christ Jesus, into whom, identifying ourselves with him, in all humility, we thought to merge in knowledge, just as in olden times, in their own way, no longer quite comprehensible to mankind today, the pupils of Ephesus merged into Diana of Ephesus.

We do not lessen our pain by viewing in the light of history what took place on New Year's Eve last year. When I was permitted to stand for the last time on that platform that had been set up in harmony with the whole of the building, the intention had been to guide the eyes of the listeners, to guide the eyes of their souls towards the ascent from earthly realms into starry realms that express the will and the wisdom, the light of the spiritual cosmos. Many of the spirits who taught their pupils in the Middle Ages in the manner described just now stood, I know, as godparents at that moment. And an hour after the last word had been spoken I was called to the burning Goetheanum. We spent the night of New Year's Eve last year watching the Goetheanum burning.

The mere utterance of these words, dear friends, conjures up an inexpressible response in all our hearts, in all our souls. When something like this has swept across a hallowed place in human evolution, there have always been a few who have vowed to work on in the spirit devoted to what had once been physical even though whatever it had been was no longer present. And gathered now as we are on the anniversary of that misfortune of the Goetheanum, let us be aware that our souls will be living in the proper mood for this our gathering if we all vow to carry on in spirit through this wave of progress in human evolution that which was present in physical form, as a physical image and a physical shape in the Goetheanum, visible to our physical eyes, before being snatched away from our physical perception by a Herostratos-deed. Our pain attaches itself to the old Goetheanum. We shall only become worthy of having been permitted to build that Goetheanum if today in remembering it we vow, before whatever is best and most divine in each one of our souls, to keep faith with the spiritual impulses that had been given an outer form in that Goetheanum. It was possible for this Goetheanum to be taken from us. The Spirit of this Goetheanum, if our will is truly upright and honest, cannot be taken from us. And least of all will it be taken from us if at this solemn and festive hour, separated by so short a time from the moment a year ago when the flames leapt up from our beloved Goetheanum, if at this moment we not only feel the pain anew but also vow out of this pain to keep faith with that Spirit for whom, over ten long years, we were permitted to build this abode.

Then, my dear friends, when this inner vow flows from our heart in all honesty and uprightness, when we can transform the pain and suffering into the impulse for doing deeds, then shall we transform the sorrowful event into a blessing. The pain cannot diminish because of this, but it behoves us to find out of this very pain the incentive to act, the incentive to do deeds in the spirit.

And so, my dear friends, let us look back to the terrible flames of fire which filled us with such inexpressible sorrow. But let us also, in making that vow before whatever forces are the best and most divine in each of us, feel the holy flame in our hearts, the flame which is to enlighten and warm that which was willed in the Goetheanum, by bearing this will onwards through the waves of progress in human evolution. So now, more profoundly, we repeat those words which I was permitted to speak over there, a year ago almost at this very moment. I said, in essence: We are living on the eve of a new year, let us live towards a new cosmic year. If only the Goetheanum still stood amongst us, we could renew this exhortation at this moment! It no longer stands amongst us. Yet I believe that just because it no longer stands amongst us we are permitted, on this eve of another new year, to renew this exhortation with a force increased many times over. Let us bear the Soul of the Goetheanum over into the new cosmic year, and let us endeavour to build in the new Goetheanum a worthy monument to the body of the old Goetheanum, a worthy memorial!

My dear friends, may this link our hearts to the old Goetheanum which we had to consign to the elements. May it link our hearts also to the Spirit, to the Soul of this Goetheanum. With this vow before whatever is best within our being we want to live on not only into the new year. In strength of deed, bearing the spirit, leading the soul we want to live on into the new cosmic year.

My dear friends, you greeted me this evening by standing in memory of the old Goetheanum. You are living in the memory of this old Goetheanum. Let us stand once more as a sign that we vow to work on in the Spirit of the Goetheanum with whatever best forces we can find in the image of our inner human being. Indeed, so be it. Amen.

Thus let us continue, my dear friends, as long as we are able, in accordance with the will that unites our human souls with the souls of the gods with whom we wish to keep faith in the spirit, in the spirit out of which we sought this faith with them at a certain moment in our lives, at that moment when we sought the spiritual wisdom of the Goetheanum. Let us understand how to keep this faith.

The phase of evolution beginning in our own time has a very special character. The same may, of course, be said of each epoch but in every case it is a matter of defining the particular characteristics. The present phase of evolution may be characterized in a general way by saying that all the experiences confronting humankind in the physical world during the earth's further existence will represent a decline, a retrogression. The time when human progress was made possible through the constant refinement of the physical forces is already over. In the future, too, humankind will progress, but only through spiritual development, through development on a higher level than that of the processes of the physical plane. People who rely entirely on the processes of the physical plane will find in them no source of satisfaction. An indication given in spiritual science a long time ago, in the lecture course on the Apocalypse,¹ namely that we are heading for the “War of All against All,” must from now onward be grasped in all its significance and gravity; its implications must not remain in the realm of theory but also come to expression in the actions, the whole behavior of human beings.

The fact that—to use a colloquialism—people in the future are not going to get much fun out of developments on the physical plane will bring home to them that further evolution must proceed from spiritual forces.

This can be understood only by surveying a lengthy period of evolution and applying what is discovered to experiences that will become more and more general in the future. The trend of forces that will manifest in the well-nigh rhythmical onset of war and destruction—processes of which the present catastrophe is but the beginning—will become only too evident. It is childish to believe that anything connected with this war can bring about a permanent era of peace for humanity on the physical plane. That will not be so. What must come about on the earth is spiritual development. Its direction and purport will be clear to us if, after surveying a comparatively lengthy epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, we bear in mind something of the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and then try to envisage the impulse of that event working in the future evolution of humankind.

We have studied the Mystery of Golgotha from many different points of view and will do so again today by characterizing, very briefly, the civilization which preceded it—let us say as far back as the third millennium B.C.—and then continued for a time as pagan culture in the period of Christian development itself. Within this pagan culture, the utterly different Hebraic-Jewish culture took root, having Christianity as its offspring.

The nature of pagan culture can best be understood if we realize that it was the outcome of knowledge, vision and action born of forces much wider in range than those belonging to present earthly existence. It was actually through Hebraic culture that the moral element was first inculcated into humanity. In paganism the moral element did not occupy a place separate and apart; this pagan culture was such that people felt themselves members of the whole cosmos.

This is something we must particularly bear in mind. Human beings living on earth within the old pagan world felt themselves membered into the whole cosmos. They felt how the forces at work in the movements of the stars extend into their own action, or, better said, into the forces taking effect in their actions. What later passed for astrology, and does so still, is but a reflection—and a very misleading one at that—of the ancient wisdom gleaned from contemplation of the stars in their courses and then used as the basis for precepts governing human action.

These ancient civilizations can be understood only if light is thrown by spiritual science upon human evolution in its outer aspect some four or five thousand years before Christ.

We are apt to speak in rather a matter-of-fact way of the second or the first post-Atlantean epochs, but we err if we picture human existence on the earth in the fifth, sixth, or seventh millennia B.C. as having been similar to our present existence. It is quite correct that people living on the earth in those ancient times had a kind of instinctive soul life, in a certain respect more akin to the soul life of animals than to that of present-day human beings. But it is a very one-sided conception of human life to say that in those ancient times people were more like animals. In tenor of soul, the human being then moving about the earth was, it is true, more like the animal; but those human-animal bodies were used by beings of soul and spirit who felt themselves members of the super-sensible worlds, above all of the cosmic worlds. And provided we go back far enough, say to the fifth pre-Christian millennium, it may be said that people made use of animal bodies as instruments rather than feeling themselves within those bodies. To characterize these people accurately, one would have to say that when they were awake, they moved about with an instinctive life of soul like that of animals, but into this instinctive life of soul there shone something like dreams from their sleeping state, waking dreams. And in these waking dreams they perceived how they had descended, to use animal bodies merely as instruments. This inner, fundamental tenor of the human soul then came to expression as a religious rite, in the Mithras cult with its main symbol of the God Mithras riding on a bull, above him the starry heavens to which he belongs, and below him the earth to which the bull belongs. This symbol was not, strictly speaking, a symbol to these people of old; it was a vision of reality. People's whole tenor of soul made them say to themselves: When I am outside my body at night I belong to the forces of the cosmos, of the starry heavens; when I wake in the morning I make use of animal instincts in an animal body.

Then human evolution passed, figuratively speaking, into a period of twilight. A certain dimness, a certain lethargy, spread over the life of humanity; the cosmic dreams receded and instinct gained the upper hand.

The attitude of soul formerly prevailing in human beings was preserved through the Mysteries, mainly through the Asiatic Mysteries. But in the fourth millennium B.C. and until the beginning of the third, humanity in general—when uninfluenced by the Mystery wisdom—lived an existence pervaded by a more or less dim, twilight consciousness. In Asia and the then-known world, it may be said that during the fourth and at the beginning of the third millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, people's life of soul was dim and instinctive. But the Mysteries were there, into which, through the powerful rites and ceremonies, the spiritual worlds were able to penetrate. And it was from these centers that human beings received illumination.

At the beginning of the third millennium a momentous event took place. The root cause of this dim, more instinctive life may be characterized by saying that as beings of spirit and soul, people were still unable at that time to make use of the human organs of intellect. These organs were already within them, they had taken shape in their physical constitution, but the being of spirit and soul could not make use of them. Thus human beings could not acquire knowledge through their own thinking, through their own powers of intellectual discernment. They were dependent upon what was imparted to them from the Mysteries. And then, about the beginning of the third millennium, a momentous event took place in the east of Asia.

A child of a distinguished Asiatic family of the time was allowed to grow up in the precincts of the Mystery ceremonies. Circumstances were such that this child was actually permitted to take part in the ceremonies, undoubtedly because the priests conducting the rites in the Mysteries felt it as an inspiration that such a child must be allowed to participate. And when the being incarnate in that child had reached the age of about forty—approximately that age—something very remarkable came to light. It became evident—and there is no doubt at all that the priests of the Mysteries had foreseen the event prophetically—it became evident that this man who had been allowed to grow up in the precincts of one of the Mystery centers in East Asia, began suddenly, at the age of about forty, to grasp through the faculty of human intellect itself what had formerly come into the Mysteries through revelation, and only through revelation. He was as it were the first to make use of the organs of human intellect, but still in association with the Mysteries.

Translating into terms of our present language how the priests of the Mysteries spoke of this matter, we must say: In this man, Lucifer himself was incarnated—no more and no less than that! It is a significant, momentous fact that in the third millennium before Christ an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh actually took place in the east of Asia. And from this incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh—for this being became a teacher—there went forth what is described as the pre-Christian, pagan culture which still survived in the gnosis of the earliest Christian centuries.

It would be wrong to pass derogatory judgment on this Lucifer culture. For all the beauty produced by Greek civilization, even the insight that is still alive in ancient Greek philosophy and in the tragedies of Aeschylus would have been impossible without this Lucifer incarnation.

The influence of the Lucifer incarnation was still powerful in the south of Europe, in the north of Africa, and in Asia Minor during the first centuries of Christendom. And when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on earth, it was essentially the luciferic wisdom through which it could be understood. The gnosis, which set about the task of grasping the import of the Mystery of Golgotha, was impregnated through and through with luciferic wisdom. It must therefore be emphasized, firstly, that at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. there was a Chinese incarnation of Lucifer; at the beginning of our own era the incarnation of Christ took place. And to begin with, the significance of the incarnation of Christ was grasped because the power of the old Lucifer incarnation still survived. This power did not actually fade from the human faculty of comprehension until the fourth century A.D.; and even then, it had its aftermath, its ramifications.

To these two incarnations, the Lucifer incarnation in ancient times and the incarnation of the Christ which gives the earth its meaning, a third incarnation will be added in a future not so very far distant. And the events of the present time are already moving in such a way as to prepare for it.

Of the incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third millennium B.C., we must say: through Lucifer, human beings have acquired the faculty of using the organs of their intellect, of their power of intellectual discernment. It was Lucifer himself, in a human body, who was the first to grasp through the power of intellect what formerly could be imparted to humanity only through revelation, namely, the content of the Mysteries.

What is now in preparation and will quite definitely come to pass on earth in a none-too-distant future is an actual incarnation of Ahriman.

As you know, since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in an era in which it behooves humankind to come more and more into possession of the full power of consciousness. It is of the very greatest importance that people should approach the coming incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness of this event. The incarnation of Lucifer could be recognized only by the prophetic insight of the priests of the Mysteries. People were also very unconscious of what the incarnation of Christ and the event of Golgotha really signified. But they must live on toward the incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness amid the shattering events which will occur on the physical plane. Amid the perpetual stresses of war and other tribulations of the immediate future, the human mind will become very inventive in the domain of physical life. And through this very growth of inventiveness in physical life—which cannot be averted in any way or by any means—the bodily existence of a human individuality in whom Ahriman can incarnate will become possible and inevitable.

From the spiritual world this Ahrimanic power is preparing for incarnation on the earth, endeavoring in every conceivable way to make such preparation that the incarnation of Ahriman in human form may be able to mislead and corrupt humankind on earth to the uttermost. A task of humankind during the next phase of civilization will be to live toward the incarnation of Ahriman with such alert consciousness that this incarnation can actually serve to promote a higher, spiritual development, inasmuch as through Ahriman himself humanity will become aware of what can, or shall we say, can not be achieved by physical life alone. But people must go forward with full consciousness toward this incarnation of Ahriman and become more and more alert in every domain, in order to recognize with greater and greater clarity those trends in life which are leading toward this Ahrimanic incarnation. People must learn from spiritual science to find the key to life and so be able to recognize and learn to control the currents leading toward the incarnation of Ahriman. It must be realized that Ahriman will live among people on the earth, but that in confronting him people will themselves determine what they may learn from him, what they may receive from him. This, however, they will not be able to do unless, from now onward, they take control of certain spiritual and also unspiritual currents which otherwise are used by Ahriman for the purpose of leaving humankind as deeply unconscious as possible of his coming; then, one day, he will be able to appear on earth and overwhelm people tempting and luring them to repudiate earth evolution, thus preventing it from reaching its goal. To understand the whole process of which I have been speaking, it is essential to recognize the character of certain currents and influences—spiritual or the reverse.

Do you not see the continually growing number of people at the present time who do not want any science of the spirit, any knowledge of the spiritual? Do you not see how numerous are the people to whom the old forces of religion no longer give any inner stimulus? Whether they go to church or not is a matter of complete indifference to large numbers of human beings nowadays. The old religious impulses mean nothing to them. But neither will they bring themselves to give a thought to what can stream into our civilization as new spiritual life. They resist it, reject it, regard it as folly, as something inconvenient; they will not allow themselves to have anything to do with it. But, you see, human beings as we live on earth are veritably a unity. Our spiritual nature cannot be separated from our physical nature; both work together as a unity between birth and death. And even if human beings do not receive the spiritual through their faculties of soul, the spiritual takes effect, nevertheless. Since the last third of the nineteenth century the spiritual has been streaming around us; it is streaming into earthly evolution. The spiritual is there in very truth—only people are not willing to receive it.

But even if they do not accept the spiritual, it is there! And what becomes of it? Paradoxical as it may seem—for much that is true seems paradoxical to the modern mind—in those people who refuse the spiritual and like eating and drinking best of all things in life, the spiritual streams, unconsciously to them, into the processes of eating and digestion. This is the secret of that march into materialism which began about the year 1840, or rather was then in active preparation. Those who do not receive the spiritual through their souls receive it today nonetheless: in eating and drinking they eat and drink the spirit. They are “eaters” of the soul and spirit. And in this way the spirit that is streaming into earth evolution passes over into the luciferic element, is conveyed to Lucifer. Thereby the luciferic power, which can then be of help to the ahrimanic power for its later incarnation, is constantly strengthened. This must come to the knowledge of those who admit the fact that in the future people will either receive spiritual knowledge consciously or consume the spirit unconsciously, thereby delivering it into the hands of the luciferic powers.

This stream of spirit-and-soul-consumption is particularly encouraged by Ahriman because in this way he can lull humankind into greater and greater drowsiness, so that then, through his incarnation, he will be able to come among people and fall upon them unawares because they do not confront him consciously.

But Ahriman can also make direct preparation for his incarnation, and he does so. Certainly, people of our day also have a spiritual life, but it is purely intellectual, unconnected with the spiritual world. This purely intellectual life is becoming more and more widespread; at first it took effect mainly in the sciences, but now it is leading to mischiefs of every kind in social life as well. What is the essential character of this intellectual life?

This intellectual life has very little to do with the true interests of human beings! I ask you: how many teachers do you not see today, passing in and out of higher and lower educational institutions without bringing any inner enthusiasm to their science but pursuing it merely as a means of livelihood? In such cases the interest of the soul is not directly linked with the actual pursuit. The same thing happens even at school. Think how much is learned at the various stages of life without any real enthusiasm or interest, how external the intellectual life is becoming for many people who devote themselves to it! And how many there are today who are forced to produce a mass of intellectual material which is then preserved in libraries and, as spiritual life, is not truly alive!

Everything that is developing as intellectual life without being suffused by warmth of soul, without being quickened by enthusiasm, directly furthers the incarnation of Ahriman in a way that is after his own heart. It lulls people to sleep in the way I have described, so that its results are advantageous to Ahriman.

There are numerous other currents in the spiritual or unspiritual life which Ahriman can turn to his advantage. You have lately heard—and you are still hearing it—that national states, national empires must be founded. A great deal is said about “freedom of the individual peoples.” But the time for founding empires based on relationships of blood and race is past and over in the evolution of mankind. [Quote 1] If an appeal is made today to national, racial, and similar relationships, to relationships arising out of the intellect and not out of the spirit, then disharmony among humankind will be intensified. And it is this disharmony among humankind which the ahrimanic power can put to special use. Chauvinism, perverted patriotism in every form—this is the material from which Ahriman will build just what he needs.

But there are other things as well. Everywhere today we see parties being formed for one object or another. People nowadays have no discernment, nor do they desire to have it where party opinions and party programs are concerned. With intellectual ingenuity, proof can be furnished in support of the most radically opposing theories. Very clever arguments can be used to prove the soundness of Leninism—but the same applies to directly contrary principles and also to what lies between the two extremes. An excellent case can be made out for every party program: but the one who establishes the validity of the opposite program is equally right. The intellectualism prevailing among people today is not capable of demonstrating the inner potentialities and values of anything. It can furnish proofs; but what is intellectually proved should not be regarded as of real value or efficacy in life. People oppose one another in parties because the soundness of every party opinion—at any rate the main party opinions—can be proved with equal justification. Our intellect remains at the surface layer of understanding and does not penetrate to the deeper layer where the truth actually lies. This, too, must be fundamentally and thoroughly understood.

People today prefer to let their intellect remain on the surface and not to penetrate with deeper forces to those levels where the essential nature of things is disclosed. It is only necessary to look around a little, for even where it takes its most external form, life often reveals the pitfalls of current predilections. People love numbers and figures in science, but they also love figures in the social sphere as well. Social science consists almost entirely of statistics. And from statistics, that is to say from figures, the weightiest conclusions are reached. Well, with figures too, anything can be proved and anything believed; for figures are not a means whereby the essential reality of things can be proved—they are simply a means of deception! Whenever one fails to look beyond figures to the qualitative, they can be utterly deceptive.

The following is an obvious example. There is, or at least there used to be, a great deal of argument about the nationality of the Macedonians. In the political life of the Balkan peninsula, much depended upon the statistics compiled there. The figures are of just as much value as those contained in other statistics. Whether statistics are compiled of wheat and rye production, or of the numbers of Greek, Serbian, or Bulgarian nationals in Macedonia—in regard to what can be proved by these means it is all the same. From the figures quoted for the Greeks, for the Bulgarians, for the Serbians, very plausible conclusions can be drawn. But one can also have an eye for the qualitative element, and then one often finds it recorded that the father was Greek, one son was Bulgarian, another was Serbian. What is at the back of it you can puzzle out for yourselves! These statistics are taken as authoritative, whereas in this case they were compiled solely in support of party aims. It stands to reason that if the father is really a Greek, the two sons are also Greeks. But the procedure adopted there is just an example of many other things that are done with figures. Ahriman can achieve a great deal through figures and numbers used in this way as evidence of proof.

A further means of which Ahriman can avail himself is again one that will seem paradoxical. As you know, we have been concerned in our movement to study the Gospels in the light of spiritual science. But these deeper interpretations of the Gospels, which are becoming more and more necessary in our time, are rejected on all sides, just as spiritual science as a whole is rejected.

The people who often profess humility in these matters—and they are insistent about it—are actually the most arrogant of all. More and more generally it is being said that people should steep themselves in the very simplicity of the Gospels and not attempt to understand the Mystery of Golgotha by entering into the complexities of spiritual science. Those who feign unpretentiousness in their study of the Gospels are the most arrogant of all, for they despise the honest search for knowledge demanded in spiritual science. So arrogant are they that they believe the highest revelations of the spiritual world can be garnered without effort, simply by browsing on the simplicity of the Gospels. What claims to be “humble” or “simple” today is often supreme arrogance. In sects, in religious confessions—it is there that the most arrogant people are to be found:

It must be remembered that the Gospels came into existence at a time when the luciferic wisdom still survived. In the first centuries of Christendom, people's understanding of the Gospels was quite different from what it came to be in later times. Today, people who cannot deepen their minds through spiritual science merely pretend to understand the Gospels. In reality they have no idea even of the original meaning of the words; for the translations that have been made into the different languages are not faithful reproductions of the Gospels; often they are scarcely even reminiscent of the original meaning of the words in which the Gospels were composed.

Real understanding of the intervention of the Christ being in earthly evolution is possible today only through spiritual science. Those who want to study, or actually do study the Gospels “without pretension”—as the saying goes—cannot come to any inner realization of the Christ being as he truly is, but only to an illusory picture, or, at very most, a vision or hallucination of the Christ being. No real connection with the Christ impulse can be achieved today merely through reading the Gospels—but only a hallucinatory picture of the Christ. Hence the prevalence of the theological view that the Christ was not present in the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was simply an historical figure like Socrates or Plato or others, although possibly more exalted. The “simple man of Nazareth” is an ideal even to the theologians. And very few of them indeed can make anything of an event like Paul's vision at the gate of Damascus, because without the deepened knowledge yielded by spiritual science the Gospels can give rise only to a hallucination of the Christ, not to vision of the real Christ. And so Paul's vision at Damascus is also regarded as a hallucination.

Deeper understanding of the Gospels in the light of spiritual science is essential today, for the apathy that takes hold of people who are content to live merely within the arms of the denominations will be used to the utmost by Ahriman in order to achieve his goal—which is that his incarnation shall catch people unawares. And those who believe they are being most truly Christian by rejecting any development of the conception of the Christ mystery, are, in their arrogance, the ones who do most to promote Ahriman's aims. The denominations and sects are positively spheres of encouragement, breeding-grounds for Ahriman. It is futile to gloss these things over with illusions. Just as the materialistic attitude, rejecting the spiritual altogether and contending that the human being is a product of what people eat and drink, furthers Ahriman's aims, so are these aims furthered by the stubborn rejection of everything spiritual and adherence to the literal, “simple” conception of the Gospels.

You see, a barrier which prevents the single Gospels from unduly circumscribing the human mind has been erected through the fact that the event of Golgotha is described in the Gospels from four—seemingly contradictory—sides. Only a little reflection will show that this is a protection from too literal a conception. In sects, however, where one Gospel only is taken as the basis of the teaching—and such sects are quite numerous—pitfalls, stupefaction, and hallucination are generated. In their day, the Gospels were given as a necessary counterweight to the luciferic gnosis; but if no attempt is made to develop understanding of their content, the aims of Ahriman are furthered, not the progress of humankind. In the absolute sense, nothing is good in itself, but is always good or bad according to the use to which it is put. The best can be the worst if wrongly used. Sublime though they are, the Gospels can also have the opposite effect if people are too lazy to search for a deeper understanding based on spiritual science.

Hence there is a great deal in the spiritual and unspiritual currents of the present time of which people should be acutely aware, and determine their attitude of soul accordingly. Upon the ability and willingness to penetrate to the roots of such matters will depend the effect which the incarnation of Ahriman can have upon human beings, whether this incarnation will lead them to prevent the earth from reaching its goal, or bring home to them the very limited significance of intellectual, unspiritual life. If people rightly take in hand the currents leading toward Ahriman, then simply through his incarnation in earthly life they will recognize the ahrimanic influence on the one side, and on the other its polar opposite—the luciferic influence. And then the very contrast between the ahrimanic and the luciferic will enable them to perceive the third reality. Human beings must consciously wrestle through to an understanding of this trinity of the Christian impulse, the ahrimanic and the luciferic influences; for without this consciousness they will not be able to go forward into the future with the prospect of achieving the goal of earth existence.

Spiritual science must be taken in deep earnestness, for only so can it be rightly understood. It is not the outcome of any sectarian whim but something that has proceeded from the fundamental needs of human evolution. Those who recognize these needs cannot choose between whether they will or will not endeavor to foster spiritual science. On the contrary they will say to themselves: The whole physical and spiritual life of human beings must be illumined and pervaded by the conceptions of spiritual science!

Just as once in the East there was a Lucifer incarnation, and then, at the midpoint, as it were, of world evolution, the incarnation of Christ, so in the West there will be an incarnation of Ahriman.

This ahrimanic incarnation cannot be averted; it is inevitable, for humanity must confront Ahriman face to face. He will be the individuality by whom it will be made clear what indescribable cleverness can be developed if they call to their help all that earthly forces can do to enhance cleverness and ingenuity. In the catastrophes that will befall humanity in the near future, people will become extremely inventive; many things discovered in the forces and substances of the universe will be used to provide human nourishment. But these very discoveries will at the same time make it apparent that matter is connected with the organs of intellect, not with the organs of the spirit but of the intellect. People will learn what to eat and drink in order to become really clever. Eating and drinking cannot make them spiritual, but clever and astute, yes. Humanity has no knowledge of these things as yet; but not only will they be striven for, they will be the inevitable outcome of catastrophes looming in the near future. And certain secret societies—where preparations are already in train—will apply these things in such a way that the necessary conditions can be established for an actual incarnation of Ahriman on the earth. This incarnation cannot be averted, for people must realize during the time of the earth's existence just how much can proceed from purely material processes! We must learn to bring under our control those spiritual or unspiritual currents which are leading to Ahriman.

Once it is realized that conflicting party programs can be proved equally correct, our attitude of soul will be that we do not set out to prove things, but rather to experience them. For to experience a thing is a very different matter from attempting to prove it intellectually.

Equally we shall be convinced that deeper and deeper penetration of the Gospels is necessary through spiritual science. The literal, word-for-word acceptance of the Gospels that is still so prevalent today promotes ahrimanic culture. Even on external grounds it is obvious that a strictly literal acceptance of the Gospels is unjustified. For as you know, what is good and right for one time is not right for every other time. What is right for one epoch becomes luciferic or ahrimanic when practiced in a later one. The mere reading of the Gospel texts has had its day. What is essential now is to acquire a spiritual understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha in the light of the truths enshrined in the Gospels. Many people, of course, find these things disquieting; but those whose interest is attracted by anthroposophy must learn to realize that the levels of culture, gradually piling one above the other, have created chaos, and that light must penetrate again into this chaos.

It is interesting nowadays to listen to someone whose views have become very extreme, or to read about some burning question of the day, and then to listen to sermons on the same subject given by a priest of some denomination who is still steeped in the form of thought current in bygone times. There you face two worlds which you cannot possibly confuse unless you avoid all attempts to get at the root of these things. Listen to a modern socialist speaking about social questions and then, immediately afterward, to a Catholic preacher speaking about the same questions. It is very interesting to find two levels of culture existing side by side but using the words in an entirely different sense. The same word has quite a different meaning in each case.

These things should be seen in the light that will dawn if they are taken in the earnest spirit we have been trying to convey. People belonging to definite religions do also come, in the end, to long in their way for spiritual deepening. It is by no means without significance that a man as eminently spiritual as Cardinal Newman, ardent Catholic though he was, should say at his investiture in Rome that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation.

In effect, what Cardinal Newman said was that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation! But he had not the courage to take a new spiritual revelation seriously. And so it is with many others. You can read countless treatises today about what is needed in social life. Another book has recently appeared: Socialism, by Robert Wilbrandt, the son of the poet. In it the social question is discussed on the foundation of accurate and detailed knowledge. And finally it is stated that without the spirit nothing is achieved, that the very course of events shows that the spirit is necessary. Yes, but what does such a man really achieve? He gets as far as to utter the word “spirit,” to pronounce the abstract word “spirit;” but he refuses to accept, indeed he rejects, anything that endeavors to make the spirit really take effect.

For that, it is essential above all to realize that wallowing in abstractions, however loud the cry for the spirit, is not yet spiritual, not yet spirit! Vague, abstract chattering about the spirit must never be confused with the active search for the content of the spiritual world pursued in anthroposophical science.

Nowadays there is much talk about the spirit. But you who accept spiritual science should not be deluded by such chattering; you should perceive the difference between it and the descriptions of the spiritual world attempted in anthroposophy, where the spiritual world is described as objectively as the physical world. You should probe into these differences, reminding yourselves repeatedly that abstract talk of the spirit is a deviation from sincere striving for the spirit and that by their very talk, people are actually removing themselves from the spirit. Purely intellectual allusion to the spirit leads nowhere. What, then, is “intelligence?” What is the content of our human intelligence? I can best explain this in the following way. Imagine—and this will be better understood by the many ladies present!—imagine yourself standing in front of a mirror and looking into it. The picture presented to you by the mirror is you, but it has no reality at all. It is nothing but a reflection. All the intelligence within your soul, all the intellectual content, is only a mirror image; it has no reality. And just as your reflected image is called into existence through the mirror, so what mirrors itself as intelligence is called into existence through the physical apparatus of your body, through the brain. You are intelligent only because your body is there. And as little as you can touch yourself by stretching your hand toward your reflected image, as little can you lay hold of the spirit if you turn only to the intellectual—for the spirit is not there! What is grasped through the intellect, ingenious as it may be, never contains the spirit itself, but only a picture of the spirit. You cannot truly experience the spirit if you get no further than mere intelligence. The reason why intelligence is so seductive is that it yields a picture, a reflected picture of the spirit—but not the spirit itself. It seems unnecessary to go to the inconvenience of penetrating to the spirit, because it is there—or so, at least, one imagines. In reality it is only a reflected picture—but for all that, it is not difficult to talk about the spirit.

To distinguish the mere picture from the reality—that is the task of the tenor of soul which does not merely theorize about spiritual science but has actual perception of the spirit.

That is what I wanted to say to you today in order to intensify the earnestness which should pervade our whole attitude to the spiritual life as conceived by anthroposophy. For the evolution of humanity in the future will depend upon how truly this attitude is adopted by people of the present day. If what I have characterized in this lecture continues to be offered the reception that is still offered to it today by the vast majority of people on the earth, then Ahriman will be an evil guest when he comes. But if people are able to rouse themselves to take into their consciousness what we have been studying, if they are able so to guide it that humanity can freely confront the ahrimanic influence, then, when Ahriman appears, human beings will acquire, precisely through him, the power to realize that although the earth must enter inevitably into its decline, humankind is lifted above earthly existence through this very fact. When human beings have reached a certain age in physical life, the body begins to decline, but if they are sensible they make no complaint, knowing that together with the soul they are approaching a life that does not run parallel with this physical decline. There lives in humankind something that is not bound up with the already prevailing decline of the physical earth but becomes more and more spiritual just because of this physical decline.

Let us learn to say frankly: Yes, the earth is in its decline, and human life, too, with respect to its physical manifestation; but just because it is so, let us muster the strength to draw into our civilization that element which, springing from humankind itself, will live on while the earth is in decline, as the immortal fruit of earth evolution.

• 1. Twelve lectures given at Nürnberg, 1908.

[ 1 ] We have seen from the foregoing chapters that the being of man is built up of four members: physical body, life-body, astral body, and the bearer of the Ego. The I or Ego of man works in the three other members and transforms them. Through this transformation arise at a lower stage sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul, while at a higher stage of man's existence Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man are evolved. These several members of man's nature stand in the most varied relations to the whole Universe. Their evolution is connected with the evolution of the Universe, and by a study of the latter we can gain insight into the deeper secrets of the being of man.

[ 2 ] It can easily be seen that the life of man is related in many different directions to the environment, to the dwelling place wherein he evolves. External science has already by its own recognized facts and data been driven to the conclusion that the Earth—this dwelling-place of man in the widest sense of the word—has itself undergone evolution. It can tell us of conditions that once prevails in the Earth, where man in his present form did not yet exist upon our planet, and can then go on to show how humanity has evolved, slowly and gradually, from quite simple conditions of civilization to those that obtain today. Thus has external science too been led to the idea that there is a connection between the evolution of man and that of the heavenly body on which he lives—the Earth.

[ 3 ] Spiritual science¹ traces this connection by means of a cognition that derives its facts from a perception that has been quickened by the spiritual organs. It follows man back on the path of his development, and perceives how the real, inner, spiritual being of man has passed through a succession of lives upon this Earth; and as it continues to pursue these researches, it arrives at length at a far distant point of time, when the inner being of man first entered upon an outward life (in the present-day meaning of the word.) It was in that earliest earthly incarnation that the I or Ego first began its activity within the three bodies—astral body, life-body and physical body; and it took with it, on into the life that followed, the fruits of this activity.

[ 4 ] When we go back in the way thus indicated, we become aware that at that distant point of time the Ego finds the Earth in a condition wherein the three bodies of man are already evolved and have a certain connection with one another. Now for the first time the Ego unites with the entity that consists of these three bodies, and from this point onwards partakes in their further evolution. Hitherto, they have been evolving without a human Ego and have in this way reached the stage at which the Ego finds them.

[ 5 ] Spiritual science must go still further back with its researches if it would find an answer to the question: How did the three bodies reach a stage of evolution such as enabled them to receive into themselves an I, and then too to the further question: How did the I itself come into being and how did it acquire the ability to work within the bodies?

[ 6 ] An answer to these questions is possible only by tracing the rise an devolution of the Earth-planet itself in the light of spiritual science. By means of such research we arrive at a beginning of this Earth-planet. The mode of thought which builds on the facts of the physical senses alone, cannot pursue its inferences far enough to deal at all with this beginning of the Earth. There is a theory which, by inferences of this kind, arrives at the result that all the substance of the Earth has evolved from a primeval nebula. There is no occasion for us to enter her into a discussion of such ideas as this. For spiritual research as to consider not merely the material processes of Earth evolution, but before all the spiritual causes which lie behind all matter and substance. If we see before us a man in the act of lifting up his hand, this can start us on two different lines of thought. We may investigate the mechanism of the arm and of the remained of the body with the intention of describing how the action takes place as a purely physical process. But we can also direct our mind's eye to that which is going on in the man's soul and constitutes his motive for lifting up his hand. In a similar way the scientist trained in spiritual perception sees spiritual processes behind all the processes of the world of the physical senses. For him, all the changes in the material nature of the Earth-planet are manifestations of spiritual forces which are there behind the material. And as his spiritual observation reaches farther and farther back in the Earth's life, he comes at length to a point in evolution where the material first begins to be. The material evolves out of the spiritual; until then, the spiritual alone existed. By the exercise of spiritual observation we perceive the spiritual, and note how, as time goes on, it partially condenses, so to speak, to the material. We watch this taking place and, but that the process is on a higher level, it is very much as though we might be looking at a vessel filled with water, where by a finely regulated cooling process, lumps of ice were gradually taking shape. We see the ice condense out of what was water through and through. Similarly, by spiritual observation we can trace how the material things, events and entities condense, as it were, out of a previous existence which was spiritual through and through.

Thus the Earth-planet has evolved out of a cosmic spiritual entity. Everything material connected with the planet has condensed out of what was once united with it spiritually. But we must not imagine that a time ever came when all spiritual being had been transformed into material. That which confronts us in the latter is never more than part of the original and spiritual. Even throughout Earth's material evolution, the spiritual always remains the guiding and directing principle.

[ 7 ] It stands to reason that the way of thought which would hold fast to the physical, sense-perceptible processes alone—and to what the intellect is able to infer from these—can say nothing whatever about the spiritual of which we are here speaking If a being could exist, endowed with senses to perceive only the ice and not the finer state of water from which the ice on cooling separates itself, then for such a being the water would not be there; he could perceive nothing of it until some of it was changed into ice. So too for the man who will admit only what presents itself to the physical senses, the spiritual which underlies the earthly processes must ever remain hidden. And if form the physical facts that he perceives today he is able to form correct conclusions as to earlier conditions of the planet, he will still reach back only to that evolutionary point where the spiritual began its partial condensation to the material. His mode of thought will not perceive the spiritual that preceded that process, any more than it can perceive the spiritual substance which even now holds sway, invisibly, behind the world of matter.

[ 8 ] Not until the later chapters of this book will it be possible to speak of the paths whereby man attains the faculty to look back, in spiritual perception, to the earlier conditions of the Earth with which we are now dealing. Suffice it for the moment to point out that for spiritual research the facts of the most distant early times are not obliterated. When a creature has come into bodily existence, its bodily nature are not obliterated in the same way. They leave behind their traces, nay their exact images, in the spiritual foundation of the world. And if we are able to raise our faculty of perception and look through the visible world to the invisible, we arrive at length at a point where we have before us what may be compared to a mighty spiritual panorama wherein all the past events of the world are displayed. These abiding traces of all spiritual happenings may be called the “Akashic Records,” denoting as “Akasha-essence” that which is spiritually permanent in the world process, in contrast with the transient forms. Here once again it must be emphasized that researches in the supersensible realms of existence can only be made with the help of spiritual perception—that is to say, as regards the region we are now considering, by actual reading of the Akashic Records. Nevertheless here too, what has been said already in similar connections holds good: to investigate and discover the supersensible facts is possible only by supersensible perception; once found however, and communicated in the science of the supersensible, these facts can be understood with man's ordinary faculty of thought. There must only be the readiness to approach the subject with an open mind In the following pages the evolutionary conditions of the Earth according to the science of the supersensible will be communicated. The transformations of our planet will be followed down to the state of life in which it is today. Let anyone consider what he has before him today in pure sense-perception, and then give his attention to what supersensible knowledge tells of how this present has evolved from the primeval past. If he be truly open-minded, he will then be able to say to himself: In the first place, what this science tells is inherently logical; secondly if I assume the truth of what is communicated from supersensible research, I find I can understand how it is that things have eventually come to be such as they appear before me now.

The use of the word “logical” in this connection does not of course imply that errors in logic can never be contained in any particular statement from supersensible research. We are using the term here in no other way than it is used in ordinary life in the physical world, where logicality of statement is universally demanded—although some individual describing a particular set of facts may now and again be guilty of mistakes in logic. The situation is just the same in supersensible research. It may even happen that an investigator, able to perceive in supersensible domains, stumbles into errors in respect of logical description, and that a man who does not himself perceive supersensibly but has a good reasoning faculty, is subsequently able to correct him. As logic, however, no objection can be raised against the logic that is applied in supersensible research. Nor should it be necessary to emphasize that exception can never be taken to the facts themselves on merely logical grounds. Just as in the realm of the physical world one can never prove by logic whether or no a whale exists, but only by inspection, so it is with supersensible facts; they can be apprehended by spiritual perception and by that alone.

It cannot, however, be sufficiently stressed that for the student of supersensible realms it is a necessity, before he tries to approach the spiritual worlds with his own perception, to make sure that he is doing so from the right standpoint—the standpoint, that is, that he can reach through the above-mentioned logic and—what is no less important—through having come to recognize that, assuming the statements of Occult Science to be correct, the world wherever it is revealed to the senses appears intelligible. In effect, all conscious experience in the supersensible world remains uncertain, nay dangerous, a kind of groping in the dark, if the student disdains to undergo this preparation. And it is for this reason that the present book, before dealing with the actual path to supersensible knowledge, will communicate first the supersensible facts of Earth evolution.

One other point needs to be borne in mind in this connection. Someone who with pure thinking finds his way into what supersensible knowledge has to relate, is by no means in the same position as a man who listens to an account of some physical process which he is unable to witness for himself. Pure thinking is itself already a supersensible activity. True, inasmuch as it belongs to the life of sense, it cannot of itself take us to the supersensible events. But when applied to the supersensible events that are told out of supersensible perception, pure thinking does of itself grow into the supersensible world. Indeed one of the very best ways to attain perception of one's own in supersensible domains, is to grow into the higher world by thinking over what supersensible knowledge communicates. For with this way of entry the greatest clarity is ensured. Hence a certain school of spiritual-scientific research regards pure thinking as the soundest kind of first step in any spiritual-scientific training.

It will be readily understood that this book cannot set out to show, in connection with every detail of the Earth's evolution as perceived in the spirit, how the supersensible finds again and again its confirmation in the outwardly manifest. This certainly was not implied when we said that the hidden can everywhere be shown and proved in its manifest effects. Rather did we mean that everything man meets in life can become clear and intelligible to him, step by step, if he will but place the manifest events into the light that is made possible for him by Occult Science. Only in a few characteristic instances will reference be made in these pages to the confirmation of the hidden in the manifest, in order to show by a few examples how it is possible to find on every hand such confirmation in the practical pursuit of life, have we but the will to do so.

[ 9 ] Following back the evolution of the Earth with spiritual-scientific research, we come to a spiritual condition of our planet. If however we pursue the investigation still further, we find that this spiritual has already been in a kind of physical embodiment before. That is to say, we encounter a past physical planetary condition which afterwards became spiritual and then, becoming material once more, was at length transformed into our Earth. Our Earth thus appears as the re-embodiment of a primeval planet. But spiritual science is able to go even further back, and as it does so it finds the whole process repeated again twice over. Thus our Earth has passed through three previous planetary conditions, with intermediate states of spiritualization in between. The physical proves to be more and more fine and delicate, the farther back we trace the Earth's embodiment.

[ 10 ] Against the descriptions that will now follow it may quite naturally be objected: How can any reasonable person entertain the postulate of world-conditions so immeasurably remote? The answer is, that to a man who can look with understanding at the spiritual that is there now, hidden within what is manifest to the senses, insight also into former sates of evolution, however distant, cannot appear essentially impossible. If we do not recognize the hidden spiritual existence that is around us even at the present time, then it will indeed be meaningless to speak of an evolution such as is here in mind. But once we are able to recognize the presence of the spiritual here and now, we shall find the earlier condition given or implied in the immediate vision of the present, just as the condition of the one-year-old infant is implied in the appearance of a man of fifty. Yes, someone may say, but in this instance we have among us, beside people of fifty, children of a year of—and all the intermediate stages too. That is quite true; but the same is also true of the evolution of the spiritual to which we here refer. Anyone possessing clear insight and discrimination will recognize that a complete observation of the present—which will necessarily include its spiritual part too—cannot but perceive there also are evolutionary conditions of the past, preserved side by side with those stages of existence which have reached the present evolutionary level. Just as children of a year old are present side by side with men and women of fifty, so within all that goes on upon Earth at the present time we can still behold primordial happenings, if only we are able to hold distinct from one another the diverse stages of evolution.

[ 11 ] Man, in the form and figure in which he is now evolving, does not emerge until the fourth of the above planetary embodiments—the Earth proper. The essential feature of man's present form is that he consists of the four members: physical body, life-body, astral body and Ego. This form however could not have emerged at all, had it not been prepared by the preceding facts of evolution. The preparation took place through the gradual evolution, during the earlier planetary embodiment, of beings who had already three of the four members of the present human being, namely physical body, life-body and astral body. These beings, whom we may call in a certain respect the ancestors of man, had as yet no I, but they evolved the other three members and the mutual connections of these three up to the point where they were ripe, subsequently to receive the I. Thus on the preceding embodiment of the planet, man's ancestor had reached a certain degree of maturity in three members. With this he passed into the state of spiritualization, out of which the new planetary condition—that of the Earth—subsequently arose. In this Earth were contained, like seeds, the thus far matured ancestors of man. By undergoing entire spiritualization and re-appearing in a new form, the planet could give the seeds it contained within it, with their physical body, life-body and astral body, not only the opportunity to evolve again up to the height which had been theirs before, but the further possibility, having attained this height, to go beyond it by receiving in addition the I. Earth evolution falls accordingly into two parts. In the first the Earth appears as a re-embodiment of the earlier planetary condition, although by virtue of the spiritualized condition it has meanwhile undergone, this recapitulation represents a higher stage than that of the former embodiment. Within it the Earth contains the seeds of the ancestors of man which have come from the earlier planet. To begin with, the seeds evolve up to the level on which they were before. When they have reached it, the first period is at an end. And now, since its own evolution is at a higher stage, the Earth can bring the seeds also to a higher level; it can make them capable of receiving the I. Thus the second period of Earth evolution is characterized by the unfolding of the I in physical body, life-body and astral body.

[ 12 ] Through Earth evolution man is thus lifted a stage higher in his development. Now this was also the case in the former planetary embodiments. For something of the human being was already in existence on the very first of these. In order therefore to come to a clear understanding of man's present nature, we have to trace his evolution back to the far primeval past—to the above-mentioned first planetary embodiment. In supersensible research this first planetary embodiment may be called Saturn, the second may be designated Sun and the third, Moon; the fourth is the Earth. One thing, however, must be strictly borne in mind in regard to these designations. They must not, to begin with, be associated in any way with the identical names as applied to the members of our present solar system. “Saturn,” “Sun” and “Moon” are here intended simply as the names for past evolutionary forms which the Earth has gone through. As to the relation of these pristine worlds to the heavenly bodies that constitute our present solar system—that will emerge in the further course of our studies. Then too the reason for the choice of the names will become evident.

[ 13 ] The conditions on the four planetary embodiments will now be described. It can only be done in merest outline; for the events, the Beings and their destinies were truly no less manifold on Saturn, Sun and Moon than they are on Earth itself. Attention will be drawn to a few characteristic features that can help to illustrate how the present conditions of our Earth have evolved out of the former ones. The farther we go back in evolution, the less will the conditions be found to resemble those of the present time. Yet they can only be described by resorting to ideas and images derived from present conditions. Thus when we speak in this connection of light, warmth and the like, it must not be forgotten that what is thus referred to is not precisely the same as what we now call light and warmth. The notation is justified nevertheless, for the observer in the supersensible perceives in the earlier stages of evolution something from which the present light, warmth, etc. have come to be. And anyone who carefully follows the descriptions will be well able to gather, from the whole context into which things are placed, the kind of conceptions he will need in order to have pictures and images that truly convey the character of the events that took place in those remote ages of the past.

[ 14 ] The difficulty is, however, undeniably great for those planetary conditions which precede the Moon embodiment. For the conditions of the Moon period still show a certain likeness to those of the Earth, and in attempting to describe them these similarities with the present day give one a point of contact and enable one to express in clear ideas what has been supersensibly perceived. It is a very different matter when we come to describe the Saturn and Sun evolutions. What confronts the clairvoyant observer here is as different as possible from the things and beings that now belong to the horizon of man's life. This makes it exceedingly difficult even to bring the corresponding facts into the domain of the supersensible consciousness at all. But since the present human being cannot be understood without going back to the Saturn state, some description of it must none the less be given. And the description will not be misunderstood if it is borne in mind that the difficulty exists, and that many of the things here said are to be taken not so much as an exact description but more as a hint and indication of the facts.

[ 15 ] What has just been said, as well as what will be said in the following pages, might not unnaturally be held to contradict the statement made previously as to the persistence of the earlier conditions within the present. Nowhere, it might be said, is there a former Saturn, Sun or Moon condition existing side by side with the present Earth condition, still less a form of human being such as is here described as having existed in those earlier conditions. It is quite true: there are not Saturn, Sun or Moon men running about among Earth men in the way that little children of three run about among the men and women of fifty. But within the hum an being as he is on Earth these earlier conditions of mankind are indeed perceptible—supersensibly. To recognize that this is so, we need only have acquired a power of discernment extending to the full horizon of the facts of life. As the child of three is present beside the man of fifth, so are present, beside the alive and waking man of Earth, the corpse, the man asleep, and the dreaming man. Granted that these various forms of manifestation of man's being do not immediately reveal, as we see them before us, the several stages of his evolution, nevertheless clear and objective contemplation will behold in them the corresponding stages.

[ 16 ] Of the four present members of the human being the physical body is the oldest. Moreover it is the physical body which has attained the greatest perfection in its kind. Supersensible research shows that this member of the human being existed already in Saturn evolution. It is true, as will emerge in these descriptions, that the form it had on Saturn was utterly different from man's present physical body. The physical body of man as it is on Earth can only exist in its proper nature inasmuch as it is connected with a life-body, an astral body and an Ego, as has been described in earlier chapters of this book. On Saturn, there was ads yet no such connection. The physical body was passing through its first stage in evolution without a human life-body or astral body or Ego being incorporated in it. During Saturn evolution it was only maturing towards the stage of receiving a life-body, and before this could happen, Saturn had first to pass into a spiritual state and then be re-incarnated as the Sun. In the Sun embodiment of the Earth, what the physical body had become on Saturn unfolded once more, as from a seed. Only then could it be permeated with an etheric body. Through receiving into it an etheric body, its nature was changed: the physical body was raised to a second level of its perfection. A like thing happened during the Moon evolution when the ancestor of man, having evolved from Sun to Moon, received into himself the astral body. The physical body was thereby changed again; this time it was raised to a third level of perfection. The life-body too was changed; henceforth it stood upon its second level of perfection. On Earth, into the ancestor of man consisting now of physical body, life-body and astral body, the Ego was incorporated. Therewith the physical body reached its fourth degree of perfection, the life-body is third, the astral body its second; while the Ego even now is only at the first stage of its existence.

[ 17 ] If we really set out to consider man with an open mind, we shall have no difficulty in forming a right idea of the varying degrees of perfection of the several members. Compare, for example, the physical body with the astral in this respect. The astral body, it is true, being of the nature of “soul,” stands at a higher level in evolution than the physical; and when in future time the astral body has come to perfection, it will signify far more for man's whole being than the present physical body. Yet the latter in its kind has attained no mean height of development. Consider the structure of the heart, planned as it is in accordance with the highest wisdom! Or look at the miraculous structure of the brain; or at that of a single part only of some bone—the upper end of the thigh-bone, for example. We find there a network or scaffolding of tiny rods, arranged according to an inner principle. The structure of the whole is so compact as to produce with the minimum use of material the best possible effect at the joint-surfaces—the best distribution of friction, for example, hence affording the right kind of mobility. So do we fined in different parts of the physical body arrangements that give evidence of the working of a deep wisdom. And if we go on to observe the harmony that prevails in the co-operation of the parts within the whole, we shall surely agree that this member of the human being has reached a certain perfection of its kind. The fact that here and there seeming inefficiencies appear, or that disturbances in structure or in function can occur, is unimportant in comparison. Nay more, we can even find that such disturbances are in a sense only the necessary shadows cast by the light of a wisdom which is poured out over the organism as a whole.

And now compare with this the astral body as the bearer of joy and sorrow, of cravings and passions. How full of uncertainty it is in its joy and sorrow! What manifold cravings and passions work themselves out in it that are adverse to the higher aims of man, and are often meaningless! The astral body is only on the way to the achievement of that harmony and self-containedness which we see already before us in the physical. So too it could be shown how the etheric body in its kind proves more perfect than the astral body, but less so than the physical. And the same line of thought will show with no less certainty that the real kernel of man's being, namely the I or Ego, is now only at the beginning of its evolution. For how much has the Ego yet accomplished of its task, which is to transform the other members until these become a revelation of itself?

For one acquainted with spiritual science, the insight arrived at in this way by external observation is intensified by something else. It might well be argues that the physical falls a pretty to disease. Now spiritual science is able to show that a large proportions of illnesses are due to some fault or failing in the astral body being transmitted to the etheric, and, through the latter, disturbing the harmony of the physical body, which in itself is perfect. This deeper connection—which can here be no more than indicated—and with it the essential cause of many a disease, eludes that mode of science which would restrict itself to physical and sense-perceptible facts. More often than not, the connection is as follows. Injury to the astral body is followed by morbid symptoms in the physical, not in the same life in which the injury is done, but in a subsequent life. Consequently the laws that prevail here are significant only for those who are ready to admit the repetition of man's life on Earth. But even if one did not wish to concern oneself with these deeper realms of knowledge, common observation would reveal only too clearly that man gives himself up to cravings and enjoyments which undermine the harmony of the physical body. Now cravings, passions, enjoyment and the like have their seat not in the physical but in the astral body. In effect, the latter is in many respects still so imperfect that it can actually mar the perfection of the physical body.

Here again let it be emphasized that the connections indicated are by no means intended to prove the statements of spiritual science as to the evolution of the four members of man's being. The proofs are derived in every case from spiritual research, which reveals that the physical body has behind it a fourfold transformation to higher stages of perfection, and the other members less, as has been explained. It was only desired to point out that these communications from spiritual research are related to facts of which the consequences are even outwardly observable, in the degrees of perfection of physical body, life-body and the remaining members.

[ 18 ] If we would form an idea—pictorial, but approximating to reality—of the conditions during Saturn evolution, we must bear in mind that of the things and beings now belonging to the Earth and included in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of Nature, virtually nothing was in existence then. The beings of these three kingdoms arose only in later periods of evolution. Of the beings of the Earth which are physically perceptible today man alone was present at that time, and of him only the physical body. But even now there are, belonging to the Earth, not only the beings of the mineral, plant and human kingdoms, but other beings too, who do not manifest in physical corporeality. Such beings existed also in the Saturn evolution, and their activity upon the scene of Saturn resulted in the subsequent evolution of man.

[ 19 ] If we turn, first of all, with spiritual organs of perception, not to the beginning or end but to the middle period of evolution of the Saturn embodiment of the Earth, we find a condition consisting essentially of “warmth” alone. There is nothing to be found of gaseous or liquid, let alone of solid constituents. It is only in the later embodiments that these other states emerge. Let us assume that a human being with present-day sense-organs were to approach this Saturn as an observer. Of all the sense-impressions of which he is capable, nothing would meet him there, save the sensation of warmth. Imagine him approaching ever nearer and nearer. The most he would perceive as he reached it would be that the part of space occupied by Saturn was in a different warmth-condition from the remaining spatial environment. Nor would he find the Saturn space itself uniformly warm. Warmer and cooler portions would be alternating with one another in the most diverse ways. Along certain lines, radiant warmth would be perceived. Such lines would not simply go on and on in one direction; irregular figures would be arising from the differences of warmth. Thus he would have before him a kind of heavenly body, a being in the cosmos, inwardly organized and differentiated, appearing in manifold and constantly changing states, and composed of warmth alone.

[ 20 ] It will be difficult for man of today to imagine something that consists of warmth alone, for is not accustomed to recognize heat or warmth as existing in itself; he is accustomed only to perceive it in connection with hot or cold gaseous, liquid or solid bodies. To one who has entirely adopted the physical conceptions of our time it will appear senseless to speak of “warmth” in the way we have done. He may well reply that there are solid, liquid and gaseous bodies, but “heat” or “warmth” denotes no more than a condition pertaining to one or other of these three. When the smallest particles of a gas are in motion, he will say we perceive this motion as warmth, but where there is no gas there can be no such motion, therefore no warmth.

The researcher in spiritual science sees the matter differently. Warmth, to him, is something of which he can speak in the same sense as of a gas, or of a liquid or solid body. It is only a yet finer substance than gas. Moreover, to him the gas itself is none other than warmth condensed, in the sense in which a liquid is condensed vapor or a solid body condensed liquid. Thus the spiritual scientist speaks of warmth-bodies, just as he speaks of gaseous and vaporous bodies.

To follow the spiritual researcher into this sphere, it is only necessary to admit the existence of a perception belonging entirely to the soul. In the world that is presented to the physical senses, warmth undoubtedly appears as a condition of what is solid, liquid or gaseous. But this is no more than the external side of warmth, or we may say, its effect. And it is really of this effect of warmth alone that physicists speak, not of its inner nature. Let us try for once to look away from the warmth-effects that we receive from outside and fix out attention purely on the inner experience we have when we say the words: “I feel warm,” or “I feel cold.” It is this inner experience alone that can give an idea of what Saturn was in the above-described period of its evolution. We might have passed right through the part of space it occupied; there would have been no gas to exert pressure, no solid or liquid body from which impressions of light could be received. But at each point of space we should have felt, inwardly and without impressions from outside: “Here there is this or that degree of warmth.”

[ 21 ] In a heavenly body of this kind there are not the conditions for the animal, plant or mineral creation of our present world. (Hence it can hardly be necessary to remark that the suggested assumption could not possibly take place in fact. A man of the present day could not, just as he is, confront Old Saturn as an observer. The suggestion had only an explanatory purpose.)

The beings of whom supersensible cognition becomes aware when observing Saturn were at a very different stage of evolution from the present, sense-perceptible beings of the Earth. Beings appear there, to begin with, who had not a physical body like the body man has today. When “physical body” is spoken of, we must beware of thinking of man's present physical corporeality. For we have carefully to distinguish between physical body and mineral body. A physical body is one that is governed by the physical laws that are observable today in the mineral kingdom. The present physical body of man is not only governed by the physical laws; it is also permeated with mineral substance. On Saturn there can bas yet be no question of physical-mineral body of this kind. There, there is only a physical corporeality, governed by physical laws—which laws express themselves solely in warmth-effects. Thus the physical body on Saturn is a delicate, tenuous, ethereal body-of-warmth. And the entire Saturn consists of these warmth-bodies. They are the first beginnings of the present physical-mineral body of man, which has evolved out of the old warmth-body by receiving into it the gaseous, liquid and solid substances that developed only at a later stage.

Among the Beings who come before the supersensible consciousness in the moment when it is confronted by the Saturn stage of evolution, and of whom we may speak as dwellers upon Saturn in addition to man, there are for instance some who had no need of a physical body at all. On the other hand they had one member beyond the members of man's being. Man has the Spirit-Man as his highest member; these Beings have a still higher one, and between etheric body and Spirit-Man they have also all the other members that we find in man: astral body, Ego, Spirit-Self, and Life-Spirit. As our Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere, so too was Saturn, only with Saturn the atmosphere was of a spiritual kind.¹ For it consisted of Beings—those already mentioned, and other Beings too. And there was a continual interaction between these Beings and the warmth-bodies of Saturn. The Beings let down the members of their nature into Saturn's physical warmth-bodies. And while in these themselves there was no life, the life of the Beings that dwelt in their encircling sphere expressed itself in them. The warmth-bodies might indeed by compared to mirrors; only it was not the above-named Beings themselves that were mirrored in them, but their life-conditions. In Saturn itself one could not have discovered anything that was alive, and yet Saturn had a vivifying influence on its environment in the heavenly spaces, for it rayed back—sent back, as it were—an echo of the life which was sent down to it. The whole of Saturn appeared like a mirror of the heavenly life. Certain sublime Beings whose life Saturn rays back, may be called Spirits of Wisdom. (In Christian spiritual science they bear the name Kyriotetes, i.e. Dominions.) Their activity on Saturn does not be any means begin with the middle epoch of evolution which is here being described. Indeed in a certain sense it is by then already at an end. Before they could become conscious of the reflection of their own life, proceeding from the warmth-bodies of Saturn, they had first to make these bodies capable of bringing about such a reflection. Hence their activity began soon after the commencement of Saturn evolution, at a time when the Saturn corporeality was still chaotic substance which could not have reflected anything.

In setting out to contemplate this chaotic, undifferentiated substance, we have already transplanted ourselves in spiritual observation to the beginning of Saturn evolution. What can be observed there does not by any means bear the later character of warmth. To characterize it, we can only speak of a quality which may be compared to the human Will. Through and through, it is nothing else than Will. Here therefore we are dealing with a condition that is purely of the nature of the soul. If we look for the source of this Will, we find that it arises from the outpouring of sublime Beings who had, by stages scarcely to be even dimly divined, brought their evolution to such a height that when the Saturn evolution began, they were able to let Will pour forth from Their own being. When the outpouring has lasted for a certain time, the activity of the Spirits of Wisdom unites with the will, with the result that the Will, which up to now might be said to have no inherent properties of its own, gradually acquired the property of raying forth Life, raying it back into the heavenly spaces.

The Beings who find Their blessedness in pouring out Will at the beginning of Saturn may be called “Spirits of Will.” (In Christian esoteric science they are called the Thrones.)

When by the working together of Will and Life a certain stage of Saturn evolution has been reached, other Beings too begin to work. They also are in the surrounding sphere of Saturn. We may call them Spirits of Movement; in Christian terminology they are Dynamis or Mights. They have no physical body and no life-body; their lowest member is the astral body. When the Saturn bodies have attained the faculty of reflecting life, the life which is thus rayed back can become permeated with the properties which have their seat in the astral bodies of the Spirits of Movement. As a result, it appears as though expressions of emotion, feeling, and other soul-forces were being hurled out from Saturn into the heavenly spaces. The entire Saturn seems like a being that is ensouled, manifesting sympathies and antipathies. But these manifestations are not its own; they are but the reflection of the soul-activities of the Spirits of Movement.

When this too has lasted through a certain epoch, the activity of yet other Beings begins, whom we will call Spirits of Form. Their lowest member is also an astral body, but it is at a different stage in evolution from the astral body of the Spirits of Movement. The manifestations of feeling which the Spirits of Movement communicate to the life that is rayed back from Saturn are of a general kind, whereas the astral body of the Spirits of Form (in Christian language Exusiai or Powers) works in such a way that it seems as though manifestations are being hurled out into cosmic space from many single beings. The Spirits of Movement, we might say, make Saturn as a whole appear as an animate being endowed with soul. The Spirits of Form divide this life of Saturn into so many separate living entities, so that eventually it appears like a conglomeration of soul-beings.

Picture to yourself a mulberry or a blackberry, composed as it is of ever so many tiny berries. To the supersensible observer Saturn looks like this in the evolutionary epoch here described. It is composed of the single Saturn beings who have no life or soul of their own, but ray back the life and soul of the Beings that dwell around them.

And now at this stage in the evolution of Saturn certain Beings intervene, who again have the astral body for their lowest member, but have brought it on so far in its evolution that it works like a human I of the present time. Through them the I looks down from the surrounding spaces on to Saturn, and communicates its nature to the single “live” beings. Hence something is sent forth from Saturn into the heavenly spaces, that resembles the impression made by human personality in our present cycle of life. The Beings who bring this about may be called “Spirits of Personality” (in Christian terminology they are the Archai, First Beginnings, or Principalities.) These Beings communicate to the particles of the Saturn body a semblance of the character of personality. The Spirits of Personality have their real personality in the surrounding sphere. They cause their own being to be rayed back to them from the Saturn bodies, and this very process bestows upon the Saturn bodies the fine substantiality which was described above as “warmth.” Throughout the whole of Saturn there is no inwardness; but the Spirits of Personality behold and recognize the image of their own inwardness, in that it streams out to them as warmth from Saturn.

[ 22 ] While all this is happening, the Spirits of Personality are at the stage at which the human being is today. They are going through their “human” epoch. To see this fact in its true light, we must be ready to conceive that a being can be a “human” being without necessarily having the form and figure man has today. The Spirits of Personality are “men” upon Saturn. Their lowest member is not the physical body but the astral body with the Ego. Therefore they cannot express the experiences of their astral body in a physical and an etheric body in the same way as can the man of today. Nevertheless they not only have an I or Ego but are aware of it, for the warmth of Saturn, by raying back this Ego, brings it home to their consciousness. They are, in effect, “human beings” under conditions differing from the earthly.

[ 23 ] In the further course of Saturn evolution, facts of quite another kind ensue. Hitherto it was all a reflection of life and feeling that were outside; henceforth there is a kind of inner life. A life of light begins, flickering here and there within the Saturn world and dying down again. At some places a quivering of glowing light will appear, at others something more like rapid lightning-flashes. The Saturn warmth-bodies begin to glimmer and glisten, even to radiate light. The attainment of this stage affords once more the possibility for certain Beings to unfold their activity. These are the Beings who may be designated “Fire Spirits” (in Christian terminology, Archangeloi, Archangels.) They have an astral body of their own at this stage of their existence but they cannot by themselves give it any stimulus. They would be quite incapable of arousing any feelings or sensation were it not for the fact that they can work upon the warmth-bodies which have reached the stage here indicated. Working in this way makes it possible for them to perceive their own existence; they perceive it by the influence they exercise. They cannot say to themselves “I am,” rather would they have to say: “My environment enables me to be.” They have perception; indeed their perceptions consist in the above-described light-effects on Saturn. These are in a certain sense their I. This gives them a peculiar form of consciousness. We may describe it as a picture-consciousness. It may be conceived as of the nature of man's dream-consciousness; only we must imagine it far more vivid, far more animated than human dreaming. Nor is it a mere meaningless ebb and flow of pictures; the dream-pictures of the Fire Spirits and the warmth-bodies of Saturn, the seeds of the human sense-organs are first implanted in the stream of evolution. The organs whereby today man perceives the physical world light up in their first, delicate ethereal beginnings. Phantoms-of-man, revealing as yet no other outward sign than these “light” archetypes of the sense-organs, become perceptible in Saturn to the faculty of clairvoyance. Man's sense-organs are thus the fruits of the activity of the Fire Spirits. But these are not the only Spirits concerned in their creation. Simultaneously with the Fire Spirits, other Beings appear upon the scene—Beings so far advanced in evolution that they are able to make use of the seeds of the sense-organs for witnessing the cosmic processes of Saturn's life. These are the Beings whom we may designate “Spirits of Love” (In Christian language, Seraphim.) Were it not for them, the Fire Spirits could not have the consciousness above described; for they gaze upon the processes taking place in Saturn with a consciousness that enables them to transmit pictures of these processes to the Fire Spirits. For themselves they forgo all the advantage they might have through witnessing the Saturn events. They renounce every enjoyment it could afford them, every delight; they give that all up, so that the Fires Spirits may have it.

[ 24 ] These events are followed by a new period in Saturn's existence. To the play of light another thing is added. It may well seem quite made to many people when we tell what now confronts supersensible cognition. Within the Saturn body something like sensations of taste begin to go surging to and fro. Sweet, bitter, sour, etc. are perceived at diverse places in the interior of Saturn; while in the heavenly spaces without, all this gives the impression of sound, a kind of music. And in these processes, once more, Beings find it possible to unfold their activity on Saturn. These Beings may be called the “Sons of Twilight,” or “Sons of Life” (in Christian language they are the Angeloi or Angels.) They begin to interact with the surging, eddying forces of taste in the interior of Saturn, and by this means their etheric of life-body develops an activity that we may designate as a kind of metabolism. They bring life into the interior of Saturn; processes of nutrition and excretion begin to take place there. Not that the Beings themselves bring about these processes directly; the processes arise indirectly, through their activity. And now this inner life makes it possible for yet other Beings to enter the heavenly body. Let them be called the “Spirits of the Harmonies” (in Christian terminology called the Cherubim.) These Beings transmit to the Sons of Life a kind of dim consciousness of man today. It is like the consciousness that belongs to man in dreamless sleep, which is of such a low degree that in a manner of speaking it does not “come to consciousness” at all; man remains unaware of it. Yet it is there. It differs from day-consciousness in kind as well as in degree. Our present-day plants possess this “dreamless sleep” consciousness. It affords no perceptions of an outer world in the human sense of the word, but it regulates the life-processes and brings them into harmony with those in the outer Universe. At the Saturn stage with which we are here dealing, the Sons of Life cannot perceive the regulations; but the Spirits of the Harmonies perceive it. They therefore are the real regulators.

All this life goes on in what we have described as the phantoms-of-man. These therefore appear to the spiritual eye as though they were alive; and yet their life is but a semblance of life. It is the life of the Sons of Life who as it were make use of these phantoms in order to live out their own life.

[ 25 ] Let us now direct our attention to these phantoms-of-man with their semblance of life. During the period with which we have been dealing, they are of ever-changing form. Now they will resemble one shape, now another. In the further course of evolution the shapes become more definite, and sometimes even last for a while. This is due to their being now permeated by the influences of the Spirits who were at work in the very beginning of Saturn evolution, namely the Spirits of Will (the Thrones.) As a result, the phantom-of-man appears to be endowed with the simplest, darkest form of consciousness. We must conceive it as being yet more dim than that of dreamless sleep. Under present-day conditions, the minerals possess this consciousness. It brings the inner nature of the object or being into unison with the physical external world. On Saturn it is the Spirits of Will who regulate this unison, with the result that man appears like an impress of the Saturn life itself. What the Saturn life is on a large scale, man is now at this stage on a small. And with this the first seed is given of what is still only in the seedling stage even in the man of today, namely Spirit-man (Atman.) Inwardly—within Saturn—this dull human will manifests itself to the faculty of supersensible perception by effects which may be compared to “smells.” Outwardly—out into the heavenly spaces—there is a manifestation as of personality, a personality, however, that is not guided by an inner I, but regulated from outside like a machine. It is the Spirits of Will who regulate it.

[ 26 ] Surveying the above, we see that form the middle condition onward the stages of Saturn's evolution could be characterized by comparing their effects with sense-impressions of the present time. Thus it was possible to say: Saturn evolution manifests as warmth; afterwards a play of light is added, then a play of taste and sound, until at length there appears what reveals itself inwardly—to the interior of Saturn—in sensations of smell, and outwardly like a human I working in a machine-like way. How is it then with the manifestations of Saturn evolution before the state of warmth is reached? They cannot be compared with anything whatsoever that is accessible to outer sensation. The warmth-condition is preceded by one which man today experiences only in his inner being. When he gives himself up to ideas which he forms for himself within his soul without the occasion being thrust upon him by any impression from outside, then he has within him something which no physical senses can perceive—something which is accessible, as a perception, to higher spiritual sight alone. The warmth-condition of Saturn is in effect preceded by manifestations which exist only for one who can perceive the supersensible. Three such conditions may be named: pure warmth-of-soul, not outwardly perceptible; purely spiritual light, which outwardly is darkness; and spiritual being which is complete in itself. Pure inner warmth accompanies the appearance on Saturn of the Spirits of Movement, pure spiritual light that of the Spirits of Wisdom, while pure inward being is connected with the first outpouring of the Spirits of Will. Thus with the appearance of the Saturn warmth, our evolution first emerges from an inner life of pure spirituality, to an existence manifesting outwardly.

[ 27 ] One more thing must be added, with which the present consciousness may find it still more difficult to come to terms. With the warmth-conditions of Old Saturn there also first emerges what we call Time. The previous conditions are in fact not temporal at all. They belong to the realm which, in spiritual science, may be named Duration. All that is said in this book of conditions in the Realm of Duration must therefore be understood in this sense. It must be borne in mind that any expression implying time-relationships is used only for the sake of comparison and exposition. In human language even those things which, in a manner of speaking, precede time, can only be characterized with words in which the time-conception is implicit. We must remember that though the first, second and third Saturn states did not take place “one after the other” in the present-day sense of the words, we cannot, after all, avoid describing them in sequence. Moreover, in spite of their duration of simultaneity, they depend on one another, and the dependence is such as to be comparable with a succession in time.

[ 28 ] With this reference to the earliest evolutionary states of Saturn, light is also thrown on all further questionings as to the “whence” of these conditions. In a purely intellectual way it is possible, of course, in the case of every given origin, to ask again after its origin. But in relation to the facts this will not do. We can easily bring it home to ourselves by a comparison. If we see ruts in a road we may ask, “Whence do they come?” We may receive the answer, “From a carriage.” Then we can ask again, “Where did the carriage come from, and where was it going?” Here again an answer founded on facts is possible. We can still go on to ask, “Who was in the carriage? What were the intentions of the person using it? What was he doing?” But we shall at length reach a point where our questioning is brought to a natural conclusion by the facts themselves. And if we go on asking questions beyond this point, we are departing from the purpose of the original question; we only prolong the questioning, as it were, mechanically. In cases like the one here cited as an illustration, we can readily see where the facts themselves will put a natural end to questioning. With the great questions of the Universe it is not so easy. None the less, if we think it over carefully, we shall recognize that all questions of “Whence” must come to an end with the Saturn conditions we have been describing. For we have here reached a sphere where the beings and processes are no longer to be accounted for by reference to that from which they take their origins, but by what they are in themselves.

[ 29 ] The eventual result of Saturn evolution is to be seen in the fact that the seed of man has grown an developed to a certain point. It has attained the low, dim state of consciousness which was described above. We must not imagine that this began to evolve only in the last stage of Saturn. The Spirits of Will are working throughout all the conditions, but it is in the last period that the result of their activity is most apparent to supersensible perception. Altogether, no hard and fast line can be drawn between the activities of the several groups of Beings. When it is said: first the Spirits of will are active, then the Spirits of Wisdom, and so forth—it does not mean that they are active at that stage only. They work throughout the whole of Saturn evolution; their working is, however, most readily observed in the times thus indicated, when the several Beings have as it were their periods of leadership.

[ 30 ] The whole of Saturn evolution thus appears as an elaboration, by the Spirits of Wisdom, Movement, Form, etc. of that which was poured out in the beginning by the Spirits of Will. The spiritual Beings themselves undergo evolution in the process. The Spirits of Wisdom, for example, after having received their life rayed back to them from Saturn, are at another stage than before. Their own faculties have advanced to a higher level, and there follows for them something not unlike what sleep is for the human being. Periods of activity on Saturn are followed by times when they are living as it were in other worlds; and then their activity is turned away from Saturn. Consequently, supersensible perception sees in the Saturn evolution here described, a rise and fall. The former lasts until the state of warmth has developed and matured. Then, with the play of light, a waning process begins. And when through the working of the Spirits of Will the phantoms-of-man have taken shape and form, the spiritual Beings have by then all gradually withdrawn. Saturn evolution dies away into itself, and disappears as such. A kind of interval of rest begins. The germ or seed of man passes as it were into a state of dissolution; not that it vanishes entirely—rather it is in the condition of a plant seed which, resting in the Earth, will ripen by and by into a new plant. So does the seed of man rest in the bosom of the world, there to await a new awakening. And when the time for its awakening has come, then the spiritual Beings have on their part acquired—under different conditions—the faculties to work still further upon the seed of man. The Spirits of Wisdom have in their etheric body attained the power to do more than enjoy the reflection of Life—as on Saturn; they are now able to pour Life out of themselves, endowing other beings with it. The Spirits of Movement are now as far advanced as were the Spirits of Wisdom upon Saturn. Their lowest member upon Saturn was the astral body; henceforth they have in addition an etheric or life-body of their own. And the other spiritual Beings too have reached a further stage in their evolution. Hence in the further evolution of the seed of man these spiritual Beings can all work in quite another way than they did upon Saturn.

But now at the end of Saturn evolution the seed of man had, as it were, dissolved; and in order that the Spirit-beings—more highly evolved as they now are—may continue where they left off before, it must briefly recapitulate the stages it went through on Saturn. And this is precisely what shows itself to supersensible perception. Emerging once more from its hidden state, the seed of man begins to unfold by its own inherent faculty—by virtue of the forces with which it was imbued on Saturn. It comes forth out of the darkness as a being-of-will, and raises itself to the semblance of life, of soul-likeness and so forth, until it reaches the manifestation of machine-like personality which belonged to it at the close of Saturn evolution.

The second of the great evolutionary periods—the Sun stage—uplifts the human being to a higher level of consciousness than he attained on Saturn, although compared with man's present consciousness, his condition on the Sun might still be called unconsciousness. For it is well-nigh equivalent to the state in which he now finds himself in absolutely dreamless sleep. We might also compare it with the low degree of consciousness in which our world of plants is slumbering today. For supersensible perception there is, as a matter of fact, no such thing as unconsciousness there are but differing degrees of consciousness. Everything in the world is conscious.

Man attains this higher state of consciousness in the course of Sun evolution through the fact that the etheric or life-body is now incorporated in him. But this cannot take place until the Saturn conditions have been recapitulated. Such recapitulation has a quite definite meaning. When the interval of rest is over, what was previously Saturn emerges from the “cosmic sleep” as a new world-entity—as Sun. But the whole situation within which evolution takes place is now changed. The Spirit-beings whose working upon Saturn we described have progressed to new conditions. The seed of man, however, as it emerges on the newly formed Sun, appears, to begin with, just as it become on Saturn. It has accordingly first of all to transmute the several evolutionary stages it underwent on Saturn, in order to adapt them to the conditions on Sun. Hence the Sun epoch begins with a repetition of the Saturn events, but a repetition adapted to the changed conditions—the Spirits of Wisdom begin their work of pouring the etheric or life-body into the physical. The higher stage that man attains upon Sun may be characterized as follows. The physical body, formed already upon Saturn in its germinal beginnings, is raised to a second level of perfection, in that it now becomes the bearer of an etheric or life-body. The etheric or life-body itself attains, during the Sun evolution, the first degree of its perfection. But for these stages of perfection to be achieved—the second for the physical and the first for the life-body—the intervention of other Spiritual-beings too is needed, just as it was for the Saturn stage.

[ 32 ] When the Spirits of Wisdom begin with their inpouring of the life-body, the Sun entity, which until now was dark, begins to radiate light. Simultaneously the first signs of an inner quickening appear in the seed of man: life begins to be. What on Saturn had to be described as a mere semblance of life, is now becoming real life. The inpouring goes on for a time, and then an important change comes over the seed of man; it differentiates into two parts. Hitherto, the physical body and life-body have been in intimate union as a single whole; now, the physical begins to separate off as a distinct part—although it still remains permeated with the life-body. Thus we now have to do with a twofold human being. One part of man is physical body, permeated through and through with life-body; the other consists of life-body alone. This severance takes place during an interval of rest in the Sun life, when the light-radiance which had begun to appear dies down again. It happens during what may be called a “cosmic night.” This interval of rest is however far shorter than the aforesaid interval between the Saturn and Sun evolutions. When it is over, the Spirits of Wisdom continue for a while to work upon the two-fold human being, just as they worked on him before, when he was single and undivided. Thereafter, the Spirits of Movement come in with their activity; they permeate with their own astral body the life-body of the human being. The life-body thus attains the faculty to carry out certain inner movements in the physical—movements that are comparable to those of the saps and fluids in a plant of the present day.

[ 33 ] The whole of Saturn consisted of warmth alone. During Sun evolution this warmth-substance condenses to a state which may be likened to that of our present gas or vapor. It is the condition we can denote as Air. The first beginnings of it show themselves after the Spirits of Movement have come in with their activity. To supersensible consciousness the following appears. Within the warmth-substance delicate, tenuous structures emerge, which are brought into regular movement by the forces of the life-body. These structures make manifest the physical body of the human being as it is at this stage in its evolution. They are permeated through and through with warmth, and are also enveloped as if by an integument of warmth. Warmth-creations with air-forms incorporated in them, the latter engaged in regular and constant movement—so may be describe the human being, physically speaking, at this stage. If we want to maintain the suggested comparison with the plant of the present day, we must remember that we are not dealing with a compact plant but with a form consisting of air or gas, the movements of which are not unlike those of the sap in the present plant.¹

This evolution is then carried further. After a time an interval of rest once more ensues; and when this is over, the Spirits of Movement continue with their work, until it is supplemented by that of the Spirits of Form, as a result of whose activity the gaseous structures, hitherto constantly changing, now assume more permanent shape. This too is brought about through the Spirits of Form pouring their forces in and out of the life-body of the human beings. Previously, when the Spirits of Movement alone were working upon them, the gaseous bodies were in incessant motion; only for a moment did they ever maintain their shape. Henceforward they will now assume, for a time, distinguishable forms.

Once more, after a certain time, comes an interval of rest; and when that is over, the Spirits of Form resume their activity. Then, however, altogether new conditions appear within Sun evolution.

[ 34 ] For now the point is reached where Sun evolution has attained its middle epoch. It is the time when the Spirits of Personality, who reached their human level upon Saturn, rise to a higher stage of perfection, thus transcending the stage of humanity. They attain a consciousness which, in the regular course of evolution, present-day man does not yet possess. He will attain it when the Earth—the fourth of the planetary stages in evolution—has reached its goal and the next planetary period will have begun. At that time, man will no longer perceive around him merely what the present physical senses communicate to him; he will be able to observe in pictures the inner soul-condition of the beings that surround him. He will have picture-consciousness, still however retaining full self-consciousness. For in his picture-vision, there will be nothing dim or dreamlike. He will perceive things of the soul—in pictures it is true, yet so that the pictures will express realities just as physical colors and tones do today. In our time it is only by spiritual-scientific training that man can raise himself to this kind of seership. The training will be dealt with in a later chapter.

Such seership the Spirits of Personality attain as their normal gift of evolution in the middle of the Sun stage. And it enables them, during Sun evolution, to work upon the newly formed life-body of the human being in the same way as they worked upon his physical body during Saturn. As upon Saturn the warmth rayed back to them their own personality, so now the gaseous forms ray back to them in shining light the picture-visions of their seership. They behold—supersensibly—what is now taking place on Sun. Nor is their seeing by any means mere observation. For in the pictures that stream outward from the Sun, it is as though something of that force which man on Earth denotes as Love were making itself felt. And as we look—in soul—more closely, we find the cause of this. Into the light as it rays outward from the Sun, sublime Beings have mingled their activity. These are the “Spirits of Love” (in Christian language, Seraphim) already named in the preceding pages. Henceforth they work upon the human etheric body (or life-body) in co-operation with the Spirits of Personality. The combined activity of these Beings enables the life-body to take a further step on its path of evolution. It becomes capable not only of transforming the gaseous structures which are within it, but of so working upon them that the first suggestions of a reproductive process appear in the living human entities. Secretions are as it were driven forth—or we might say, “perspired”—by the already-formed gaseous organisms, and assume form in their turn in the likeness of their mother-organism.

[ 35 ] Before we can go on to describe the further evolution of the Sun, we must point to a fact which is of the greatest importance in the whole cosmic process. In the course of a given epoch not all the beings attain the goal of their evolution. Some fall short of it. During Saturn evolution, for example, not all the Spirits of Personality attained the “human” stage appointed for them. Nor did all the human physical bodies that developed upon Saturn reach the degree of maturity which could enable them to become the bearers on Sun of an independent life-body. As a result, beings and structures are present on the Sun, unsuited to the conditions that obtain there. These must now make good what they have missed on Saturn. During the Sun stage spiritual perceptions can therefore observe the following. When the Spirits of Wisdom begin with their in-pouring of the life-body, the whole body of the Sun becomes as it were clouded. For it is interspersed with structures which belong essentially to Saturn—warmth-structures that are unable to condense in the proper way to air. These are the human entities which have remained behind at the Saturn stage. They cannot become bearers of a normally developed life-body.

What is thus left behind of Saturn's warmth-substance, divides on the Sun into two portions. One is as it were absorbed by the human bodies, and constitutes henceforth, within the human being, a kind of lower nature. Thus on Sun the human being receives something into his bodily nature that corresponds in reality to the Saturn stage. Now as the Saturn body of man made it possible for the Spirits of Personality to rise to their “human” level, so on the Sun does this Saturn part of man render a like service to the Fires Spirits. These rise to their human stage by pouring their forces in and out of it, just as the Spirits of Personality did on Saturn. This too takes place during the middle epoch of Sun evolution, for then the Saturn part of the human being is sufficiently mature for the Fire Spirits (The Archangeloi) to pass through their human stage with its assistance.

Another portion of the Saturn warmth-substance separates off and comes to an independent existence alongside of and among the Sun human beings, constituting thus a second kingdom, developing a fully independent, but purely physical body—a body of warmth. There is therefore in this second kingdom no independent life-body to receive the activity of the fully evolved Spirits of Personality. But now certain Spirits of Personality have also stopped short at the Saturn stage; they did not attain there the level of humanity. Between them and this second kingdom of the Sun, there is a bond of attraction. They must now relate themselves to this retarded kingdom in the same way as their more advanced companions related themselves upon Saturn to the human beings. For upon Saturn these too had developed only a physical body. But on the Sun itself there is no possibility for this work to be done by the backward Spirits of Personality. They therefore separate themselves from the Sun and form an independent heavenly body outside it. From this heavenly body that has left the Sun, the retarded Spirits of Personality work upon the creatures of the second Sun kingdom.. The single cosmic entity that Saturn was before, has thus become two. Henceforth the Sun has a second heavenly body in its environment, representing a kind of re-birth of Saturn—as it were, a new Saturn. From this new Saturn the second kingdom of the Sun is endowed with the character of personality. Its beings have no personality upon the Sun itself; but they reflect to the Spirits of Personality on the new Saturn their personality. In among the human beings on the sun, supersensible consciousness can observe forces of warmth, whose working intermingles with the regular evolution of the Sun. Herein we have to perceive the Spirits of the new Saturn wielding their power.

Observation of the human being during the middle epoch of Sun evolution reveals it to be divided into a physical body and a life-body. The latter is the scene of activity for the more advanced Spirits of Personality, in unison with the Spirits of Love. The physical body is now intermingled with a portion of the retarded Saturn nature, and here the activity of the Fire Spirits is at work. In what the Fire Spirits achieve in this retarded Saturn nature, we have to recognize the forerunners of the present sense-organs of Earth man. (It will be remembered that already upon Saturn the Fire Spirits were concerned in elaborating within the warmth-substance the seeds of the human senses.) On the other hand, in that which is accomplished by the Spirits of Personality in union with the Spirits of Love (the Seraphim,) we have to perceive the first beginnings of man's present glandular organs.

But now the work of those Spirits of Personality who dwell on the new Saturn is not exhaustively described in what was said above. Their activity goes beyond the second kingdom of the Sun; they also establish a kind of connection between this second kingdom and the human senses. The warmth-substances of this second kingdom stream through the human senses in their germinal condition, pouring continually in and out of them. In this way the human being rises on Sun to a kind of perception of the lower kingdom that is there beside him. It is, in the nature of the case, a very dim perception—corresponding in all respects to the dull Saturn consciousness of which we spoke before. And it consists essentially in varying effects of warmth.

[ 38 ] All that has here been described as pertaining to the middle epoch of Sun evolution, lasts for a certain time; and then, once more there is an interval of rest. After the interval, things go on for awhile in the same way as before, until a point is reached in evolution when the human etheric body is mature for a united working of the Sons of Life (The Angeloi) and the Spirits of Harmony (the Cherubim.) To supersensible consciousness manifestations now appear within the human being which may be likened to perceptions of taste, and which reveal themselves outwardly as sounds. It will be remembered that we resorted to a similar comparison in our description of Saturn evolution. Here however, on Sun, all that does on in the human being is far more inward, is full of a more independent life.

The Sons of Life hereby attain the dim picture-consciousness which the Fire Spirits reached on Saturn. The Spirits of Harmony (Cherubim) are their helpers in this. They behold in spirit what is now taking its course in Sun evolution; but they deny themselves all the fruits of this their contemplation, all feeling of the Wisdom-filled pictures that arise there, and pour them like wondrous magic scenes into the dream-consciousness of the Sons of Life. These in turn weave the forms they behold into man's etheric body, which rises thereby to higher and higher stages in its evolution.

[ 39 ] Again there is an interval of rest. Again the whole arises out of the “sleep of worlds” and, after it has continued its course for a time, the human being is mature enough to be able to arouse within him the forces of his own. These are the forces which were poured into his being by the Thrones during the last epoch of Saturn evolution. The human being now continues his evolution in an inner life which, in its manifestation to consciousness, may be likened to an inward sensation of smell. Outwardly, over against the heavenly spaces, he reveals himself as a personality. We have already seen how at the end of Saturn evolution, personality manifested like a machine. Moreover, as at that time the first seed was developed of what is still in a seedling state even in the man of today, namely Spirit-Man or Atma, so now and in like manner the first seed is formed of Life-Spirit or Budhi.

After all this has gone on for a certain time, there is once more an interval of rest And, as has happened before, after the interval the former activity of the human being is resumed for a while. Then new conditions enter in, arising out of a fresh intervention on the part of the Spirits of Wisdom. Through this the human being becomes able to feel the first traces of sympathy and antipathy with his environment. It is as yet not real feeling; nevertheless, it is a forerunner of feeling. For the inner activity of life, the manifestations of which could be described as resembling perceptions of smell, reveals itself outwardly as if in a kind of primitive speech. When an agreeable smell or taste, glimmer of light, or other manifestation is inwardly perceived, the human being makes it known outwardly by a sound. Similarly too with an inwardly distasteful perception. And now, as a result of all these developments, the true meaning of Sun evolution for the being of man has been attained. He has reached a higher level of consciousness than was his Saturn. It is the consciousness of sleep.

After a while the point has also been reached when the higher Beings connected with the Sun stage must pass to other spheres, there to assimilate the potentialities they have implanted in themselves by the work they have done on the human being. A greater interval of rest supervenes, such as there was between Saturn and Sun. All that has been evolved on Sun passes into a condition like that of a plant when its forces of growth are resting in the seed. But as these come forth again to the light of day in a new plant, so after the interval of rest is over, all that was life upon the Sun emerges again out of the bosom of the worlds and a new planetary existence begins. We shall well understand the meaning of such an interval of rest or “sleep of worlds” if we turn our thought for a moment to some one of the above-named groups of Beings—the Spirits of Wisdom, for example. On Saturn, these Beings were not yet so far advanced as to be able to pour forth from themselves an etheric body. The experiences they underwent there served however to prepare them for this activity. During the interval they transmitted what had been prepared in them, into the actual faculty, with the result that on Sun they were ready to let the life stream out from them and so endow the human being with a life-body of his own.

When the interval of rest is over, what formerly was Sun comes forth again from the “sleep of worlds.” That is to say, it becomes perceptible once more to those powers of spiritual sight which had formerly been able to observe it but from which it vanished in the interval of rest. The planetary being emerging now in its new form shall be designated “Moon”—but we must not confuse it with that fragment of it which constitutes the present Moon, the satellite of the Earth. Two things are to be noted, as it re-emerges. In the first place, the new Saturn, which separated off during Sun, is now again within the planetary being. During the interval of rest, it has re-united with the Sun. The whole content of the original Saturn comes forth again to begin with as a single cosmic entity. Secondly, the life-bodies of the human beings, that were formed upon Sun, have been absorbed during the interval of rest by the planet's spiritual envelope—for such, as a sense, it is. Hence at this point of time the life-bodies do not appear in union with the human physical bodies; these emerge, to begin with, by themselves. Though bearing in their nature all that has been achieved in them on Saturn and on the Sun, they are still without the etheric or life-body. Nor indeed would they be able to receive it at once, for in the interval of rest the etheric body itself has undergone an evolution to which they are not yet adapted. And so now, at the beginning of Moon evolution, another repetition of the Saturn events takes place, in order to achieve this adaptation.

The physical life of man passes in recapitulation through the stages of Saturn evolution, but under altogether changed conditions. For on Saturn the forces of a warmth body alone were at work in it, whereas now there are also those of the gaseous body which it has assimilated. The latter do not however emerge at once. In the beginning of Moon evolution it is as though the human being consisted of warmth-substance alone, with the gaseous forces still asleep within it. Then follows a period when these emerge in their first indication. And at length, in the last period of the Saturn repetition, the human being has already the appearance he had when he was alive on Sun. Yet all “life” at this stage proves to be no more than a mere semblance of life. For there must first be an interval of rest, like the short intervals of rest during Sun evolution. Then begins once more the inpouring of the life-body, for which the physical body has now made itself mature. This inpouring takes place, as did the Saturn repetition, in three distinct epochs. In the second of these, the human being is so far adapted to the new Moon conditions that the Spirits of Movement can bring into action the faculty they have acquired. Out of their own nature they can now pour the astral body into the human beings. For this work they prepared themselves during Sun evolutions, and in the interval of rest between Sun and Moon they have transmuted what they had prepared into the actual faculty. This inpouring of the astral body lasts for a certain time, and then again one of the smaller intervals of rest ensues; after which the inpouring is continued, until the Spirits of Form enter with their activity. Through the Spirits of Movement pouring into him the astral body, the human being acquires his first qualities of soul. The processes that take place in him by virtue of the life-body—which in Sun evolution were still of a plant-like character—these he now begins to follow with sensation, feeling pleasure in them or disliking them. But the sympathies and antipathies thus aroused remain in ever-changing ebb and flow, until the Spirits of Form come in and play their part. Thereupon the ever-changing feelings become so transformed that there emerges in the human being what we may regard as a first sign of wish and craving. He strives for a repetition of what gave enjoyment, and seeks to avoid what roused a feeling of antipathy. Since however the Spirits of Form do not communicate their own nature to the human being but only cause their forces to pour in and out of him, this craving is without inwardness or independence. It is guided by the Spirits of Form, and gives the impression of being purely instinctive.

[ 40 ] On Saturn the physical body of the human being was a body of warmth; on Sun there was a condensation to the gaseous condition, to “air.” Now, in Moon evolution, when the Astral is poured in, the moment is reached when the physical attains a further stage of condensation. It comes into a condition comparable to that of a liquid in our time. This new state may be designated “water,” meaning however not our present water but any liquid form of existence. The human physical body comes now gradually to assume a form composed of three organic structures, distinct form one another in their substance. The densest is a “water body;” this is permeated through and through by airy currents, and warmth effects continue also to pervade the whole.

[ 41 ] But now, as on Saturn, so in the Sun stage too, not all the forms attain the corresponding maturity. Hence we find upon Moon, forms which are even now still at the Saturn stage, and some also which have reached but remain at the stage of Sun. Two other kingdoms thus emerge, beside the properly developed human kingdom. One consists of beings which, having remained at the Saturn stage, have physical body alone; and this physical body is not yet able, even now on Moon, to become the bearer of an independent life-body. These beings form the lowest kingdom. A second kingdom is composed of beings who have stopped short at the Sun stage, and are accordingly not ready on Moon to incorporate within them an independent astral body. They constitute an intermediate kingdom, between the aforesaid and the normally advanced human kingdom.

[ 1 ] A further event has now to be noted. The substances with forces of warmth alone, those also that have stopped short as forces of air, permeate the human beings too. These, therefore, on Moon, bear within them a Saturn and a Sun nature. Thereby a kind of split has come about in human nature, and in consequence of this, an event of great significance takes place in Moon evolution. Soon after the Spirits of Form have come in with their activity, a severance begins to be prepared for in the heavenly body of the Moon. A portion of the substances and beings is split off from the remainder. Out of the single heavenly body, two separate ones evolve. The first is taken for their dwelling-place by certain higher Beings, hitherto more intimately united with the heavenly body in its single state. The second is occupied by man, together with the two lower kingdoms above-mentioned and also certain higher Beings who do not pass over to the first. The former heavenly body, with the higher Beings, appears now as a Sun re-born and at the same time refined; the latter is henceforth the essentially new creation—“Old Moon,” as it has to be called—the third planetary embodiment of our Earth, following on the Saturn and Sun embodiments.

[ 1 ] Of the substances that have come into existence on Moon, the new-born Sun, as it goes forth, takes with it only warmth and air; while on the remained which is left behind as Moon, beside these two the watery state is also to be found. In consequence of the severance, the Beings who have gone forth with the new-born Sun are no longer hampered in their evolution by the denser beings of the Moon. They are now able to progress untrammeled in their own becoming, and they attain thereby the greater strength to work—now from without, from their dwelling-place, the Sun—upon the beings of the Moon. Thus do the Moon beings too attain new possibilities of evolution. What is for them particularly significant is that the Spirits of Form have remained united with them. These establish more firmly the desire-nature of the human being, and by degrees this comes to find expression in a further condensation of the physical body. Where hitherto it has been but watery, it begins to assume a more viscous form, and the structures of air and of warmth are densified to correspond. Similar changes take place also in the two lower kingdoms.

[ 42 ] In consequence of having separated from the Sun, the Moon is now related to the Sun in the same way as once was Saturn to the whole of the surrounding cosmic evolution. Saturn was formed out of the body of the Spirits of Will (Thrones.) From the Saturn substance rayed back into cosmic space all that was experienced in consciousness by the Spirit-beings in its environment. And through the events that followed, this raying-back gradually work to independent life. Such is the essence of all evolution. Independent being is first separated out from the life of the environment, then the environment engraves itself—as it were, by reflection—upon the separated being, and then the latter evolves further, independently.

So did the Moon body sever itself from the Sun, and, to being with, simply reflect the life of the Sun body. If, therefore, nothing else had happened, the situation in the cosmos would have been as follows. There would have been a Sun body, where spiritual Beings well adapted to its nature had their experiences in the elements of warmth and air. Over against it would have been a Lunar body, wherein other Beings were evolving, living a life of warmth and air and water. And the progress from the Sun to the Moon embodiment would have meant for the Sun Beings that in what was happening on Moon they would have beheld their own life as in a mirror, and would in this way have been able to receive it and enjoy it, which during the Sun embodiment had not yet been possible. But evolution took another turn. Something took place which was of the very deepest significance for all succeeding evolution. Certain beings, who were adapted to the Moon body, possessed themselves of the element of Will (a heritage from the Thrones) which stood at their disposal, and evolved therewith a life of their own, that grew up independently of the Sun life.

[ 43 ] Alongside the experiences on Moon which were entirely subject to the Sun's influence, independent experiences now arose—states of rebellion, as it were, or of opposition to the Sun Beings. And the various kingdoms that had arisen on Sun and Moon—above all, the kingdom of the forefather of man—became involved in these new conditions. Spiritually and materially, the Moon body contained now within it two kinds of life—one that was in intimate union with the Sun's life, and another which, having “fallen” from this, went on its own independent way. This division into a twofold life comes to expression in all the succeeding events of the Moon embodiment.

[ 44 ] That which presents itself to supersensible consciousness at this epoch in evolution, can be described in the following picture. The ground mass of the Moon was formed of a semi-live substance, which was in constant movement, sometimes sluggish, sometimes quick and lively. There is as yet no solid mineral mass like the rocks and other constituents of the Earth on which man treads today. We might describe it as a kind of plant-mineral kingdom. Only, we have to imagine the whole ground and body of the Moon consisting of this plant-mineral substance, just as the earth today consists of rocks and stones, arable soil, etc. As here and there rocks protrude from the Earth today, so in the Lunar mass, harder portions also were embedded. These might be likened to forms made of hard wood or horn. Moreover, as plants today spring from the mineral soil, so was the ground of the Moon bedecked, and also penetrates, by a second kingdom, consisting of a kind of plant-animal. The substance of this kingdom was softer than the ground and more mobile in itself. It spread over the lower kingdom like a turgid sea. And as for man himself, he might be described as animal-man. He had in his nature the constituents of the two other kingdoms; but his being was permeated through and through by a life-body and an astral body, upon which the forces of the higher Beings on the Sun were working, thereby ennobling his form and figure. The Spirits of form gave him a form and figure that adapted him to the Moon life; the Sun Spirits, on the other hand, made him a being that was lifted beyond this life. With the faculties bestowed on him by these Spirits, man had the power to ennoble his own nature; he could even lift up on to a higher level that within him which was akin to the lower kingdoms.

Seen in their spiritual aspect, these developments may be described as follows. Man's ancestor had also been ennobled by beings who had fallen away from the Sun kingdom. Their ennobling influence extended, above all, to everything that could be experienced in the watery element. Upon this element, the influence of the Beings of the Sun was not so great; they were rulers in the elements of warmth and air. The outcome of all this was that a twofold nature began to declare itself in man's organism. One part of it was permeated through and through by the influence of the Sun Beings; while in the other, the fallen beings, the Moon beings, were working. The latter part was thus more independent. In the former, no other states of consciousness could arise than those in which the Beings of the Sun were living, while in the latter there lived a kind of cosmic consciousness, such as had belonged to the Saturn state, but on a higher level. Through it man's ancestor saw himself as an “Image of the Universe,” while in the “Sun” part of his being he would feel himself only as an “Image of the Sun.”

These two natures in man began now to come into a kind of conflict. And for this conflict a balance was established by the influence of the Sun Beings making transient and frail the more material part of man's organism whereby he was enabled to have the independent World-consciousness. Henceforth this part had to be thrown off from time to time. During the process and for some while after, man's ancestor was a being subject to the Sun influence alone. His consciousness became less independent; he lived in utter devotion to the Solar life. Thereupon the independent—Moon—part would be renewed once more; and after a while the whole process be repeated. This happened time and again. Thus did the ancestor of man live on the Moon in alternating states of consciousness—now duller, now clearer; and the alternation was accompanied by a changing and renewal of his being in its material aspect. From time to time he would lay aside his Moon body, then after awhile put it on once more.

[ 45 ] Seen in their physical aspect, the aforesaid kingdoms of the Moon show great variety. The mineral-plants differ from one another, group by group; so do the plant-animals and the animal-men. This we shall readily understand if we recall that certain structures have remained behind at each of the preceding stages. Forms very varied in quality will thus had been embodied. Some there are which still reveal the initial properties of Saturn; others, those of its middle epoch; others again, those of its end. So too for all the successive evolutionary stages of the Sun.

[ 46 ] Nor is it only the forms and structures belonging to the heavenly body that remain behind as it goes forward in its evolution. The same applies to many of the Beings connected with it. With the advance of evolution to Moon, a number of different ranks of such Beings are to be found. There are Spirits of Personality who even on Sun did not attain their human level, while there are others who made good there what they and missed before, and rose to the human stage. The same with the Fires Spirits who should have become human beings on Sun: a number of these have also remained behind. And as in Sun evolution certain Spirits of Personality, having remained behind, withdrew from the Sun and made Saturn arise anew as a distinct heavenly body, so too in the course of Moon evolution do the Beings aforesaid remove themselves on to separate heavenly bodies. So far, we have spoken only of the separation into Sun and Moon, but in the same manner other heavenly forms were also separated from the Moon body which emerged after the great interval between the Sun and Moon stages of evolution; so that we have in time a whole system of heavenly bodies, the most advanced of which, as will readily be seen, must be the new Sun. And now, as in Sun evolution there was a bond of attraction between the backward Saturn kingdom and the Spirits of Personality on the new Saturn, so, in like manner, bonds of attraction now arise between the several heavenly bodies and the corresponding Moon beings. It would lead us much too far afield to trace here in detail all the heavenly bodies that emerged. Let is suffice to have pointed out the reason why, as time went on, from the single heavenly body which arose as Saturn in the beginning of human evolution, a whole number of heavenly bodies detached themselves one after another.

[ 47 ] After the Spirits of Form have come in with their activity, Moon evolution continues for a time along these lines. Then there is once more an interval, during which the coarser parts of the three Moon kingdoms remain in a kind of quiescent state, while the finer parts—and notably the astral bodies of the human beings—free themselves from these coarser structures. They come into a condition where the higher forces of the sublime Beings of the Sun can work upon them with peculiar intensity.

After this interval of rest, the finer portions penetrate once more into the parts of the human being that are of coarser substance. What with the strength they have acquired in their free condition during the interval, they can now make these coarser substances ready to receive the influence which, after a time, the normally progressive Spirits of Personality and the Fire Spirits will bring to bear on them.

[ 48 ] The Spirits of Personality have risen meanwhile to a stage at which they have the consciousness of Inspiration. Not only can they, as in their former picture-consciousness, perceive in picture form the inner states of other beings; they can behold their very inwardness, expressed in a language as it were of spiritual music. Meanwhile the Fire Spirits have risen to the consciousness which the Spirits of Personality possessed on Sun. Both kinds of Spirits are thus able to enter, and play their part in, the now more ripened life of the human being. The Spirits of Personality work on his astral body, the Fire Spirits on his etheric body. The astral body receives thereby the character of personality. Henceforth it not only experiences pleasure and pain, it also relates them to itself. Not yet does it rise to the full consciousness of “I” which says to itself “I am;” Rather does it feel sustained and sheltered by other beings in its environment. Turning its gaze upward, as it were, to these, it can exclaim: “This my environment upholds me in existence.”

Meanwhile the Fire Spirits work upon the etheric body. Under their influence the motion of the forces in this body becomes gradually more and more of an inward life activity. It finds physical expression in a movement of the saps and fluids and in phenomena of growth. The gaseous substances have been condensed to watery, and we may now begin to speak of a kind of nutrition—in the sense that what is received from without is inwardly transmuted and assimilated. If we imagine something intermediate between the nutrition and the breathing of today, we shall have a fair idea of what was taking place in this direction. The human being derived his “food-stuffs” from the animal-plant kingdom. These animal-plants we must imagine hovering and floating in a surrounding element (or sometimes also loosely rooted in the ground,) rather as the lower animals of today live in the water, or the terrestrial animals in the air. But the element in which the animal-plants lived was neither water nor air in the present sense; it was something intermediate between the two—a kind of dense vapor wherein the most diverse substances, being as it were dissolved in it, moved hither and thither in manifold currents. The animal-plants seemed like forms within this element that were only rather more regular and condensed. Physically they were often but little different from their surrounding element. Besides the process of nutrition, there was also a breathing process. But it was not as it is on Earth; it was more like an in-drawing and out-pouring of warmth. To the supersensible observer of these processes, it is as though organs were opening out and drawing to again, while a warmth-giving stream pours in and out of them, and air and water substances are conveyed inwards and outwards. And since the human being has already at this stage an astral body of his own, both breathing and nutrition are accompanied by inner feelings. A kind of pleasure is experienced when substances that are helpful for building the human being, are absorbed; discomfort is felt when harmful substances flow in, or even when they only come too near.

Now as the breathing process was during Moon evolution nearly related to that of nutrition, so was the process of ideation—the forming of mental images—to the reproduction process. The things and begins in Moon man's environment exercised no immediate effect on any human senses. Man's mental life was rather of the following character. In this dim twilight consciousness, pictures were called up by the presence of these things and begins; and the pictures were far more intimately related to the real inner nature of the environment than are our sense-perceptions, which reveal—in colors, sounds, smells, etc.—merely its outer aspect. To gain a better idea of Moon man's consciousness we should imagine him steeped in the vapor-like environment above described. Manifold processes are taking place within it. Substances are combining, substances are separating; some parts grow more condensed, others thin out, become more tenuous. All this goes on in such a way that though the human beings do not directly see or hear it, it calls forth pictures in their consciousness. These may be likened to the pictures of our dream-consciousness today. Let us say, an object falls to the floor. The sleeper does not perceive the real process, but instead some arbitrary picture—for example, he thinks a shot is being fired. The pictures of Moon consciousness, however, unlike our dream-pictures, are not arbitrary. Though they are not copies but symbols only of outer processes, nevertheless they correspond to them. For a particular outer process one picture will arise and no other. Moon man is thus in a position to order his conduct according to the pictures, just as today man orders his conduct according to his perceptions. Only, observe the difference; conduct based on our perceptions is subject to free choice whereas action under the influence of these pictures takes place as though impelled by a deep inner urge.

We must not however imagine that in this picture-consciousness we have no more than a symbolization of outer physical processes. Through the pictures, the spiritual Beings holding sway behind the physical facts—these spiritual Beings and their activities are also presented to consciousness. Thus in the creatures of the animal-like kingdom the Spirits of Personality are as it were made visible, while the Fires Spirits appear behind and within the mineral-plant beings. Other beings too appear, whom man can conceive without connection with anything physical; he beholds them rather as ethereal and soul-like forces. These are the Sons of Life.

The mental pictures of Moon consciousness being not copies but symbols of the outer beings, their influence on the inner life of the human being was on this very account all the greater; it was far greater than that of the mental pictures man has today, that are communicated by external perception. The pictures of Moon consciousness were capable of arousing his whole inner life to movement and action. The inner processes took shape to accord with them, they were formative forces in the true sense of the word. The human being became even as they formed him. He became, so to speak, the image of his own processes in consciousness.

[ 49 ] But now the farther evolution goes on in this way, the more does it entail a deeply incisive change for the human being. The power proceeding from the pictures in consciousness grows gradually less and less to extend over his whole bodily nature. Some members are subject in their formation to the formative plastic influences of the picture-consciousness, and become to a large extent an image of the mental life in the way that has been indicated; but there are other organs that withdraw themselves from this influence. In part of his being, man is as it were too dense—determined too much by other laws—for him to follow the pictures he has in his consciousness. These organs withdraw from his influence. But they come under another; they come under the influence of the sublime Sun Beings themselves. This stage in evolution is however seen to be preceded by an interval of rest, wherein the Sun Spirits gather up their forces, in order to work upon the beings of the Moon under these quite new conditions.

After the interval of rest, the human being is seen to be divided into two natures. One is withdrawn from the independent working of his picture-consciousness. It takes on a more definite shape and comes under the influence of forces which, though they proceed from the body of the Moon, can only arise there through the influence of the Sun Beings. This portion of man's being partakes increasingly in the life that is kindled by the Sun. The other rises out of this one, like a kind of head. It is mobile and pliable, shaping itself so as to express and sustain the dream-like consciousness in which man lives. The two portions are however intimately bound up with one another. They send each other their respective fluids, and the members of each extend into the other.

[ 50 ] While all this has been taking place, a relationship of Sun and Moon has arisen, which accords with the trend of this evolution. A significant harmony is thereby brought about.

It has already been shown how the spiritual Beings, as they go forward through the stages of their evolution, detach from the great cosmic mass various heavenly bodies, to be their dwelling-places. It is the Beings who radiate the forces by which the cosmic substances are organized and differentiated. The separation of Sun and Moon was thus a necessary event, to lead up to the provision of proper dwelling-places for the several spiritual Beings. But this determination of substance and of its forces by the Spirit goes still farther. For it is the spiritual Beings who give rise to certain movements of the heavenly bodies, revolutions one about another, with the result that the heavenly bodies change their relative positions; and every change in their relative position of one heavenly body to another means a change in the mutual influences of the Beings.

This is what happened with regard to Sun and Moon. A movement of the Moon about the Sun is induced, which at certain times brings the human begins more into the sphere of the Sun's influence, while at other, alternative times they are enabled to turn away from it and so be thrown more upon their own resources. The movement is an outcome of the above-mentioned “fall” of certain beings of the Moon, and of the balance established in settlement of the conflict which ensued. It is simply the physical expression for the spiritual relationship of forces that was engendered by the “fall.” Through the one heavenly body moving around the other, there arise in the Beings who inhabit them such alternative states of consciousness as were described above. It can indeed be said that the Moon alternatively turns her life towards the Sun and away from it. There is a sun time and a planetary time. During the latter the Moon Beings grow and evolve on a side of the Moon which is turned away from the Sun. It must however be added that something else comes into play on the Moon, beside this motion of the heavenly bodies. Supersensible consciousness, as it looks back, can see the Moon Beings themselves migrating round their planet at regular intervals of time. Sometimes they seek the regions where they can give themselves up to the Sun's influence, at other times they journey to regions where they are not subject to it—where they can, as it were, muse upon their own life and being.

[ 51 ] To complete the picture, it is moreover to be observed that in this epoch the Sons of Life attain their human stage. We have seen how the first beginnings of the human senses came into being upon Saturn. Even now on Moon, moan cannot yet use these senses for his own perception of external objects; at this stage, however, they can become instruments for the Sons of Life. The Sons of Life use them in order through them to have perception. Thus these senses, that belong to the physical body of man, enter into mutual relation with the Sons of Life. For the Sons of Life do not merely make use of them; they also work upon them and perfect them.

[ 52 ] Through these alternating relations to the Sun, recurring changes arise, as we have seen, in the life-conditions of man himself. It happens in the following way. Each time that he is subjected to the influence of the Sun, man devotes himself to the Sun life and its manifestations rather than to himself. At such times he feels the greatness and majesty of the Universe as expressed in the shining of the Sun. He inhales, at it were, sublime and cosmic greatness. It is then that the lofty Beings, who have their dwelling on the Sun, are exerting their influence upon the Moon. And the Moon, in turn, is working—not upon the whole human being, but chiefly upon those parts of him which have withdrawn from the influence of the pictures he has in his consciousness. The physical body and the life-body especially attain at these times a certain magnitude and a certain perfection of form. In the manifestations of consciousness, on the other hand, there is a decline. But when the life of the human being is turned away from the Sun, he occupies himself more with his own nature. Then inner life and mobility begin in the astral body, while the outer figure grows less comely, less perfect in formation.

There are therefore during Moon evolution two alternating states of consciousness, quite distinct from one another. The one during the Sun period is more dim; the other—in the epoch when life is thrown more on its won resources—is clearer. The former condition, while it is dimmer, is at the same time more selfless, for man then lives more in devotion to the outer world—to the Universe as reflected in the Sun This alternation in states of consciousness may be compared, in the man of the present day, both to the alternation of sleeping and waking, and also to that of life between birth and death on the one hand and, on the other, the more spiritual existence between death and a new birth. Man's awakening on Moon, when the Sun time draws to a close, might thus be described as something intermediate between the awakening of present-day man each morning, and his birth. So too the gradual dimming of consciousness as the Sun time approaches is like an intermediate state between our dying and our falling asleep; for it must not be supposed that an Old Moon there was yet a consciousness of birth and death such as man has today. In the Sun time the human being abandoned himself to the enjoyment of a kind of Sun-life. He was lifted away form his own life and lived more spiritually. We can do no more than attempt an approximate and comparative description of what he then experienced. He felt as if the very forces of the Universe, as if all their influences were streaming in upon him, throbbing through his being. He felt intoxicated by the cosmic harmonies in which his life participated. At such times his astral body was in a way freed from the physical, and with it part of the life-body too was drawn away; and this entity of astral body and life-body was like a delicate and wonderful musical instrument, upon the chords of which the cosmic Mysteries resounded. And the members of that part of man on which his consciousness had little influence were then shaped and molded in accordance with the harmonies of the Universe. For in these harmonies the Beings of the Sun were working. This part of man was thus in very truth shaped and formed by the tones of spiritual, cosmic sounds.

The transition from the brighter state of consciousness to the duller one was not so marked as in the transition from the waking condition to the dreamless sleep of man today. The picture-consciousness was not, indeed, as bright as waking consciousness today, neither was the other state of consciousness as dull as our dreamless sleep. Man had a certain apprehension, though a dim one, of the playing of the cosmic harmonies in his physical body and in that part of his etheric body which had remained united with the physical. And when the Sun was, as it were, no longer shining for him, the mental pictures came into his consciousness in place of the cosmic harmonies. Life was then kindled more in those members of the physical and etheric bodies which were subject to the direct influence of his own consciousness, while the other parts of man—the formative, creative forces no longer working on them from the Sun—went through a kind of withering and hardening process. And as the Sun time drew near once more, the old bodies fell away. They detached themselves from the human being, and out of his old bodily nature, as though out of a grave, man came forth once more—new-formed within, though crude as yet in outer shape and stature. The life-process in him had undergone renewal. After this, the new-born body—under the influence of the Sun Beings with their cosmic harmonies—grew and unfolded to its perfect state once more, and then the whole process was repeated.

Man felt this renewal like the putting-on of a fresh garment. He had not, with the kernel of his being, gone through an actual birth or death. He had but passed from a spiritual consciousness of cosmic Sound—when he was in a state of devotion to the outer Universe—to a consciousness that was directed upon his own inner being. He had cast his skin. The old body having grown unfit for use had been laid aside—and renewed.

Herewith we have also indicated more precisely what was characterized above as a kind of reproduction that was closely related to the life of ideation—the forming of mental images. In respect of certain parts of the physical and etheric body it is true to say that the human being brought forth his kind. But this does not mean that we have then a daughter-being fully distinct from the parent-being. The kernel of the latter passes over to the former, thus bringing forth—not a new being—but itself in a new shape. When the Sun time draws near, his mental pictures grow fainter and fainter, a sense of blissful devotion fills him, and in the peace and silence of his inner being the universal harmonies resound. Towards the end of this period the pictures in the astral body become alive again; man begins to be increasingly aware of himself. He feels as though he were awakening form the blissful rest in which he has been immersed during the Sun time. Another significant experience meets him here. With the renewed lighting-up of the pictures in consciousness, the human being sees himself enshrouded as it were within a cloud, which has descended on him like a Being from the great Universe. This Being, he feels, belongs to him, is a kind of completion of his own nature. He it is, he feels, that grants him his existence, that grants him his I. The Being is one of the Sons of Life. Man's feeling towards him can be expressed somewhat as follows—“In him I lived, even in the Sun time when I was given up to the sublime glory of the Universal All. Only, then he was not visible to me; now he is becoming visible.” And it is this Son of Life from whom the force proceeds that enables man to work upon his own bodily nature during the Sun-less time. Then, when the Sun time draws near once more, man feels as though he himself were becoming one with the Sun of Life. Even then he does not see him, but he feels deeply and inwardly united with him.

[ 53 ] The relation of the human beings to the Sons of Life was not such that each single human being had his Son of Life to himself, but a whole group would feel that a Son of Life belonged to it as a group. Men lived, on Moon, separated in this way into groups, and each group felt in common “group-Ego” in a Son of Life. The different between the groups made itself felt notably in the etheric body, which had a special form in each group. Since however the physical body takes its form from the etheric, the differences in the latter were impressed upon the former, and the several groups may be regarded as so many human species. When the Sons of Life looked down upon the human groups belonging to them, they saw themselves manifolded, as it were, in so many single human beings. And that gave them the feeling of their own Ego-hood. They saw the reflection of themselves in the human beings. Herein too lay the function of the human senses at that time. We have already seen that the senses did not yet transmit any perceptions of external objects, but at this stage they reflected the being of the Sons of Life. What the Sons of Life perceived through this reflection, gave them their “I” consciousness. And what was kindled in man's astral body by the same reflection—was none other than the picture-content of his dim Moon consciousness. The effect of this activity of man in mutual interaction with the Sons of Life finds expression in the physical body in the beginnings of the nervous system. The nerves make their appearance there like prolongations of the senses into the inward parts of the body.

[ 54 ] From all this a clear picture emerges of how the three kinds of Spirits—the Spirits of Personality, the Fire Spirits and the Sons of Life—worked upon Moon man. Fixing our attention on the main period—the middle epoch—of Moon evolution, we may say: The Spirits of Personality implant independence, the character of personality, in the human astral body. It is due to this that man is able, in the times when—so to speak—the Sun is not shining for him, to turn in upon himself and labor at his own formation. The Fires Spirits are at work in the etheric body, in so far as the same independent character becomes impressed upon it too. It is owing to their influence that after each renewal of this body man feels himself still the same being. This is because the etheric body is endowed by them with a kind of memory. The Sons of Life work on the physical body. They make it possible for the physical body to become an expression of the new independent astral body—to become, as it were, a physiognomical image of it. On the other hand, higher spiritual Beings are also working into the physical and etheric bodies in so far as in the Sun periods these bodies grow and develop apart from the independent astral body. This applied especially to the Spirits of Form and the Spirits of Movement. Their intervention takes place form the Sun, as has been described.

[ 55 ] Amid all these various influences, the human being matures to the point where he begins to develop within him the seed of Spirit-Self, just as the seed of Spirit-Man arose in the second half of Saturn evolution and the seed of Life-Spirit on Sun. And now all the conditions on Moon undergo change. Through the successive metamorphoses and renewals the human beings have been growing every nobler, purer and finer in their nature; at the same time they have also gained in strength. Hence they are able increasingly to preserve the picture-consciousness even on into the Sun periods, with the result that this consciousness gains influence on the formation of the physical and the etheric bodies, which formerly was effected through the working of the Sun Beings alone. All that happens upon Moon through the agency of the human beings and the Spirits connected with them, comes more and more to resemble what was formerly brought about by the Sun and the higher Beings that belong to it. In consequence of this, the Sun Beings are able to apply their forces more and more to their own evolution. The Moon too grew ready after a time to be united again with the Sun.

Spiritually regarded, these processes reveal themselves as follows. Little by little, the “fallen” Moon Beings have been overcome by the Sun Beings and must henceforth come into line with them. The deeds of the Moon Beings must become part and parcel of the deeds of the Sun Beings, to whom they are now subordinate. This change requires long epochs of time, during which the Moon periods grow ever shorter and shorter and the Sun periods longer and longer. And then there comes once more a period of evolution during which Sun and Moon form a single cosmic entity. The physical human body has now become entirely ethereal. When this is said, it must not however be imagined that under such conditions there is no physical body. That which has been evolved as physical body during the times of Saturn, Sun and Moon, remains as such. The fact is, we must not limit our recognition of the physical to where it manifests in an outwardly physical form. The physical can also exist in such a way as to present outwardly the form of the etheric, nay even of the astral. We must distinguish here between outward appearance and inner law and principle. A physical can become ethereal and astral, while still retaining the physical laws in its inner nature. And this is what happens when on the Moon the physical body of man has reached a certain stage in its perfection. It becomes ethereal in form. But when the supersensible consciousness that can perceive such things, turns its attention to this body, then, although ethereal in form, it shows itself to be imbued with the laws, not of the etheric but of the physical. In effect, the physical has then been received into the etheric, to rest in it as in a mother's womb and to be nurtured there. Afterwards it will emerge in a physical form once more, but on a higher level. If the human beings of Moon had had to maintain their physical bodies in gross physical form, the Moon could never have been reunited with the Sun. By assuming etheric form, the physical body becomes more akin to the etheric body, and is thus able to be imbued again more intimately with those portions of the etheric and astral bodies which had to be withdrawn from it in the Sun-time epochs of Moon evolution. Man, having appeared like a twofold being during the severance of Sun and Moon, now grows once more into a single whole. The physical takes on more of the quality of soul; and the soul-life is at the same time more bound up with the physical.

Upon this human being, single and coherent, the Spirits of the Sun into whose realm he has now entered can work quite differently than they could before, when they were sending their influences tot he Moon from without. Man is now living in an environment that is more of the soul and spirit. This enables the Spirits of Wisdom to come in with an activity of deep significance. They imbue man with Wisdom—ensoul him with Wisdom. Thereby he becomes in a sense an independent soul. Then to their influence is added that of the Spirits of Movement, who work above all upon the astral body. Under the influence of these high Beings, the astral body develops within it quickness of soul and a Wisdom-filled life-body. This Wisdom-filled etheric body is the germ of what was described in an earlier chapter—in respect of the man at present time—as intellectual soul, while the astral body, animated as it now is by the Spirits of Movement, is the seed and beginning of the sentient soul. And since all this is brought about in the human being at a time when his independence is enhanced, these beginnings of intellectual soul and sentient soul appear as the expression of the Spirit-Self. We must not make the mistake of imagining the Spirit-Self to be, in this period of evolution, a separate entity beside the intellectual and the sentient souls. The latter are only the expression of the Spirit-Self, which in its turn signifies their higher union and harmony.

[ 56 ] The intervention of the Spirits of Wisdom in this epoch is of peculiar significance. For they intervene not only for the human beings but for the other kingdoms too, which have developed upon Moon. When Sun and Moon are joined again, these lower kingdoms are also drawn into the realm of the Sun. All that was physical in them is etherealised. So now there are in the Sun not only human beings, but also mineral-plants and plant-animals. These other beings still maintain however their own nature, their own laws of being. Consequently they feel themselves strangers in their new surroundings. For they emerge there with a nature which is scarcely in accord with their environment. Since, however, they are etherealised, they too are accessible to the influence of the Spirits of Wisdom. Indeed, all that has come over from Moon into Sun is now permeated with the forces of these Spirits. That which the Sun-Moon entity has become during this time in evolution may accordingly be called “Cosmos of Wisdom.”

When after an interval of rest the system of our Earth emerges as the successor to this Cosmos of Wisdom, and the created beings that have come over from Moon as seeds come alive again on Earth, then all these beings reveal themselves as filled and permeated with Wisdom. And now we see how it is that Earth man, as he contemplates the things around him, is able to discover Wisdom in their very nature. We can admire the Wisdom in every leaf, in every bone of animal or man, or again in the marvelous construction of the brain and the heart. If man needs Wisdom to understand the things—if, that is, he can examine them and draw forth Wisdom from them—it proves that Wisdom is inherent in them. Try as he will to understand the things of the Earth with Wisdom-filled ideas, man could extract no Wisdom from them if Wisdom had not first been implanted in them. Anyone who would presume to grasp by Wisdom things of which he thinks that they have not first received that Wisdom, may just as well suppose that he can draw water form a glass into which water has not first been poured. Earth—as will be shown later—is Old Moon reborn. And it manifests as a creation filled with Wisdom, because in the epoch here described the Spirits of Wisdom imbued it with their forces.

[ 57 ] It will readily be understood that in the above account of Moon conditions it has only been possible to depict a few transient forms of this whole stage of evolution. Out of the whole course of events we have had to lay hold, as it were, on certain elements, singling them out for description. One might feel dissatisfied with a method of exposition that can give no more than isolated pictures, and regret that Moon evolution had not been brought into a nexus of well defined concepts. If objection is taken on this ground, all one can say is that these descriptions have purposely been given in concepts less sharp and definite. For the intention here is not so much to provide speculative concepts and built-up scheme of thought, but a mental picture of what can actually appear before the spiritual eye when supersensible vision is directed to the facts. And for Moon evolution this has far less of sharp and clear-cut outline than have our perceptions on Earth. In the Moon epoch we have to do much more with changing, varying impressions, with fleeting, mobile pictures and their transitions from one to another. It must moreover be borne in mind that we are considering an evolution that continues through long, long ages, and in any description of it we can after all do no more than hold fast momentary pictures here and there.

[ 58 ] The culminating point of the Moon epoch is reached at the moment when the human being, through the astral body which has been implanted in him, has advanced so far in evolution that his physical body gives to the Sons of Life the means to attain their human stage. For at this point the human being has also attained all that the Moon epoch can give him for himself, for his own inner begin, on his forward path. The ensuing time—the second half of Moon evolution—may therefore be described as a waning period. Yet in this time, as we have seen, something of great importance is nevertheless achieved, both for man's environment and also for man himself. Wisdom is implanted into the heavenly body of Sun-Moon. Moreover it is in this declining period that the seeds are sown of the intellectual and the sentient souls. Their unfoldment, however, and that of the spiritual soul—and withal, the birth of the I in free self-consciousness—does not take place until the Earth. At the Moon stage the intellectual and sentient souls do not by any means appear as though the human being were already expressing himself through them; rather do they seem like instruments for the Sons of Life who are associated with Man's being. If one wanted to describe how man felt in this respect on Old Moon, one would have to express his consciousness in some such words as these—“In me and through me lives the Son of Life. Through me he beholds the Lunar environment, the Moon; in me he thinks upon the things and beings that Moon contains.” Moon man, in fact, feels himself overshadowed by the Son of Life. He feels himself as the tool or instrument of this higher Being. During the severance of Sun and Moon, in the times when he is turned away from the Sun, he feels, it is true, more independent; he also feels as thought the I belonging to him—which in the Sun times vanished from his picture-consciousness—for so we may describe it—gives the human being on Moon the feeling: “In the Sun time my Ego soars away with me to higher realms, to Beings lofty and sublime; then it descends with me, when the Sun vanishes, into deeper worlds.”

[ 59 ] Moon evolution proper was preceded by a preparatory stage; a kind of repetition of Saturn and Sun evolutions took place. And now, in this declining period, after the reunion of Sun and Moon, we can similarly distinguish two epochs, during which there were to some extent even physical condensations. So do physical soul-spirited conditions of the Sun-Moon body alternate with one another. In the physical epochs the human being, and also the beings of the lower kingdoms, appear as though foreshadowing in “set forms that are without independence, what they will afterwards become in a more independent way during the Earth time.

Thus we have two preparatory epochs of Moon evolution and again two epochs in the declining time, Such epochs may be called “cycles” or “rounds.” In the intervening time, after the two preparatory epochs but before the epochs of decline—in the time, that is to say, when Moon and Sun are severed—we shall be able to recognize three distinct epochs. The middle one is the time when the Sons of Life reach their human stage. It is preceded by an epoch when the conditions are all leading up to this central event, and it ids followed by another, wherein the Sons of Life enter more fully into the new creations and carry their development further. These three epochs when taken together with the two of preparation and the two of decline, make seven rounds in all. Moon evaluation as a whole may therefore be said to take its course in seven rounds. Between the rounds are intervals of rest, such as we have already had frequent occasion to describe. But if we want to have a true picture of what happens, we must not imagine an abrupt transition from activity to interval of rest. The Sun Beings, for example, gradually withdraws from their activities on the Moon. A time begins for them which, seen from without, appears as their interval of rest, while on the Moon itself, quick, independent activity continues. In this way the period of activity for one kind of Being will often extend into the period of rest for another. Taking this into account, we may speak of a rhythmic waxing and waning of forces in cyclic epochs. Nay more, a similar division is also recognizable within each of the seven Moon cycles above indicated. The whole of Moon evolution may be described as one great—or planetary—cycle; the seven divisions within it as small cycles, and their sub -divisions are still smaller ones. This seven times sevenfold division can be observed also in Sun evolution, and even in the Saturn epoch there is a suggestion of it. It should however be borne in mind that the dividing lines are to some extent obliterated in the Sun epoch and still more so in Saturn. They grow increasingly distinct, the farther evolution proceeds towards the Earth epoch.

[ 60 ] At the close of the Moon evolution that has been described in outline in the foregoing pages, all the forces and Begins connected with it pass into a more spiritual form of existence, that is on an entirely different level both from the form of existence during the Moon period and also from that during the Earth evolution which follows. A being with faculties sufficiently highly developed to be able to perceive all the details of Moon and Earth evolutions, will not necessarily be able to see what takes place in the interval between the two. For him, the Beings and forces would, at the close of the Moon period, vanish as it were into the void, and then after a lapse of time emerge again from the dim twilight of the cosmic womb. Only a being with far higher faculties could trace the spiritual events that are enacted in the intervening time.

[ 61 ] When the interval is over, the Beings who took part in the evolutionary processes on Saturn, Sun and Moon reappear, endowed with new faculties. By their former deeds, the Beings who stand above man have attained the power to bring his evolution so far forward that in the Earth epoch which follows on the Moon he will be able to develop a new mode of consciousness, that stands at a stage higher than the picture-consciousness he had in the Moon epoch. But man must first be prepared to receive this new gift. During the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions he has incorporated into his being the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. But these members received only those faculties and forces which enabled them to live for a picture-consciousness. The organs, and also the whole form and figure which would enable them to perceive a world of external objects are lacking. Just as a new plant will unfold no more than is contained, as potentiality, in the seed that comes from the old one, so too, at the beginning of the new stage in evolution, the three members of man's nature emerge with forms and organs such as allow of the development only of a picture- consciousness. For the unfolding of a higher stage in consciousness they will have first to be prepared.

The preparation takes place in three stages. During the first, the physical body is lifted to a height of development such as enables it to undergo the necessary change into a form and figure which can provide the basis for objective consciousness. This preliminary stage of Earth evolution may be described as a repetition of the Saturn period on a higher level. For in this period, as in the Saturn time, higher Beings are working upon the physical body alone. When the evolution of this physical body is far enough advanced, all the Beings have to pass once more into a higher form of existence, before the life-body can advance in its turn. The physical body has, as it were, to be re-cast, in order to be able to receive, when it unfolds again, the more highly evolved life-body. After this interval devoted to a higher form of existence, there follows a kind of recapitulation of Sun evolution on a higher level, for the further development of the life-body. And then—after a further interval—the like is done, in a recapitulation of Moon evolution, for the astral body.

[ 62 ] Let our attention now be turned to the events of evolution after the close of the third of these repetitions. All the Beings and forces have become spiritualized once more, rising during the process of spiritualization into far higher worlds. The lowest of the worlds where something of them is still to be perceived is the very world where man now sojourns between death and new birth—the several regions, namely, of Spiritland. Thereafter the Beings gradually descend once more into lower worlds. Before the physical evolution of the Earth begins, they have come down so far that their lowest manifestations can be beheld in the astral or soul-world.

[ 63 ] All that exists of man during this period is still in astral form. For a right understanding of this stage in his development it is important to realize that although man has in him physical body, life-body and astral body, the physical body is not yet present in a physical form. What makes this physical body physical at this stage is not physical form but the fact that while possessing astral form it bears within it physical laws. It is an entity with physical laws and principles in a form that is of the nature of soul—and the like holds good of the life-body.

[ 64 ] To the eye of the spirit the Earth at this stage in its evolution appears at first as a world-entity which is all soul and spirit—that is to say, in which even the physical and living forces show a soul-like form. In this world-entity is potentially contained all that is destined subsequently to metamorphose into the creatures of the physical Earth. It radiates light; but the light is not yet such as physical eyes could have perceived—even if they had existed then. It shines only for the opened eyes of the seer, shines for him in the light that is of the soul.

[ 65 ] Within this soul-entity there now takes place what may be described as a condensation, with the result that after a time in the very midst of the soul-entity a form of fire makes its appearance, even such a fiery form as Saturn was in its densest state. This form is woven-through with the influences of the various Beings who are partaking in the evolution. Like a surging forth and a diving down into the fiery sphere of the Earth—such is the interplay we can observe between the Beings and the heavenly body. We are not therefore to think of this fiery sphere of the Earth as being of the same substance throughout. Rather it is like an organism that is permeated with soul and spirit. As to those beings who are destined to become on Earth human beings in their present form, they can take very little share in this diving down into the fire-body. They are still in a condition that obliges them to remain almost entirely in the uncondensed surrounding sphere, where they are within the womb of higher spiritual Beings. At this stage they touch the fire-Earth with a single point only of their soul-form, with the result that the warmth condenses a portion of their astral form. Thereby Earth life is kindled in them. For the most part, their being still belongs to worlds of soul and spirit; only through this contact with the earthly fire does warmth of life begin to play around them. If therefore we would make us a picture—at once sensible and supersensible—of man at this beginning of the physical Earth, we must conceive a soul-form of egg-like shape, contained in the encircling sphere of Earth, and surrounded at its lower surface in the way an acorn is by a cup; only, the substance of this “cup” consists entirely of warmth or fire. Now as a consequence of this envelopment by warmth, not only is life kindled in the human being, but at the same time a change takes place in his astral body. Into it is implanted the first beginning of that which afterwards becomes the sentient soul. We may say therefore that, at this stage, man consists of sentient soul, astral body, life-body, and of a physical body that is woven of fire. In the astral body are surging up and down the spiritual Beings who partake in his existence. Through the sentient soul man feels himself bound to the Earth. He has in this time a predominating picture-consciousness where the spiritual Beings in whose womb he lies reveal themselves; and only like a point within this consciousness is the sensation man has of the body that belongs to him. It is as though he were looking down from the spiritual world upon an earthly possession, of which he feels: “That is thine.”

Stage by stage the condensation of the Earth continues, and the above-described differentiation in man grows gradually more distinct. Then comes a moment in evolution when the Earth is so far condensed that only a part of it remains fiery, while another part has assumed a form of substance that may be described as “gas” or “air.” With man too a change is brought about. Henceforth not only is he touched by the warmth of Earth, but air-substance too begins to be imparted to his fire-body. And as the warmth kindled the life in him, so does the air as it plays around him evoke within him what can be described as—spiritual—sound. His life-body rings forth with sound. Simultaneously, a portion of his astral body becomes separated out as the first germinal beginning of the intellectual soul that emerges later.

To envisage what is going on at this time in the soul of man, we must remember that the higher Beings are continuously surging up and down in the air-and-fire body of the Earth. In the fire-Earth it is, to begin with, the Spirits of Personality that are of importance for man. And while he is being called to life by the Earth-warmth, his sentient soul says to itself: “These are the Spirits of Personality.” In the air too, higher Beings are in like manner making themselves known. They are the ones we have already named, following Christian esoteric usage, the Archangels; and it is their influence that man feels as inward sound when the air is wafted round him. Then does his intellectual soul say to itself: “These are the Archangels.” For what man perceives at this stage through his connection with the Earth does not yet consist of so many physical objects. He lives in the sensations of warmth that rise up to him, and in sounds; and within these streams of warmth and surging waves of sound he feels the presence of the Spirits of Personality and the Archangels. He cannot yet perceive these Beings directly, only through the veils, as it were, of warmth and sound. While the perceptions of warmth and sound are penetrating into his soul, pictures of the higher Beings in whose sheltering care he feels himself to be, are continually rising and falling within him.

[ 66 ] And now evolution continues, its progress finding expression once again in a further condensation. Watery substance is incorporated into the Earth-body, which consists now of three members: the fiery, the airy and the watery. But before this, an important event takes place. Out of the fire-air Earth an independent heavenly body splits off, which will in its further course become the present Sun. Hitherto Earth and Sun have been a single body. After the severance of the Sun , Earth still contains within it, to begin with, all that is in and on our present Moon. The separation of the Sun takes place because higher Beings—for their own evolution and for that which they have yet to do for the Earth—can no longer endure the matter which is now condensed as far as water. Out of the whole Earth-mass they separate the substances which alone are suited to their use, and take their departure to make themselves a new dwelling-place in the Sun. Henceforth they work on to the Earth from without, from the Sun. Man, on the other hand, needs for his further evolution a scene of action where matter will condense still more.

[ 67 ] Hand in hand with the incorporation of watery substance into the Earth-body, once again a change is wrought in man himself. Henceforth not only does the fire pour into him, and the air play around him, but watery substance too is incorporated into his physical body. Simultaneously his etheric part undergoes a change; he now begins to perceive it as a delicate body-of-light. Formerly, man felt streams of warmth rise upward to him from the Earth, while tones made him conscious of air being wafted towards him; now, his body is penetrated also by the watery element, whose inpouring and outpouring he beholds as waxing and waning light. Moreover, in his soul too a change has taken place. To the first beginning of sentient and then of intellectual soul, that of the spiritual soul has been added. In the element of water work the Angels; they are the real kindlers of light. For man it is as though they were appearing to him in light.

Certain higher Beings who were formerly in the Earth-body itself now act upon it from the Sun. In consequence of this, all influences that are at work on the Earth are changed. Man, fettered to the Earth, would no longer have been able to feel within him the influences of the Sun Beings, were his soul turned perpetually towards the Earth from which his physical body is derived. Henceforth he is brought into alternating states of consciousness. At certain times the Sun Beings tear his soul away from the physical body; so that he is now alternately in the lap of the Sun Beings in a pure life of soul and then again in a condition where, united with the body, he receives the influences of the Earth. When he is in the physical body, the streams of warmth flow up towards him, the airy masses resound around him, the waters pour in and out of him. When he is outside the body, the pictures of the higher Beings, in whose womb he is, go surging through his soul.

Earth at this stage of evolution lives through two alternating times. At one time it can play around the human souls with its substances and enwrap them with bodies; at another, the human souls have withdrawn from it and only the bodies are left. Earth with its human beings is then in a state of sleep. It is by no means out of keeping with the facts to say that in those pristine ages the Earth underwent a day-time and a night-time. (In terms of physical space this can be expressed as follows. Through the mutual influence of the Beings of Sun and Earth, the Earth comes into movement in relation to the Sun, and in this way the alternation of the above-described periods of night and day is brought about. It is day when the surface of the Earth where man is evolving is turned towards the Sun; when it is turned away it is night—that is, the time during which man's life is entirely a life of soul. But we must not imagine that the movement of the Earth around the Sun in that primeval age was like the movement it describes today. Conditions were altogether different. Nevertheless, it is good already at this point to begin to sense that the movements of the heavenly bodies into such relative movements and positions as enable the spiritual conditions to work themselves out in the physical.)

[ 68 ] Turning out gaze upon it during its nocturnal time, the body of the Earth would look to us like a corpse. For it is largely composed of the disintegrating bodies of human beings whose souls are in another form of existence. The watery and aeriform organic structures of which the human bodies consist disintegrate in the night and are dissolved in the remaining mass of the Earth. That part alone of the human body which was formed from the very beginning of Earth evolution by the interaction of fire with the human soul, and which then in course of time grew ever denser and denser—that part alone remains, but quite inconspicuous, like a seed. It will easily be seen that we must not imagine the “periods of day and night” here described as bearing very much resemblance to what these terms denote for the present Earth. When at the beginning of the day-time the Earth again comes under the immediate influence of the Sun, the human souls press forward into the region of physical life. Touching the seeds, they cause these to sprout and grow into an outer form which looks like an image of the human being such as he is in his soul-nature. Something not unlike a tender act of fertilization takes place here between man's soul and the seed-like body. Then do the souls thus incarnated begin once more to draw to themselves the air and water-masses and incorporate them into their bodies. The differentiated body expels and inhales the air—a first beginning of the later breathing process. The water too is absorbed and expelled; nutriment in a primeval form begins. These processes, however, are not yet perceived as outward happenings. Only in the case of the above-described “fertilization” do we find the soul engaged in a kind of external perception. As it touches the seed which the Earth is holding out towards it, the soul is dimly aware of awakening to physical existence. What it then perceives may be conveyed approximately in the words: “That is my form.” This feeling—we might also describe it as a dawning sensation of I—remains with the soul throughout the time of its union with the physical body. The absorption of the air, on the other hand, is still experienced in an entirely spiritual way. It appears in the form of sound-pictures surging and dying away, which “form” the seed that is undergoing differentiation. Surrounded on all hands by surging waves of sound, the soul feels how it is forming and shaping its own body according to the forces of these sound-tones. At this stage in evolution, human forms and figures begin to take shape, the like of which cannot be observed by present-day consciousness in any outer world. They evolve like plant and flower-forms of the most delicate texture; being inwardly mobile they give rather the appearance of waving, fluttering flowers. During his time on Earth, man lives through a blissful feeling of being fashioned into such forms as these. The absorption of the watery parts of the Earth is felt in the soul as an access of force, as an inner strengthening. Outwardly it appears in the physical entity of man as growth. As the direct working of the Sun declines, the human soul loses the power to control these processes. Little by little, they are cast aside. Only those parts remain, which bring about the maturing of what we described as the seed. Man himself deserts his body and returns into the spiritual form of existence. (Not all parts of the Earth are used up in the construction of the human bodies. We must not imagine that the Earth in its nocturnal time consists entirely of disintegrating corpses and seeds which await their re-awakening. These are embedded in other forms, fashioned out of the substance of Earth, the nature of which will be revealed later.)

[ 69 ] And now the condensation-process goes still further. To the watery element is added the solid—we may call it the element of “earth.” Man too begins during his Earth time to incorporate the earth-element into his body. And then it immediately becomes evident that the forces which his soul brings with it from the body-free condition no longer have the same power as heretofore. Formerly the soul fashioned its body from the fiery, airy and watery elements, according to the tones that rang out from them and the pictures of light that they set playing all around. Now that the form is solidified, the soul can no longer do this. Other powers enter into the forming process. That which remains behind when the soul departs from the body is no longer merely like a seed, to be kindled to life by the returning soul. Henceforth it actually contains within itself the quickening power. The soul at its departure leaves not merely its image behind on Earth but, implanted in the image, a portion also of this quickening power. At its reappearance upon Earth, it is no longer able ton its own to awaken the image to life. The calling-to-life must take place within the image itself. Henceforth the spiritual Beings who work on to the Earth from the Sun maintain the quickening force in the human body even when man himself is not upon the Earth. Now therefore the reincarnating soul is aware not only of the sounds and pictures-of-light that surge around, wherein it feels the higher Beings who are immediately above it; in receiving the earth-element the soul experiences the influence of those still higher Beings who have established their scene of action on the Sun.

Formerly, man felt himself belonging to the Beings of soul and spirit with whom he was united when free of the body. His I was still sheltered within their womb. From now on, the I confronted him during physical incarnation, along with all the other things that were around him. Independent images of man's soul and spirit existed henceforth on Earth. Compared to the present human body they were fine and delicate in substance. For only in a very rarefied state did “earth” enter into their composition—rather as when the man of today receives into his organ of smell the finely distributed substances of some outer object. The human bodies were like wraiths, like shadows. Distributed as they were over the whole Earth, they came under different kinds of Earthly influence at different parts of the Earth's surface. While the bodily images, being in accordance with the soul of man that quickened them, were heretofore essentially alike over the whole Earth, diversity began now to appear among the human forms. Thus was the way prepared for what afterwards showed itself in variety of race.

Now that the bodily man had grown more independent, the former intimate union between the Earthly human being and the world of soul and spirit was to some extent dissolved. Henceforth, when the soul left the body, the latter experienced something like a continuation of life.

Had evolution gone on in this way, the Earth would needs have hardened under the influence of its solid element. Supersensible cognition, looking back upon these conditions, sees the human bodies, when their souls depart from them, growing more and more solid. After a time, human souls returning to Earth would no longer have found any suitable material with which to unite. It would all have been used up in filling the Earth with the lignified relics of their incarnations.

[ 70 ] At this juncture an event took place which gave to the whole of evolution a new turn. Everything that could conduce to a permanent hardening in the solid substance of the Earth was eliminated. This was the time when our present Moon left the Earth. The influences that contributed to permanence of form and had hitherto worked directly from within the Earth, worked henceforth indirectly in a weakened manner from the Moon. The higher Beings upon whom this “forming of form” depends, had resolved to let their influences come no longer from within the Earth but from without As a result, there now appeared in the human bodily organisms a diversity which may rightly be regarded as the beginning of the separation into male and female. The delicately constituted human forms that previously inhabited the Earth had brought forth the new human form, their descendant, by the interaction within them of two forces—the seed-force and the life-giving, quickening force. These descendants now underwent a change. In one group of them worked more of the seed-force of the soul and spirit; in the other, more of the quickening seed-force. This was due to the fact that with the departure of the Moon from the Earth, the earth-element had toned down its power. The working of the two forces on upon the other now became more gentle, more tender than it had been when it took place within a single living body. Consequently the descendant organism too was more tender, more delicate. Entering upon its life on Earth in this tender condition, it only gradually assimilated the more solid parts. Thus, for the human soul returning to Earth, the possibility of union with the body was restored. The soul no longer called the body to life from without, for now the quickening process took place on Earth; but it united with the body and made it grow—although a certain limit was set to the body's growth. Owing to the separation of the Moon the human body became plastic for a while; but the longer it continued to grow on Earth, the more did the hardening forces gain the upper hand, until at length the soul could partake but feebly in its organization. Thereupon the body fell into decay, while the soul ascended to other—spiritual—modes of lie.

[ 71 ] Stage by stage, while this configuration of the Earth is proceeding, the forces man has been acquiring during Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, begin gradually to partake in his further development. First, the astral body—still containing the life-body and the physical body dissolved within it—is kindled by the Earthly fire. Then it separates into a finer, specifically astral part—the sentient soul—and a coarser, etheric part which will from now on be touched also by the earth-element. The etheric of life-body, hitherto latent, makes its appearance. And while in the astral man the intellectual and the spiritual soul are developing, the coarser parts, receptive to sound and light, are separated out in the etheric body.

Finally, in the moment when the etheric body condenses still more, so as to become—from a “light” body—a fire body, or body-of-warmth, the stage in evolution is reached when the solid earth-element begins to be incorporated in the human being. Having condensed to fire, the etheric body can now unite—by virtue of the forces of the physical body that have been implanted in it—with the substances into the body, which has in the meantime grown more solid. And this is where the higher Beings come in who dwell on the Sun. They breathe into man's body the air. Whereas by virtue of his past, man has within him the power to permeate himself with the Earth's fire, higher Beings have to guide the breath of air into his body. Before the hardening took place, the life-body of man, as the receiver of sound, guided the stream of air and permeated the physical body with life. Now man's physical body begins to receive a life that comes from outside. The consequence is that this life grows independent of the soul part of man. The soul of man, when withdrawing from Earth, leaves behind not a mere seed of his form, but a complete living image of himself. The Spirits of Form remain united with the image; they carry over to the descendants, when the soul has left the body, the life which they have bestowed. In this way what we may call “heredity” develops. And when the soul of man appears again on Earth, he feels himself within a body whose life has been transmitted from the ancestors. To such a body he feels especially attracted. Something like a memory evolves of the progenitor with whom the soul feels at one. Through the sequence of the descendants this memory continues like a common consciousness. The I flows downward through the generations.

[ 72 ] At this stage in his evolution man felt himself an independent being during his time on Earth. He felt the inner fire of his life-body united with the outer fire of the Earth. The warmth, as it flowed through him, he could feel as his own I. Here in these streams of warmth, woven through and through with life, we have the first beginnings of the circulation of the blood. But in the air that streamed into him man did not altogether feel his own being. For in the air the forces of higher Beings were at work. Nevertheless, part of the forces and influences within the air that poured through him still remained his own, namely, that portion which had already become his own through the etheric forces he had formerly developed. Man had, therefore, a portion of the airy currents under his command. Inasmuch as this was so, not alone higher Beings but he himself was working at his formation and configuration. He shaped the airy parts within him in accordance with the picture in his astral body. While air was streaming into his body from without, to become there the foundation of his breathing life, a portion of the air was differentiated off within him, into an organism inherent in his own nature. This became the basis of the later nervous system. Thus through warmth and air did man at this time have his connection with the surrounding world of the Earth.

On the other hand he was not sensible at all of the assimilation of the solid earth-element. Though this element also played its part at his incarnation, he could not perceive its introduction directly but only in a dimly conscious picture form, as a manifestation of Beings far above him—the entry into his body of the fluid element of Earth. Now that his earthly form has become denser, these pictures have undergone a change in his consciousness. The solid element being now mingled with the fluid, the introduction of that too must needs to be felt as proceeding from the higher Beings, working from without. Man can no longer have the power in his own soul to guide this assimilation, for the body which it has now to serve has been built up from outside. He would indeed spoil its form if he attempted to do so. Thus what he assimilates from without appears to him as guided by edicts proceeding from the higher Beings who work at the formation of his body. Man feels himself as an Ego; he has within him, as a part of his astral body, his intellectual soul, through which he experiences inwardly in pictures what is going on outside him, and with which he permeates his delicate nervous system. He feels himself as a descendant of forefathers, by virtue of the lie streaming through the generations. He breathes—and feels his breathing as brought about by the higher Beings who have been described as the Spirits of Form. To these he also feels beholden for all that through their impulses is brought to him from without, as nourishment. Darkest of all to him is his origin as an individual. The nearest he comes to any feeling of it is a sense of having an influence from the Spirits of Form, as they manifest in the forces of the Earth. Man is guided and directed in his relation to the outer world. This comes to expression in that he is conscious of activities of soul and spirit that are going on behind his physical world. He does not perceive the spiritual Beings in their own form, but he experiences sounds and colors and the like within his soul and knows that in this world of ideal images live the deeds of spiritual Beings. What they communicate sounds forth to him; what they reveal appears to him in pictures of light. The most inward feeling Earth man has of himself comes to him through the conceptions he gains of the element of fire or warmth. He can already distinguish his own inner warmth from the streams of warmth in his environment. In the latter the Spirits of Personality reveal themselves. But man has no more than a dim consciousness of what is there behind thee outer streams of warmth. He feels in them the influence of the Spirits of form. When mighty activities of warmth manifest in his environment, then the feeling arises in the soul: “Now, glowing through the Earth's horizon are the spiritual Beings, a spark of whose fire has detached itself to become the warmth that fills my inner being.”

In the workings of light, man does not yet distinguish in quite the same way an outer and an inner. When pictures of light emerged in his environment, they did not always give rise to the same feeling in the soul of man. There were times when he felt them as coming from outside. This was when he had descended from the body-free condition and entered into incarnation—periods, that is, of his growth on Earth. But as the time drew near, when the seed of the new Earth man was taking shape, the pictures faded and man retained no more than something like inner memories of them. In these pictures of light, the deeds of the Fire Spirits (Archangels) were contained. The Fires Spirits appeared to man as ministering spirits of the Warmth-Beings who planted a spark of fire in his inner nature. When these outer manifestations faded, man experienced them as mental images (as memories) within him. He felt united with their forces; and so indeed he was. For by virtue of what he had received from them he was able to work upon the sphere of air that surrounded him. Under his influence it began to ray forth light. That was a time when Nature forces and human forces were not yet separate from one another as they afterwards became. Whatever took place upon Earth proceeded still to a large extent from the forces of human beings. An observer, looking from beyond the Earth upon the events of Nature that were taking place there, would not have seen in these mere outer processes, independent of man; he would have recognized in them the influence also of human beings.

The perceptions of sound took yet another form for Earth man. From the very beginning of his Earthly life, he perceived them as coming from without. And while the light-pictures were so perceived only until the middle period of his existence on Earth, external sounds could still be heard even after this middle period. Only towards the end of his life did Earth man become insensitive to these; and then there remained to him still the inner memories of them. The sounds bore within them the manifestations of the Sons of Life (the Angels.) When towards the end of his life man felt himself inwardly united with these forces, he could then, by imitating them, call forth mighty activities in the water-element of the Earth. Under his influence arose a surging of the waters—within the Earth and over its surface.

Only in the first quarter of his Earthly life did man have any conscious experience of taste, and even then it appeared to his soul like a memory of experiences in his body-free condition. So long as he had the sense of taste, the solidification of his body by the absorption of outer substances continued. In the second quarter of his Earthly life, though growth might still continue, man's form and figure was already fully developed. At this period, he could only perceive other living beings beside himself through the warmth, light and sound. Effects that they produced. For he was not yet able to form any conception of the solid element. Of the watery he received only, in the first quarter of his life, the taste effects above mentioned.

[ 73 ] A reflection of this inner soul-condition of man could be seen in his external, bodily form. Those parts which contained the beginning of what afterwards became the form of the head, were the most perfectly evolved. The remaining organs appeared only as appendages, and were shadowlike and indistinct. But not all Earth men were alike in form and figure. Some there were in whom, according to the conditions under which they lived, the “appendages” were more, or less, developed—the variation depending upon their dwelling-place on Earth. Where they became more deeply involved in the Earth world, the appendages appeared more prominent. There were also human beings who at the beginning of the physical development of Earth had, by virtue of their preceding evolution, been the most mature and had accordingly experienced the contact with the fire-element at the very outset, when Earth had not yet condensed to air, and who were now able to develop more perfectly the beginnings of the head. These were, in their inner life, of all human beings the most harmonious. Others had not been ready for contact with the fire-element until the Earth had evolved within it also the air; they were more dependent on external conditions. The former kind were clearly aware through the warmth, of the Spirits of Form, and their feeling of themselves in Earthly life was as though they retained a memory of belonging to the Spirits of Form, of having been united with them in the body-free condition. The others had the memory of the body-free condition only to a lesser degree; they were chiefly aware of their membership of the spiritual world through the light-effects of the Spirits of Fire (Archangels.)

There was in addition a third kind of human being, still more deeply entangled in Earthly existence. These had not been able to be touched by the fire-element until such time as the Earth, already separated from the Sun, had received into it the element of water. The feeling they had of belonging to the spiritual world was slight, notably at the beginning of their Earthly life. Only when the working of the Archangels, and more especially of the Angels made itself felt in their inner mental life, did they become aware of it. On the other hand, at the beginning of their Earthly time they were full of eager impulse for action—for such actions, namely, as could be performed within the conditions of the Earth itself. In such human beings the other organs (the appendages) were especially developed.

[ 74 ] In the time when, before the separation of the Moon, the Moon forces were bringing about in the Earth a constantly increasing measure of solidification, it befell that among the descendants of the “seeds” left behind by men on Earth, there were some in whom the human souls returning from the body-free condition could no longer incarnate. Their form was much too hardened, and under the influence of the Moon forces had grown all too unlike the human figure to be able to receive the soul. This meant that certain human souls no longer found it possible to return to Earth. Only the most mature, only the strongest felt themselves equal to the task of so transforming the Earthly body during its growth that it could blossom forth into the true human form. Hence but a portion only of the human bodily descendants became vehicles for Earth men. Another portion, owing to their hardened form, could only receive souls that were at a lower level than the souls of men. Some of the human souls, on the other hand, being thus compelled to cease partaking in Earth evolution during that epoch, were brought into a different kind of life-history. Even at the time of the separation of the Sun, there had already been souls who could no longer find a place on Earth. These were transplanted for their further evolution to another planet. Under the guidance of cosmic Beings, this planet wrested itself free of the general World-substance which had been united with the physical evolution of Earth at its beginning, and out of which the Sun itself had also separated. This was the planet whose physical expression is known to external science as Jupiter. (Here we are speaking of heavenly bodies and planets and of their names, in precisely the same way as was customary in a science of former times. The meaning will e clear from the context. The physical Earth is but the physical expression for an organism of soul and spirit, and the same is true of every other heavenly body. He who perceives the Supersensible does not mean by the name “Earth” the mere physical planet, nor by “Sun” the mere physical fixed star. And in like manner, when he speaks of Jupiter, Mars, etc., he is referring to far-reaching spiritual complexes. Naturally, the heavenly bodies have since the times of which we are here telling undergone fundamental changes in their form and purpose—in a certain respect, even in their position in the heavenly spaces. Only one who is able to follow back their evolution into far distant ages, can recognize the connection of the present planets with their forebears.)

It was thus on Jupiter that such souls continued their evolution. Later one, when then Earth was inclining still more to the solid state, another dwelling-place had to be created for souls who, though able for a time to inhabit the hardened bodies, could no longer do so when the hardening had gone too far. For these, there arose in Mars a dwelling suited to their further evolution. Then again there were souls who at a still earlier time, when the Earth was united with the Sun and was incorporating in itself the air element, proved unadapted to partake in its evolution. These souls were affected too strongly by the Earthly corporeal form. They had therefore to be withdrawn, already at that time, from the immediate influence of the Sun forces. The Sun forces must work upon them from without. They found on Saturn a place for their further evolution. Thus in the course of its evolution the number of human forms on Earth steadily decreased. Forms began to appear in which human souls were not incarnated—forms which were able to receive only astral bodies, even as man's physical body and life-body had done on Old Moon. While Earth was growing waste and void as to human inhabitants, these beings now established themselves upon it. In the last resort, all human souls would have had to leave the Earth—had it not been for the severance of the Moon. This made it possible for human forms which at that time could still be humanly ensouled, to withdraw the human seed or embryo during their Earthly life from the Moon forces emanating directly from the Earth, and let it mature within themselves up to the point where it could safely be exposed to these forces. This meant that, while the seed or embryo was taking shape within the human being, it came under the influence of those Beings who guided by the Mightiest among them, had severed the Moon from the Earth, so as to carry Earth's evolution forward over a critical point.

[ 75 ] When the Earth had developed the air-element within it, there were astral beings in the sense of the above description—as relics from the Old Moon—who had remained farther back in the evolution than the lowest of human souls. These became the souls of the forms which had to be deserted by man even before the separation of the Sun, and were the forefathers of the animal kingdom. In course of time, they evolved especially those organs which in man existed as appendages. Their astral body had to work upon the physical and the life-body in the same way as was the case with man on Old Moon. This, then, is how the animals originated; and they had souls which could not dwell in the single creature. The soul extended its being to the descendant of the parent form. Animals that are in the main descended from a single form, have one soul together. Only when, as a result of special influences, the descendant departs from the parent form, does a new animal-soul come into incarnation. And it is in this sense that in spiritual science we speak of specific (or generic) souls, or “group souls” of the animals.

[ 76 ] Something not unlike this took place at the time of the separation of the Sun from the Earth. Out of the watery element forms emerged which were no farther on in their development than man had been before his evolution on Old Moon. Such forms were only able to receive an astral influence when it worked upon them from without; and this could not happen until after the departure of the Sun from the Earth. Each time that the Sun period of the Earth set in, the Astral of the Sun roused up these forms to build themselves their life-body from out of the Ethereal of the Earth. Then, when the Sun was turned away from the Earth, this life-body was dissolved once more in the common body of the Earth. As a result of this working together of the Astral of the Sun and the Ethereal of the Earth, physical forms arose out of the watery element which were the forebears of the present plant kingdom.

[ 77 ] Man has become on Earth an individualized soul-being. His astral body, poured into him on Old Moon by the Spirits of Movement, has been organized on Earth into the sentient, the intellectual and the spiritual soul. When his spiritual soul was so far developed as to be able, during Earth life, to build itself a body well adapted to contain it, the Spirits of Form endowed him with a spark of their own fire. The I was kindled in him. Every time he left the physical body, man was in the spiritual world, where he encountered the Beings who had given him his physical body, his life-body and his astral body during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and had perfected these up to the Earth level of development. But now that the spark of fire of the I had been kindled in his life on Earth, a change had come about in the body-free life as well. Before this moment in his evolution, man had no independence in relation to the spiritual world. He did not in that world feel himself as a separate, single being, but as membered into the sublime organism composed of higher Beings above him. Now, however, the “I” experience on Earth began to work on into the spiritual world; there too, man began to feel himself as a single unit. Yet at the same time he also felt he was eternally united with that world. In the body-free condition he found again in a higher aspect the Spirits of Form whom he had perceived in their manifestation upon Earth through the spark of his own I.

[ 78 ] The severance of the Moon from the Earth involved also new experiences for the body-free soul in the spiritual world. For it was only through the transference from the Earth to the Moon of a portion of the form-building forces that it was made possible still to develop upon Earth such human forms as could receive a soul's individuality. Thereby the individuality of man was brought into the realm of the Moon Beings. And even in the body-free condition, the after-echo of Earthly individuality could only be effective inasmuch as there too the soul remained within the realm of those mighty Spirits who had brought about the separation of the Moon. It happened in the following way. Immediately after leaving the Earth, the soul could only see the sublime Beings of the Sun as it were in a reflected radiance cast by the Beings of the Moon. But until it had been sufficiently prepared by beholding this reflected radiance, did the soul come face to face with the sublime Sun Beings themselves.

[ 79 ] The mineral kingdom of the Earth also arose by being thrust out from the evolution of mankind. Its structures represent what was still left in a hardened condition when the Moon was separated from the Earth. The soul-nature that felt drawn to these structures was of a kind which, having remained at the Saturn stage, was fitted to create only physical forms. All the events of which we are speaking here—or will be speaking in the sequel—are to be thought of as taking place in the course of immense epochs, the precise determination of which is beyond our present scope.

[ 80 ] The above descriptions have given a picture of the evolution of the Earth from its external aspect. Seen from the aspect of the Spirit, the following emerges. The spiritual Beings who drew the Moon away from the Earth and bound up their own existence with it—becoming in this way Beings of the Earth's Moon—sent down their forces from that heavenly body to Earth and thereby determined the form and structure of man's organization. Their influence was directed to the I or Ego which man had by then acquired; it made itself felt in the interplay of the I with the astral, etheric and physical bodies. It was due to these Beings that the possibility arose in man, consciously to mirror in himself the wisdom-filled configuration of the World, and to portray it, as by reflection, in an act of knowledge. Let the reader recall here the description that was given of how in the Old Moon time, through the Moon's severance from the Sun, man had attained a certain independence in his organization—a freer state of consciousness than could proceed directly from the Sun Beings themselves. During the period of Earth evolution we are now describing, this free and independent consciousness appeared again—a heritage from Old Moon evolution. Under the influence of the Moon Beings, it could have been harmonized once more with the great Universe, and made into a faithful image of it. And this would indeed have come to pass had no other influence intervened. Man would have become a being with a consciousness whose content mirrored back the Universe in the pictures of the life of knowledge, as by natural necessity, not be his own free intention. But it did not happen so. At the very time of the Moon's severance, certain spiritual Beings intervened in human evolution, who had retained so much of their own Moon nature that they could not partake in the departure of the Sun from the Earth, while on the other hand they were also excluded from the influences of the Beings who worked on to the Earth from the Moon. These Beings with an Old Moon nature were banished, as it were, by an abnormal evolution, to the Earth. In their Moon nature was contained precisely that quality which had rebelled against the Spirits of the Sun during Old Moon, and had at that time been of real benefit to man, inasmuch as it had brought him to a free and independent consciousness. As a consequence of their peculiar evolution during the Earth epoch, they now became the opponents of those who, working from the Moon, desired to make man's consciousness an infallible knowledge-mirror of the World. The very same thing which on Old Moon had helped man to a higher level, proved itself now a factor of resistance to the new conditions that had been made possible in the course of Earth evolution. The opposing powers had brought with them from their Old Moon nature the faculty to work upon the human astral body in such manner as to make it—in the sense of the above descriptions—independent. This faculty they used; they gave the astral body—for the Earth epoch too—a certain independence, as against the unfree consciousness determined by necessity, that was being induced in it by the Beings of Earth-Moon.

It is not easy to express in ordinary language what the influence of these spiritual Beings was like in that primeval time. We must not conceive it to have been like the present-day influences of Nature, not yet like the influence of man on man, when by his words one man awakens in another forces of inner consciousness, whereby the other learns to understand something or is moved to some virtue or vice. The primeval influence to which we here refer was not a “natural” influence at all, but a purely spiritual one. It worked also in a spiritual way: it was transmitted, as a spiritual influence, from the higher Spirit Beings to the human being in a manner that accorded with his state of consciousness at that time. If we imagine it like an influence of Nature, we completely fail to perceive its real essence. If on the other hand, we say that the Beings with the Old Moon nature approached man with intent to win him over for their aims by “tempting” him, then we are using a symbolical expression, which is all right, so long as we are aware of its symbolic nature and realize that behind the symbol lies a spiritual fact.

[ 81 ] This influence on man, proceeding from Spirit-beings who had remained behind in the Old Moon condition, entailed for him a twofold consequence. His consciousness was divested of the character of a mere mirror of the Universe, for there was kindled in the human astral body the power to regulate and control the pictures in consciousness. Man became the master of his own faculty of cognition. On the other hand, since it was the astral body which was made the source of this control, the Ego, in spite of being in reality above the astral, fell into a state of perpetual dependence on it. This meant that for the future man was exposed to the constant influence of a lower element in his own nature. It was now possible for his life to sink beneath the high level on which the Earth-Moon Beings had placed him in the cosmic process. And in the sequel there remained the constant influence upon his nature of the abnormally developed Beings of the Moon. These latter may be called—in contrast to those who from Earth-Moon formed man's consciousness to be a mirror of the Universe, yet gave him no free will—the Luciferian Spirits. They brought man the power to unfold a free activity in his own consciousness, but brought him at the same time the possibility of error and of evil.

[ 82 ] As a result of these events, man came into a different relation to the Sun Spirits than was predestined for him by the Earth-Moon Beings. The latter wanted to evolve the mirror of his consciousness in such a way that the influence of the Sun Spirits would predominate in his entire life of soul. But this intention of theirs was frustrated, and in the human beings an opposition was set up between the influence of the Sun Spirits and the influence of the Spirits who were undergoing an irregular Moon evolution, with the result that man was rendered incapable of recognizing the physical influences of the Sun for what they were; they remained hidden from him behind the earthly impressions of the outer world. Filled with these impressions, the astral in man was drawn into the domain of the I. Had it not been for this, the I of man would have been content simply to feel the spark of fire bequeathed him by the Spirits of Form, remaining subject to their commands in all that appertained to the outer fire. But now the I began to use the fire-element, with which it had itself been informed, to influence the phenomena of warmth in the surrounding world. Thus a bond of attraction was established between the I and the Earth fire, and man became entangled, more than had been predestined for him, in the realm of earthly matter. Previously he had had a physical body, consisting as to its main parts of fire, air and water, and with only a shade or, as it were, a phantom of earth substance added. Now the body became more densely compact of earth. Previously, man had moreover been living—as a being rather delicately organized—in a kind of floating, soaring movement above the solid ground of Earth; now he had to descend from the surrounding sphere to the parts of Earth which were already more or less solidified.

[ 83 ] That such physical effects were possible as a direct outcome of spiritual influences, is explained by the fact that these influences were of the kind we have described. They were not Nature influences nor were they like the influences of soul that work from man to man. The latter do not extend their effects so far into the bodily as did the spiritual forces with which we are dealing here.

[ 84 ] Because man exposed himself to the influences of the outer world under the guidance merely of his own ideas, subject as these were to error, because moreover he lived by cravings and passions which he did not allow higher spiritual influences to regulate, the possibility of illness arose. And another marked effect of the Luciferian influence was the following. Henceforth man was unable to feel his single life on Earth as a continuation of body-free existence. He now received such Earthly impressions as he could experience through the astral element with which he had been inoculated, and these impressions joined themselves on to the forces that destroy life. Man experienced this as the doing away of his Earthly life. Death, brought about by human nature itself, now made its appearance. Here we touch a significant secret of man's nature—the connection of the human astral body with illness and death.

[ 85 ] Peculiar conditions now arose for the life-body of man. If was placed in such a position between the physical and astral bodies as to be withdrawn to a certain extent from the faculties man had acquired through the Luciferian influence. A portion of the life-body remained outside the physical body, and was accordingly controllable by higher Beings who, under the leadership of one of their sublime number had left the Earth at the separation of the Sun, to occupy another dwelling-place. Had this portion of the life-body remained united with the astral body, man would have seized on supersensible forces which had belonged to him before, and put them to his own use; he would have extended the Luciferian influence to these supersensible forces. In so doing man would in time have severed himself completely from the Beings of the Sun, and his Ego would have become an entirely Earthly Ego. For at the death of the physical body (or even during its disintegration) the Earthly Ego would have been obliged to take up its abode in another physical body—in a descendant body—without first passing through a time of union with higher spiritual Beings in a body-free condition. Man would thus have attained the consciousness of his I, but only as an Earthly I.

This result was averted by the special development described above in connection with the life-body, a development that was brought about by the Earth-Moon Beings. The true individual Ego was thereby loosed from the merely Earthly Ego, so that man during this earthly life felt himself only partly as his own I, while at the same time he felt that his Earthly Ego was a continuation of the Earthly Ego of his forefathers through the generations. Thus during life on Earth the soul felt a kind of Group Ego reaching back to distant ancestors, and the individual man felt himself a member of the group. It was only on entering into the body-free condition that the individual Ego could feel itself a single being. And even this individualization was impaired inasmuch as the Ego was still burdened with the memory of the Earthly consciousness—the consciousness, that is, of the Earthly Ego. This memory clouded man's vision of the spiritual world, which began to be veiled over between death and birth, as it was already for man's physical vision upon Earth.

[ 86 ] The many changes that took place in the spiritual world while human evolution was passing through these conditions, found physical expression in the gradual regulation of the mutual relationships of Sun and Moon and Earth—and, in a wider sense, of other heavenly bodies too. One consequence of these relationships may here be singled out: the alternation of day and night. (The movements of the heavenly bodies are regulated by the Beings who inhabit them. The movement of the Earth whereby day and night arise, was brought about by the mutual relations of the higher Spirit-Beings above humanity. And it was in like manner that the Lunar motion came about; for after the severance of Moon from Earth, the rotation of the former about the latter enabled the Spirits of Form to work upon the physical body of man in the right way—in the proper rhythm.) By day the Ego and astral body of man were working in the physical body and the life-body. By night this work ceased; the Ego and astral body left the physical and the life-body. During this time they were entirely within the domain of the Sons of Life (Angels,) the Fire Spirits (Archangels,) the Spirits of Personality and the Spirits of Form. The physical body and life-body were also received into their sphere of influence by the Spirits of Form, and in addition by the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom and the Thrones. In this way the harmful influences which had been brought to bear on man during the day through the aberrations of the astral body could be made good again.

[ 87 ] Human beings now began to multiply again on Earth, there was no longer any reason why human souls should not proceed to incarnate in the descendants. For the way in which the Earth-Moon forces were now working enabled the human bodies to take such shape as adapted them perfectly for the embodiment of human souls. Now therefore the souls, formerly translated on to Mars, Jupiter, etc., were guided once more to the Earth. For ever human descendant born in the sequence of the generations, a soul was thus made available. And so it went on or a long time: the coming of fresh souls to settle on the Earth corresponded to the increase in the population. And when these souls left the body through Earthly death, they retained like a memory, in the body-free condition, the echo of their Earthly individuality. This memory worked in such a way that when a body proper for its habitation was born again on Earth, the soul would incarnate in it once more. Thus is came about that among the progeny of men, there were some with souls coming from outside—appearing again on Earth for the first time since the primeval ages of its evolution—and others with souls that were not reincarnating. As evolution continued, the “young” souls appearing for the first time grew ever less and the reincarnated more in number. Nevertheless, for long ages of time the human race still consisted of these two kinds of human beings.

Henceforth, on Earth man felt himself united with his forefathers through the common Ego of the group. But the experience of the individual I was correspondingly intense in the body-free condition between death and a new birth. The souls who came fresh from heavenly spaces to take up their abode in human bodies were in a different situation from those who had one or more Earthly lives behind them. The former brought with them to physical life on Earth only those conditions of soul which they owed to the influence of the higher spiritual world and to the experiences they had undergone outside the Earth's domain. The others had, in earlier lives on Earth, added conditions of their own making. The destinies of the former souls were determined entirely by facts that lay outside the new Earth conditions, while those of the reincarnated souls depended also on what they themselves had done in their former lives under the conditions that prevailed on Earth. And so it came about that along with reincarnation, individual human Karma began to show itself.

Through the withdrawal of the human life-body from the influence of the astral body—in the way indicated above—the relationships of reproduction remained outside the horizon of man's consciousness, and were subject to the guidance of the spiritual world. Whenever a soul had to descend into the Earth sphere, the impulses for reproduction arose in man on Earth. For Earthly consciousness the whole process was veiled to some extent in mystery and darkness.

But now also during Earthly life this partial separation of the life-body from the physical had its results. Spiritual influence was able to effect a notable enhancement of the faculties inherent in the life-body, which manifested in a peculiar development of the power of memory. Independent logical thinking was only in its very first beginnings in that period of man's existence. But the power of memory was almost unlimited. Another effect showed itself in a more outward manner in the fact that man had an immediate “feeling” knowledge of the potent virtues of all living things. He could enlist in his own serve the forces of life and reproduction inherent in animal, and more especially in plant natures. He could withdraw from the plant the force that impels it in its growth, and use this force, just as nowadays forces are taken from lifeless nature—the latent force of coal, for instance—and used to set machines in motion. (Further details on this subject will be found in my book on Atlantis and Lemuria)¹

[ 1 ] Man's inner life of soul was also altered in diverse ways through the Luciferian influence; many kinds of feelings and emotions could be cited which owed their origin to it. Mention may here be made of a few of these changes. Previously the human soul, in whatever it had to do and create, worked in accordance with the aims of higher spiritual Beings. The plan for what had to be achieved was settled in advance. And in the measure in which his consciousness was evolved, man could even foresee how, in pursuance of the preconceived plan, things must necessarily develop in the future. This forward-seeing consciousness was lost when a veil of earthly perceptions was woven across the revelations of the higher Beings and hid from man's view the real forces of the Sun Beings. The future now became uncertain, and this meant that the possibility of feeling fear was implanted in the soul. Fear is a direct consequence of error.

[ 1 ] At the same time we see how with the Luciferian influence man became independent of certain forces to which he had hitherto been entirely subject. Henceforth he could make resolves—quite on his own. Freedom is thus the result of this influence. Fear, and feelings akin to fear, are but concomitant phenomena of man's evolution towards freedom.

[ 88 ] There is a spiritual aspect to this emergence of fear. Within the forces of the Earth, under whose influence man had been brought by the Luciferian powers, other powers were at work—powers which had begun to evince irregularity far earlier in evolution than the Luciferian. Along with the Earth forces, man began now to receive into his being the influences of these other powers. They instilled into feelings which without them would have worked quite differently, the quality of fear. We may name them here the Ahrimanic beings; they are the same as are called by Goethe, Mephistophelian.

[ 89 ] Now although at first the Luciferian influence made itself felt only in the most advanced human beings, it soon began to extend over others too. The descendants of the more advanced mingled with those of the less advanced, with the result that the Luciferian force penetrated also to these. Moreover the life-body of the souls returning from the planets could not be protected to the same extent as the life-body of the descendants of those who had remained on Earth. The protection of the latter was the work of a sublime Being who had the leadership in the Cosmos at the time when the Sun separated from the Earth. In connection with the development we are here considering, this Being appears as the Ruler in the kingdom of the Sun. With Him there journeyed to the Solar dwelling-place such sublime Spirits as had attained the necessary maturity in their cosmic evolution.

But there were also Beings who at the separation of the Sun had not reached this height of development. They had to look for other scenes of action. And these are the Beings through whom it had come to pass that Jupiter and other planets split off from the common World-substance which was in the physical organism of the Earth in the beginning. Jupiter became the habitation of Beings who had not matured to the level of the Sun. The most advanced among them became the leader of Jupiter. As the leader of the Sun evolution became the higher Ego, working in the life-body of the descendants of the human beings who had remained on Earth, so did the Jupiter leader become the higher Ego which passed like a common consciousness through other human beings—those, namely, who traced their descent to a mingling of the offspring of the men who had remained on Earth with those who had only appeared on Earth at the time of the air element and had then gone off to Jupiter. The latter may accordingly be named in spiritual science “Jupiter men.” They were those human descendants who in that ancient time had still been receiving human souls—souls, however, which at the beginning of Earthly evolution had not yet been mature enough to partake in the first contact with the fire-element. These were souls between the human and the animal kingdoms.

And there were still other Beings, who—once more under the leadership of a Highest among them—had separated Mars out of the common World-substance as their dwelling-place, and they exercised their influence upon a third kind of human being who had also arisen by intermingling, the “Mars men.” (This kind of knowledge throws light on the fundamental causes and origins of the planets in our solar system. All the heavenly bodies of this system have come into being through the varying degrees of maturity of the Spirits who inhabit them. Naturally. we cannot enter here into all the details of these cosmic differentiations.)

Those human beings on the other hand, who beheld the presence in their life-body of the high Being of the Sun Himself, may be called “Sun men.” The Being who lived in them as a higher Ego—only in the generations, needless to say, not in the single individuals—is the One to whom diverse names were subsequently given, when men acquired conscious knowledge of Him. To the men of the present time He is the One in whom the relation of the Christ to the Cosmos is revealed.

We can also distinguish “Saturn men.” In them there appeared as higher Ego a Being who, with his companions, had to leave the common substance of the World even before the separation of the Sun The Saturn men were a type of human being in whom, not only in the life-body but in the physical body too, there was a portion which remained withdrawn from the Luciferian influence.

[ 90 ] But now it was so, that in the lower kinds of human beings the life-body was after all too little protected, and could not sufficiently resist the encroachments of the Luciferian nature. Such human beings could so far extend the arbitrary power of the fiery spark of the I which was within them as to be able to call forth in their environment mighty workings of fire, of a harmful nature. This led eventually to a stupendous Earth catastrophe. A great portion of the then inhabited Earth was destroyed in these fire-storms, and with it perished also the human beings who had fallen into error. Only a very small number of them, having remained comparatively untouched by error, could save themselves by taking refuge on some region of the Earth that had so far been protected from the harmful influence of men. One land in particular proved suitable as such a dwelling-place for the new humanity. It was situated at the part of the Earth's surface which is now covered by the Atlantic Ocean. The portion of mankind that had remained most pure from error migrated thither. Other parts became inhabited only by stray remnants. The continent which then existed between the present Europe, Africa and America may be called in spiritual science, Atlantis. (The above-described period of human evolution, preceding the Atlantean, is dealt with from a certain aspect in the relevant literature. It is there called the Lemurian epoch of the Earth, whereas the time when the Moon forces had not yet unfolded their most powerful effects may be called the Hyperborean age. This epoch was preceded by yet another, which coincides with the very earliest time of physical Earth evolution. In Biblical tradition the time before the entry of the Luciferian beings is referred to as the time of Paradise, and the descent on to the Earth—man's entanglement in the world of the senses—as the expulsion from Paradise.)

[ 91 ] It was during evolution in the region of Atlantis that the actual separation of humanity into the men of Saturn, Sun, Jupiter and Mars took place. Previously, no more than the initial tendencies in this direction had shown themselves. The division also into the waking and the sleeping state now entailed yet other important consequences, which came strongly into evidence in Atlantean humanity. During the night, man's astral body and Ego were in the realm of the Beings above him, reaching as far as to the Spirits of Personality. Through the portion of his life-body which was not united with the physical he could have perception of the Sons of Life (the Angels) and the Fire Spirits (the Archangels.) For he could remain united, during sleep, with this portion of the life-body. His perception however of the Spirits of Personality remained indistinct, and this was directly due to the Luciferian influence. But with the Angels and Archangels, other beings also became visible to man in this condition. These were being who, having remained behind on Sun and Moon, had not been able to enter upon Earth-existence at all; they had had perforce to remain in the world of soul and spirit. Under the Luciferian influence, however, man drew them into the realm of his own soul when it was separated from the physical. Thus he came into touch with beings whose influence upon him was in the highest degree seductive. They multiplied in his soul the impulses that led him astray, especially the impulse to misuse the forces of growth and reproduction, which now stood at man's disposal owing to the partial separation of the physical body from the life-body.

[ 92 ] Now there were individual human beings of the Atlantean epoch who were to a large extent enabled to avoid entanglement in the world of the senses. Through them the Luciferian influence was changed from a hindrance in man's evolution into a means for his higher progress. For with its help they were enabled to unfold a knowledge of the things of Earth sooner than would otherwise have been possible, and in so doing, they strove to remove error from their mental life and to bring to light from out of the world's phenomena the primal intentions of the Spirit-Beings. They kept themselves free from impulses and cravings of the astral body directed merely to the world of the senses. Thus they became less and less liable to error, and were brought in this way into conditions of consciousness whereby they had perception purely in that part of the life-body which was separated from the physical. At these times it was as though the physical body's power of perception were extinguished and the body itself dead. But through the life-body these human beings were wholly united with the kingdom of the Spirits of Form, and could learn from them how they were led and guided by the sublime Being who had been the Leader in the severance of Sun and Earth, and through whom the understanding for the “Christ” was subsequently revealed to man. Such men were Initiates. But because the human individuality had now, as we have seen, come into the domain of the Moon Beings, even the Initiates could not, as a rule, be touched directly by the Sun Beings. He could be revealed to them only, as it were in reflection, through the Moon Beings. Thus they beheld not the Sun Being Himself, but His reflected radiance. These Initiates became the leaders of the rest of mankind, to whom they were able to communicate the secrets they saw. They trained up disciples, teaching them the paths to the attainment of the condition that leads to Initiation. The knowledge of what had formerly manifested through “Christ” was attainable only by such as belonged to the Sun humanity in the sense above described. These cultivated their secret knowledge and the ministrations which led up to it, at a special sanctuary which shall here be named the Christ—of the Sun—Oracle. (Oraculum meaning a place where the intentions of spiritual Beings are perceived.)

What is here said in reference to the Christ will be misunderstood unless the following is borne in mind. Supersensible knowledge has to recognize, in the appearance of Christ on Earth, an event to which those men of earlier ages who knew the meaning and purpose of Earth evolution could point, as to an event that was to come in the future. It would be a mistake to presume in those Initiates a relationship To Christ which has only been made possible by the event they prophesied. This much they could prophetically understand and bring home to their disciples: “Who so is touched by the might of the Sun Being, sees the Christ coming towards the Earth.”

[ 93 ] Other Oracles were called into life by the members of Saturn, Mars and Jupiter humanity, whose Initiates carried their vision no farther than to those Beings who could be revealed to them—as “higher Egos”—in their life-bodies. Thus there arose the adherents of the Saturn, the Jupiter and the Mars Wisdom. Beside those modes of Initiation, there were again still others, for human beings who had received into themselves too much of the Luciferic nature to permit of so great a part of the life-body being separated from the physical as was the case with the Sun humanity; more of it is held back there by the astral body. Human beings of this type were not able, even in their more advanced states of consciousness, to reach through to the prophetic Christ Revelation. Their astral body being more under the influence of the Luciferian principle, they had harder experiences to undergo in preparation, before they could receive, in a less body-free condition than the others, not indeed the revelation of the Christ Himself, but that of other sublime Beings; for there were Beings who, though they had left the Earth at the time of the separation of the Sun, were not upon so high a level as to be able to partake continuously in the Sun's evolution. After the severance of Sun and Earth they went forth again from the Sun, taking with them another separate dwelling-place and this was Venus. Their leader was the Being who now became the “higher Ego” for the above-described Initiates and their followers. A similar thing happened with the leading Spirit of Mercury in connection with still another kind of human being. And so there arose the Venus and the Mercury Oracles.

There was moreover a further class of human beings who had absorbed most of all the Luciferian influence. They could only reach up to a Spirit-Being who with his associates had been thrust forth again soonest of all from the evolution of the Sun. This Being has no special planet in the cosmic spaces but lives to this day in the surrounding sphere of the Earth itself, with which he re-united after his return thither from the Sun. The human beings to whom he revealed himself as their higher Ego may be called adherents of the Vulcan Oracle. Their vision was more directed than that of all the other Initiates to the phenomena of Earth. They laid the first foundation for what afterwards arose among men as arts and sciences. The Mercury Initiates, on the other hand, founded the science of things more supersensible; and to a still higher degree the Venus Initiates did the same. The Vulcan, Mercury and Venus Initiates differed from the Saturn, Jupiter and Mars Initiates in the following way. The latter received their secrets more as a revelation from above, more in a finished state, while the former were already receiving knowledge more in the form of thoughts and ideas that were their own. The Christ-Initiates stood between the two; together with the direct revelation, they received at the same time the faculty to clothe their secrets in the form of human concepts. The Saturn, Jupiter and Mars Initiates had to express themselves more in symbolic pictures; the Christ, Venus, Mercury and Vulcan Initiates could make their communications more in the form of ideas and thought-pictures.

[ 94 ] All that was given to Atlantean humanity in this way, came to them through their Initiates, but the rest of mankind also received special faculties through the working of the Luciferian principle, inasmuch as the great cosmic Beings turned to good what might otherwise have been quite detrimental. One such faculty is that of speech. Speech came to man through his condensation into physical materiality and through the separation of a part of his life-body from the physical body. In the times that followed the separation of the Moon, man, to begin with, felt himself united with his physical forefathers through the Ego of the group. But in course of generations this common consciousness, uniting descendants with their forefathers, was gradually lost. Thus with the later descendants the “inner memory” reached back only to a fairly recent ancestor, not any longer to the more ancient forefathers. It was only in conditions resembling sleep, where men came in contact with the spiritual world, that the memory of this or that ancestor would emerge. Then would a man often deem himself one with some such ancestor, whom he believed to have reappeared in himself. This was, in fact, a mistaken idea of reincarnation, which arose especially in the last period of Atlantis. The true teaching about reincarnation was to be found only in the schools of the Initiates. For the Initiates were able to behold how the human soul passes in the body-free condition from incarnation to incarnation. They alone could implant the truth to their pupils.

[ 95 ] In the far distant past of which we are here speaking, the physical form and figure of man was as yet very different from what it is today. It was still to a great extent the expression of qualities of soul. The human being was of a finer, softer materiality than he afterwards became. Where his members are now quite rigid, they were plastic, soft and pliable. A man more filled with soul and spirit was of gentle build, mobile, expressive. One who was less spiritually developed had coarser bodily forms, immobile, not so plastic. Improvement in the life of the soul tended to draw man's members together; such a man would remain small in stature. Backwardness of soul, entanglement in sensuality, came to expression in gigantic bodily proportions. While man was still in his period of growth, the body took shape according to what was growing in the soul—and this to an extent which must seem fabulous, indeed quite fantastic, to present-day ideas. Depravity of passion, or of instinct or desire brought with it a monstrous enlargement of the material in man. The present human form has arisen by the contraction, condensation, and rigidification of Atlantean man. Before the time of Atlantis, man had presented a faithful image of his soul, of his inner being, but the very events and processes that took place in Atlantean evolution contained the inner causes which led to the human being of post-Atlantean time, who in his physical form and statue is firm and well-established, comparatively little dependent on his qualities of soul. (The animal kingdom grew dense in its forms, in far earlier epochs than man.) The laws which at the present time underlie the molding and shaping of forms in the kingdoms of Nature can certainly not be extended to the more remote ages of the past.

[ 96 ] Towards the middle of the Atlantean period of evolution, a great calamity began gradually to overwhelm mankind. The secrets of the Initiates should have been carefully protected from those human beings who had not by due preparation purified their astral bodies from error. For is such attained insight into the hidden knowledge—into the laws whereby the higher Beings guided the forces of Nature—they might enlist these laws in the service of their own mistaken needs and passions. The danger was all the greater, since, as we have seen, men were coming into the realm of lower spirit-beings who were themselves unable to partake in the regular evolution of the Earth and therefore worked against it. These beings were perpetually influencing men, imbuing them with interests which worked against the true welfare of mankind. And then too, the men of that time still had the faculty to place at their own disposal the forces of growth and reproduction in animal and human nature.

Nor was it only the ordinary run of human beings, but some of the Initiates too succumbed to the temptations of lower spirit-beings, and even went so far as to employ the above-named supersensible forces for an end that was directly opposed to the evolution of mankind. For this purpose they gathered round them as associates men who were uninitiated and who applied the secrets of the supersensible working of Nature for decidedly lower ends. A widespread corruption of humanity ensued. The evil grew to greater and greater dimensions.

Now the forces of growth and reproduction, when torn from their mother-soil and independently employed, stand in a mysterious relationship to certain forces that work in air and water. Mighty and ominous powers of Nature were thus let loose by the deeds of men, leading eventually to the gradual destruction of the whole territory of Atlantis by catastrophes of air and water. Atlantean humanity—the portion of it, that is, which did not perish in the storms—was compelled to migrate. As a result too of the great storms, the whole face of the Earth changed. Europe, Asia and Africa on the one hand, and America on the other, began gradually to assume their present shape. Vast numbers of human beings migrated into these countries. For us in our time those above all are of importance who went eastward from Atlantis. Europe, Asia and Africa gradually became colonized by descendants of the Atlanteans. Peoples of many kinds took up their abode in these countries, people that stood at many different levels of evolution—and also of corruption. And in their midst went the Initiates, the Guardians of the secrets of the Oracles. In various regions the Initiates established holy places where the services of Jupiter, Venus, etc. were cultivated in a good—or in an evil—sense. Most detrimental of all was the betrayal of the Vulcan secrets. For the adherents of the Vulcan Mysteries had their attention concentrated upon things of Earth. By this betrayal was brought into a state of dependence upon spiritual things who in consequence of their preceding evolution were disposed to reject all that came from the spiritual world that had evolved through the separation of the Earth from the Sun. Such was the tendency they had developed, and they worked in accordance with it, precisely in that element which was arising in man inasmuch as he had sense-perceptions in the physical world—perceptions behind which the spiritual remained hidden. These beings now attained great influence over many of the human inhabitants of Earth, and the immediate outcome of it was to deprive man more and more of any feeling for things spiritual.

In those times, the size, form and plasticity of man's physical body were still largely determined by qualities of soul. Hence the results of the betrayal appeared in changes of this very kind in the human race. Where supersensible forces were placed in the service of lower instincts, passions and desires—where, that is, the prevalent corruption took this particular form—human figures would arise that were monstrous and grotesque in size and shape. These could not, however, survive beyond the Atlantean epoch; they died out. Physically speaking, post-Atlantean humanity evolved form Atlantean forebears whose bodily figure had already become firm enough not to give way to the soul-forces which had grown to be so contrary to their true nature. There was a period in Atlantean evolution when the laws prevailing in and around the Earth were such as to subject the human figure precisely to those conditions under which it had to grow firm. Human racial forms which had hardened before this time could continue to propagate themselves for a good while to come, but by degrees the souls incarnating in them found themselves so restricted that these races too had to die out. Many of the forms were nevertheless able to maintain themselves right into the post-Atlantean times; indeed, some of them that had remained mobile enough, survived in a somewhat altered condition for a very long time. On the other hand, the human forms which had retained their plasticity beyond the above-mentioned period, became bodies for those souls in particular who had suffered in a high degree the harmful influence of the betrayal. Such forms were destined to die out early.

[ 97 ] In consequence of these developments, other beings had, since the middle of the Atlantean time, been making themselves felt in the realm of human evolution, owing to whose influence man was induced to enter the world of the physical senses in an unspiritual manner. So much so that in place of the true form of this world, hallucinations could appear to him, phantasms, and delusions of all kinds. Man was thus exposed not only to the Luciferian influence but also to that of these other beings, to whose existence we have already alluded. The leader of them may be called after the name he received later on in the ancient Persian civilization, Ahriman. (Mephistopheles is the same being.) Through this influence man came after his death among powers which caused him to appear even there as a being whose inclination was entirely towards the things of Earth and of the life of the senses. The free and open outlook into all that was going on in the spiritual world—of this he was deprived more and more. He had to feel himself in the grip of Ahriman and to a certain extent excluded form community with the spiritual world.

[ 98 ] One Oracle sanctuary was of peculiar importance. Amid the general decline this sanctuary had preserved the ancient service in the purest form. It belonged to the Christ Oracles, and was accordingly able to preserve not only the secret of the Christ Himself but those of the other Oracles as well. For in the manifestation of the supreme Spirit of the Sun, the leaders of Saturn, Jupiter, etc. were also unveiled. In the Sun Oracle was known the secret of producing, in one or other human beings, life-bodies such as the best of the Initiates of Jupiter, Mercury, etc. had possessed. By means which they had in their power, but into which we cannot enter in further detail here, the Initiates of the Sun Oracle caused the impress of the best life-bodies of the old Initiates to be preserved, and then stamped on chosen human beings of a later time. The Venus, Mercury and Vulcan Initiates could also do the like with astral bodies.

[ 99 ] A time came when the leader of the Christ-Initiates saw himself left alone with a few associates, to whom he could, to a very limited degree, impart the secrets of the world. For they were men in whom, owing to their natural endowment, there was least of all of the separation between physical body and life-body. In that age of time such men were altogether the best suited for the further progress of mankind in those times. Conscious experiences in the realm of sleep were coming to them less and less. More and more did the spiritual world become closed to them. They also lacked understanding for all that had been revealed in more ancient times when man was not in his physical but only in his life-body which had formerly been separated from it. This reunion was now gradually taking place in mankind ads a whole, as a result of the transformation which their Atlantean dwelling-place and the Earth in general had undergone. The physical body and the life-body of man were tending more and more to coincide. This meant that the formerly unlimited powers of memory were being lost, and the life of thought was beginning. The portion of the life-body that had now united with the physical transformed the physical brain into the essential instrument of thought. And now at last did man really begin to feel his I within the physical body; now at last did self-consciousness awaken there. To begin with, this happened with a small portion only of mankind, first among whom were the companions of the leader of the Sun Oracle. The remaining masses of mankind, spread over Europe, Asia and Africa, preserved in varying degrees remnants of the ancient states of consciousness. They had therefore immediate experience of the supersensible world.

The companions of the Christ Initiate were men of highly developed intellect, while of all the people of that time they had the least experience in the supersensible domain. The Christ-Initiate journeyed with them from West to East, to a region of central Asia. He wanted to protect them as far as possible from contact with men who were less advanced than they in the evolution of consciousness. He educated them according to the hidden things that were to him open and visible, and worked in this way especially on their descendants. Thus did he train up a group of human beings who had received into their hearts the inner impulses that responded to the secrets of the Christ-Initiation. Out of this group he chose the seven best, that they might be able to have life-bodies and astral bodies corresponding to the impressions of the life-bodies of the seven best Atlantean Initiates. In this way he trained up a successor to each of the Christ, Saturn, Jupiter, etc., Initiates. These seven Initiates became the teachers and guides of those who in the time after Atlantis had settled in the South of Asia, more particularly in ancient India. Endowed as they were with after-images of the life-bodies of their spiritual predecessors, what these great teachers had in their astral bodies—namely, the knowledge and understanding which they had themselves assimilated and made their own—did not come up to what was revealed to them through their life-bodies. For these revelations to speak to them, they had to silence their own faculty of cognition. Then did there speak, from them and through them, the sublime Beings who had also spoken for their spiritual forebears. Save in the times when these great Beings were speaking through them, they were simple, unassuming men, endowed merely with such culture of intellect and heart as they had themselves acquired.

[ 100 ] In India there was living at this time a type of human being that had preserved to a marked degree a living memory of the ancient Atlantean soul-condition that permitted of conscious experience in the spiritual world. In very many of them remained also a strong urge of heart and mind towards such experiences in the supersensible world. By a wise guidance of destiny the main portion of this type of mankind, who were from the best of the Atlantean population, had found their way into Southern Asia. They were then joined by others who migrated thither at different times. Such was the complex of humanity to which the Christ-Initiate assigned his seven great disciples to be their teachers. These gave their wisdom and their commandments to this ancient Indian people. In many a one among these ancient Indians only slight preparation was required to kindle in him the scarcely extinct faculties that could lead to observation in the spiritual world. Indeed the longing for that world was to the Indian a fundamental, ever-present mood of soul. Within that world, he felt, was the primeval home of mankind. Man had been transplanted from it into this world which can endow him with external sense-perception and the intellect connected with it; but he felt the supersensible world as the true one and the sense-world as a fallacy of man's perception—an illusion, a maya—and strove by every means in his power to gain insight into the true world. In the illusory world of the senses he could summon up no interest—or only in so far as it manifests as a veil of the supersensible.

The power that could go out from the seven great Teachers to human beings such as these was tremendous. All that could be revealed through them entered deeply and livingly into the Indian soul. Gifted moreover as the Teachers were, by virtue of the life-bodies and astral bodies that had been bequeathed to them, with high spiritual forces, they were able also to work magically on their pupils. They did not really teach; they worked as though by magic from man to man. Thus arose a civilization permeated through and through with supersensible Wisdom. What is contained in the Wisdom-books of the Indians (the Vedas) reproduces, not the lofty Wisdom-teachings in their primal form—guarded as these were and cared for by the great Teachers in those ancient times—but only a faint echo of the same. The eye of seership alone, as it looks back, can detect behind the written, an unwritten, pristine Wisdom. One feature which especially emerges in this primal Wisdom is the harmonious sounding-together of the diverse Wisdoms of the Oracles of Atlantean time. Each of the great Teachers could unveil the Wisdom of one of these Oracles, and the different aspects of Wisdom gave together a perfect harmony, for behind them stood the fundamental Wisdom of the prophetic Christ-Initiation. The Teacher who was the spiritual successor of the Christ-Initiate did not, it is true, show forth what the Christ-Initiate did not, it is true, show forth what the Christ-Initiate himself had been able to unveil. The latter remained in the background of evolution. He could not, to begin with, transmit the high office to any member of post-Atlantean mankind. The Christ-Initiate who was with the seven Indian Teachers differed from him in this respect: he had been able, as we know, completely to assimilate to human concepts and ideas his vision of the Mystery of Christ. Whereas the Indian Christ-Initiate could but present a reflected radiance of this Mystery in signs and symbols, such power of ideation as he had been able to attain by his own effort being inadequate to comprehend it. Nevertheless, out of the union of the seven Teachers there arose in a sublime Wisdom-picture a knowledge of the supersensible world, only single parts of which had been able to be revealed in the ancient Atlantean Oracle. The Guiding Powers of the great cosmic world were unveiled; men learned, as it were in whispered tones, of the one great Sun Spirit, the Hidden One, enthroned above the Spirits who manifested through the seven Teachers.

[ 101 ] What is here to be understood by the term “ancient India” is not coincident with what the words are generally taken to mean. Of the time of which we are speaking no outer documentary records exist. The people now commonly known as Indians belong to a stage of historic evolution which developed long afterwards. We have thus to recognize a first post-Atlantean period of the Earth, in which the civilization here described as Indian was dominant. After it a second post-Atlantean period took shape, in which the civilization hereafter referred to as the ancient Persian became dominant. Still later, there evolved the Egypto-Chaldean civilization, also to be described in the following pages. During the development of these second and third post-Atlantean culture-epochs, ancient India lived through a second and a third epoch of its own, and the third is the one usually spoken of as “ancient India.” We must accordingly not confuse it with the description given here.

[ 102 ] Another feature of the ancient Indian culture was what subsequently led to the division of men into castes. The dwellers in ancient India were descendants of Atlanteans who belonged to the diverse kinds of humanity—Saturn men, Jupiter men, etc. The supersensible teachings they received made it quite plain to them that a soul has not been placed by chance into this or that caste, but by its own self-determination.

Nor was it difficult for the men of ancient India to accept this teaching, inasmuch as in many of them what has been described as “inner harmony” of their ancestors could still be called to life. Such memories were, however, also apt to lead all too easily to a mistaken idea of reincarnation. As in the Atlantean age, it had been through the Initiates alone that the true idea of reincarnation could be attained, similarly in ancient India it was attainable only by direct contact with the great Teachers. And it is undeniable that the erroneous idea became widely prevalent among the peoples who were scattered over Europe, Asia and Africa in consequence of the downfall of Atlantis. The Initiates who had gone astray during the Atlantean evolution had communicated this secret too to immature persons, and so it came to pass that men tended increasingly to confuse the true idea with the mistaken one. It must not be forgotten that a kind of dim clairvoyance had remained to these people as a heritage from Atlantean time. As the Atlanteans had in sleep entered into the region of the spiritual world, so did their descendants experience the same spiritual world in abnormal states, intermediate between sleeping and waking. Pictures then arose in them of that olden time to which their ancestors had belonged; and they believed themselves reincarnations of human beings of that time. Teachings on reincarnation, that were incompatible with the true ideas possessed by the Initiates, spread over the whole Earth.

[ 103 ] As a result of the prolonged migrations from West to East ever since the beginning of the Atlantean catastrophe, a group of peoples had settled in the regions of Western Asia, the descendants of whom are known to history as the Persians and kindred races. Supersensible knowledge must however look back to far earlier times than those of which history tells. We are here concerned with very early forefathers of the later Persians. Among these arose, following upon the Indian, the second great civilization-epoch of post-Atlantean evolution. The people of this epoch had a different task. Their longs and inclinations were not directed solely to the supersensible world. They were a people well fitted for the physical world of the senses. They learned to love the Earth. They valued what man can win for himself on Earth and what he can then also acquire by making use of its forces. Their achievements as a warlike nation and the means they invented to possess themselves of the treasures of the Earth, correspond with this trait in their character. Theirs was not the danger of yearning so intensely for the supersensible as to turn right away from the “illusion” of the physical world. Rather they were in danger of cherishing so strong a feeling for this physical world that their souls might lose all connection with the world of the supersensible. The Oracle-sanctuaries too, which had been transplanted hither from the ancient land of Atlantis, shared in the general character of the people. Of all the forces which men had once been able to acquire by conscious experience in the supersensible world and which—in certain lower forms—were still at their command, this people cultivated the power so to direct the phenomena of Nature that these may serve the personal interests of man. They still possessed great power over Nature-forces that subsequently withdrew from the control of human will. The Guardians of the Oracles were in command of inner forces connected with fire and other elements. They may indeed rightly be called magicians. The heritage of supersensible knowledge and supersensible forces which they had preserved from ancient times was feeble, no doubt, compared with what men had been able to attain in the far distant past. Nevertheless, it found expression in a multitude of forms, from noble arts which had in mind only the true weal of man, down to the most abominable practices. The Luciferian nature worked in these men in a peculiar way. It had brought them into connection with all that can divert man from the intentions of those higher Beings who, had Lucifer not intervened, would have had the sole guidance of human evolution. Some of them, who were still gifted with relics of the old clairvoyance that belonged to the condition between waking and sleeping, felt themselves strongly attracted to the lower beings of the spiritual world. A strong spiritual impulse needed to be given to this whole people, to counteract these qualities in their character. From the same fountain-head from which the ancient Indian spiritual life had proceeded, a leader was given them by the Keeper of the secrets of the Sun Oracle.

[ 104 ] The leader, whom the Guardian of the Sun Oracle assigned to the ancient Persian spiritual culture, may be called by the name that is familiar to us in history as Zoroaster or Zarathustra. It must however be emphasized that he belonged to a far earlier time than history attributes to the bearer of the name. Here, as you know, we are not concerned with outer historical research, but with spiritual science. Whoever feels bound to associate the bearer of the name Zarathustra with a later date, will be able to find himself in harmony with what spiritual science tells, when he realizes that he is thinking of a successor of the first great Zarathustra—one who took his name and labored in the spirit of his teaching.

The impulse Zarathustra had to give to his people may be described as follows. He showed them that the world of the physical senses is not void of spirit, as it appears to be when man allows himself to fall exclusively under the influence of the Lucifer Being. To this Being man owes his personal independence and his sense of freedom, but Lucifer has to work in him in harmony with the opposite spiritual Being. For the ancient Persians it was of first importance that they should keep alive their feeling for this opposite spiritual Being. Owing to their inclination to the physical world they were in danger of merging altogether into the Luciferian beings. Now Zarathustra had received form the Guardian of the Sun Oracle an Initiation that made it possible for the revelations of the sublime Beings of the Sun to be vouchsafed him. In special states of consciousness, to which he had been brought by his training, he could behold the Leader of the Sun Beings, who had taken the human life-body under His protection in the way that has been described. He knew that this Being had charge of the spiritual guidance of the evolution of mankind, but that the right time must be awaited before He would be able to descend from cosmic space on to the Earth. To this end it was necessary that He should be able to live in the astral body of a human being, even as He had worked in the life-body since the entry of the Luciferic influence. A human being must appear on Earth who had restored the astral body to a stage of development such as it would have attained, had it not been or Lucifer, at an earlier point of time—namely at the middle of the Atlantean evolution. Had Lucifer not come, man would have attained this stage more quickly, but without personal independence and without the possibility of inner freedom. Now he as to reach it even with the possession of these qualities.

Zarathustra in his moments of vision foresaw that a time would come in man's evolution when there would be a human being possessing an astral body of this kind. He knew also that until that time the spiritual forces of the Sun could not be found on Earth, but that supersensible vision could perceive them within the spiritual realm of the Sun; he himself could behold them when he looked upward to the Sun with the eye of seership. And he proclaimed to his people the nature of these forces which, although in the meantime they are discoverable in the spiritual world alone, are yet destined in the future to descend to Earth. Such was Zarathustra's prophecy of the great Sun Spirit of Spirit of Light (Ahura Mazdao, Ormuzd, the Aura of the Sun.) To Zarathustra and his disciples the Spirit of Light revealed Himself as the Being who from the spiritual world inclines His countenance to man and works within mankind, preparing the future. It was the Spirit revealing the nature of Christ before His appearance upon Earth, whom Zarathustra proclaimed as the Spirit of Light. In Ahriman (Angra mainyu) on the other hand, he described a Power whose influence, if man blindly gives himself up to it, works harmfully upon the life of soul. This Power is none other than the one described above, who had attained particular dominion on the Earth since the betrayal of the Vulcan secrets.

Together with his message of the God of Light, Zarathustra taught also of those spiritual Beings who are revealed to the pure vision of the seer as the companions of the Light-Spirit, in contrast to the tempters who become manifest to the unpurified remnants of the clairvoyance preserved from Atlantean time. For it had to be made clear to the Persian people of that olden time, how in the soul of man, in so far as he directs his energy to doing work in the physical world, a battle is raging between the power of the God of Light and the power of His Opponent; and man had to be shown how he must bear himself, so that the Adversary may not lead him down to the abyss, but on the contrary his evil influence be turned to good by the forces of the God of Light.

[ 105 ] A third civilization-epoch of post Atlantean time was born among people who in the great migrations had eventually come together in Asia Minor and Northern Africa. It evolved among the Chaldeans, Babylonians and Assyrians on the one hand, and among the Egyptians on the other. In these people the feeling for the physical world was developed in still another way than in the ancient Persians. They had received far more than other people of the spiritual predisposition which provides the right foundation for the development of thought, of that gift of intelligence that had begun to manifest in man since later Atlantean times. It is, as we know, the essential task of post-Atlantean mankind to unfold those faculties of soul which can be gained through awakened forces of thought and mind and feeling, forces not stimulated directly by the spiritual world, but arising out of the fact that man observes the world of sense, lives his way into it and works upon it. The conquest of the physical world by his own human faculties must be regarded as the mission of post-Atlantean man. Stage by stage the conquest advances. Even in ancient India the condition of man's soul was already such as to direct his attention to this world; but he still regarded it as illusion, and his spirit inclined towards the supersensible world. The ancient Persian people made the endeavor to conquer this physical world of the senses. To a large extent, however, they still relied on forces of soul that remained to them as heritage from a time when man was able to reach right up into the supersensible world. In the peoples of the third epoch, these supersensible faculties were by then in great measure lost to the soul. Man had now to search out in the world of sense that lay around him the manifestations of the Spiritual and continue his soul's development by discovering and inventing the means of civilization in what this world provides.

As man learned to elicit from the physical world of sense the laws of the Spiritual that underlies it, the sciences came into being; and as he came to recognize and manipulate the forces of this world, arts and crafts arose; man began to have his tools and his technique. To a man of the Chaldean and Babylonian peoples the world of the senses was no longer an illusion. In its various kingdoms, in mountain and ocean, in wind and water, it was a revelation of the spiritual deeds of Powers that were there behind it, whose laws he was studying to apprehend. To the Egyptian, the Earth was a field for his labor, given to him in a condition which it was his task so to transform by his own faculties of intelligence, that it might bear the stamp of man's ascendancy. The sanctuaries which had been transplanted from Atlantis into Egypt came chiefly from the Oracle of Mercury. There were, however, also others—Venus Oracles for instance. Into all that could be nurtured in the Egyptian people from these sacred places, a new seed of civilization was implanted. This was the work of a great leader, who had been trained within the Persian Mysteries of Zarathustra. (He was the reincarnation of a disciple of the great Zarathustra.) We may call him Hermes, taking once more an historic name. What he received form the Zarathustra Mysteries, enabled Hermes to find the right way of giving guidance to the Egyptian people In their life on Earth between birth and death they had been turning their minds towards the physical world so as to recognize in it the laws and workings of the underlying Spirit-world, but their immediate vision of the latter was decidedly restricted. The spiritual world could not therefore be described to them as a world into which they might find their way while living on Earth. In place of this, however, they could be shown how in the body-free condition after death man would be living in the world of Spirit-beings who during his time on Earth appear through their counterparts in the physical and sense-perceptible realm. Hermes taught them: In so far as man employs his forces upon Earth to work in it in accordance with the aims of the Spirit Powers, he fits himself to be united with these Powers after death; and those who between birth and death have worked the most zealously in this direction, will be united with Osiris, even with the sublime Being of the Sun.

On the Chaldean and Babylonian side of this stream of civilization, the inclination of men's minds towards the physical and sensible was stronger than it was on the Egyptian. They investigated the laws of this world; and although they turned their gaze from the sense-perceptible images or prototypes to the spiritual archetypes, these peoples remained in many ways entangled in the world of sense. Instead of the Spirit of the star, the star itself was placed in the foreground; instead of other Spirit-beings, their earthly images or idols. It was only the leaders who attained genuine and deep knowledge of the laws of the supersensible world and of its connection with the sensible. More so than anywhere else did a contrast make itself felt here between the wisdom of the Initiates and the mistaken beliefs of the people.

[ 106 ] Utterly different were the conditions that prevailed in those regions of Southern Europe and Western Asia where the fourth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization grew and blossomed. We may define it as the Graeco-Latin epoch. In these countries, descendants of human beings from the most diverse regions of the more ancient world had come together. Here were Oracle-sanctuaries, successors to the various Atlantean Oracles. Here too were men who inherited as a natural gift fragments of old clairvoyance, and others who by special training could with comparative ease attain the same. At select places not only were the traditions of the old Initiates preserved, but worthy successors to them arose, and the disciples who were trained by these were able to rise to high levels of seership. Moreover these people had in them an impulse to create within the world of sense a realm which should express the spiritual in the physical in perfect form. Among many other things, Greek Art was an outcome of this impulse. We have only to look with the eye of the spirit at a Grecian temple, and we can perceive how in this wonder-work of Art the sense-perceptible material has been so formed and fashioned by man that in its every detail it gives expression to the spiritual. The Grecian temple is a veritable “home of the spirit.” In its forms we behold what can otherwise be apprehended only by the spirit-vision of one who sees the supersensible. A temple of Zeus (or Jupiter) was so formed as to present to the outer eye a visible worthy abode for what the Guardian of the Zeus (or Jupiter) Initiation saw with the eye of the spirit. And it is the same with all the Art of Greece. The wisdom-treasures of the Initiates flowed by mysterious paths into the poets, artists and thinkers. In the cosmologies and philosophic edifices of the Greek thinkers we find again the secrets of the Initiates, in the form of concepts and ideas.

Manifold influences of the spiritual life—secrets of Asiatic and African places of Initiation—found their way into these peoples and their leaders. The great teachers of India, the associates of Zarathustra, the followers of Hermes, had all of them trained up disciples; and these disciples, or their successors, now founded places of Initiation in which the old wisdom-treasures came to life again in a new form. Such were the “Mysteries” of antiquity. Here pupils were prepared, so as to be brought in due time into those states of consciousness where they could attain vision into the spiritual world. (Some details concerning these Mysteries of antiquity will be found in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact. More will also be said about them in later chapters of the present work.) From these centers of Initiation flowed treasures of wisdom to those who in Asia Minor, in Greece and in Italy guarded the spiritual secrets. Within the Grecian world important centers of Initiation arose in the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. In the Pythagorean School of Wisdom the mighty wisdom-teachings and methods of primeval times worked on. Pythagoras himself had in course of his great journeys been initiated into the secrets of the most diverse Mysteries.

[ 107 ] In post-Atlantean time the life of man between birth and death has had its influence also on the body-free condition after death. The more man turned his interest to the physical world, the greater was the possibility for Ahriman to find his way into the soul during earthly life, and then maintain his power over it after death. In the peoples of ancient Indian the danger was as yet very slight. During their life on Earth they had felt the world of the physical senses as an illusion; thereby they withdrew themselves after death from the power of Ahriman. The danger was correspondingly greater for the ancient Persian people, who in the time between birth and death had turned their gaze with interest upon the physical world. They would all too readily have fallen a prey to the snares of Ahriman, had not Zarathustra, with his teaching of the God of Light , impressed it so earnestly upon them that behind the world of the physical senses is the world of the Spirits of Light. According to the measure of what their souls received of the whole world-of-ideas which these teachings were capable of arousing, in such measure did they withdraw themselves from the clutches of Ahriman during earthly life and therewith also for their life after death, in which they would have to prepare themselves for a new life on Earth. In Earthly life the power of Ahriman misleads man into regarding the sense-perceptible, physical existence as the one and only reality, thus shutting himself off entirely from any kind of outlook into a spiritual world. In the spiritual world, Ahriman brings man to complete isolation, leading him to center all his interest upon himself alone. Men who at death are in the power of Ahriman are born again as egoists.

[ 108 ] In the spiritual science of our time, life between death and a new birth can be portrayed, such as it is when Ahriman's influence has to a certain extent been overcome. It has been so described by the present writer in other works, and in the first chapters of this book. And it is important that this should be done, so that man may be shown what he can indeed experience in yonder form of existence if he has gained the clarity of spiritual vision to behold what is actually present there. Whether a given individual experiences more or less, will depend upon how far he can overcome the Ahrimanic influence. Man is gradually approaching more nearly to what he can be in the spiritual world. How this, that he can be, is marred by other influences, must none the less be clearly envisaged when we are studying mankind's evolutionary course.

[ 109 ] Among the Egyptian people Hermes saw to it that men should prepare themselves during earthly life for communion with the Spirit of Light. In that time, however, the interests of men between birth and death were already such that they were able only to a slight extent to look through the veil of the physical. Consequently, the spiritual vision of their souls was apt to remain clouded after death. Their perception of the World of Light was dim.

But the overclouding of the spiritual world after death came to a climax for the souls who passed into the body-free condition out of a body of the Graeco-Latin culture. In earthly life they had cultivated the physical life of the senses so that it blossomed forth under their hands. In so doing they had condemned themselves to a shadow-like existence after death. Hence the Greek felt life after death as an existence of the Shades. It is no empty phrase but a real feeling of the truth when the Hero of that time, devoted to the healthy life of the senses, exclaims: “Better to be a beggar upon Earth than a king in the realm of Shades.” All this was still more marked in those of the Asiatic peoples who had in their very reverence and worship concentrated on the sensual images alone instead of on the spiritual archetypes. Such was indeed the situation of a great part of mankind during the Graeco-Latin epoch. The fact is here brought home to us that man's mission in post-Atlantean time—the conquest of the physical world—could not but lead to his estrangement from the spiritual world—could not but lead to his estrangement from the spiritual world. Thus is greatness on the one hand necessarily bound up with decline upon the other.

Man's connection with the spiritual world was meantime nurtured in the Mysteries. There the Initiates were able to special states of soul to receive revelations from the spiritual world. In greater or less degree, they were successors to the Atlantean Guardians of the Oracles. To them was unveiled what had been veiled by the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. Lucifer concealed from man all that of the spiritual world which had, until the middle of the Atlantean time, been pouring into the human astral body without any participation on his part. If the life-body had not been partially separated from the physical, man could have experienced within him this region of the spiritual world as an inner revelation of the soul. Owing to the Luciferian intervention it was only in special states of soul that he could do so. A spiritual world then appeared to him in the garment of the astral. The Beings of this world revealed themselves in forms that possessed the members only of man's higher nature, and made manifest in these, in astrally visible pictures, their several spiritual virtues. Superhuman Beings revealed themselves to man in this way.

After the intervention of Ahriman another kind of Initiation was added. Ahriman had, since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, veiled all that of the spiritual world which would, but for his intervention, have appeared behind the perceptions of the physical senses. This was now unveiled to the Initiates, inasmuch as they practiced in their souls all the faculties man had acquired since that time, beyond the measure needed for bringing about the clear impressions of the physical and sense-perceptible world. It was revealed to them that spiritual Powers underlay the forces of Nature. They could tell of spiritual Beings behind outer Nature. It was given them to behold the divine creative Powers underlying the forces that are at work in the realms of Nature beneath man. All that had worked on from Saturn, Sun and Moon, forming man's physical body, life-body and astral body, as well as the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of Nature—all this made up the content of one kind of Mystery-secrets. These were the secrets over which Ahriman held his hand. What had led, on the other hand, to the sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul, was made manifest in a second kind of Mystery-secrets. But there was something of which the Mysteries could only tell prophetically, namely that in the fullness of time a human being would appear with an astral body such that, in spite of Lucifer, the Light-world of the Spirit and the Sun would come to consciousness in him through the life-body, apart from any special states of soul. And the physical body of this human being would be such that for him the realms of the spiritual world which Ahriman is able to conceal until physical death occurs would become manifest. Physical death can alter nothing in this human beings' life, will have no power over it. In such a human being the I shines forth with so strong a radiance that even in his physical life the spiritual comes to full manifestation. Such a being is the bearer of the Spirit of Light, to whom the Initiates had two ways of ascent, in that they were led in special states of soul either to the spirit of the superhuman realm or to the very essence of the powers of external Nature. Inasmuch as they foretold that in course of time such a human being would appear, the Initiates in the Mysteries were prophets of the Christ.

[ 110 ] One particular prophet in this sense arose within a nation who possessed by natural inheritance the qualities of the peoples of Western Asia, and by education the teachings also of the Egyptians. This was the nation of the Israelites, and the prophet to whom we refer was Moses. So abundantly had the influences of Initiation been received by Moses that in certain states of soul the Being revealed himself to him who had undertaken, from the Moon, a long while ago in the normal course of Earth's evolution, the function of shaping human consciousness. In thunder and lightning Moses recognized not mere physical phenomena but the manifestations of this Spirit. And at the same time the other kind of Mysteries had also worked upon his soul. These enabled him to behold in astral visions the Superhuman, and perceive how it becomes the human through the I. Thus He who was to come revealed Himself to Moses from two sides, as the highest form of the I.

[ 111 ] With Christ there appeared in human form and figure what the high Being of the Sun had prepared as the great pattern for humanity on Earth. And with this Appearance, all the wisdom of the Mysteries had in a certain respect to assume a new form. Hitherto this wisdom had existed only to enable man to bring himself into a state of soul where he could behold the realm of the Sun Spirit beyond the confines of Earthly evolution. From now on, the wisdom-contents of the Mysteries had a different mission; they had to make man capable of recognizing Christ-become-Man, and then of learning to understand—from this center of all wisdom—both the natural and the spiritual worlds.

[ 112 ] In the moment of His life when His astral body had within it all that which is capable of being veiled by the Luciferian intervention, Christ Jesus began to come forward as a Teacher of mankind. From this moment on, the possibility was implanted in human evolution of receiving the wisdom whereby the physical goal of Earth can gradually be attained. And in the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled, another faculty was instilled into mankind—the faculty whereby the influence of Ahriman can be turned to good. Out of his lie on Earth man can henceforth take with him through the Gate of Death that which will free him from isolation in the spiritual world. Not only for the physical evolution of mankind is the Event of Palestine the center and focal point; the same is true for the other worlds to which man belongs. When the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, when the Death on the Cross had been suffered, then did the Christ appear in the world where the souls of men sojourn after death, and set limits to the power of Ahriman. And from this moment on, the region which the Greeks had called the “realm of Shades” was shot through by a spiritual lightning-flash announcing to its dwellers that Light was now returning to it again. What was achieved for the physical world through the mystery of Golgotha shed its light also into the spiritual world.

Hitherto the post-Atlantean evolution of mankind had meant for the physical world an ascent—but at the same time a decline for the spiritual world. Everything that flowed into the world of the senses came from sources that had existed in the spiritual world from the most ancient times. Since the Event of Christ, human beings who lift themselves to the Christ Mystery can carry with them into the spiritual world what has been gained here in the world of the senses. And from the spiritual world it flows back again, forasmuch as the human beings, when they reincarnate, bring with them what the Christ Impulse has become for them in the spiritual world between death and new birth.

[ 113 ] All that was conferred upon human evolution through the coming of Christ, has been working in it like a seed. Only by degrees can the seed ripen. Up to the present, no more than the minutest part of the depths of the new wisdom has found its way into physical existence. We are but at the beginning of Christian evolution. In the successive epochs that have elapsed since His appearance, Christian evolution has been able to unveil only so much of its inner essence as men and nations were capable of receiving, capable also of assimilating to their power of understanding. The first form into which this recognition could be case, may be described as an all-embracing ideal of life. As such it showed itself in striking contrast to the forms of life which had evolved in contrast to the forms of life which had evolved in post-Atlanteans humanity. We have described the conditions under which the evolution of mankind had been going forward since the re-population of the Earth in the Lemurian epoch. We saw how the human beings have to be traced back in their soul nature to diverse beings who, coming down from other worlds, incarnated in the bodily descendants of the old Lemurians. The varieties of race are a consequence of this. And when the souls reincarnated, all kinds of different interests arose in them, as an outcome of their Karma. While all this was working itself out, there could not exist for man the ideal of a “universal humanity.” Mankind went forth from unity in the beginning, but Earth evolution hitherto had led to diversity. In the figure of Christ live also the forces of the sublime Being of the Sun, and in these forces every human I will find its source and its foundation. Even the Israelites still felt themselves as a nation, with each man merely as a member of the nation. As man came to understand—to begin with, purely in thought—that in Christ Jesus lives the ideal Man, unaffected by any and every tendency to separation, Christianity became the ideal of universal brotherhood. Beyond all separate interests and kinships there arose the feeling that the inmost Self of man has in every one the same origin. (Beside all earthly ancestors appear the common Father of all men. “I and the Father are One.”)

[ 114 ] In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries A.D. a new civilization-epoch was preparing in Europe. The actual beginning of it was in the fifteenth century, and we are still living in it now. Intended as it was by slow degrees to replace the fourth, the Graeco-Latin, this is the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The peoples who after manifold wanderings and destinies came forward as the bearers of this epoch, were descended from those Atlanteans who had been least affected by what had taken place meanwhile in the four preceding epochs. They had not penetrated to the countries where the civilizations of these earlier epochs took root. They had instead transmitted the heritage of Atlantean civilizations in their own way. Among them were many who had preserved in large measure the heritage of the old dim clairvoyance—the intermediate state between waking and sleeping. Such men knew the spiritual world from their own experience and could tell their fellow-men of what goes on there. In this way there arose a world of stories about spiritual beings and events. The fairy-tales and sagas of the peoples came originally from these real experiences in the spirit; for in many human beings the dim clairvoyance lasted on into times by no means remote from the present. Others there were who, though they had lost the old clairvoyance, developed the new faculties in relation to the physical experiences of clairvoyance. And beside all this, the Atlantean Oracles also had their successors here; centers of the Mysteries were to be found on every hand. The Initiation-secret chiefly developed in these centers was of the kind that leads to the revelation of that spiritual world which Ahriman keeps hidden. The spiritual Powers underlying the elemental forces of Nature were revealed. In the mythologies of the European peoples can be found traces of what the Initiates in the Mysteries were able to make known to men. Yet these mythologies also contain the other secret, though in a less perfect form than either the Southern or Eastern Mysteries. The superhuman Beings were known in Europe too; but they were seen in perpetual warfare with the associates of Lucifer. The God of Light was indeed proclaimed, but not in such form and figure as would enable one to say with assurance that He would conquer Lucifer. Nevertheless these Mysteries too were irradiated by the figure of the Christ that was to come. Of Him it was prophesied that His Kingdom would replace the kingdom of that other God of Light. (The sagas that tell of the Twilight of the Gods, and kindred legends, originated in this knowledge of the European Mysteries.)

Influences such as these tended to produce in the man of the fifth civilization-epoch a duality of soul—a duality that has lasted on to this day and shows itself in many ways. From olden time these souls had preserved the leaning towards the spirit, yet not so strongly as to be able to maintain the inner link between the spiritual world and the world of the senses. They cherished the connection only in the devotion of the heart, in the life of feeling—not as an immediate beholding of the Supersensible. Meanwhile man's vision was increasingly directed to the world of the senses and to its conquest. And the forces of intellect awakened towards the close of the Atlantean epoch—all those forces in man, whose instrument is in the physical brain—were developed with this end in view: the understanding and the mastery of the world of the senses. Two worlds have been evolving, as it were, in the human breast.¹ The one is devoted to physical and sense-perceptible existence, the other is receptive to the revelations of the Spirit and though lacking direct vision, is ready to permeate the spiritual with feeling and emotion.

The inner tendencies to this duality of soul were already present when the Christ teaching found its way into the countries of Europe. The people received this new message of the Spirit into their hearts and drank it in with deep feeling, but could not build the bridge from it to what the intellect, directed to the senses, was discovering in outer physical existence. What we know today ad the antagonism between external science and spiritual knowledge is nothing but a consequence of this fact. The Christian mysticism of Eckhart, Tauler and others is an outcome of the permeation of heart and feeling with Christianity. The science that is directed solely to the outer world of sense and to the results that follow its application in life, is a consequence of the other tendency that lives in the soul. The achievements of our time in outer material civilization are unquestionably due to this division of tendency. Through being turned in a one-sided way towards the physical, those faculties of man whose instrument is in the brain could be so far enhanced as to make possible the science and technical civilization of today. And it was among the European peoples alone that this material civilization could originate. For they, among all the descendants of the Atlanteans, did not develop into actual faculties the inclination towards the physical world of sense until the inclination had reached maturity. Letting it slumber until then undisturbed, they lived on their inheritance of clairvoyance from Atlantis and on the communications of their Initiates. While outwardly their spiritual culture was devoted entirely to these influences, their aptitude for the material conquest of the world was all the time slowly ripening.

[ 115 ] And now, at the present time, the dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch is already making itself felt. For whatever is to emerge at a certain time in human evolution, will always be slowly maturing in the preceding time. One thing can even now begin to evolve in its initial stages, namely the finding of the thread which will unite the two spheres that claim man's devotion—the material civilization, and life in the spiritual world. To this end it is necessary on the one hand that the results of spiritual seership be received and understood, and on the other, that in man's observations and experiences of the sense-world the revelations of the Spirit be recognized. The sixth civilization-epoch will bring to full development the harmony between the two.

Herewith the studies in this book have reached a point where we may turn from the perspectives of the past to those of the future. But it will be better to precede the latter by a study of the Knowledge of Higher Worlds and of Initiation. Then, after this study and in connection with it, we shall be able to indicate in brief the outlook for the future, in so far as that can be done within the framework of this book.

• 1. The term ‘spiritual science’ is here used—as will be evident from the whole context—with the same meaning as ‘Occult Science’—that is to say, the Science of the Supersensible.
• 1. If one wanted to express more precisely the inner experience one has in spiritual investigation, one would have to say not “Saturn was surrounded by an atmosphere” but “when the supersensible consciousness becomes aware of Saturn, there also appears before it an atmosphere of Saturn,” or “other Beings appear, of such and such kind.” To translate this into the wording ”this or that is there” is assuredly permissible, for in the last resort the very same change is made in applying the ordinary usages of speech to what the soul experiences in sense-perception. This point should nevertheless be borne in mind throughout the following description. It is indeed implicitly contained in the context.
• 1. The gas appears to supersensible consciousness through the light-effects which it sends forth. Hence we might also speak of forms of light presenting themselves to spiritual vision.
• 1. See the volume entitled Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man, published in 1959 by Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc., Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.A. The title of the corresponding volume in German is Aus der Akasha Chronik. (Note by Translators.)
• 1. An allusion to the line in Goethe's Faust: “Two souls, alas, reside within my breast.”

[ 1 ] In the spatial cosmos there stand in opposition to one another: World Expanse, and Earth-Centre. In the World-Expanse, strewn abroad as it were, are the Stars. From the Earth-Centre, forces radiate forth in all directions to the World-Expanse.

[ 2 ] As Man stands to-day in the world, in the present cosmic age, the Stars in their shining, and the Earth-forces in their working, can only appear to him collectively as the accomplished work of the divine spiritual beings, with whom his link is in the inner man.

[ 3 ] But there was once an age of cosmic history when this shining of the stars and these earth-forces were still a direct spiritual revelation of the divine spiritual beings actively at work within his own being.

[ 4 ] Then came another age. The Star-Heaven separated as a corporeal existence out of the divine spiritual tide of activity. There arose what may be called World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Spirit is a multiplicity of divine Spirit-Beings. They send their influences, in the earlier age, from the places of the stars upon the earth within. What there rained down in light from the regions of the world-expanse, what radiated forth as forces from the earth-centre, was in actuality the Intelligence and the Will of those divine spirit-beings who were shaping Earth and Earth's Manhood.

[ 5 ] In the alter cosmic epoch—after the evolution of Saturn and Sun—this Intelligence and Will of the divine Spirit-Beings became ever more spiritually inward in its workings. What they had actively been present in, present with their very Being, became now the ‘World-Body,’ an harmonious ordering of the stars in cosmic space. Looking back upon these things in spirit, comprehending them in a spiritual world-conception, one may express it thus: Out of the original Spirit-Body of the world-creative Beings there arose World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Body marks in stellar order the stellar movement the way in which the Gods were working, long long ago in their Intelligence and Will. For the present age of the Cosmos, what once lived in the stars as freely moving, freely shaping divine intelligence and will, is now set fast in them as fixed Law.

[ 6 ] What shines therefore from out of the star-worlds to-day, to Man upon earth within, is not the immediate expression of divine will and divine intelligence, but a sign, left stationary, to mark what this divine will and intelligence were long ago, even in the stars. In the marvelous star-configuration of the heavens, waking wonder in the human soul, we may behold therefore a past manifestation but not the present manifestation of the Gods.

[ 7] But what is thus ‘past’ in the glory of the shining of the stars, is ‘present’ in the world of the spirit. And Man lives with his own being in this ‘present’ world-spirit.

[ 8 ] In the evolving forms of the world, we must look back upon an ancient epoch of cosmic history, when world-spirit and world-body worked together as a unity. We must keep before our eyes the intermediate epoch, during which they develop as a duality. And we must think forward into the future—into the third epoch, when the world-spirit will once more absorb the world-body into its sphere of action.

[ 9 ] For the ancient epoch there could have been no ‘calculating’ the constellations and the courses of the stars, for they were an expression of the free intelligence and the free will of divine spiritual beings. In the future, there will again be no calculating them.

[ 10 ] ‘Calculation’ only has any meaning for the intermediate epoch of the Cosmos.

[ 11 ] This, which is true of the constellations and the courses of the stars, applies also to the action of the forces which radiate from the earth-centre into the world-expanse. What there spring forth ‘from the depths’ also becomes ‘calculable.’

[ 12 ] Everything tends from the earlier cosmic epoch towards the intermediate one, when the worlds of Time and space become ‘calculable,’ and when Divine Spirit, in its manifestations as Intelligence and will, must be sought ‘behind’ the ‘Calculable.’

[ 13 ] This intermediate epoch alone affords the conditions under which Mankind can progress from a dull, dim consciousness to a clear, free consciousness of Self—to free intelligence and free will of his own.

[ 14 ] There had to come the time when Copernicus and Kepler ‘calculated’ the world-body; for the cosmic forces that served to bring about this moment were necessary to that development of human Self-consciousness. The disposition for this Self-consciousness was laid in an older age; then came the time when it was advanced so far as to be able to calculate the distant world-expanses.

[ 15 ] ‘History’ begins to be played out upon earth. There would have been no History, had not the world-expanse with all its stars become set in ‘fixed’ constellations and orbits. In the ‘course of history’ upon earth, we have a reproduction—though a quite transformed one—of what, once on a time, was ‘heavenly history.’

[ 16 ] The peoples of olden time continued to carry this ‘heavenly history’ still in their consciousness, and turned their eyes rather upon this than upon ‘earthly history.’

[ 17 ] In Earthly History there lives the intelligence and will of Man, at first in connection with the cosmic, divine will and divine intelligence, and then independently.

[ 18 ] In Heavenly History there lived the intelligence and will of the divine spirit-beings connected with mankind.

[ 19 ] Looking back over the spiritual life of the various peoples one finds, in the far remote past, such a consciousness amongst men of their being together and willing together with the divine spirit-beings, that their own human history is still a heavenly history. In his narration of first ‘origins,’ man's tale is not of earthly proceedings but of cosmic. Indeed, even for his own times—the times in which he is presently concerned—that which goes on in his earthly surroundings seems to him so insignificant in comparison with what is going on in the Cosmos, that he disregards the former and only pays attention to the latter.

[ 20 ] There was an age when the consciousness of mankind beheld the Heaven's history in mighty impressions, in which the divine spirit-beings themselves stood before Man's soul. The divine Beings spoke, and Man heard their speech in dream-like Inspiration; they revealed their forms, and Man beheld them in dream-like Imagination.

[ 21 ] This Heavenly History, which for a long while filled men's souls, was followed by Mythical History, now for the most part regarded as old poetic fiction. This Mythical History links together heavenly doings and earthly doings. ‘Heroes’ for instance came upon the scene—super-human beings. These are beings who stand higher than men in their evolution. Men at a particular time, for instance, have only developed the different parts of Man's being as far as the Sentient Soul. The Hero however has already evolved what will one day take its place in Man as ‘Spirit-Self.’ The Hero cannot directly incarnate in a physical body under earthly conditions; but he can do so by going down into the physical body of a human being, and thus enabling himself to work as a man amongst men. In the ‘Initiates’ of earlier ages we have beings of this kind.

The actual fact, with regard to all these things which occurred in the course of the world, is not simply that mankind in the successive periods of history ‘pictured’ things in one way or another in their own minds. What actually took place between the more spiritual, ‘incalculable’ world and the corporeal ‘calculable’ one, itself underwent a change. Only this much may be said: long after the actual conditions had changed in the world, human consciousness, in one or another other of the peoples, still clung to a ‘view of the world’ which corresponded to a far earlier reality. At first it was so, that human consciousness—which does not keep pace with the progress of cosmic events—still really saw the things of old. Then came a time when spiritual sight grew dim, and the old things were only maintained by tradition. Thus in the Middle Ages people still traditionally ‘pictured in their minds’ an intervention of the heavenly in the earthly world, which was no longer seen, since the power of pictorial vision no longer existed.

[ 22 ] Moreover, the evolution of the various peoples in the earthly sphere is such that they retain one or other view of the world, with its corresponding picture, for varying lengths of time; so that there are living alongside one another, views of the world which by their essential character should be living after one another.

The different views of the world however, existing amongst the different peoples, did not proceed only from this, but also from the fact that these different peoples, according to their dispositions, saw different things. Thus the Egyptians saw that world in which there are beings who long ago stopped short on the road to human evolution and never became earth-men; and they saw Man, after his earth-life, in all that he had to do with beings of this kind. The Chaldean peoples saw rather, how spiritual beings—both good and evil—from beyond the earthly sphere entered into earth-life to influence its course.

[ 23 ] To the ancient Heavenly History, properly speaking, which extends over quite a long period of time, there then succeeds the Mythological History, which is shorter, but still long in comparison to the subsequent period of ‘history proper.’

[ 24 ] As I described, men in their consciousness leave go but reluctantly of the old views, in which gods and men are pictured as fellow-actors in a common field. Proper, earthly history had long been in existence—ever since the development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—whilst men were still ‘thinking’ in the sense of what had been in former times. Only with the first opening flower of the Spiritual Soul did men begin to turn their eyes upon ‘history’ in the proper sense.

[ 25 ] Now in the human spirit working in earthly history, loosed from its tie with the Divine Spirit, men have the possibility to realize within themselves free intelligence and free will.

[ 26 ] So the weaving of the world-process in which Man is interwoven moves on, between the altogether calculable and the workings of free intelligence and free will. Under the joint action of both, the world-process is manifested—in every variety of shade betwixt the two.

[ 27 ] In his life as he leads it between birth and death, Man has ready-laid for him in the Calculable, as a foundation, the bodily groundwork upon which to unfold the free Incalculable of his inner, spiritual soul-life. His life between death and new birth is passed in the Incalculable—yet in such a way that in his inner life of soul and spirit, the Calculable is revealed to him in thought. Thereby—out of this Calculable—he becomes the architect of his next earth-life.

[ 28 ] In ‘history,’ the Incalculable is played out on earth—an Incalculable with which however the Calculable is interwoven, if only in feeble measure.

[ 29 ] Against this order established between Calculable and Incalculable by the divine spiritual beings who have been associated with Man from the beginning of all things, against their harmonizing of the Cosmos through ‘Measure, Number and Weight,’ stands the opposition of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings. Lucifer can combine with his own form of being, as he has made it, nothing calculable. His ideal is the cosmic unconditioned action of intelligence and will.

[ 30 ] This Luciferic tendency is one fitly suited to the world's order in those fields where freedom should rightly rule events. And there Lucifer is justly the spiritual helper of Mankind in their evolution. Without his aid, freedom would never make its way into Man's spiritual and soul life, built as it is upon a calculable, bodily basis. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the whole Cosmos. And here his activity becomes a war against that divine spiritual order to which Man originally belongs.

[ 31 ] Here Michael intervenes. With his own being he stands in the Incalculable; but he dresses the balance between the Incalculable, and that Calculable which he bears within him as a World-thought received from his Gods.

[ 32 ] The Ahrimanic Powers stand otherwise in the world. They are the complete opposite of the divine spirit-beings with whom Man is originally connected. These latter are at the present day purely spiritual beings, who bear within themselves perfectly free intelligence and perfectly free will, but who create, in this their free intelligence and will, a wise insight into the necessity of the Calculable and Unfree, as a World-Thought from whose sheltering lap Man may grow up into a free being. And with all the Calculable, with this World-Thought of the cosmos, they are united in Love. This Love streams from them throughout all the universe.

[ 33 ] In complete opposition to all this is the grasping greed of the Ahrimanic powers, in which lives cold Hate of everything expanding in freedom. Ahriman's aim and endeavour, in all that he pours forth into world-space, is to make a cosmic machine. His ideal is, ‘simply and solely,’ Measure, Number and Weight. He was called into the Cosmos prepared for the service of human evolution, because it was necessary that this, his special department—Measure, Number and Weight—should be developed.

[ 34 ] He who comprehends the world as everywhere Spirit-in-body, he alone really comprehends it. This must be carried down into the world of Nature with regard to the powers at work there, such as the Divine Spiritual Powers who work in Love, and the Ahrimanic Powers who work in hate. In the natural, universal warmth, as it sets in with the spring and tends on into summer, we must behold the natural love of the Divine Spirit-Beings. In the freezing blasts of winter we must recognize the workings of Ahriman.

[ 35 ] In the height of midsummer, Lucifer mingles his power with the Love, the Warmth of Nature. At Christmas-tide, the Divine Spirit-Beings with whom Man is from his origin united turn their power against the frozen Hate of Ahriman. And ever more and more towards the springtime, Natural Divine Love is mildly at work, mitigating Natural Ahrimanic Hate.

[ 36 ] The yearly sign of this Divine Love, new-manifested as it is year by year, is the time of Remembrance, when we recall how with the Christ the free element of God entered into the calculable element of Earth. Christ works in perfect freedom within the Calculable. In so doing, He renders harmless that which craves the Calculable only—Ahriman and his forces.

[ 37 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is the free, cosmic act of Love within Earth's history. It is to be comprehended too only by the Love that Man brings to its comprehension.

Leading Thoughts

[ 38 ] The cosmic process with which the evolution of mankind is interwoven, and which reflects itself in human consciousness as History (in the most comprehensive sense,) may be distinguished into: a lengthy period of Heavenly History; a shorter one of Mythological History; and the comparatively short Earthly History.

[ 39 ] This cosmic process, at the present time, falls apart into: the ‘not-to-be-calculated’ working of divine spirit-beings, who freely create in free Intelligence and Will, and the ‘calculable’ processes or the world-body.

[ 40 ] To the Calculable of the world-body are opposed the Luciferic Powers; to the creating in free intelligence and free will, the Ahrimanic Powers.

[ 41 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is a free cosmic act, which originates in World-Love and can only be comprehended by Man's Love.

I have often pointed out how the need of modern mankind for a socialization of the social order arises precisely from the antisocial impulses of mankind, which are more prominent in the present than in earlier times. People today are much more antisocial in their emotional life, in general in their soul life, than in earlier times. And one would like to say: In relation to the more elementary, natural development of mankind, the antisocial impulses are increasing. It can also be said that in the course of the last four centuries people have more or less given themselves over to certain antisocial impulses in the wide circle of social life. And the countercurrent against this abandonment to antisocial impulses is the call for socialization. This call for socialization flares up in people's consciousness precisely because strong antisocial impulses awaken in people's subconscious.

Today this can be traced into the most intimate life of the soul. Never, however, has it been so difficult for people to convince themselves of anything that comes to them as an opinion, or even as the evidence of another; never has the stubbornness with regard to standing on opinions been so great as it is at the present time. And when it happens that someone draws attention to the one-sidedness of every human opinion, yes, also to the one-sidedness of everything that is called human truth, when it happens that someone illuminates things from different sides, then he is reproached for expressing one opinion and another. We will not come to healthy socialization, which is based on social understanding of people, if this ability of adaptation of the individual to the other does not also occur for the human soul.

Now, of course, it is deeply, deeply rooted in the historical development that this is the case today with the antisocial instincts. For people have been developing since the middle of the 15th century in the age of the consciousness soul. People should gradually place themselves on the basis of individual consciousness. Therefore, they can reach a social life only in a different way than in earlier ages, where still the group instincts, the group-egos played a much greater role than they play today. Therefore we see discrepancies everywhere today in the social life of people. We see strange non-coherence. Man always has something in him somewhere in the subsoil of his soul through which he understands everything that can reveal itself in any time. Only he is usually not far enough with his head understanding, with his intellect. Then the strange phenomenon can occur - which should be observed especially by those who join a spiritual-scientific movement - that just those who have learned too much in any direction, lag behind in the development. We experience this today in the most sufficient measure. We would be able to make much faster progress today in understanding what is socially necessary if the masses were not held back by those who have learned too much from the old, who live too much in old concepts, who have adapted themselves too stubbornly to the old concepts. On the whole, it can be said that today the broad mass of the proletariat would certainly have understanding for the most advanced impulses, if they were not held back by that leadership which for decades has fitted itself into quite definite rigid concepts and now cannot go any further. The holding back of people by those who have learned too much, just too much of what could be learned in the 19th century, that is something very significant for the psychological understanding of our time. Therefore, one will only slowly and gradually be able to see something, which, however, is very intensively necessary to see.

On what - this must be asked again and again - have the present leading people formed their concepts, their ideas, their feelings, also their social will? They have trained them on the scientific ideas that played such a great, such a decisive role in the 19th century. One must not be deceived about this. Scientific ideas have penetrated everywhere. But scientific ideas, as they have emerged in the last four centuries, are only applicable to the dead, to that which has died, to that which no longer has life. It is not an extraordinariness, but it is deeply rooted in the essence of the matter that the present ideas about the essence of man can only be applied to what is gained from the corpse, to what is gained in general outside the context of life. What scientific conceptions can give about man, that does not lead to man, not to Homo, that leads only to the homunculus. And that is why people, when they begin to think socially today, always think past reality. They think only of that which basically destroys the social organization, which dismantles it, and not of that which brings new fertilizing life to the social organization. Because people have not absorbed any ideas about the living during the last four centuries, they have not learned to supply fruitful life to the healthy organism. It is the tragedy of the present time that we live only from concepts about the dead, and that the social organism demands from us to assert impulses that are valid for life. But we have no concept of the living precisely within that which is today regarded as the formation of mankind. Does anyone today ask about the social organism as if it were a living thing? He does not.

I have already pointed this out to you the other day: Let us imagine that someone raises the question: Why should we always eat? We satisfy ourselves by eating, but we achieve nothing other than that we are hungry again afterwards; so we might as well keep hunger! - It is not true that it would be foolishness if someone thought in this way towards the natural organism; but according to this pattern of foolishness one actually always thinks with reference to the social organism! This has the effect that this social organism must again and again be shaken and trembled by shocks, which, if the misunderstanding of social life lasts very long, must become revolutionary shocks and even revolutions on a large scale. Because in the last centuries people have become entangled in all kinds of social illusions, that is why the terrible revolutionary train has arisen in our time. What can help there? It can only help to see social life as something really alive. What, then, is a revolution? You see, a revolution is nothing more than the sum of all the necessary small revolutions. There are always revolutions. As in the natural human organism, which also undergoes very significant revolutions from one saturation period to another, so there are always revolutions in the social organism. Why? Because it cannot be otherwise than that through the interaction of the individual human faculties, of the spiritual part of man with the economic life, the tendency arises continually for individual men to gain the upper hand over others. This tendency is simply always present in economic life and in spiritual life. In economic life, for example, there is always the tendency to form capital. If this tendency of economic life to form capital were not present, then economic life would have to die out altogether. For it is only through capital that it is possible that the complicated means of production exist in our advanced times.

But the performance of work on these means of production cannot be achieved by anything other than individual human abilities. When capital is formed, small revolutionary foci are naturally always formed. And government must consist in being vigilant against the formation of small revolutionary foci. We must constantly work against revolution, but not by asking: How can we prevent the creation of capital? -but: What must be done with capital when it has developed for a certain time in one place? - It must be transferred from one individuality to another! That is what matters. The way must be found, also for the material goods, which are expressed in the means of production, which, as I said to you the other day, is found to be the most feasible for the most wretched good, which today's mankind regards as the most wretched good. What one produces spiritually, is lost after some time for the family of the producer, it goes over into the 'general public. The material goods must find their transition into the social organism even at the moment when they no longer have any connection with the individual ability of man, so that they are in turn best utilized by other individual abilities. Socialist thinkers today ask quite wrong questions with regard to the social organism. Socialist thinkers today ask: How can private ownership of the means of production, including land, be prevented? That is, how to kill the life of the social organism? We have just seen in the course of the capitalist economic order that private capital in the means of production and in land produces great damage. The simplest question then seems to be this: How do we get rid of that which causes damage, how do we prevent it from arising in the first place? But this is a killing question. A living question is this: What is to be done with private capital so that it does not cause further damage? How can it be appropriately separated from the private capitalist and transferred to another producer when he himself no longer produces in the service of the social organism? The questions already have to be asked from a much deeper understanding than the present mankind even suspects. The present mankind actually lives in its illusions only because it does not draw the consequences of these illusions in reality. All kinds of professors of national economy in all universities of the world teach today many things according to the recipe: Wash my fur, but do not wet it. - This is the basis of these teachings, which aim at socialization. The very old antisocial teachings are still represented only by some old buttons. But that these good professors teach these things is only possible because they do not draw the consequences. The consequences of what these professors teach are drawn by Lenin and Trotsky. There is a continuous connection. And one should actually rise to a completely different thinking towards the social organism. One should not stop at the old habits of thought, but go over to new habits of thought, because the old habits of thought, consistently carried out, must lead to the robbery of the old social order. And this is what people find it so difficult to decide to embrace new habits of thought. This will perhaps not happen until people really think in a spiritual-scientific way, and until the thoughts they get used to in spiritual science will also be the teachers, perhaps better the disciplinarians, for the way they should think socially. It will always remain something half if one merely spreads social teachings today without imbuing them with the actual spiritual-scientific teachings which make thinking and feeling and imagining, above all judging, so flexible as we need it today if we want to fit into the great complication of life which has now necessarily come upon modern mankind.

Is it not necessary to ask: What is this human being who is to be integrated into the social organism, this human organism? Can one actually promise oneself to feel right about the social organism if one does not first feel right about man himself? For man is a member of this social organism. Now natural science, in spite of all its great progress, has led away from the understanding of the real man, not towards it. That is what must be considered.

If one says to people today: Look, the healthy social organism must consist of the three independent members, the spiritual organization, the political state and legal organization and the economic organization, and if one then points out that the natural man also consists of three members, of the nervous-sensory system, of the lung-heart or rhythmic system, and of the metabolic system, then the clever people come and say: Again such a game with analogies! But it is not a question of playing with analogies, it is a question of training the spirit on the one hand in a correct understanding of the natural man, so that with the spirit trained in this way one can also understand the social organism correctly. It is not a question of making conclusions from one to the other, as Schäffle did in the past, and Meray has done again, but of making one's thinking so flexible in relation to the human organism that one can really understand the social organism in its needs.

One of the basic phenomena of the future understanding of man will be precisely this, how man descends from a spiritual life through birth, how he lives in his physical existence between birth and death and lives a social life with society, and then returns to the spiritual world through death. There it is a question of understanding already once this man as such really in his threefoldness. The present anatomist, the present physiologist, has man before him; for him a muscle in the head is the same as a muscle in the arm. He does not divide man into his three parts, he knows nothing about it, this present natural scientist, how man's origin comes from three sources. He does not ask properly, therefore he does not come to a proper answer, for example, what man has from the mother and what from the father. We have often spoken about the matter, today we can again speak about the matter from a certain point of view. You know, when man lives in this ordinary life, he lives in two different states of life or consciousness. While awake, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego interpenetrate each other. In sleep, the physical body and the astral body are in bed; in the spiritual world, the I and the astral body are in bed. In the morning the ego and the astral body again unite with the physical body and the atheric body. Consider the human being who, when he sleeps, lies in bed without the ego and without the astral body. Of course, this is not a human being; but it is something essential of the human being who lives on the physical earth. You can separate very precisely from the whole man that which is there of the man who lives on the physical earth when he sleeps, and which manifests itself in the physical body and etheric body. Let us now first look away from the whole man, let us look at that which lies in bed at night, when the ego and the astral body are gone, and let us ask about the origin of this man, which consists of the physical body and etheric body, which lies in bed at night, let us ask about its next origin: Where does it come from? It is only a piece of man, but where does it come from? - What lies there in bed comes according to its disposition, its powers, not as it is first formed in the full human being, in the adult human being, but according to its dispositions, its powers, it comes from the mother and is already with the mother before any fertilization. That which merely comes in through the woman is that which then lies fully grown in the bed of man when he sleeps. That is not a human being; but it cannot become a human being either, what comes only from the mother.

It is not arbitrary talk when one divides man into these limbs of which one usually speaks, but it points to very real things. When one speaks of the physical body and etheric body, one speaks of what is predisposed in the mother before fertilization, what is always predisposed in the mother. When man from spiritual heights, after he has lived for a while the life between death and new birth, again inclines to the physical life, then he feels, as it were, that in a female personality related to him that disposition is found into which he can pour that which has developed in him since the last life from the rest of the organism to the head. The human embryonic formation therefore starts from the head. The head is that which first develops in a certain perfection in the human embryonic formation. That which acts on this head formation, which actually comes from the cosmos, is already in the ego and in the astral body. And the fact that the ego and the astral body can be together with the physical body and the etheric body comes from fertilization. Fertilization mediates the coexistence between the ego and the astral body, and the physical body and the etheric body. What is the origin of fertilization? Fertilization is first of all concerned with the mere metabolic life of man. It is aimed at giving him a new metabolic and respiratory organism, because the forces of the head organism originate from the previous incarnation. All that, therefore, which brings man, who comes from the previous incarnation, together with the head organism, man owes to his relation to the spiritual world. Everything that, so to speak, enters the human being in embryonic life, when fertilization has taken place, the human being owes to the coexistence with the earth being, with the earthly being.

There you see how complicated that comes about, what the human being actually is. To a certain extent, man's limbs, to which the metabolic system also belongs, are given to him internally, from the earth. That which functions in the human head is given to him from the spiritual world. And that which is breathing and heart system, that is in between.

And now you can ask: What is the essence that we can inherit from our father and mother? In which system of the human being do the forces lie by which we can inherit something from our father and from our mother? - We inherit nothing for our head from our father and mother, because, what works in our head, we bring with us from the previous incarnation. We do not inherit anything for our metabolic system, because that is what the earth gives us after fertilization. We inherit only within the lung-heart system, we inherit only in all the forces that live in breathing and blood circulation; there we inherit. Only one limb, the middle limb of man, the respiratory-circulatory limb, is that which owes its origin to the two sexes. Man is so complicated. He is a tripartite being also according to his physical organism. He has his head, which he can only use for that which is not earthly; he has his limbs with the metabolic system, which he can only use for that which is earthly; and he has that which lies in breathing and circulation, through the relationship of man to man.

I can only indicate to you here what leads to a wide, wide field of knowledge of man. What I have indicated to you looks like a theory. But for our time it is not a theory, but there is something in man today which feels in the sense of what I have just said, There is something developing in the present time which feels in this tripartite sense in man. Today man has complicated feelings in the innermost part of his being, without being fully aware of it. He knows himself through his head as a citizen of an extraterrestrial, he knows himself through his lung-heart system in a relation of man to man. There is something inside the human being that says: When I meet another human being, this meeting is an image of that which was transplanted into me also from human being to human being, namely through father and mother. Through his lung-heart system the human being feels quite placed among people. Through his metabolic system man feels himself as a member of the earth, as belonging to the earth. These three kinds of feelings are already in man today. But the mind does not want to go along. The mind wants everything to be simple, the mind wants that everything can be traced back to some monon. And this is what the people of the present day suffer from. They will no longer suffer from it only when the tripartite feeling in the inner being, which is really already found in man, corresponds to a tripartite social organism, when man finds a mirror image of his being on the outside.

You see, this is the terrible thing that lies in the subconsciousness of people who today belong to the social movement, For three to four centuries the spiritual life and everything that dominates the social coexistence of people has developed in such a way that this spiritual life is a mirror of the material life. Inside, however, the longing pulsates, the outer life should be a mirror of the inner. Today's mankind suffers from this. It wants to form the outer life in such a way that the outer social organism is an image of man, whereas today man is an image of the outer world. And people in the present see past this, they find it complicated, they find it theoretical. They find it easier to put the human being as a whole. Of course, it is more complicated to have to answer someone to the question: What is man? - to answer: Look at the representative of mankind in the middle and above Lucifer and below Ahriman! All three belong together in the unity of man. But the man is just tripartite and differently you do not understand the man.

This is not a theory, but something that is very, very real, that occurs in the human nature. Because man begins to feel tripartite about himself and about the world, he demands in his subconsciousness a tripartite social organism, not only a uniform monistic state organism, which also includes economic life and state life: A spiritual organization for itself, a legal or political or state organization for itself, and an economic organization for itself. Only then will man find himself in this outer world. And the earthquake-like tremors of our time stem from the fact that a culmination, a highest point, has been reached with regard to the non-correspondence of the outer social organism with the human inner being. While people are basically striving to feel the independent threefoldness of the social organism, their leaders, the leaders of the socialists, appear and say: Everything will already result from the economic life, if we let the economic life develop correctly, if we only reverse it a little, so that that which has been below comes above, and that which has been above comes below; then the right thing will already develop.

Nothing right will develop out of economic life alone, but only if one admits the independence of economic life on the one side, and on the second side of political legal life, of security life, and on the other side of the spiritual organization as such. If one really places the spiritual life on itself, then it must form its reality out of itself. Otherwise the chasms will always remain between the human classes. Today one does not even suspect how these abysses have actually opened up. Sometimes one can be confronted with the most justified in the sense of contemporary culture, and one will not understand how that which one who belongs to a class must feel to be completely justified cannot be understood by the other.

Take, to choose an obvious example, a well-painted landscape, a quite artistically painted landscape. The member of the bourgeois class has acquired certain feelings, certain ideas, as to how a well-painted landscape should look. With these feelings, with these ideas, he places himself in front of a landscape picture that is clamped in a frame and admires it. The proletarian may be induced to admire it, too, because he is gradually persuaded that it belongs to "education" to admire such a thing; some who are not proletarians do not understand anything about a landscape painting and admire it because they have been persuaded that it belongs to education. But this even breeds untruthfulness, because if one does not belong to the class where, among those who work physically, some are also bred who are allowed to be physically tired so that they can paint, so that they can think up how to paint, he only remains true if he confronts such a landscape in such a way that he says: What for? Someone paints a piece of forest on a canvas with blots of color, and I see it every day when I walk through the forest, much more beautiful. You can never make a landscape painting as beautiful as it is outside in nature. Why do people, who don't want to look into nature to see the piece of landscape, hang a piece of landscape, which is only a clumsy imitation of nature, in a gold frame in their room? - That would be the true sensation. And this feeling rests on the soul of many people who are not brought up to admire things out of educational backgrounds. Certainly the admiration of a certain class is sincere; but the admiration of by far the greatest mass of people for such a landscape cannot be sincere, because they are not educated with the others.

One must touch on much deeper things in the life of feeling if one is to understand today what abysses lie between human souls. We will not awaken understanding for art - and you can transfer this to other branches of life - until, for example, one will also want to pursue in painting that which one cannot see every day outside in nature, but which must be brought down from the spiritual world. All people will understand this, and something else will come on this detour. The spiritual must be carried down from the spiritual world by people. Trust will again arise from person to person, because through one person this, through another person that must be carried down from the spiritual world. In another way than by carrying things down from the spiritual world, it will not be possible for soul to find itself again socially with soul.

So one must, I would say, speak more deeply into that which today pulsates through time than one usually does. Preachers full of unctuousness, who actually bring only a copy of what the Catholic pulpit orators can do better in their way, now go around a lot and talk about the fact that "inwardly" people should find each other again, after this terrible catastrophe of the last four and a half years has shown how little people are inclined to a harmonious life. Yes, but you can't let people find themselves inwardly by talking, you can only let them find themselves inwardly if you have the will today to really radically go over to other habits of thinking and feeling. The other day someone said that you have to get to know poverty in order to develop a social feeling in yourself. Today it is not enough to have looked at poverty, to have gone to some neighborhood in a big city and seen how ragged the people are, how little they have to eat; that is not enough today. Today it is enough to really know the souls of those who want to work their way up socially. Today it is necessary not only to know poverty, but to know the poor in their souls, in their innermost life. But there is no other way to achieve this than by finding a new way to the human soul, by really learning to penetrate into the innermost being of man. And then one will find that people can henceforth be nothing without finding the mirror of their own being in the social outer organism.

One must be able to lead people on the one hand to the highest heights of spiritual life and on the other hand to be able to really submerge the spirit in economic problems. Today, however, one has to say strange things. On the one hand, one must say: Take the schools away from the state, take the spiritual life away from it, base the spiritual life on itself, let it be administered by itself, then you will compel this spiritual life to lead the struggle continuously from its own strength. Then, however, this spiritual life will also be able to place itself in the right way to the constitutional state and to the economic life, for example, the spiritual life will be straight - I have explained this in my social writing, which will now be finished in the next few days -, then the spiritual life will also be the right administrator of the capital.

On the other hand: Let the economic life be turned in on itself. This is truly not a phrase in relation to concrete questions. If you turn economic life in on itself, if you take it from the state, then above all you must take something very, very concrete from the state, namely money, the administration of the currency. You must return the administration of the currency to economic life. In the various territories where people have worked their way up from the natural economy to the money economy, they have initially kept to a money representative who is something of a hybrid between a commodity and a mere instruction. The very learned people argue about whether money is a mere instruction, whether a banknote is a mere instruction, or 'whether money is a commodity. One can argue about it for a long time, because money is one thing and another. It is one thing because it mediates the economic process; that makes money a commodity. The other is that the state determines by its law the value of the coin in question. But money must be returned entirely to economic life. Then one thing will occur, but only gradually. In order for it to occur, the very thing I am touching on now must become international. This will take a long time, because the leading trading state, England, on which it really depends that we have the gold standard, will not easily let go of the gold standard. So it will take a long time. But the self-sufficient economic organization, to which also the currency is left, the monetary system, will no longer need to place a commodity "gold" between the other goods as a means of exchange. The economic organization does not need that. The economic organization will, however, also have money, but only for the distribution of the exchange of goods. For it will turn out that always that which is the solid, real basis of economic life, that this is the monetary basis also for money. Gold is money only because gold has gradually become a particularly popular commodity among people, because people have agreed to value gold. This looks dilettante when you say it, but it is much more correct than what the non-dilettantes, the scholars of today, say. The value of gold is merely based on the tacit agreement of people about this value of gold. Something else could come to such an estimate. But with the centralization of the three social links, something that actually has a mere apparent value will always come to this estimate in economic life. Gold, after all, has in reality only an apparent value. You cannot eat gold. You can be very rich in gold; if nobody gives you anything for it, you cannot live from gold, of course. This is based only on a tacit agreement among people. You don't need it at all in national traffic. In interstate traffic, it is needed only to bring about certain compensations that cannot otherwise be brought about because the necessary great trust does not exist. But this illusory value attributed to a certain metal will cease when the administration of money is handed over to the economic body and the state no longer has any say in the administration of money. Then the state remains on the ground of mere law, remains on the basis of what can only be agreed between man and man on a democratic basis.

Now, if certain money tokens, money orders are in circulation, the state has a certain gold treasure. What will then be there when truth will have taken the place of appearance through the threefold division? Then everything will be there as a cover for the money, which in truth will not belong to the individual, on which the individual will only work, but which has an equal value for all people who live in the social organism: The means of production will take the place of gold, that by which one can prepare something for the commodity character. By bringing the means of production into flux, as today only the spiritual productions are in flux, the character of the means of production as a monetary basis is gradually brought about.

These things are very difficult, and one must make very complicated national economic assumptions - which I naturally do not presuppose with you - if one wants to prove them scientifically; but they can be proved quite scientifically. But I would rather give you a concrete example of what I mean. You see, I once got to know a strange kind of money myself - I think I have already spoken of it here once. This strange kind of money consisted in Goethe letters and Goethe manuscripts. I got to know a gentleman, no, several, who were actually quite clever as financiers. They began to buy Goethe letters and Goethe manuscripts cheaply in the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. You didn't have to pay much for them then. Now they had them. Now came the time when everything had already been bought up, when due to circumstances, the description of which would lead too far, Goethe letters and Goethe manuscripts acquired a great value. These letters and manuscripts were sold. That was a strange money, the value of which increased considerably in about thirty to forty years. I was assured even by one of the gentlemen who did that, that no stock exchange papers have fructified so, for a time, as Goethe letters. They were the best paper, and they had actually taken on a money character. One got a great deal for them. Now think what that depended on. It depended on the fact that constellations had occurred that were completely independent of the first coming into being. It's not true that when Goethe wrote his letters, these letters were perhaps worth a great deal to the recipient. Nobody bought them. They were not money at that time. You couldn't buy bread for them. Mr. von Loeper, who bought Goethe letters in the fifties, could buy a lot of bread in 1895 for these Goethe letters. They were like good money. The way in which ordinary money stands inside in the economic organism is also not different than this standing inside was with the Goethe letters. The value of these pieces of paper, on which Goethe's letters were written, was based on a social process, on a social process, on what had happened in connection with Goethe's personality from the fifties to the nineties. One has to know the social organism well if one wants to judge these strange processes, where something that at a certain time does not need to be worth anything special in the economic process becomes valuable.

The usual demand of the social democrats for the socialization of the means of production would naturally lead to the paralysis of the spiritual qualities, the spiritual talents of the people. This is something that is impossible to carry out. But just think, for example - of course, one can think of it in the most varied way -: Whoever has certain talents for some branch of the economy will be able to obtain capital in completely free competition, namely, saved capital, which he collects as a loan. Of course, there can be intermediaries; I reduce the process to the simplest form, so to speak. The person concerned will make certain claims for his intellectual achievement, for his leadership achievement, for his leadership. Once a real contract is concluded between employer and employee - the contract usual today is only a sham - the employee will realize that his interests are best represented if the entrepreneur manages the enterprise well with his individual powers, but without owning it. And this is possible precisely when the entrepreneur originally sets the demand for his intellectual performance on his own initiative and negotiates it with the workers. If this demand cannot be fulfilled, the entrepreneur must go down with his demand. But the demand must be made originally from completely free initiative. If the entrepreneur does not find any customers, he must go down, which goes without saying. But now it must remain so. He now draws from the enterprise nothing more than the agreed share, which, if his work increases, can be increased. But it remains interest. In addition, there is the productivity of the means of production itself, the profit that comes out of the enterprise. These are two quite different things, that which one acquires through one's intellectual effort and that which comes out of the enterprise. It is quite different to work with means of production than to put one's saved capital into means of production. These things are not distinguished today. These things will be distinguished in the healthy social organism.

If I put a certain capital, which I have saved myself, into a factory, that is something completely different than if I use this capital to buy a room. If I use the capital to put it into a factory, then I have worked for the social organism by saving the capital. If I use it to get myself room furnishings, I am making the social organism work for me. These things are distinguished in the healthy social organism. They are not distinguished in today's sick social organism. Of course, I am not saying that no one should buy a furniture. But buying furniture will mean something completely different in the healthy social organism than it means today. Today it can be exploitation; later it will be the use of the room furnishings as means of production, because one will have nothing from the room furnishings if one does not produce something for the social organism with the help of the room furnishings, whatever it may be. The term "means of production" is first put on a sound basis in the healthy social organism.

There you see that one can distinguish exactly between what someone draws as interest and what comes from the self-work of the means of production. As long as one uses the profit of the means of production to enlarge the enterprise, well, it remains so. But at the moment when something is gained from the means of production which is not used to enlarge the enterprise, to expand the enterprise, then the leader is obliged to transfer what is gained to another who can produce again.

There you have a circulation of capital. There you have the transfer to another individuality. Whoever does not consider himself capable of transferring his capital to another individuality, transfers it to a corporation of the spiritual organization, which may not use it itself, which in turn will transfer it to an individual or to a group of people, to an association. There you bring everything that is produced by the means of production into the social flow, into a real social circulation. That which circulates in this way in the social organism, which is in a perpetual circulation, has a permanent value, even though it is always changing. But it has a permanent value because what is worn out must be replaced again. If you read in national economic books today why gold is so well suited for money, you will find all kinds of beautiful properties of gold; first, that it is popular with all people, second, that it is durable, does not wear out, does not oxidize, and so on. All these beautiful properties have this ideal good, which circulates as a means of production. The future cover for the money notes will be, if in the economic organism, not in the state organism the money is created, the money is administered, will circulate, the cover will be the capital goods not accumulating in the private property, it will be the means of production, which can be really fructified in the economic process.

To believe in this, my dear friends, the Central European states and especially Russia will have to bite the bullet first. The Western states will not believe in it for the time being, as long as the reprieve lasts; they will still believe in gold. The Central and Eastern states will have to believe that their now completely derouted currency, their completely ruined currency, will not get back on its feet in any other way than by turning economic life over to itself. No matter how many projects for the improvement of the currency in the Central and Eastern States may arise, they will all be useless and will lead to nothing; only the transfer of the currency from the state to economic life will solve the currency question in these Central and Eastern States. Certainly, the economic organizations in the Central and Eastern States will have to work with gold as long as gold is insisted upon. But this will only be a sham. When trade with the Western states is resumed, the gold treasure will have to be there. But the real prosperity, the real cover for the money will have to lie in what are circulating means of production.

At a very concrete point this threefoldness begins to become an international matter. People so easily believe that this threefolding, of which I am always speaking now, is a mere domestic affair. And that is why I have just argued in the "Appeal" that a healthy negotiation of the Central States with the Western States, if it should ever occur, can only be based on the fact that in the Central States the delegates are elected independently by the economic body, the legal body and the spiritual body. After all, the Western states can be indifferent as to whom they have to negotiate with; they can say: They are all equal to us, that is not important. - But these middle states can only come to a real recovery by themselves, by coming to a real threefolding. For the time being, the Western states can still harbor illusions that they will go beyond the threefold structure. But there will be no other way in the world than for people to convert to this threefold structure in order to live in accordance with the forces of development that want to be realized in the civilized world in the next twenty to thirty years. It could be that just those states in which things are still relatively good, like Switzerland, would make themselves comfortable to take up such a threefold structure before things go haywire. But the others, the central and eastern states, should already realize that they must either continue to destroy or move toward threefolding. We will talk more about this tomorrow.

Pitfalls await those on the path of spiritual knowledge. Dr. Steiner's poignant depiction of self-love can be especially helpful. This love rises like a force of nature in one who follows a spiritual path. He also explores the encounter with the double, the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, the role of fear, and the polar tendencies toward phenomenology and mysticism.

Lecture 12 of 14 from the volume: Results of Spiritual Investigation The volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner containing the original text of the this lecture, among eight others, is entitled: Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung, (No. 62 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961).

Just as it is of great significance in every realm of human endeavor and investigation to know not only the path of truth but also the sources of error, so it is especially the case in the realm dealt with by our lectures here, the realm of spiritual science, of spiritual investigation. In this realm one has to do not only with sources of error that can be eliminated to a certain extent through judgment and reasoning but with sources of error that accompany every step of the spiritual investigation of truth. One has to do with errors that must be not only refuted but overcome, conquered. Only by knowing them in such a way that one keeps, as it were, a spiritual eye on these experiences in their character as error will it be possible to guard oneself against them. It is not possible in relation to this realm to speak of individual truths or errors, but it is necessary to be clear through which activity of the soul, through which confusion of the soul, man can fall into untruth on the path of spiritual investigation.

It is easy to grasp that one wishing to penetrate to the super-sensible world first needs a healthy organ of perception, just as healthy sense organs are needed for outer sense observation. The second thing one needs, in addition to the organ of perception, is a corresponding development of clarity of consciousness, which can clearly oversee and judge the observations. Even in ordinary sense observation of life it is necessary that we have not only healthy senses but also a healthy consciousness, that is, a consciousness not befogged or confused, not paralyzed in a certain way. Both these qualities of the soul life in a higher stage come to be of even greater significance in the realm of spiritual investigation. A comparison from ordinary sense observation will help us to understand this. Suppose someone has an abnormally developed eye, for example. He will not be in a position to observe objects in as accurate and unprejudiced a way as they should be seen. From hundreds of possible examples let us consider just this one. A very significant natural scientist of our day, who is not in the least inclined to submit willingly to any delusion, had a certain eye condition, and he described in his biographical sketch how this eye condition misled him, particularly at dusk, causing him to see things unclearly and, through this unclear seeing, to arrive at false judgments. He described, for example, how he often walked through darkness and, due to his eye condition, would see a figure that he took to be real but that was nothing other than something called forth by his abnormal eye. He then related how he once went around the corner in a strange city and, because he believed the city to be unsafe, his eye induced him to see someone approaching and wishing to assault him; he even pulled out a weapon to defend himself. He therefore was not in a condition, despite complete knowledge of his organ impairment, to judge the situation correctly, to recognize that what his eye called forth was not there at all. Errors can occur in this way in all our sense organs. I bring this up only as a comparison.

In the recent lectures it was described how the human being, through a certain inner cultivation, evolution, of his soul, can develop into a real spiritual investigator, how he brings into use real organs of spirit through which he can look into the super-sensible world. These spiritual organs must be developed in the right way to make it possible to behold—in an analogy with sense perception—not caricature and untruth but the truth, the reality, of higher spiritual worlds. As we have seen, this development of the higher spiritual organs, which can be brought about by a rightly applied concentration, contemplation, and meditation, depends upon the starting point in ordinary, everyday life. Every human being who wishes to evolve upward to a view of the spiritual world must, and this is quite natural and proper, take his starting point from ordinary soul development, from what is right and normal for everyday life and also for ordinary science. Only from this starting point, by taking into the soul those mental processes (Vorstellungsarten) that we have presented as meditations and as other exercises, can the soul ascend again to an observation of the spiritual world.

The problem now is that at the starting point, that is, before the beginning of a spiritual training, the future spiritual investigator must be in possession of a sound power of judgment, a capacity for judgment proceeding from true conditions. Every starting point that does not result from a sound power of judgment, that surrenders itself to the object, leads to unsound organs of spiritual observation, which can be compared to abnormally developed sense organs. Here we are again at the point that we have often mentioned in previous lectures: the significance of what one can designate as the soul life of the spiritual investigator before he begins his development as a spiritual investigator, his training for spiritual investigation. An unsound power of judgment, lacking ability to observe objects in their reality, leads man to see facts and beings of the spiritual world as distorted or, as we shall see today, in many false ways. This is, as it were, the first important point in all development toward spiritual investigation. Spiritual scientific training makes it necessary to take as one's starting point a sound power of judgment, an interest in the true relationships of existence, even before the path to the super-sensible worlds is embarked upon. Everything that readily surrenders itself to illusion in the soul, that readily judges in an arbitrary way, that represents in the soul a certain unsound logic, leads also to the development of unsound spiritual organs.

The other starting point that is of essential significance is the moral mood of soul. The moral ability, the moral force, is as important as sound logic and intelligence, for if unsound logic, if unsound intelligence, lead to faulty spiritual organs, so will a cowardly (schwachmuetig) or immoral mood at the beginning of the spiritual training lead one ascending into the spiritual world to a certain fogginess, a “stupor”, we could call it. One thus faces the higher world in a state of what one must designate as a kind of paralysis, even a loss of consciousness (Ohnmacht). It must be noted, however, that in the stage of soul development referred to here, that which is called losing consciousness, a stupor, cannot be compared with the loss of consciousness, the paralysis, of ordinary, everyday consciousness. In ordinary consciousness, losing consciousness occurs in relation to the areas of everyday life. Losing consciousness in the spiritual world means a stupor, a fogging; it means the saturation of consciousness with all that can stem from the ordinary sense world or from the ordinary experience of the day. The spiritual investigator who is in error cannot be befogged or unconscious to the same degree as in ordinary consciousness, but he can be unconscious in relation to the spiritual world by being filled in the spiritual field of consciousness with that which has justification only through its properties and way of appearing in ordinary sense and intellectual consciousness.

By taking such elements along into the spiritual world, the spiritual investigator dims his higher consciousness. The matter can be presented in the following way. Dimming of consciousness, impairment of the ordinary behavior of soul in everyday life, is like a penetration of sleep or of the dreams into the clear, everyday consciousness. A stupor, a fogging of the higher, super-sensible consciousness, however, is like a penetration of ordinary, everyday consciousness—the consciousness that we carry around with us in the ordinary world—into that consciousness in which it no longer belongs, into the consciousness that should oversee and judge the facts of the higher, super-sensible worlds purely and clearly. Any kind of immoral or weak moral mood, any kind of moral untruthfulness, leads to such a fogging of super-sensible consciousness. Among the essential and most significant aspects of preparing for a spiritual scientific training, therefore, is a corresponding moral development, and, if you go through my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, you will find special practices for the soul through which this appropriate moral mood can be established. Of particular damage in this striving is everything that overcomes man in ordinary life in the way of vanity, ambition, the ordinary sense of self, and a particular sympathy for this or that experience. Inner tranquility, impartiality, a loving penetration of things and worlds, an attentive interest in everything life offers, but especially a certain moral courage, a standing up for what one recognizes as true, are proper starting points for a spiritual scientific training.

From what has been said in preceding lectures, it should be clear that all spiritual training consists of an awakening of certain spiritual forces that exist in the soul but that slumber in ordinary life and must be developed. The spiritual organs and the super-sensible consciousness can be developed only when forces lying peacefully in the depths of the soul, forces that are weak or not at all developed in ordinary life, are really brought into consciousness.

The following can be seen from what has been said. Two things appear when man, through appropriate meditation, through concentrating his whole life of soul on individual mental images called into consciousness by his free will, tries to draw forth these forces resting in the depths of his soul. First, a quality that is always present in the soul but that in ordinary life can be kept relatively in check will be intensified, along with the other slumbering qualities in the depths of the soul; spiritual development cannot take place in any other way than by the whole soul life becoming in a certain respect inwardly more active, more infused with energy. This quality that is intensified at the same time as the others that one is trying directly to intensify one can call human self-love, sense of self. One could say that one begins to know this human self-love, this sense of self, only when one goes through a spiritual scientific training; only then does one begin to know how deep within the human soul this self-love slumbers. As has been pointed out already, he who engages in the exercises described in past lectures, thus intensifying his soul forces, notices at a certain moment in his development that another world enters his soul life. He must be able to notice, to have the knowledge to recognize, that the first form (Gestalt) in which the new, super-sensible world appears is nothing other than a projection, a shadow image, of his own inner soul life. These forces that he has developed in his soul life appear to him first in a mirror image. This is the reason that the materialistic thinker easily mistakes what appears in the soul life of the spiritual investigator for what can appear in the unhealthy soul life as illusions, visions, hallucinations, and the like. That objections from this side rest on ignorance of the facts has often been pointed out; this distinction, however, must be alluded to again and again. The unhealthy soul life, which beholds its own essence as in a mirror image, takes its own reflections for a real world and is not in a position to eliminate these reflections through inner choice. By comparison, in a true spiritual training it must be maintained that the spiritual investigator recognizes the first phenomena that appear as reflections of his own being; not only does he recognize them as such, but he is able to eliminate them, to extinguish them from his field of consciousness.

Just as the spiritual investigator is able through his exercises to intensify his soul forces so that a new world is conjured before him, so he must be able to extinguish this whole world in its first form; he must not only recognize it as a reflection of his own being but be able to extinguish it again. If he could not extinguish it, he would be in a situation comparable to something that occurs in sense observation and that would be unbearable, impossible in an actual development of the human soul. Imagine in ordinary sense observation that a person directed his eyes to an object and became so attracted to it that he could not avert his gaze. The person would not be able to look around freely but would be tied to the object. This would be an unbearable situation in relation to the outer world. With a spiritual development, it would mean exactly the same in relation to the super-sensible world if a person were not in the position to turn from his spiritual observation and extinguish what presents itself as image to his spiritual observation. He must pass the test expressed in the words, “You are able to extinguish your image,” overcoming himself in this extinguishing; if the image returns, so that he can know his reality in a corresponding way, then only does he face reality and not his own imaginings (Einbildung). The spiritual investigator therefore must be able not only to create his own spiritual phenomena and to approach them but also to extinguish them again.

What does this mean, however? It means nothing less than the need for an immensely strong force to overcome the sense of self, self-love. Why does the abnormal soul life, which arrives at visions, hallucinations, and crazy notions, see these creations as realities and not as emanations from its own being? Because the human being feels himself so connected, so bound, to what he himself brings forth that he would believe himself destroyed if he could not look at what he himself brings forth as a reality. If a human being leaves the ordinary world with an abnormal soul life, his self-love becomes so intensified that it works like a force of nature. Within the ordinary soul life we can distinguish very clearly between so-called fantasy and what is reality, for within the ordinary soul life we have a certain power over our mental images. Any person is aware of this power whose soul has been capable of eliminating certain mental images when it recognizes their error. We are in a different situation in relation to the outer world when we are confronted with forces of nature; when lightning flashes, when thunder rolls, we have to let the phenomena take their course; we cannot tell the lightning not to flash or the thunder not to roll.

With the same inner force, however, the sense of self appears in us when we leave the ordinary soul life; as little as we can forbid lightning to flash so little can we forbid self-love from appearing, developed into a force of nature, if it is only a reflection of one's own being, that which the soul presents as an image of its own being, perceived as a real outer world. From this one can see, therefore, that the self-education of the spiritual investigator must consist chiefly of overcoming piece by piece self-love, the sense of self. Only if this is accomplished at every stage of spiritual development through a strict self-observation will one come to be able at last to erase a spiritual world when it appears as described. This means to be in the position of allowing that which one has striven for with all one's might to fall into oblivion. Something must be developed through spiritual training (one can find this presented more precisely in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds) that actually does not exist at all in man's free will in ordinary life. If man in ordinary life undertakes to do something, he wants to do it if he neglects to do something, he doesn't want to do it. One must say that in ordinary life man is in the position of applying his will impulses. To extinguish, in the way I described, the spiritual world that appears, the will must not only have the described faculties but must be able, after the spiritual world appears, slowly to weaken itself bit by bit, to the point of utter will-lessness, even to the point of extinguishing itself. Such a cultivation of the will is accomplished only when the exercises for the soul, described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, are followed systematically. When we awaken the slumbering forces in our soul, self-love, the sense of self, are intensified. This intensification leads us under certain circumstances to consider as an outer reality that which we actually are ourselves, that which lies only within us.

Another thing that is necessary when the soul undergoes appropriate exercises for a spiritual training is for man, at a certain level of this development, actually to forsake everything in his consciousness, everything that in his life up to now gave him in outer, everyday life and in ordinary science the content of truth, security in truth, everything that gave him the possibility of considering something as reality. As indicated already in previous lectures, all supports that we have for our judgments in ordinary life, all basic reference points given us by the sense world, which teaches us how we must think about reality, must be forsaken. After all, we want through the spiritual training to enter a higher world. The spiritual investigator at an appropriate stage of his development now sees, “You can no longer have a support in the world that you want to enter; you can no longer have the support of outer sense perception, of the intellectual judgment you have acquired, which otherwise guided you correctly through life”; when he has seen this, then comes the all-important, serious moment in the life of the spiritual investigator when he feels as if the ground is gone from under his feet, as if the support that he has had in ordinary life is gone, as if all security that has carried him up to now is gone and that he approaches an abyss into which with every further step he will surely fall. This must in a certain way become an experience in the spiritual training. That this experience not be accompanied by every possible danger is the primary concern of a true spiritual training today.

An attempt has been made to explain this more fully in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. If one undergoes the exercises offered there, one comes step by step to a point at which one feels what has just been described; one feels oneself as if over an abyss. One has already become so tranquil in one's soul, however, that one beholds the situation with a newly acquired, special faculty of judgment; therefore the fear, terror, and horror that otherwise needs must overtake the human soul in a dangerous way—not an ordinary, everyday fear—do not appear. One learns to know the basis of the fear, terror, and horror, but one has already progressed so as to achieve a mood in which one can endure it without fear.

Here we are again at a point at which it becomes necessary for the soul to recognize the truth and not fall into error, because the support that one has in ordinary life has disappeared, and the soul feels itself as if placed over an abyss. This must occur in order that, out of the emptiness, that which is fully spiritual in the world can approach the soul.

What in ordinary life is called anxiety, fear, will be intensified through such a training, expanded, just as self-love and the sense of self are intensified and expanded, growing into a kind of force of nature. Something must be said here that perhaps sounds paradoxical. In ordinary life if we have not struggled through to a certain courage, if we are cowards, we are frightened by this or that event if we have courage, however, we can endure it. In the region of the soul life we have described, fear, terror, and horror will approach us, but we must be in the position, as it were, not to be afraid of the fear, not to be horrified by the horror, not to become anxious with the anxiety that confronts us. This is the paradox, but it corresponds exactly with an actual soul experience that appears in this realm.

Everything that the human being experiences on entering the spiritual world is designated ordinarily as the experience with the Guardian of the Threshold. I tried to describe something concrete about this experience in my Mystery Drama, The Guardian of the Threshold. Here it only need be mentioned that at a certain stage of spiritual development, man learns to know his inner being as it can love itself with the force of an event of nature, as it can be frightened and horrified on entering the spiritual world. This experience of our own self, of the intensified self of that inner being that otherwise never would come before our soul, is the soul-shaking event called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. Only by having this meeting will one acquire the faculty to differentiate truth from error in the spiritual world.

Why this experience is called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold is easily comprehensible. It is clear that the spiritual world that man enters is always around us and that man is unaware of it in ordinary life only because he does not have the appropriate organs to perceive it. The spiritual world surrounds us always and is always behind that which the senses perceive. Before man can enter this world, however, he must strengthen his ego, his I. With the strengthening of the ego, however, the aforementioned qualities also appear. He therefore must learn above all else to know himself, so that when he is able to confront a spiritual outer world in the same way as he confronts an objective being he can distinguish himself from what is truth. If he does not learn to delimit himself in this way, he will always confuse that which is only within him, that which is only his subjective experience, with the spiritual world picture; he can never arrive at a real grasp of spiritual reality.

To what extent fear plays a certain role on entering the spiritual world can be observed particularly in the people who deny the existence of such a world. Among such people are also many who have different reasons for denying this spiritual world, but a great portion of those people who are theoretical materialists or materialistically tinged monists have a definite reason for denying this spiritual world, a reason that is clearly visible for one who knows the soul. We must now emphasize that the soul life of the human being is, as it were, twofold. In the soul not only does there exist what man ordinarily knows, but in the depths of the soul life things are happening that cast their shadows—or their lights—into ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness, however, does not reach down to this level. We can find in the hidden depths of soul hatred and love, joy and fear and excitement, without our carrying these effects into conscious soul life. It is therefore entirely correct to say that a phenomenon of hatred directed from one person to another, taking place within consciousness, actually can be rooted, in the depths of soul, in love. There can be a sympathy, a deep sympathy, of one person for another in the depths of the soul, but since this person at the same time has reasons—reasons about which he perhaps knows nothing—he is confused about this love, about the sympathy, deceiving himself with hatred and antipathy. This is something that holds sway in the depths of the soul, so that these depths look quite different from what we call our everyday consciousness. There can be conditions of fear, of anxiety, in the depths of the soul of which one has no conscious idea. Man can have that fear in the depths of his soul, that anxiety in face of the spiritual world—because he must cross the abyss that has been described before entering—and yet be aware of nothing consciously. Actually, all human beings who have not yet entered the spiritual world, but who have acquired an understanding of entering, have to a degree this fear, this terror in face of the spiritual world. Whatever one may think concerning this fear and anxiety that are within the depths of the soul, they are there, though they appear stronger with one person, weaker with another. Because the soul might be injured, man is protected by the wisdom-filled nature of his being from being able to look further into the spiritual world, from being able to have the experience of meeting the Guardian of the Threshold until he is ready for it. Before that he is protected. Therefore one speaks of the experience of the Guardian of the Threshold.

We can note that a materialistically or monistically minded person, although knowing nothing of this experience, does have this fear in face of the spiritual world in the depths of his soul. There lives in such a person a certain antipathy to confronting the abyss that must be crossed; and to help him get past this fear, this anxiety in the soul in face of the spiritual world, the monist or materialist thinks out his theories and denies the spiritual world; this denial is nothing other than a self-induced anesthesia in face of his fear. This is the real explanation for materialism. As unsympathetic as it may sound, for one who knows the soul it is evident that in a meeting of materialistic monists, or those who deny soul and spirit, there prevails only the fear in the face of the spiritual world. One could say mockingly that fear-mongering is the basis of materialism, and although it is mocking it is nevertheless true. In materialistic literature, in the materialistic world conception, the spiritual investigator recognizes everywhere between the lines fear and anxiety in face of the spiritual world. What in ordinary life appears as materialism, however, as the soul condition present when a person is a materialist or a materialistically tinged monist, can also be present when a person arrives through definite measures at a certain spiritual vision. One can go through certain exercises in the soul and develop thereby from a more-or-less unhealthy soul condition to a more-or-less spiritual comprehension, yet one need not come by this means to a real understanding of the nature of the spiritual world. In a certain way one can carry up into the spiritual something of this fear about which one knows nothing, which has already been characterized and which underlies the materialistically minded person in the ordinary world.

If one does not grasp this connection, one can carry up into the spiritual world something that is terribly widespread in ordinary life: the love of ease of thinking, the love of ease of feeling. Fear is closely akin to love of ease, to clinging to habit. Why is man afraid of changing his situation? Because he loves his ease and comfort. This love of ease is closely related to fear. We have already described the basis for hatred; in the same way one can also say that lassitude, love of ease, are closely related to fear. One can, however, carry this love of ease up into the spiritual world. No one ought to object that human beings show no evidence of fear or love of ease, for this is again characteristic; it is characteristic that the ordinary mood of soul knows nothing of these things rooted in the subconscious. If man carries fear into the spiritual world, already having developed to the point of acknowledging the spiritual world, then an error arises in a spiritual region, an error that is extraordinarily important to consider the leaning toward phenomenalism.

People who become subject to this leaning become, rather than spiritual investigators, “specterseers” (to express it crassly), those who see ghosts (Gespensterschauer); they become possessed by a leaning toward phenomenalism. This means that they want to see the spiritual world in the same way as the sense world is to be seen; they do not want to perceive spiritual facts, spiritual beings, but something similar to the beings that the sensory eye can behold. In short, instead of spirits they want to behold specters, ghosts. The error of spiritualism (this is not to say that all spiritualism is unjustified) consists of this leaning toward phenomenalism. Just as the ordinary, everyday materialist wants to see only matter everywhere and not the spirit behind matter, so does he who brings to the spiritual world the same soul condition that actually exists in materialism want to see everywhere only ghostlike, condensed spirits.

This is one dangerous extreme of error that can emerge. One must say that this tendency to carry the ordinary field of consciousness up into the super-sensible field of consciousness exists in the widest circles, even among those who fully recognize a “spiritual world” and want “proof” of a spiritual world. The error here, however, lies in considering a proof valid only if it takes place in the realm of phenomenalism; it lies in considering that everything should be like condensed ghosts. Here something arises that was called in the beginning of our study a stupor, losing consciousness in relation to the spiritual world. While losing consciousness in ordinary life is the penetration of a sleeping or dreaming condition into consciousness, losing consciousness regarding the spiritual world means wanting to give worth only to that which appears in the same way as things in the ordinary world, so that one is unconscious in relation to the spiritual world; it is demanded that proof be supplied that can be taken in the way appropriate only in the ordinary world. Just as one brings sleep into the ordinary world if one falls unconscious, so one falls unconscious in relation to the beings and processes of the spiritual world if one takes into the super-sensible world that which is only an extract of sense reality (das Sinnliche). The true spiritual investigator also knows those realms of the spiritual world that condense into the ghostlike, but he knows that everything arriving at such a condensation is merely the dying, the withering in the spiritual world. When, for example, with the help of a medium, something is brought to life as the thoughts of a deceased person, we are confronted only with what remains behind, as it were, of the deceased. We are not dealing with that which goes through the portal of death, which passes through the spiritual world and appears again in a new earthly life. We are concerned in such a case not with what is present in the individuality of the dead person but with the sheath that is cast off, the wooden part of the tree, or the shell of a shellfish, or the skin of the snake that is cast off. In the same way, such sheaths, such useless remnants, are continuously being cast off from the being of the spiritual world and then, by way of a medium, they can be made perceptible—although as visible unreality. The spiritual investigator knows, to be sure, that he is not confronting an unreality. He does not surrender himself to the error, however, that in encountering the described phenomenon he is confronted with something fertile, with something sprouting and budding; rather he knows it as something dying, withering. At the same time it must be emphasized that in the sense world, when one confronts error, one is dealing with something that must be ignored, that must be eliminated as soon as it is recognized as error, whereas in the spiritual world one cannot cope with error in the same way. There, an error corresponds to the dying, the withering, and the error consists of mistaking the dying and withering in the spiritual world for something fruitful or full of significance. Even in the life of the ordinary human being, error is something one casts off; in the spiritual world error arises when the dead, the dying, is taken for something fruitful, sprouting; one mistakes the dead remnants that have been cast off for immortality.

How deeply the best individuals of our time have been entangled in this kind of phenomenalism, considering only such proof as valid, we can see in an individual who wrote so many excellent things about the world and now has written a book about these phenomena, about these different phenomena of spiritual investigation. I am referring to Maurice Maeterlinck and his book, About Death. We read there that he acknowledges a spiritual world but as proof acknowledges only what appears in phenomenalism. He does not notice that he tries to find in phenomenalism that which can never be found in phenomenalism. Then he criticizes the “phenomena” very acutely, very effectively. He does notice, however, that all this actually has no particular meaning and that the human soul after death does not exhibit a very intense vitality, that it behaves rather awkwardly, as though groping in the dark. Since he wants to admit only this kind of proof, he generally does not acknowledge spiritual investigation but remains stuck.

We see how the possibility of error opens itself to someone who would gladly recognize the spiritual world but is unable to do so, because he does not demand spiritual investigation but rather “specter investigation” and does not make use of what reality can give. His newest book is extraordinarily interesting from this point of view.

In the leaning toward phenomenalism we thus have the one extreme among the possibilities for error in spiritual investigation. The other extreme among the possibilities for error is ecstasy, and between phenomenalism and ecstasy, in knowing both, lies the truth, or at least truth can be reached if one knows both. The path of error, however, lies as much on the side of phenomenalism as on the side of ecstasy. We have seen what soul condition leads into the wish to acknowledge only phenomenalism. It is fear, horror, which man does not admit, which he tries to conceal. Because he is afraid to abandon all sense reality and to make the leap over the abyss, he accepts sense reality, demands the specters, and arrives thereby only at the dying, at that which destroys itself: This is one source of error. The other force of the soul, intensified through the exercises often described here is self-love, sense of self; self-love has as its polarity—one would like to say—the “getting out of oneself.” This “enjoying oneself in oneself” (pardon the expression; it is a radical choice but points exactly to what we are concerned with here) is only one side; the other side consists of “losing oneself in the world,” the surrender and dissolving and self-enjoyment in the other and the corresponding intensification of this self-seeking coming-out-of-one's self is ecstasy in its extreme. It is the cause of a condition in which man in a certain respect can say to himself that he has gotten free of himself. He has become free of himself, however, only by feeling the comfort of his own self in the being outside himself. If the one who knows the soul looks at the evolution of mysticism in the world, he finds that a large part of mysticism consists of the phenomena just characterized. As great, as powerful in soul experiences, as deep and significant as mysticism can be, the possibilities of error in ecstasy are actually rooted in a false cultivation of the mystical faculty of the human being. When man strives always to enter more and more into himself, when he strives through this for what is called the deepening of his soul life, strives, as he says, to find “God in himself” this God that man finds in his inner being is usually nothing other than his own I or ego made into God. With many mystics we find, when they speak of the “God within,” nothing other than the God imprinted with their own egos. Mystical immersion in God is at times nothing but immersing oneself into one's own dear ego, especially into the parts of the ego into which one does not penetrate with full consciousness, so that one surrenders one's self, loses one's self, comes out of one's self, and yet remains only within one's self. Much that confronts us as mysticism shows that with false mystics love of God is often only disguised self-love.

The real spiritual investigator must guard himself on the one hand against carrying the outer sense world into the higher world; he must guard on the other hand against the opposite extreme, against false mysticism, the coming-out-of-oneself. He must never confuse “love for the spiritual being of the world” with self-love. In the moment that he confuses these, the following occurs, as the true spiritual investigator, who has developed himself correctly, can verify. Just as one who is compelled by phenomenalism beholds only the remnants, the dying of the spiritual world, so he who surrenders himself to the other extreme sees only individual parts of the spiritual world, not spiritual facts and beings. In the spiritual world he does not do what one who contemplates the flowers in a meadow does; rather, he does what the one does who takes what grows in the field, chops it up and eats it. This comparison is peculiar but absolutely to the point. Through ecstasy the spiritual facts are not grasped in their wholeness, their totality, but only in that which pleases and benefits one's own soul, that which the soul can consume spiritually. It is actually a consumption of spiritual substance that is cultivated in the human being through ecstasy. Just as little as one learns to know things of this sense world by eating them, so little does one learn to know the forces and beings of the spiritual world through giving oneself to ecstasy in order to warm one's own self with what feels good. One thereby comes to a definite knowledge only of one's own self in relation to the spiritual world. One lives only in a heightened sense of self, a heightened self-love, and because one takes in from the spiritual world only that which can be consumed spiritually, which can be eaten spiritually, one deprives oneself of that which cannot be handled in this way, of that which stands apart from the nourishment gained through ecstasy. What one deprives oneself of, however, is by far the greatest part of the spiritual world, and the mystic who clings to ecstasy is deprived more and more. We find with mystics who ascend to the spiritual world through ecstasy that it is exactly as if they were always indulging themselves through repeating feelings and sensations. Many presentations of such mystics appear not as objective presentations of the conditions of the spiritual world but as though the one who gives the presentation were indulging in what he presents. Many mystics are actually nothing but spiritual gourmets, and the rest of the spiritual world, which does not taste good to them, does not even exist for them.

We see again how concepts change when we ascend from the ordinary world into the higher world. If in the ordinary world we occupy ourselves only with our own concepts, we become poorer and poorer, our logic becomes ever poorer. Finally we find that we can no longer find our orientation, and anyone who knows the facts can set us straight. In the ordinary world we correct this meagerness by widening our concepts. In the spiritual world, that which corresponds to ecstasy leads to something else. By taking into us realities, and not something unreal—but taking in only isolated parts, after picking out what suits us—we receive a view of the spiritual world that is only suited to ourselves. We carry ourselves into the spiritual world just as in the other extreme, in phenomenalism, we carry the sense world into the spiritual world. It can always be shown in the case of one who arrives at a false picture of the world through ecstasy that he began from an unsound force of judgment, from an incomplete factual logic.

We thus see how the spiritual investigator always must avoid the two extremes that bring him to every possible source of error: phenomenalism on the one hand and ecstasy on the other. In order to avoid the sources of error, nothing will be more helpful than for the spiritual investigator to cultivate one particular mood of soul, through which he is in a position, when he places himself in the spiritual world, to exist in the spiritual world, to be able to observe calmly in that world. One cannot always remain in the spiritual world, however, so long as one is in the physical body; one must also live with the physical world; therefore this mood of soul that the spiritual investigator must cultivate allows him in the physical world to strive as much as possible to grasp the facts of life with common sense, without sentimentality and untruthfulness. It is necessary for the spiritual investigator, to a much higher degree than is ordinarily the case, to have a healthy sense for facts, a genuine feeling for truthfulness. All fanaticism, all inaccuracy, which make it so easy to skirt what is really there, are harmful for the spiritual investigator. One can see already in ordinary life, and it becomes clear immediately in the realm of spiritual training, that lie who lets himself indulge only the least bit in inaccuracy will notice that it is only a tiny step from inaccuracy to lies and untruthfulness. The spiritual investigator, therefore, must strive to feel himself obliged to hold firmly to the truth, to mix nothing with the unconditional truth that exists in ordinary life, for in the spiritual world such a mixing leads from error to error. In those circles wishing to have anything to do with spiritual investigation, the justified opinion should be spread that an outer, distinguishing characteristic of the true spiritual investigator must be his truthfulness; the moment the spiritual investigator demonstrates that he feels little obligation to test what he says, speaking rather of things he cannot know about the physical world, he becomes flawed as a spiritual investigator and no longer can merit a full trust. This is connected with the conditions for spiritual investigation itself.

It must be brought to our attention again and again that, when the realms of spiritual investigation and spiritual science are spoken of today, it is unjustified to claim that only the spiritual investigator can see into the spiritual world and that one who is not yet a spiritual investigator is unable to know and understand and grasp it. You can learn from the descriptions in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and from my presentation in An Outline of Occult Science that in our era to a certain degree every person, if only he makes the necessary effort, can become a spiritual investigator, no matter what his position in life is otherwise. Nevertheless, it is also possible for a person to understand the descriptions of the spiritual world without being a spiritual investigator. It is necessary to be a spiritual investigator not in order to understand the communications from the spiritual world but in order to discover them, to investigate what is present in the spiritual world. One must be a painter in order to paint a picture, but one need not be a painter to understand a picture; it is the same with understanding communications from the spiritual world with the sound human intellect. It is in order to investigate the spiritual world that the human being is endowed with the higher organs of observation. If what is investigated, however, is brought into the concepts of the ordinary world, as is often attempted here, the sound human intellect can, if only it is sufficiently unprejudiced and does not create obstructions for itself, grasp what is brought to light through spiritual investigation.

One could say that with spiritual investigation it is the same as it is with what grows under the earth and is found only when one digs into the earth like a miner. Whatever one finds there can originate only as it exists within the earth, developing in those layers of the earth that are covered by layers above it. What is in the depths of the earth cannot develop on the surface of the earth, which is illuminated by the sun during the day. If we then make an opening in the earth, however, and let the sunlight shine in, illuminating what is underneath, everything can appear in the light of the sun. It is the same with what can be gained through spiritual scientific investigation: it can be brought to light only if the soul has transformed itself into an organ of perception for the spiritual world. If it is brought into the concepts and mental images of ordinary life, however, then the human intellect, if only it is sufficiently sound, can understand and illuminate everything as if with spiritual sunlight. All of spiritual science, therefore, can be grasped by the sound human intellect. Just as a painting is not made merely for the painter himself, so the communications about the spiritual world are not only for the spiritual scientific investigator. Nevertheless, paintings are able to originate only through the painter, and the spiritual world can be explored only by the spiritual investigator.

He who believes that what comes from the communications of the spiritual investigator cannot be grasped by means of the ordinary intellect does not perceive at all correctly the nature and essence of the human capacity for thinking. In the human capacity for thinking reside faculties that stand in direct connection with the nature of the higher world. Because man is accustomed to approach only the ordinary sense objects with his concepts, he believes that the ordinary faculty of judgment vanishes in him if super-sensible facts are presented to him. He who develops his capacity for thinking, however, can cultivate this capacity in such a way that it can grasp what is brought to light through spiritual investigation. One must not have some notion beforehand, however, of how one can grasp such matters. This should result from the study itself. If one has a definite notion of how one should grasp these things, one surrenders oneself again to a serious error in relation to spiritual investigation. This is the second aspect that is especially noticeable in Maurice Maeterlinck's new book. He is an individual who wishes to direct his gaze to the spiritual world, who has made some fine observations about various things, and who has also tried to present the mysteries of the spiritual world dramatically; it is especially telling that this individual, in the moment in which he should approach the real science of the spirit, proves himself so inadequate. He demands a certain kind of understanding—not the kind given by the things themselves but the kind he imagines (ertraeumt), which he believes must appear to provide verification. In this way the greatest peculiarity arises: Maeterlinck takes to be merely a belief that which anthroposophy or spiritual science has to say when it speaks today about “repeated earthly lives”—when it speaks with a certain outer justification (not with a merely inner conviction, which would be akin to a certain primitive belief of humanity). He calls it a belief, because he cannot perceive that what we are concerned with here does not have to do with belief but with knowledge. He thus finds that the existence of that which develops further in man, moving from life to life, cannot be proved, because he has a definite idea of what constitutes proof. Maeterlinck can be compared in this realm to certain other people. Until recently, there existed a kind of belief, a certain mathematical-geometrical belief that is summarized in the words, the “squaring of the circle”; that is, one would seek by means of a mathematical-analytical, constructive thinking for that square which equaled the area or the circumference of the circle. This task of transforming the circle into a square was an ideal, as it were, toward which one always strove: the transforming of the circle into a square. Now, no one doubted that there could be a square exactly as large as a circle. In reality, of course, it is entirely possible for such a thing to exist, but it is impossible to show with mathematical constructions or with analytical methods just what the diameter of a circle would have to be to equal a particular square. This means that mathematical thinking does not suffice to prove something that is real, that is physical. There have been countless people who have worked on the solution of squaring the circle, until recent mathematicians proved that it is impossible to solve the problem in this way. Today anyone still trying to solve the problem of squaring the circle is considered not to know mathematics in this realm. Maeterlinck is equivalent to those people trying to square the circle in regard to what he is trying to prove. One can understand the spiritual world, can grasp that what is brought to light through spiritual investigation is real; one cannot prove the existence of this spiritual world, however, if one demands out of prejudice a particular kind of proof; one can prove it in this way as little as one can prove the squaring of a circle mathematically.

One would have to reply to Maeterlinck, therefore, that he tries to square the circle in the spiritual realm, or he would have to be shown how the concepts by which he would like to prove the existence of the spiritual world disappear when man passes through the portal of death. How is one supposed to prove the existence of the spiritual world with concepts such as those taken from the sense world? This, however, is what Maeterlinck is trying to do, and it is extraordinarily interesting that when he gives in to his healthy feeling, he has no choice but to acknowledge repeated lives on earth. It is very interesting how he expresses himself about a knowledge that he calls a belief, and I would like to read to you his own words: ‘Never was there a belief more beautiful, more just, more pure, more morally fruitful, more comforting, and in a certain sense more probable than this. With its teaching of gradual redemption and purification of all bodily and spiritual inequities, of all social injustice, all terrible’ injustices of destiny, it alone gives meaning to life. The goodness of a belief, however, is no proof of its truthfulness. Although six hundred million human beings devote themselves to this religion, although it is closest to the origins that are shrouded in darkness, although it is the only one without hatred, it should have done what the others have not done: bring us indisputable evidence. What it has given us up to now is only the first shadow of the beginning of a proof.” In other words, Maeterlinck is trying in this realm to square the circle.

We see especially clearly in this example how someone who can think that the benefit of spiritual science lies only in an extreme, in phenomenalism (all his writings show this), is totally unable to keep in view the significance and the real nature of spiritual scientific investigation. From such an example as Maeterlinck, we can learn a lot, namely that truth, which must be introduced into the world evolution of humanity, is really, when it first appears, in the position once characterized by Schopenhauer with the words, “In all centuries poor truth had to blush over being paradoxical.” To Maeterlinck, truth appears not just paradoxical but unbelievable, yet it is not the fault of truth. Truth cannot take on the form of the universally reigning error. Thus she looks sighing to her patron god, Time, which promises her victory and glory, but whose vast wings beat so slowly that she dies in the meantime. So it goes with the course of the spiritual evolution of humanity. It is most interesting and instructive that the best individuals today, those human beings who long to have their soul life connected with a spiritual world, are not capable of grasping the core of the actual science of the spirit. Instead, where it involves distinguishing the true path from the two possibilities for error, they stumble, because they do not dare leap over the abyss; they wish either to make use of their dependence on the ordinary world, in phenomenalism, or, if they do not do this, they seek an intensification of the sense of self in ecstasy. We cannot concern ourselves only with recognizing the character of the separate possibilities for error; we must concern ourselves with that which humanity must avoid if one is to recognize and close up the source of spiritual scientific error. From the way in which today's study has been undertaken, one conclusion can be drawn: spiritual investigation must know the sources of error. The temptation is always present in the soul to err in the direction of phenomenalism, and therefore to stand as though spiritually unconscious in relation to the spiritual world, or to err in the direction of ecstasy, which means wanting to enter the spiritual world with inadequate organs of spirit and thus receiving only isolated pieces and not related facts.

The path goes between the two extremes. One must know the possibilities for error. Because they can appear with every step in spiritual life one must not only know them but overcome them. The revelations of spiritual investigation are not only results of investigation but also victories over error, victory by means of a way of looking that has been gained previously, victory over the sense of self and more. He who penetrates more deeply into what we have tried to describe only sketchily today will become aware that—even if everywhere where we embark on the investigation of spiritual life the possibilities for error can lurk frighteningly—we nevertheless must conquer error again and again. He will become aware that spiritual investigation not only satisfies an indomitable yearning for that which man needs for certainty in his life but that its goal must appear, to one who regards this movement with comprehension, as attainable to a sound human sense. To conclude what today's lecture was to offer on the level of feeling, I would like to say that in spite of all obstacles, in spite of all things that can stand in a hostile way on the path of spiritual investigation, those who penetrate with a sound sense into the results of spiritual scientific. investigation feel and sense that these results penetrate—through difficult hindrances of soul, through bewildering darknesses of spirit—to a solemn clarity, to a luminous truth.

It is, after all, something that should be taken into account that a meeting was convened some time ago by the opponents of the things presented at the Vienna Anthroposophical Congress, at which a wide variety of speakers spoke out of the materialistic sense of the present and that at the end a particularly materialistically minded physician summarized the various speeches in a slogan that was intended to represent a kind of motto for the opponents of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science: the battle against the spirit. — It is simply the case that today there are people who see the battle against the spirit as a real motto.

When such a word is uttered, one is reminded again and again of how many people, well-meaning people, there are in the present day who, in the face of what is prevailing in the civilized world, are actually caught in a kind of sleep state, who do not want to hear where things are heading. They consider things of the greatest importance to be insignificant phenomena of the times, the opinion of one person or another, whereas it is in fact the case that today a striving that is present in the real progress of human development is clearly asserting itself. And actually all those who can muster an understanding for such a cause should also be most intensely involved with it in their hearts in order to truly muster it.

I have now tried to show, by taking two personalities as examples, how deeper natures in particular were placed in the newer currents of thought. I have contrasted these two personalities, Franz Brentano and Nietzsche, to show how, from the most diverse sides, people who are initially oriented towards the spiritual are, as it were, submerged in the contemporary scientific way of thinking. If we consider personalities who have shared the fate I have outlined, we may perhaps be more deeply moved than if such things are presented only in the form of an abstract description.

In the case of Brentano, I wanted to illustrate how a personality who grew up in an education shaped entirely by Catholicism retained for life, on the one hand, what Catholic Christianity had implanted in its soul in terms of an affinity for the spiritual world. In Franz Brentano, who was born in 1838 and thus lived during the time when the scientific way of thinking of the nineteenth century flooded all human research and spiritual striving, we see what lives on from very old currents of world view.

If we look at young Brentano, who studied in Catholic seminaries in the 1850s and 1860s, we find that his soul was filled with two things that guided him in a certain way. One is the Catholic doctrine of revelation, to which he stood in a position that theologians of the Catholic Church have held since the Middle Ages. The Catholic revelation about everything spiritual is traditionally received. One finds oneself in a kind of knowledge of the supersensible worlds that has come to man through grace. For Brentano, the other element was connected with this, through which he first wanted to understand what he had received through the Catholic doctrine of revelation. That was Aristotelian philosophy, the philosophy that was still developed in ancient Greece. And until the mid-sixties, perhaps even a little longer, Brentano's soul lived in a way that was entirely in keeping with the spirit of a medieval scholastic: one must accept what man is meant to know of transcendental worlds as revealed by the Church, and one can apply one's thinking to the study of nature and life according to the instructions of the greatest teacher for this research, according to the instructions of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

These two things, Aristotelianism and Catholic revelation, were indeed connected in the spiritual life of the medieval scholastics, who regarded them as compatible. This continued in Franz Brentano. He was only shaken in such a view by what then confronted him as the scientific method, so strongly shaken that when he took up his post as a private lecturer in Würzburg, he established as a main thesis the proposition that in all philosophy it must be done as in natural science. And then he wanted to found a psychology, a doctrine of the soul, in which the life of the soul would be considered in the same way that natural science considers external natural phenomena.

It is therefore fair to say that this man underwent a very radical change. He wanted to combine knowledge gained through revelation with knowledge gained through reason, which is limited only to earthly things. He thus demanded that science can only be what is formed according to the pattern of scientific methodology. One should really stop and think about what such a radical change really means.

What I would like to draw your attention to first is that, up until this change, medieval scholastic thinking still seems to be present in an extraordinary personality. This continues to have an effect, as it does today in many contemporaries who are honestly Catholic, as it basically exists, albeit in a slightly different form, in many honest confessors of the Protestant faiths. If I quoted Nietzsche, it was because, although Nietzsche did not have a survival of medieval scholasticism in his soul, something else lived on in his soul, namely, what emerged during the Renaissance as a kind of reaction to scholasticism. Nietzsche had a kind of Greek wisdom of art that formed the basis for his entire world view. He had it in the same way that the men of the Renaissance had it. But these men of the Renaissance by no means already had the urge and the inclination not to recognize the spiritual in its reality. They sensed, they still felt the reality of the spiritual. So that something from ancient times also survived in Nietzsche's soul. And he, too, as I told you yesterday, had to immerse himself in the scientific view of the 19th century and completely lost what connected his soul to a spiritual world.

The implications of this point to some tremendously significant riddles for the true seeker of truth in the present day. Let us take the two streams of spiritual thought that penetrated the life of the soul, as they lie in medieval scholasticism. Let us visualize what is actually present. I would like to do it in the following way. Within medieval scholasticism, we have a number of, let us say, doctrines about the supersensible world, for example about the Trinity of the original spiritual being, about the incarnation of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. series of doctrines that must be said to relate not to the sensual but to the supersensible world, which in very ancient times were once found by people who were then initiates, initiates. For one must not imagine, of course, that something like the doctrine of the Trinity or the Incarnation was simply invented by someone to deceive people. These doctrines are rather the results of the experiences of former initiates. That they were regarded as a supernatural revelation is only a later conception. Such doctrines were originally found by way of initiation. Later on, however, it was no longer admitted that one could undergo such an initiation and arrive at the conception of the Trinity oneself, for example.

There were such conclusions, which the medieval scholastic admitted to the knowledge of reason, which touched the supernatural; only the view of the supernatural was not admitted. But reason was admitted, through which one could not understand the real knowledge of revelation, but through which one could approach something like the existence of God or the beginning of the existence of the world. These truths, which could be found through reason, were called preambula fidei, and could then form a basis for penetrating to that which could not be explored by reason, but which was said to be the content of revelation.

Now, having juxtaposed these two currents of thought, of knowledge, let us place ourselves in the mind of a person who juxtaposed them in his own soul. During the period in which scholasticism flourished, what lived in a scholastic was by no means the evil that uninformed people tell of today, but at a certain time in medieval development it was simply what was required by the development of humanity. One could not have had any other view at that particular time. Today, of course, things have changed. Today, we have to find different ways to knowledge and to human soul activity than those that were at home in scholasticism. But that is why one should still try to penetrate this scholasticism with understanding. And you can only do that if you now ask yourself: How did the knowledge of revelation stand in the soul of an honest scholastic, alongside the knowledge of reason that was directed towards natural phenomena and towards one-sided conclusions of reason from natural phenomena? How did these two things stand side by side?

What did such a scholastic want, and with him all his believers, all who were honestly Catholic, when he put himself in the frame of mind that was in line with revelation, when he said: What the dogmas give must not be looked at, looking at it is not possible; one must accept it as a revelation? The scholastic attempted to evoke a certain mood of soul in relation to the supersensible world. He was completely imbued with the fact that this supersensible world exists and stands in an intimate relationship to that which lives in man as soul. But he did not seek a path of knowledge in man in order to come directly through his own personality to that which stands as the supersensible world in an intimate relationship to man.

Imagine this mood. It was the mood towards, I would say, a known unknown, towards an unknown acquaintance, towards someone you should worship and revere, but to whom you should still be shy, so that you do not, so to speak, open your eyes to him.

Next to it stood the knowledge of reason. Scholastic reason was an extraordinarily astute one, something that has not been achieved again later. One would wish – I have also said it here several times – that people who do natural science or science in general today would only learn to think as sharply as the scholastics were able to think. It was a rational knowledge that only denied itself the right to go beyond certain limits: knowledge by revelation on the one hand, rational knowledge on the other. But if we now compare the knowledge by revelation and the rational knowledge of the scholastics with similar structures of today, then a great difference becomes apparent.

The scholastic said to himself: You dare not intrude with your knowledge into the realm from which you are only supposed to have revelations. You dare not intrude into a vision of the Trinity, into a vision of the Incarnation. But in the revelation that he received through his church, ideas of the Trinity and ideas of the Incarnation were given. They were described. People said to themselves: knowledge does not penetrate to these things, but one can think about them if one reflects on these things in the sense of what has been revealed. You cannot say of the medieval scholastics that they had a mere dark mystical feeling of the supernatural. It was not that. It was a thinking that was already trained in plastic ideas and that grasped the content of Revelation. They thought about the Trinity, they thought about the Incarnation. But they did not think as one thinks when one arrives at a conclusion oneself, but as one thinks thoughts that are revealed to one.

You see, that too still corresponds to a certain fact of higher knowledge. There are still people today who have certain atavistic clairvoyant views, as you might call them, who have dream-like imaginations. There are people who, for example, can rise in such atavistic clairvoyant imaginations to the point of visualizing the events of Atlantis. That still exists today. Don't think that there are no thoughts in what such people have as clairvoyant imaginations. Such seers often have much more plastic thoughts than our strange logicians, who learn to think from today's schooling. Sometimes one would like to despair of the logic of those who learn to think from today's schooling, while one need not despair of the logic that simply reveals itself atavistically and clairvoyantly; for this is often very strictly developed.

Thus, even today it can be shown that thinking is already present in that which is truly revealed supersensibly for human observation. This was also the case in medieval scholasticism. It is only in recent times that thought has been eradicated from the content of revelation, so that today faith seeks to distil not only knowledge but also thinking out of its content. The medieval scholastics did not do that. They did extract the knowledge, but not the thinking. Therefore, if you take the dogmatics of medieval scholasticism, you will find a very highly developed system of thinking.

This lived on in a man like Franz Brentano. That is why he could think. He could grasp thoughts. This can be seen even in the rudiments of his psychology, in which he only got as far as the first volume. There you can still see that he has a certain inner plasticity of thought formation, even though he constantly steps on his own feet in a terrible way and thus does not make any progress. As soon as he has any thought about a psychological construct - and he has such - he immediately forbids himself to think about the things. This prohibition is something extraordinary today. I have told you how an extraordinarily brilliant man, who wrote the important book 'The Whole of Philosophy and its End', told me in Vienna himself recently: 'I have my thoughts about what stands behind mere events as the primal factors.' But scientifically he forbids himself to have these thoughts. One could easily imagine, hypothetically of course, that a scientifically trained person today would suddenly become clairvoyant through a miracle, and that he would fight against this clairvoyance in the worst possible way. One could easily imagine this hypothetically because the authority of knowledge that clings to the external is enormous. So that was one thing that lived in the soul of the medieval scholastic: a specifically formulated content of revelation. On the other hand, there was a rational knowledge that was based on nature, but it was not yet the same as our present-day knowledge of nature. To substantiate this, just open a book of natural history, for example by Albertus Magnus; you will probably find descriptions of natural objects as they are described today – but they are described differently than they are today – but alongside that, you will still find all kinds of elemental and spiritual beings. Spirit still lives in nature, and it is not the case that only the completely dry sensual evidence is described as natural history and natural science. These two things live side by side, a content of revelation, in the face of which one prohibits oneself from knowing, but which one nevertheless thinks, so that the human spirit still attains it in its thoughts, and a content of rational knowledge, which still has spirit, but which also still has something that one must look at if one wants to have it before oneself in its reality.

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Knowledge of nature has developed out of medieval scholasticism. One branch of scholasticism, knowledge by reason, has developed further and become the modern view of nature. But what has happened as a result? Imagine the thoughts of a scholasticist regarding knowledge of nature quite vividly. There is still spiritual content in them. What do these spiritual contents protect the medieval scholastic natural scientist from?

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Perhaps I can illustrate this schematically. Suppose this here was such a medieval scholastic with his longing for revelational knowledge at the top and his longing for knowledge of nature at the bottom. But in the knowledge of nature, he has the spiritual. I'll let some red pass. He has thinking in the knowledge of revelation. I'll let some yellow pass. Where does this rational knowledge actually want to go? It wants to go out to the objects, to the things around us. The thoughts you have want to snap into place with the objects. You don't want to recognize just any plant, you want to form a concept of the plant, without you counting on it: the concept snaps in there, it wants to snap in. But with the scholastic, the spiritual content, which still permeates his rational knowledge, prevents him from really snapping in down there. It doesn't snap completely, it is, as it were, thrown back a little. What does it not snap into? When today's intellectualistic rational knowledge snaps into external nature, when it snaps fully into it, it actually snaps fully into the Ahrimanic. What then does the spirituality of the medieval scholastic mean in relation to his rational knowledge? That basically, he wants to approach nature with this rational knowledge as if it were something that burns a little. But he feels the burning and shrinks back again and again: nature is sin! He guards himself against Ahriman! But further development has brought this: in the nineteenth century it has thrown out of all spiritual rational knowledge, and with that rational knowledge snapped into the Ahrimanic.

And what does rational knowledge, which has snapped into the outer Ahrimanic, say? It says: the world consists of atoms, atomic movement is the basis of all scientific knowledge. It explains warmth and light as atomic movements, it explains everything in the external world as atomic movements, because that satisfies our need for causality.

In 1872, Da Bois-Reymond gave his famous lecture in Leipzig on the limits of knowledge of nature. It is the lecture in which the rational knowledge of scholasticism has advanced so far that all spirituality has been thrown out; and with the motto “Ignorabimus” the spirit of man should snap into the Ahrimanic. And Du Bois-Reymond describes very vividly how a human mind that now has an overview of everything that swirls as atoms in the universe no longer sees green and blue, but only perceives atomic movements everywhere. It feels no warmth, but wherever there is warmth, it feels that movement of which I spoke to you here eight days ago. He suppresses everything in his mind that has to do with colors, temperatures, sounds, etc. He fills his head with an understanding of the world that consists only of atoms. Imagine: the whole world as imagined by someone who thinks in terms of atoms. He has it all figured out in his head: the moment Caesar crossed the Rubicon, there was a certain constellation of atoms in our cosmos. Now he only needs to be able to set up the differential equation, and so, by continuing the calculation, he finds the next constellation, and the next, and so on. He can calculate the most distant future. Du Bois-Reymond called this the Laplacean mind because it was also an ideal of Laplace. So there we have, in 1872, a description of an intellect that comprehends the world universally, that comprehends everything as atomic motion, and all you need to do is know the differential equations and then integrate them, and you get the world formula.

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But what has actually been achieved as a result? What has been achieved is that one has learned to think as Ahriman can think, what the Ahrimanic ideal of thinking is. One can only recognize the full significance of what is happening in our time when one knows what it actually is. The Ignorabimus speech will go down in the history of the development of the modern spirit, but its true significance will only be recognized when we are in a position to show that here the one branch of the scholastic school of thought has actually snapped into the Ahrimanic. You see, the scholastic, so to speak, kept his knowledge in suspense. It did not quite reach what is out there. He always withdrew with his knowledge before Ahriman. That is why he had such a need to develop truly ingenious concepts; because ingenious concepts still have to be developed through human effort. When it comes to conducting experiments, well, then you only need human endeavor to put the apparatus together and so on, but the kind of astute thinking that scholasticism had is not needed.

This meant a very important turning point when one was once snapped into the Ahrimanic. Because what you see outside as the sensual phenomena of the world, as your sensual environment, that is only there as long as the earth is there. It perishes with our planet. What lives on are the thoughts that snap in outside. When something is conceived that is in line with Laplacean thinking, or what Du Bois-Reymond presented as an ideal of natural scientific thinking, it means not only that it is conceived, but that these are real thoughts that snap into place outside. And when everything we see with our senses on earth has perished, these thoughts can live on, if they are not eradicated beforehand. Therefore, there is a real danger that, if such a way of thinking becomes general, our earth will change into a planet corresponding to the materialists' conceptions. Materialism is only a mere doctrine as long as it does not become reality. But the Ahrimanic powers strive to make the thoughts of materialism so strong and widespread that the only thing left of the earth are atoms.

If we say today that we have to explain everything in terms of atoms, that is an error. But if all people start to think that everything has to be explained in terms of atoms, if all people put on Laplacian minds, then the earth will really consist of atoms. It is not true from primeval times that the earth consists of atoms and their components, but humanity can bring this about. That is the essential thing. Man is not merely predisposed to have wrong views, but wrong thoughts create wrong realities; when wrong thoughts become general, realities arise.

This danger from Ahriman has already manifested itself today. The other danger in the knowledge of revelation was sought to be avoided by the medieval scholastic, who still had the knowledge of revelation clothed in thoughts. It was concrete thoughts that grasped the content of the revelation. The dogmas were gradually thought through so little that people came to drop them altogether in general. One should indeed drop what is not understood. This is fully justified on the one hand, and if people can no longer follow the dogmas to the point of seeing them, it is natural that they drop them. But then what do they come to? Then they arrive at the most abstract of thoughts of dependence on some quite indefinite eternal or infinite. Then thoughts are no longer vividly formed that carry the content of the Revelation within them, but only some kind of dependence on some kind of infinite is felt in dark mysticism. Then the content of the thought disappears. This path has also been taken in recent times. It is the path that leads to the Luciferic. And just as surely as the path of knowledge through reason in modern times has led to the Ahrimanic, just as surely the other path can lead to the Luciferic.

And now look again at a mind like Franz Brentano's in the sense I have described. Franz Brentano approaches nature with this attitude: Just don't touch Ahriman! - and to the supersensible world: Just don't touch Lucifer! — So just don't become atomistic, just don't become a mystic. With this attitude he approaches natural science, which is such a powerful authority that he submits to it. He describes the phenomena of the soul in terms of the scientific method. If he had approached the subject from a more superficial point of view, as many of today's psychologists do, he would have written a doctrine of the soul inspired by Ahriman, a kind of psychology, a 'doctrine of the soul without a soul'. He could not do that. Therefore, he abandoned the attempt after the first volume, and did not write the following volumes – there should have been four – because something in him did not allow him to grasp the idea of rushing headlong into the purely Ahrimanic.

And take Nietzsche. Nietzsche was likewise seized by natural science. But how did he take up natural science? He did not really care much about the individual methods, but only looked at the natural scientific way of thinking in general. He said to himself: All that is spiritual is based in the physiological, is a “human, all too human” thing. What should actually be divine-spiritual ideals are an expression, a manifestation of the human, of the all-too-human. He rejected the very kind of knowledge that can be found in Brentano: knowledge through reason. He allowed the will to become active in him. And, as I said yesterday, he wore down the ideals, he wore down the spiritual. This is the other phenomenon where a personality, as it were, approaches the Ahrimanic, but strikes against it. Instead of snapping, he strikes. He also wants to develop atomism, but he strikes against a wall.

And so we see how such minds develop their particular soul mood in the 19th century because they come so very close to what plays into our knowledge as Ahrimanic powers. That is the fate of such minds in the 19th century: they come so incredibly close to Ahriman. And then they either end up in a situation like Brentano's, where they shyly retreat at the very boundary and do not advance at all with their knowledge, or they start lashing out like Nietzsche. But it is the Ahrimanic power that brought its waves to knowledge in the 19th century, which then had an effect on the 20th century. And one should understand that. And the original spirits who personally experienced this still half-masked encounter with Ahriman in the 19th century had a tragic fate behind them. But the students now received the prepared thoughts. These thoughts live in them. The Ahrimanic power has already formed the thoughts. The first original spirits recoiled; the pupils received the incomplete ahrimanic thoughts. These are now at work in them: 'Fight against the spirit', against the spirit that just does not want to surrender the earth to the ahrimanic powers, hatred of the spirit, fight against the spirit!

Today we must see this as a real connection. It lives today as a mood of the times, as a state of mind. We must understand it in order to truly grasp how necessary it is to assert a truly spiritual world view in all the different cultural forms in which such a world view must be lived.

Yesterday¹ I spoke about initiation science. Today² I shall describe some aspects of what nowadays gives expression to initiation science. A profound breach now runs through the whole of civilization, a breach which brings much chaos to the world and which people who are fully aware cannot but experience with a sense of tragedy. One expression of this breach is the fact that human beings, when considering human dignity and their worth as human beings, can no longer find any connection with a world to which they look up—that world which gives the human soul religious feelings both profound and uplifting—namely, the world of moral values.

People look instead to the world of nature, to which, of course, they also belong. During the course of recent centuries the world of nature has come to appear before the human soul in such a way that it has absorbed the whole of reality, has absorbed every aspect of actual existence. The world of nature, with its laws which are indifferent to moral values, runs its course in accordance with external necessity, and in their everyday life human beings, too, are tied up in this necessity. However the bounds of this necessity are defined, if human beings feel themselves enclosed within such bounds, it is impossible for them to discover what it is that makes them human. Human beings have to look up from the world of nature to the world of moral values. We have to see the content of this moral world as something which ought to be, something which is the ideal. Yet no knowledge which is current today is capable of showing us how moral ideals can flow into the laws of nature and how necessity can be made to serve moral values.

We have to admit that today's world is divided into two parts which, for modern consciousness, are incompatible: the moral world and the material world. People see birth and death as the boundaries which encompass the only existence recognized by present-day knowledge. On the other hand they have to look up to a world which lies above birth and death, a world which is eternally meaningful, unlike the endlessly changing material world; and they have to think of their soul life as being linked with the eternal meaning of that world of moral values. The Platonic view of the world, containing as it did the last remnants of orientalism, saw the external world perceptible to the senses as a semblance, an illusion, and the world of ideas as the true, real world. But for modern human beings, if they remain within the confines of present-day consciousness, this Platonic world view has no answers.

But now initiation science wants to enter once again into human civilization and show us that behind the world perceived by our senses there stands a spiritual world, a mighty world, powerful and real, a world of moral values to which we may turn. It is the task of initiation science to take away from natural existence the absolute reality it assumes for itself and to give reality back once more to the world of moral values. It can only do so by using means of expression different from those given by today's language, today's world of ideas and concepts.

The language of initiation science still seems strange, even illusory, to people today because they have no inkling that real forces stand behind the expressions used, nor that, whatever kind of speech is used—whether ordinary everyday speech or speech formation—language cannot give full and adequate expression to what is seen and perceived. What, after all, do the words ‘human being’ signify, when only the speech sounds are considered, compared with the abundant richness of spirit, soul and body of an actual human being standing before us! In just such a way in initiation science a spiritual world—behind the world of the senses—living in the world of moral values, storms and flows, working in manifold ways. This initiation science has to select all manner of ways of expressing what, despite everything, will be far richer in its manifestation than any possible means of expression.

Today I should like to speak about certain expressions of this kind with regard to man's immediate existence, expressions which have been discussed here in one connection or another over the last few days and which are well known to those of you who have concerned yourselves over a period of time with anthroposophical spiritual science.

It is both right and wrong to say that the true being of man is beyond understanding. It is right in a certain sense, but not in the sense frequently meant nowadays. Yet the true being of man is indeed revealed to initiation science in a way which defies direct definitions, descriptions or explanations. To make use of a comparison I might say that defining the being of man is like trying to draw a picture of the fulcrum of a beam. It cannot be drawn. You can draw the left-hand and the right-hand portions of the beam but not the fulcrum upon which it turns. The fulcrum is the point at which the right-hand and the left-hand portions of the beam begin. In a similar way the profoundest element of the human being cannot be encompassed by adequate concepts and ideas. But it can be grasped by endeavouring to look at deviations from the true human being. The being of man represents the state of balance poised between deviations that constantly want to go off in opposite directions. Human beings throughout their life are permanently beset by two dangers: deviation in one of two directions, the luciferic or the ahrimanic.³

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In ordinary life our state of balance is maintained because only a part of our total, our full being, is harnessed to our bodily form, and because it is not we who hold this bodily form in a state of balance within the world as a whole, but spiritual beings who stand behind us. Thus, in ordinary consciousness, we are on the whole unaware of the two dangers which can cause us to deviate from our state of balance towards one side or the other, towards the luciferic or the ahrimanic side. This is what is characteristic of initiation science. When we begin to comprehend the world in its true nature we feel as though we were standing on a high rock with one abyss on our right and another on our left. The abyss is ever-present, but in ordinary life we do not see this abyss, or rather these two abysses. To learn to know ourselves fully we have to perceive these abysses, or at least we have to learn about them. We are drawn in one direction towards Lucifer and in the other towards Ahriman. And the ahrimanic and the luciferic aspects can be characterized in relation to the body, the soul and the spirit.

Let us start from the point of view of man's physical being. This physical being, which the senses perceive as a unit, is in fact only seemingly so. Actually we are forever in tension between the forces which make us young and those which make us old, between the forces of birth and the forces of death. Not for a single moment throughout our life is only one of these forces present; always both are there.

When we are small, perhaps tiny, children, the youthful, luciferic forces predominate. But even then, deep down, are the ageing forces, the forces which eventually lead to the sclerosis of our body and, in the end, to death. It is necessary for both kinds of force to exist in the human body. Through the luciferic forces there is always a possibility of inclining towards, let me say, the phosphoric side, towards warmth. In the extreme situation of an illness this manifests in a fever, such as a pleuritic condition, a state of inflammation. This inclination towards fever and inflammation is ever-present and is only held in check or in balance by those other forces which want to lead towards solidified, sclerotic, mineral states. The nature of the human being arises from the state of balance between these two polar-opposite forces.

Valid sciences of human physiology and biology will only be possible when the whole human body and each of its separate organs, such as heart, lungs, liver, are seen to encompass polar opposites which incline them on the one hand towards dissolution into warmth and, on the other hand, towards consolidation into the mineral state. The way the organs function will only be properly understood once the whole human being, as well as each separate organ, are seen in this light. The science of human health and sickness will only find a footing on healthy ground once these polarities in the physical human being are able to be seen everywhere. Then it will be known, for instance, that at the change of teeth, around the seventh year, ahrimanic forces are setting to work in the head region; or that when the physical body starts to develop towards the warmth pole at puberty, this means that luciferic forces are at work; that in the rhythmical nature of the human being there are constant swings of the pendulum, physically too, between the luciferic and the ahrimanic aspect. Until we learn to speak thus, without any superstition, but with scientific exactness, about the luciferic and ahrimanic influences upon human nature—just as today we speak without superstition or mysticism about positive and negative magnetism, about positive and negative electricity, about light and darkness—we shall not be in a position to gain knowledge of the human being which can stand up to the abstract knowledge of inorganic nature that we have achieved during the course of recent centuries.

In an abstract way many people already speak about all kinds of polarities in the human being. Mystical, nebulous publications discuss all kinds of positive and negative influences in man. They shy away from ascending to a much more concrete, more spiritual, but spiritually entirely concrete plane, and so they speak in a manner about the human being's positive and negative polarities which is just as abstract as that in which they discuss polarities in inorganic nature. Real knowledge of the human being can only come about if we rise above the poverty-stricken concepts of positive and negative, the poverty-stricken concepts of polarity as found in inorganic nature, and ascend to the meaningful concepts of luciferic and ahrimanic influences in man.

Turning now to the soul element, in a higher sense the second element of man's being, we find the ahrimanic influence at work in everything that drives the soul towards purely intellectual rigid laws. Our natural science today is almost totally ahrimanic. As we develop towards ahrimanic soul elements, we discard anything that might fill our concepts and ideas with warmth. We submit only to whatever makes concepts and ideas ice-cold and dry as dust. So we feel especially satisfied in today's scientific thinking when we are ahrimanic, when we handle dry, cold concepts, when we can make every explanation of the world conform to the pattern we have established for inorganic, lifeless nature. Also, when we imbue our soul with moral issues, the ahrimanic influence is found in everything that tends towards what is pedantic, stiff, philistine on the one hand; but also in what tends towards freedom, towards independence, towards everything that strives to extract the fruits of material existence from this material existence and wants to become perfect by filling material existence.

Both ahrimanic and luciferic influences nearly always display two sides. In the ahrimanic direction, one of these—the pedantic, the philistine, the one-sidedly intellectual aspect—leads us astray. But on the other side there is also something that lies in mankind's necessary line of evolution, something which develops a will for freedom, a will to make use of material existence, to free the human being and so on.

The luciferic influence in the human soul is found in everything that makes us desire to fly upwards out of ourselves. This can create nebulous, mystical attitudes which lead us to regions where any thought of the material world seems ignoble and inferior. Thus we are led astray, misled into despising material existence entirely and into wanting instead to indulge in whatever lies above the material world, into wanting wings on which to soar above earthly existence, at least in our soul. This is how the luciferic aspect works on our soul. To the ahrimanic aspect of dull, dry, cold science is added a sultry mysticism of the kind that in religions leads to an ascetic disdain for the earth, and so on.

This description of the ahrimanic and luciferic aspects of soul life shows us that the human soul, too, has to find a balance between polar opposites. Like the ahrimanic, the luciferic aspect also reveals possibilities for deviation and, at the same time, possibilities for the necessary further evolution of the proper being of man. The deviation is a blurred, hazy, nebulous mysticism that allows any clear concepts to flutter away into an indeterminate, misty flickering of clarity and obscurity with the purpose of leading us up and away from ourselves. On the other hand, a luciferic influence which is entirely justifiable, and is indeed a part of mankind's necessary progress, is made manifest when we fill material existence with today's genuine life principles, not in order to make exhaustive use of the impulses of this material existence—as is the case with ahrimanic influences—but in order to paralyse material existence into becoming a semblance which can then be used in order to describe a super-sensible realm, in order to describe something that is spiritually real, and yet—in this spiritual reality—cannot also be real in the world of the senses merely through natural existence.

Luciferic forces endow human beings with the possibility of expressing the spirit in the semblance of sense-perceptible existence. It is for this that all art and all beauty are striving. Lucifer is the guardian of beauty and art. So in seeking the right balance between luciferic and ahrimanic influences we may allow art—Lucifer—in the form of beauty, to work upon this balance. There is no question of saying that human beings must guard against ahrimanic and luciferic influences. What matters is for human beings to find the right attitude towards ahrimanic and luciferic influences, maintaining always a balance between the two. Provided this balance is maintained, luciferic influences may be permitted to shine into life in the form of beauty, in the form of art. Thus something unreal is brought into life as if by magic, something which has been transformed into a semblance of reality by the effort of human beings themselves.

It is the endeavour of luciferic forces to bring into present-day life something that has long been overtaken by world existence, something that the laws of existence cannot allow to be real in present-day life. If human beings follow a course of cosmic conservation, if they want to bring into the present certain forms of existence which were right and proper in earlier times, then they fall in the wrong way under the influence of the luciferic aspect. If, for instance, they bring in a view of the world that lives only in vague pictures such as were justifiable in ancient cosmic ages, if they allow everything living in their soul to become blurred and mingled, they are giving themselves up in the wrong way to luciferic existence. But if they give to external existence a form which expresses something it could not express by its own laws alone—marble can only express the laws of the mineral world—if they force marble to express something it would never be able to express by means of its own natural forces, the result is the art of sculpture; then, something which cannot be a reality in a sense-perceptible situation of this kind, something unreal, is brought as if, by magic into real existence. This is what Lucifer is striving to achieve. He strives to lead human beings away from the reality in which they find themselves between birth and death into a reality which was indeed reality in earlier times but which cannot be genuine reality for the present day.

Now let us look at the spiritual aspect of the human being. We find that here, too, both luciferic and ahrimanic influences are called upon. In life here on earth the being of man expresses itself in the first instance in the alternating states of waking and sleeping. In the waking state the spiritual part of our being is fully given over to the material world. The following must be said in this connection: In sleep, from the moment of going to sleep to the moment of waking up, we find ourselves in a spirit-soul existence. On going to sleep we depart with our spirit-soul existence from our physical and etheric bodies, and on waking up we enter with our spirit and soul once again into our physical and etheric bodies. In sleep, you could say, we bear our state of soul-spirit within us; but on waking up we keep back our soul state almost entirely in the form of our soul life. Only with our spirit do we plunge fully into our body. So in the waking state in the present phase of human evolution we become with our spirit entirely body, we plunge into our body, at least to a very high degree. From the existence of our sleeping state we fall into that of our waking state. We are carried over from one state to the other. This is brought about by forces which we have to count among the ahrimanic forces.

Looking at the spiritual aspect of the human being, that is, at the alternation between waking and sleeping, which is what reveals our spiritual aspect in physical, earthly existence, we find that in waking up the ahrimanic element is most at work, while falling asleep is brought about chiefly by the luciferic element. From being entirely enveloped in our physical body, we are carried across into the free soul-spirit state. We are carried over into a state in which we no longer think in ahrimanic concepts but solely in pictures which dissolve sharp ahrimanic conceptual contours, allowing everything to interweave and become blurred. We are placed in a state in which to interweave in pictures is normal. In brief we can say: The ahrimanic element carries us, quite properly, from the sleeping to the waking state, and the luciferic element carries us, equally properly, from the waking state into the sleeping state.

Deviations occur when too little of the luciferic impulse is carried over into the waking state, making the ahrimanic impulse stronger than it should be in the waking state. If this happens, the ahrimanic impulse presses the human being down too strongly into his physical body, preventing him from remaining in the realm of the soul sentiments of good and evil, the realm of moral impulses. He is pushed down into the realm of emotions and passions. He is submerged in the life of animal instinct. His ego is made to enter too thoroughly into the bodily aspect.

Conversely, when the luciferic impulse works in an unjustified way in the human being it means that he carries too much of his waking life into his sleeping life. Dreams rise up in sleep which are too reminiscent of waking life. These work back into waking life and push it into an unhealthy kind of mysticism.

So you see, in every aspect of life a state of balance must be brought about in the human being by the two polarities, by the luciferic and the ahrimanic elements. Yet deviations an occur. As I have said, a proper physiology of the body, with a proper knowledge of health and sickness, will only be possible when we have learnt to find this polarity in every aspect of bodily life. Similarly, a valid psychology will only be possible when we are in a position to discover this polarity in the soul.

Nowadays, in the sciences that are regarded as psychology—the science of the soul—all sorts of chaotic things are said about thinking, feeling and willing. In the life of the soul thinking, feeling and willing also flow into one another. However pure our thoughts may be, as we link them together and take them apart we are using our will in our thoughts. And even in movements which are purely instinctive our thought impulses work into our will activity. Thinking, feeling and willing are nowhere separate in our soul life; everywhere they work into one another. If, as is the custom today, they are separated out, this is merely an abstract separation; to speak of thinking, feeling and willing is then merely to speak of three abstractions. Certainly we can distinguish between what we call thinking, feeling and willing, and as abstract concepts they may help us to build up our knowledge of what each one is; but this by no means gives us a true picture of reality.

We gain a true picture of reality only if we see feeling and willing in every thought, thinking and willing in every feeling and thinking and feeling in every act of will. In order to see—in place of that abstract thinking, feeling and willing—our concrete living and surging soul life, we must also picture to ourselves how our soul life is deflected to one polarity or the other—for instance, how it is deflected to the ahrimanic polarity and there lives in thoughts. However many will impulses there may be in these thoughts, if we learn to recognize, at a higher level of knowledge, the special characteristics of the ahrimanic element, then we can feel the polarity of thinking in the soul. And if we see the soul deflected in the other direction, towards the will, then—however much thought content there may be in this will activity—if we have grasped the luciferic nature of the will, we shall have understood the living nature of the will in our soul life. All abstractions, concepts, ideas in us must be transformed into living vision. This we will not achieve unless we resolve to ascend to a view of the luciferic and the ahrimanic elements.

As regards the life of mankind through history, too, the pictures we form are only real if we are capable of perceiving the working and surging of the luciferic and ahrimanic elements in the different periods of history. Let us look, for instance, at the period of history which starts with Augustine⁴ and reaches to the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times, the fifteenth century. Let us look at this period and see how in external life people preferred to allow impulses to work which came from their deepest inner being, out of their emotional life; let us see how people during this period wanted to shape even the external life of society and the state in accordance with what they believed they could discern of the divine impulses within themselves. We feel quite clearly that the luciferic impulse was at work in this period of history.

Now go to more recent times and see how people turn and look outwards towards the mechanical and physical aspects of the world which can only be adequately comprehended in the right way by thinking and by contact with the external world. It is obvious that the ahrimanic element is at work in this period. Yet this must not tempt us to declare the period from Augustine to Galileo to be luciferic and the period from Galileo to the present time to be ahrimanic. This would in turn be an ahrimanic judgement, an intellectualistic interpretation. If we want to make the transition from an intellectualistic to a living interpretation, to a recognition of life as an experience in which we share, of which we are a part, then we shall have to express ourselves differently. We shall have to say: During the period from Augustine to Galileo, human beings had to resist the luciferic element in their striving for balance. And in more recent times human beings have to resist the ahrimanic element in their striving for balance.

We must understand ever more clearly that in our civilization as it progresses it is not a matter of whether we say one thing or another. What matters is being able to decide, in a given situation, whether one thing or another can be said. However true it may be to say, in an abstract way, that the Middle Ages were luciferic and more recent times ahrimanic, what matters is that this abstract truth bears no real impulse. The real impulse comes into play when we say: In the Middle Ages human beings maintained their uprightness by combating the luciferic element; in modern times they maintain their uprightness by combating the ahrimanic element. In an external, abstract sense something that is in reality no more than an empty phrase can be perfectly true. But as regards the particular situation of human existence in question, a thing that is real in our life of ideas can only be something that is actually inwardly present. What people today must avoid more than anything else is to fall into empty phrases. Again and again we come across situations in which people who believe themselves to be standing in anthroposophical life say: So-and-so said something which was in perfect agreement with Anthroposophy. We are not concerned with an outward agreement in words alone. What matters is the spirit, the living spirit, the living reality within which something stands. If we concern ourselves solely with the external, logical content of what people say today, we do not avoid the danger of the empty phrase.

In one circle or another recently I have a number of times given a striking example of how strangely certain statements, which are perfectly correct in themselves, appear when illuminated by a sense for reality. In 1884, in the German Reichstag, Bismarck made a remarkable statement when he felt threatened by the approach of social democracy.⁵ He wanted to dissuade the majority of the working population from following their radical social-democratic leaders, and this is what spurred him to say: Every individual has the right to work; grant to every individual the right to work, let the state find work for everybody, provide everybody with what they need in order to live—thus spoke the German Chancellor—when they are old and can no longer work, or when they are ill, and you will see that the broad masses of the workers will turn tail on the promises of their leaders. This is what Prince Bismarck said in the German Reichstag in 1884.

Curiously enough, if you go back almost a hundred years you find that another political figure said the same, almost verbatim: It is our human duty to grant every individual the right to work, to let the state find work for all, so long as they can work, and for the state to care for them when they are ill and can no longer work. In 1793 Robespierre⁶ wanted to incorporate this sentence in the democratic constitution. Is it not remarkable that in 1793 the revolutionary Robespierre and in 1884 Prince Bismarck—who certainly had no wish to be another Robespierre—said exactly the same thing. Two people can say exactly the same, yet it is not the same. Curiously, too, Bismarck referred in 1884 to the fact that every worker in the state of Prussia was guaranteed the right to work, since this was laid down in the Prussian constitution of 1794. So Bismarck not only says the same, but he says that what Robespierre demanded was laid down in the Prussian constitution. The real situation, however, was as follows: Bismarck only spoke those words because he felt the approach of a threat which arose from the very fact that what stood word for word in the Prussian constitution was actually not the case at all.

I quote this example not because it is political but because it is a striking demonstration of how two people can say the same thing, word for word, even though the reality in each case is the opposite. Thus I want to make you aware that it is time for us to enter upon an age when what matters, rather than the actual words, is our experience of reality. If we fail in this, then in the realm of spiritual life we shall fall into empty phrases which play such a major role in the spiritual life of today. And this transition from mere correctness of content to truth livingly experienced is to be brought about through the entry of initiation science into human civilization, initiation science which progresses from mere logical content to the experience of the spiritual world. Those who view correctly the external symptoms of historical development in the present and on into the near future will succeed, out of these symptoms, in achieving a feeling, a sense, for the justified and necessary entry of initiation science into world civilization. This is what I wanted to place before your souls today by way of a New Year's contemplation.

• 1 . See lecture of 31 December 1921 in Rudolf Steiner, The Rediscovery of Spiritual Reality in Nature and in Man. English text available in typescript only.
• 2 . Rudolf Steiner, Soul Economy and Waldorf Education, Rudolf Steiner Press London and Anthroposophic Press New York, 1986.
• 3 . Regarding luciferic and ahrimanic beings, see the chapter ‘Man and the Evolution of the World’ in Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science—An Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1979.
• 4 . Aurelius Augustinus 354-430, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa.
• 5 . in a speech on 9 May 1884, ‘I recognize unconditionally the right to work and will defend this so long as I occupy my present position. In doing so, I stand, not on the soil of socialism but on the soil of the Prussian constitution.’ Quoted in Gide and Rist Geschichte der volkswirt schaftlichen Lehrmeinungen, Jena 1921.
• 6 . Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore de Robespierre, 1758-1794. From 1793 a leading member of the Committee of Public Safety. Guillotined in 1794.

Dear attendees!

It was in the late summer of 1831 – that is, [not quite] a year before Goethe's death – that the great poet sealed a package. The contents of this package were to remain untouched until after his death.

What Goethe sealed at the time was the conclusion of his great life's work, the second part of his “Faust” as it is presented to us today. And the words that Goethe spoke to one of his friends when he had completed this great work of poetry sound significant. He said: “My life's work is now complete, and basically it doesn't matter what I do now and whether I do anything at all.

It is a peculiar feeling that must creep into our soul when we see such a personality arrive at the height of life and at the same time in the evening of life, and when such a feeling passes through the soul of this personality. This statement by Goethe implies that our poet feels something deeply inwardly concluded in his life's work: he feels, so to speak, that he has brought to an end and to a goal something that he had been working on for a long, long time – not years, but decades! And when we consider that the work in which he has invested his highest ideals and views of life has been completed, then we must attach a very special importance to such a work – such a rich, meaningful life that can speak of itself with such inner harmony and with the consciousness of having reached a goal [that he has given the world what he had to give, that is the deep meaning]. To have given to humanity the best you have to say! [With this great poet, we can understand how his work grows with development, becoming richer and richer.]

We can get an impression of what that means if we put ourselves back into the poet's life, into that time when he, in September of the year 1783, in Ilmenau, carved into a [wooden wall] the words:

Over all the hills
There is peace,
In all the treetops
You can barely feel
A breath;
The little birds are silent in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You too will rest.

Even if we have to understand such a poem based on the situation and perhaps have to remember that it was born in such a moment of inspiration as Goethe had – it was evening – out of the evening mood, we can still say that these words, so full of meaning, were written out of Goethe's mood at the time, out of that mood of heavy worries of the inner life, when heavy riddles weighed on his soul.

It was at the end of his life, when he was back at the place where he had written these words. He reread them in old age, and with tears of emotion he looked back to this youthful mood. What lies between two such moments in Goethe's life! What ultimately lies in Goethe's life between the time when he began to invest all his thirst for knowledge as a yearning for the ideals of life in the youthful [first parts of] Faust, and the moment shortly before his death, which brings this work to a close! Oh, it is very peculiar that we can follow several steps in this work of the poet's, where it shows us how it grows and grows with the poet's personality. Even when he arrived in Weimar in his [mid] seventies, he brought with him certain parts of his “Faust”. That was the first form in which he expressed his life ideals and riddles. This version was not available in print for a long time – it was preserved until the nineteenth century, when it was found in the estate of a Weimar court lady. Rediscovered when the archives were opened, the “Faust” was printed as a fragment in 1790. [From then on, the “Faust” grew more and more.]

Today, my task is to characterize this mighty poem from the outside and thus create the conditions for tomorrow's lecture, which will delve deeper into the profound secrets. There has been much talk about the incomprehensibility of the second part. In response to this, I would simply like to raise the question: Do you believe that a personality such as Goethe, at the end of his life, is as easy to understand as he was in his earlier years? Should we not rather endeavor to penetrate with all our might into what he had to say in his old age?

We have three versions of Faust: first, the youthful Faust, which is called the first part. This is available to us in the manuscript that was found in the Weimar estate of the aforementioned court lady. The second version dates from 1790. And the third appeared in 1808. This is the form in which the first part of “Faust” is now available to us. From then until the 1820s, Goethe did not think about continuing his “Faust.” [We will see what the reasons for this were.] For Goethe, the problem was too great to simply bring it to a conclusion. It was only in 1820, when he was at the height of his powers, that the poet took up the work again and completed it with energy and strength in the last year of his life. Oh, in Goethe we have a person who is already confronted with the greatest issues of life in his youth, but at the same time a personality who, from decade to decade, was able to look into his own soul and say: Now you have come a step further.

And when we see how far above us this ever-striving personality stands, must we not be inspired to follow the steps he took between the first and second parts of his “Faust”? [Truly, there is a tremendous difference between the stages of the first part of “Faust” and between the first and second parts.] If we first consider the figure that could have been printed in 1775, we would see a personal work in which Goethe's most intimate yearning and striving have been incorporated. Everything that Goethe has felt in terms of mystery and profound experience has been poured into this work.

Then we find that “Fragment” that first came to our attention in 1790. There we find a remarkable difference compared to the first one: Goethe is already more serene. What first comes to us as a personality with an individual touch and nuance is more elevated into the impersonal and serene. We feel more that what is being discussed concerns not only Goethe in his youth, but also all of us to a greater or lesser extent.

And if we then consider the figure from 1808, we find that he [“Faust”] has moved more from the human into the superhuman, into a sphere where the powers of heaven fight for man and man is placed in the struggle between good and evil – expressed in particular in the “Prologue in Heaven”. In the first part, we see the striving of the Goethe soul to participate as a human being, but in 1808 we see him placed in the whole of humanity, his perspective broadened from the human-personal to a grand tableau of the world.

But in the inner character we find that the first part contains something that Goethe himself, in the age of life, feels as something personal and unclear, not as something universally human. Those who delve into it find something theoretical in it: the way a person speaks when faced with things unknown to him, of which he has only a presentiment. The second part – however strange this may sound in view of our usual preconceptions – is a realistic work, flowing from the most fundamental experiences after he could say of himself that he had arrived at a satisfactory solution to all the questions of life. [In this respect the second part is raised even higher above the personal level]. Therefore, if we understand him correctly, Faust fills us with the same satisfaction as all literary works of which we can say: here an artistic individuality has struggled to speak to all people, to inner peace, to inner harmony.

How Goethe allowed the content of “Faust” to flow out of his innermost being can help us understand why the first part is more theoretical and the second more realistic in the way it recounts Goethe's experiences of what he experienced.

If we want to find Goethe in his “Faust”, we have to realize that the goal was contained in his disposition from childhood on. That is why it is so significant that seven-year-old Goethe already felt unsatisfied as a boy [from what his environment told him] about the great underpinnings of life. Of course, he cannot express it then, only feel and sense it; but he feels in the direction that he was later able to present in such sharp contours. And so we find that one day he is looking for an expression for his feelings about the divine: He takes a music stand and places on it everything he can find of natural products in his father's collection of natural objects. He has erected a kind of altar for himself, and through the products of nature he allows the creator, the creative spirit behind it all, to speak to him. For the seven-year-old boy intended to make an offering to the god he was seeking. And on top of it he places a small incense stick, and he takes a burning glass, collects the rays of the rising sun with the burning glass and ignites the small incense stick. He has made a sacrifice to his god at the very source of nature. [This is the direction of Goethe's soul, his striving towards the sources of life.] In his memoirs, he himself says that as a boy he wanted to sacrifice to the deity. This urge remained in his soul and was expressed in all his later endeavors.

Thus we see him, when he was supposed to be studying law as a student in Leipzig, mainly occupied with what he could take from the natural science of the time; and in all other sciences and knowledge of life he looks around, just as he had looked around at the end of the sixties [of the seventeenth century] in all knowledge. But he does not seek [individual insights] as one otherwise [as a young student] sought under the constraints of circumstances. He sought to blaze a trail to insights of all kinds; he strove [for a general knowledge of the spiritual source of humanity], thereafter, what was then expressed in abstract terms, in sober, dry observations of external life impressions, that he sought to connect with the innermost longings and needs of his soul: the insights should bring him enlightenment about the riddles of life. The knowledge of the time was not suited for this purpose.

Everything that came to him was connected in Goethe with his very individual quest, with all the questions that arose in him about the infinite. And his life, even in his youth, was such as to point him to the spiritual and eternal. But that which was so suited to deepen his whole life from youth on was particularly expressed in various events of his life.

Only two of these will be mentioned here: During a serious illness, he felt close to death. Yes, death stood at his bedside in his early youth. He was touched by this event in his life by the transience of all externals, and his soul was also directed outwardly to the pursuit of the immortal.

Anyone who follows Goethe's life at the time will see how this event deepened his life. He was suited to encounter very special [intellectual circles] in Frankfurt. And the personalities who, in the most eminent sense, direct the soul towards investigating [the riddles of life], the spirit and the sources of existence, who have worked their way out of the traditional moods of religion, who ask: Where are the limits of our knowledge? How much do we have to leave to mere religious traditions and how much to our own insight? [Those who do not ask about the limits of knowledge, about the limits of science and revelation] did not feel at home with those who were Goethe's friends at the time.

Meanwhile, a different mood prevailed among those in the midst of whom stood the sincere Fräulein von Klettenberg, whom Goethe later immortalized in his “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul.” In this circle, people said to each other: There is something in the human soul that can be developed, that can mature ever higher and higher. Man is not always mature enough to recognize the highest, but forces slumber in his soul that he can develop [that can be brought out if one strives and works on himself. One then acquires inner spiritual powers that are otherwise not present in the soul]. And what he cannot achieve, no matter how humanly he tries, he can achieve if he develops powers that cannot be achieved in ordinary life. The content of this circle of friends was the development of the soul; because it was their conviction that there is something in the soul that remains unconscious, or let's say subconscious, in ordinary life. [In ordinary life, people are unconcerned about the mysterious powers that are there.] If a person lives in such a way that he devotes himself only to sensory perception, and processes this sensory perception only with the intellect, he does not approach the sources of life, he passes by the hidden powers of the soul, which he can develop and work on. And when a person has brought himself to a higher level of development, then he penetrates deeper into what is hidden behind the objects. Then the spiritual, the eternal, the imperishable comes to meet him. Such was the mood of these friends.

So you can see that these people had a different attitude to the question of the immortality of the human soul than many people have in their lives, where they often refrain from seeking insight into what is eternal in nature or in art, or leave it to traditional lore. It was not so with these friends. They said to themselves: There is something immortal out there in nature, and there are forces that are in the human organization as they are out there in nature. What is transitory and shows itself to be transitory on the outside is also transitory within the human being. And if we only see our powers with this transitory, then the immortal will never reveal itself. But in the hidden depths of the soul lie deeper powers of the human being, powers that are covered as if by a veil because the human being only gives some to the outer sense perceptions and the mind that combines them. Through such powers, which are purified and which give objective knowledge [of the eternal] [in the same way as the intellect gives it for the sensual world], we must purify the senses and try to distract them from the transitory. That is what they said to themselves: When I connect with the eternal in my own soul, then I stand spiritually face to face with the immortal, then I have brought it out of myself, then nothing can take away the certainty of immortality, then I am connected with the spirit in my own breast, which comes from the Spirit of God just as sense things come from the outer belonging and harmony.

Goethe felt a deep kinship with these souls. But there was much that was unclear in these souls. What I have now explained with certain words was expressed by them more in the form of intuitions, of unexpressed feelings of the soul; it was expressed more in certain soul gestures than in sharply outlined insights.

It was into this society that young Goethe came. And this society had a certain preference for a certain kind of writing that emerged from a medieval knowledge that had already passed away. Writings that expressed the way in which one sought to approach the great secrets of human nature. Goethe also came into contact with these writings, and we can see what the basic mood of his heart was when we see him searching in these medieval writings with an unceasing thirst for knowledge, in order to find means to develop the hidden forces of his soul that would finally lead to the knowledge of the immortal. One such work was that of Valentinus Basilius and Theophrastus Paracelsus, [Welling's “Opus macrocabalisticum et theosophicum”, but especially Kirchweger's “Aurea catena Homeri”], which he himself calls cabalistic-theosophical.

What do these writings contain that a person with a modern attitude at the time would delve into such writings as if a modern-day Haeckelian or other modern educated person would occupy themselves with the strange writings of Eliphas Levy? [If an ordinary person delved into them at the time, they would consider these writings to be pure nonsense, a flight of fancy.] And that is exactly how it was in those days: a modern person would feel that it was pure nonsense, that only a fantasist could devote himself to such things. One can understand this attitude, then and now. From a certain point of view, it can be recognized as a justified attitude. One need not be surprised that someone who is not far enough along in the development of his soul can only see pure nonsense in it. Goethe found more than mere nonsense in it. But some of it was pure nonsense. It still belonged to the time before the invention of printing, when everything was still written by hand; to the time when science had not yet been enriched by what Galileo and Kepler had taught. In those days, people sought to understand nature in a completely different way. If we want to characterize the way in which people wanted to approach the source in that time before the great achievements of natural science, we have to say that before that time, people sought to enter into nature and the world with everything that was in their soul, to enter into nature and the world with everything in his soul, not only with his intellect; but to purify his will and feeling in such a way that he also recognizes objectively with his feeling in the same way that mathematical knowledge searches. [Something that today's man can hardly imagine. In the same way, desire can become a power of knowledge. But for that, man must change it; he must work on it; he must purify and purify it of all selfish feelings. In the same way, the will can be elevated to a power of knowledge. But for that, man must not leave feeling, sensation and desire as they are – he must work on them!

The circle of friends around Goethe knew how to work on it. While the mind can be left as it is, because it is already as one can leave it, [one must reshape feeling, emotion, will and desire so that they become powers of knowledge]. Only through this work can one extract the hidden abilities of the soul that give man a knowledge of the eternal. The intellect, which is conveniently left alone, can only provide enlightenment about the transitory. This kind of knowledge through will and feelings had been more neglected [compared to intellectual knowledge at the time], even in Goethe's youth. On the other hand, what was gained through external sensory perception and the intellect prevailed, as is also the case today. But Goethe knew the limits of sensory-intellectual knowledge. [So he could not really find his way around in these writings, which, since they were written by latecomers who no longer had their own knowledge, contained a lot of nonsense.] His soul received nourishment from these books, although he could not understand them. They contained much that was pure nonsense, but anyone who could see beyond that to what was more deeply contained in these writings could feel that there was knowledge lying dormant within them. And this is what Goethe felt: the realization that does not aim to take the world as it is, but to develop the soul, to shape it, to bring up the forces that lie dormant within it. (He now wants to develop the ability to grasp these within himself.)

In these writings, Goethe found strange figures that only a fool can find pleasing today. But there is something else behind these things; I will mention just one example. In that writing, “Aurea catena Homeri,” which made a particular impression on him, you will find a strange figure: two dragons. One formed at the top as a semicircle. It is full of life and gives the impression of a good being. Below, entwined with it, is a shriveled, dried-up dragon, which appears as a symbol of evil. The two are entwined in a circle. Within the circle are two triangles: one point facing upwards and the signs for the individual planets of our solar system at the corners.

How fascinated Goethe's soul must have been by such a sign, for what is experienced in the soul in relation to this sign does not leave the soul untouched. Inner soul forces stirred when he looked at this sign: what otherwise only served human needs, what will and desire is, stirred like the urge for knowledge. He felt something that is necessary for the knowledge of such writings.

If someone wants to say: Of course, if you just want to talk about the tasteless stuff, you show that you have no knowledge of science, such as philosophy and other sciences. This objection can be understood, even if one says: In our knowledge, we should see what is there in truth. What this fantastic stuff depicts does not depict truth. Those who speak in this way are absolutely right. But they do not know what is important! What matters is the impression that these images make on the soul; that they are precisely those that bring out what otherwise lies deep within the soul, that they have creative power for the soul. And Goethe felt how this sign affected him: “It affects your will,” he felt. It draws forces from your soul that connect with the universe. He felt that. But he felt something else as well, something terrible for him at the time. He was confronted with all these things, felt that they could trigger something in the soul, felt that they could work — but he did not feel the strength within himself to be able to let this something take effect. He only felt that they concealed something

and I cannot understand what I can sense there.

[He sensed something in them like the spirit of the world, but he cannot understand it through his education and his previous life.] It was terribly shattering for Goethe's soul when he sensed something like connections with higher soul forces, sensed what could flow out of this “Aurea catena Homeri”, and yet had to say to himself: You are not yet mature, you cannot penetrate the secrets of the world, your powers of knowledge have not yet matured. But he longed to follow such a path of knowledge. And so he came to other signs, to a symbol that represented not only the great world but also the working of the spirit on earth. He felt closer to it, but still was not able to extract the forces from the earth. Now we feel how what he experienced flowed into Faust. There he focuses on the title page of the 'Aurea catena Homeri'. It shows him how the forces go from planet to planet, how their inner relationship is indicated with human desires, [it draws them up to good, down to evil], in the forms of coiled dragons, with the triangles, one point of which is directed upwards. A few pages further on, he sees the picture that shows “heavenly powers ascending and descending”. There he must turn away, for he did not feel his powers ripe to understand this.

Now read the passage in Goethe's “Faust” that shows that you cannot grasp anything from ordinary knowledge, from scientific knowledge, nothing that is experienced in the depths of the soul:

There I stand now, I poor fool, And am as wise as before!

That was the mood when Goethe left Leipzig.

There he sought a different path in Frankfurt, as he expresses so beautifully in Faust. He opened the book of Nostradamus and saw the sign of the macrocosm. [There he sees the working of nature before his soul, he sees:]

How everything is woven into a whole,
One within the other, working and living!
How heavenly powers rise up and down
And pass each other the golden buckets!
With wings that smell of blessing
From heaven through the earth they penetrate,
Harmoniously resounding through the universe!

This is a beautiful and wonderful description of what so fascinated Goethe. This is how he expresses what he feels when he sees the sign of the first spirit. Then he turns to the sign that only concerns the processes that take place on earth. He sees the sign of the earth spirit. Again it fascinates him. Before, he felt the stirring of the powers that are otherwise expressed as interest and feeling for objects. These powers should now develop in the earth spirit sign in such a way that they become powers of knowledge. Try to imagine the powers that come into question as powers of knowledge for the soul; first the objective powers of the mind, the powers of thinking. These are easy to access. But then the powers of feeling and perception, which can only be purified in the described way and can be awakened by the signs that evoke the spiritual world. Now Goethe had unlocked such a sign, and now he felt that he was not yet ripe for it. He did not feel ripe to understand the powers of perception that connect only with the earth either. Not ripe!

Now something rises in his soul. But at first only terror and fear, which are reflected to us where “Faust” turns away from the earth spirit, whom he calls “terrible face”, and whereupon the earth spirit then says to him:

You resemble the spirit you understand, not me!

Thus Goethe's insights are reflected in the first part of “Faust”. But Goethe was not a personality who could necessarily remain a “fearfully cringing worm”; he was a personality who was powerful enough to strive on. What did the personality say to itself? It did not speak like other personalities who believe that they are seekers of knowledge and say: There are limits to knowledge. It is easy and comfortable to dismiss all this as nonsense. No! Goethe said to himself: I am not yet ready for this! That is something we can learn from Goethe: he said to himself, “You are not ready yet; you must first begin to work on yourself in order to mature to what is possible for the soul.” [Now he worked on himself to get ahead.] To achieve this, he now immersed himself in life in order to get to know life and people and science in all its aspects. And we see this when, after his time in Frankfurt, he comes to Strasbourg, looks around at nature, in order to grasp the things that he, as a seven-year-old boy, placed on his father's music stand, in order to get to know the divine-spiritual forces of being through their knowledge. But not only the divine-spiritual forces of what is formed externally in nature, but also of human life and its manifold forms. And now we can already see how he has the favorable opportunity to get to know all the ups and downs of the human soul, the human soul in its infinite kindness and love – but also in all its malicious, spiteful and harmful qualities, with all its longings, torments and sacrifices. [He experienced the greatest satisfaction, but also tormenting doubts, in the souls of people.] There he met the great personality of Herder in Strasbourg, a personality who strove throughout her entire life to come close to the sources of life, who also felt that the powers of her soul were not ripe. A terrible mood was in Herder's soul at that very moment, when, despite his titanic urge for knowledge, he loses courage and says to himself, [You cannot strive higher]. One's own inability is a general human inability. Herder was close to such moods, such moods had gained control in him and caused a lifestyle that was harsh and rejecting – only bearable for a soul like Goethe's, which was benevolent. Goethe had recognized the greatness of Herder's soul. And no matter how much Herder might have belittled him, Goethe knew that he was in the presence of greatness. And Goethe had a great soul, great enough not to pay attention to the unimportant when faced with the important. When he climbed the stairs of the Gasthof zum Heiligen Geist and unexpectedly saw this personality, who Herder introduced in a somewhat brusque manner – with his coat fluttering, his coat-tails criss-crossed in his pockets – Goethe sensed at a single glance that this personality was Herder, and he said: “You are Herder.” From that moment on, his respect for him increased.

Deep ideas lived in Herder, as we can find them, for example, in his treatise “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”. But all this was not enough for him. Then Goethe got to know a tremendous striving that was on the verge of collapsing, and was held down by it. But Goethe had already learned from another personality the inadequacy of the ordinary mind: from his friend Merck. Of him, even the most well-meaning woman, Goethe's mother, said: “He can never leave Mephisto at home; he finds fault with everything.” Goethe saw these personalities, and he saw in them something that in turn had a significant effect on his soul: that they had particularly developed what he himself had in his own soul. As in a mirror, he saw his soul, himself! He saw the intellect into which error and superstition of the outer world creep. He sought to comprehend the spirit of the earth, which he has spoken in “Faust”:

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

He had tried out of inner urge to grasp the spirit and soul that spoke to him in the forces of life, in the images of the “Aurea catena Homeri.” But he had also felt that he was not yet ready to soar to these heights of the mind. He had now realized why: because there was still too much of the sensual interests in him. Now he knew that the spirit to which he still resembled too much was the most evil, the Mephisto spirit.

You resemble the spirit you understand,

the Earth Spirit could speak, who saw the Mephistophelian in Goethe's soul.

Now a good part of the idea for Faust shone forth in Goethe: Why can't human beings, in their ordinary feelings and perceptions, achieve the same kind of clear insight as they do in their thinking? Why are desire and perception not as powerful as the powers of thought? Because there are forces at work within us that are not ourselves, but which have an effect on us. The forces that we embrace with our actions and desires, according to both ancient and new spiritual science, are the forces of Lucifer, and these bring our desires down to such a level that they cannot become an objective power of knowledge in this life. This is how Lucifer works.

But there is also another kind of force that makes us act, that our minds gain real knowledge when we direct our perception to this world. These are the forces that were first characterized by Zarathustra as ahrimanic. Thus the Ahrimanic forces, which are imbued with desire and would penetrate to the macrocosm, work in us. [They prevent feeling from becoming a power of knowledge in relation to the earth, just as the Luciferic spirits prevent desire from rising to cosmic knowledge.] The Luciferic entities work in us.

Goethe sensed what clouds the human gaze and leads to error, what is called the forces of Ahriman. For Ahriman is the same as what we are accustomed to calling Mephistopheles, after the one who characterizes human behavior as lying: from the Hebrew “Mephis” is liar and “tofel” is ruin. It means the same thing that Zarathustra calls Ahriman. But Mephisto does not mean Lucifer. He is the power that leads man to lie, to see outer life in deceptive forms, not in truth.

All these forces are at work where man passes through life and is led by his interests to see life in its deceptive forms.

Goethe, despite his most sincere efforts, could not penetrate to the sources of truth at that time because he still had too much of the Mephistopheles in him – You resemble the Mephistopheles, not me! And so [in the “Urfaust” immediately after the earth spirit] Mephisto appears suddenly, as if shot out of a pistol. [Sudden because Goethe only sensed the context, did not clearly recognize it.] Another deeply moving secret of the soul.

Thus we see how Goethe pours into “Faust,” as it were, what he experiences, how he tries to depict how Mephisto guides him to take pleasure in such stale stuff as in Auerbach's cellar, in many of the externalities of life, which he must call banal from a higher point of view. But this Mephisto leads him to something else as well. If we follow Goethe from Strasbourg to the time when he had passed the bar exam, a little later, we find two qualities that must have brought a deep and searching soul into strange conflicts. The first one comes to us when we seek him out as a legal scholar. He was not very good at the positive knowledge of the law, [he only knew a few legal paragraphs]. But when it was a matter of quickly grasping some case and penetrating it in no time, he was one of the very first, still admired today by experts who follow his processes. [He was a practical man who quickly found his way in practical life with his mind.] He is proof against the outrageous statement that those who seek access to the spiritual life must be impractical people in life. Goethe sought access to the spiritual worlds to the highest degree and at the same time was an eminently practical person compared to all those who are impractical because they are untalented. Some young poets think that it is part of being absorbed in the intellectual life that you have to be an impractical person. Such people are only talented up to a certain point. No one would ever dispute the special talent that Goethe showed in writing his “Iphigenia”. On his desk lay the lists for the recruitment of recruits. While the recruits were being drafted, he wrote the verses for his “Iphigenia” in between. That was a whole human being! Penetrating into the spiritual world never prevents one from finding one's way into the practical world. Goethe felt he was a practical person.

But he also felt this: when he was consulting with himself one day, he had to say something to himself that made a deep impression on his soul. There are many, many things in which you have not been at your own height in your life – and above all: you have become guilty! The self-knowledge: You have become guilty – in the face of such cases as the Frankfurt poet experienced in Sesenheim, in the face of the struggle of the most violent passions that confronted him there in Friederike. He also knew that they did not fit together, that he would be paralyzed in all his striving if he had sought a connection with her. But he knew that through the way he behaved, he had become guilty, knew that Mephisto had led him; as we are led by Mephisto when, instead of being led into clear circumstances, we are led into error and deception.

Goethe felt completely and in his deepest innermost being, because he grasped all these questions at their center, that this in the human soul, which guides everything in the human soul, that [this Mephistophelian power] can lead it far, to completely different self-confessions than what he had to clothe in words: You have become guilty. He knew that when these Mephistophelian forces intrude into the striving for knowledge, they can make a charlatan out of a person in the face of higher striving for knowledge! There he stood with his soul before something monstrous; there he stood [before a tremendous abyss] that he said to himself: You must go beyond what only the mind can experience, you must call upon the powers of feeling and emotion for knowledge, [those that Mephistopheles pulls down], but there is still something of Mephisto living in you. Another self lives in you besides. Only now did he clearly recognize a figure of the sixteenth century who [has interested and frightened so many people], who has instilled fear and horror in people. Now the “Faust” of the sixteenth century became clear to him. How did he become clear to him? We take a deep look into Goethe's psychological self-knowledge when we research it. Goethe said to himself, as many people could still say today: Man cannot help but seek access to the forces that transcend the sensual. That is why, in our time, which does so little for the deepest needs of the soul, we have so many currents that emanate from such people who seek access to the spiritual currents, to the spiritual foundations of the soul.

The first thing [that is necessary] for a person to find access [to the spiritual world] without harm, to purify and cleanse his soul, is that he free himself from everything that is now called, in Goethe's sense, Mephistophelian forces, from the merely negating, criticizing endeavors [that are directed only at the things of the outer world]. This is not easy; Goethe himself shows how difficult it is by being bound to Mephisto as to a spirit that makes up part of his soul.

If man listens to this Mephisto in him, then he does not tell his fellow human beings the truth, but rather what the Mephistophelian element, reinforced by the Luciferian element, incites him to, leading to arrogance, ambition, pride, charlatanry.

Truly, a very fine cobweb separates the charlatan from the true spiritual researcher. This can also be seen today. Theosophy or other spiritual movements arise because they correspond to the longing of our world. But it is not easy to become a messenger of the spirit.

If the researcher is not free from these Mephistophelean forces, then he is not a real researcher, but a charlatan who incites vanity in the field of knowledge. — Here a fine sense is really necessary to distinguish between noble striving for higher knowledge and charlatanry. And it is difficult for the one who does not penetrate deeply into the spiritual life to distinguish the charlatan from the spiritual researcher. This danger also exists in Theosophy. It is not easy to satisfy the longings. He who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world is in danger of falling into charlatanry. It is therefore only too understandable when the charlatan and the spiritual researcher are confused. The reproach of the outer world is only too justified: “One cannot distinguish the charlatan from the true spiritual researcher”. This, which can confront us so vividly in life, confronted Goethe in his soul. The Mephistophelean brings you so close in an entity, as it is to Faust, whom people fear, of whom one can say that he has united with the devil, has fallen prey to the forces that lead to lies and deception. And now the question arose in Goethe's soul: How can man save himself from the danger of charlatanry, so that Mephisto does not lead him down into the abyss? Thus the Faust question had become a matter of the heart for Goethe.

The first thing a person must say to himself when this question arises in his soul is: [You must become simple and humble]. You have to go through something, where you look for the individual thing in you; from the smallest experience, from the smallest observation, to find the divine in every single experience. Goethe embarked on this path. On this path we see him wandering through Italy, modestly, humbly collecting all the details. In the inconspicuous coltsfoot, he seeks to clarify the different effects of plant forms, [observing the difference in its appearance here and elsewhere]. We see him hurrying from picture to picture, from work of art to work of art, in an intimate, selfless way. Although he has read Spinoza at home to uplift himself, he does not dwell on it because he is humble. [He goes to the works of art and says to himself,] When I look at them, I know that the ancients created like nature, by raising forces to a higher level. There is necessity in this, there is God. He does not seek to build a worldview in a rush, from thing to thing, humbly seeking the smallest thing in order to modestly seek the divine-spiritual in the smallest thing. [Perhaps you sometimes find it inconvenient when someone who talks about spiritual science speaks of details.] The human quest for knowledge is not modest enough, does not want to go from detail to detail, wants to go straight up; one would like to span the whole world at once with one word. For example, in the theosophical movement, emphasis is placed on going from detail to detail in each step, so it is sometimes said, “I want to go straight to the highest levels of the Logos,” although the person in question does not understand more about the Logos than that the word “Logos” is composed of five letters. (Above all, modesty is needed; Goethe achieved this necessary modesty).

Goethe learns from detail to detail. That was what Goethe did. In doing so, he achieved the purity and refinement that he had after he had been on this path for a while, so that he can now speak in a different way about [his encounter with those spiritual forces like the earth spirit, from whom he had previously turned away, curled up in terror like “a timid worm curled up in terror”], of his encounter with the earth spirit, who experiences what is happening on the earth. At that time he had to listen to:

You resemble the spirit you comprehend, not me!

The spirit had appeared to him out of the fire. So now, after he had gone from piece of nature to piece of nature through modesty, through prudent research, so that he could incorporate the piece he wrote in Italy into “Faust,” now he addressed this spirit of the earth differently, as characterized in that beautiful monologue in “Forest and Cave”:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
strength to feel, to enjoy. Not
coldly marvelling visit thou only allowest,
allow me to look into her deep chest
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water know.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches
And crushing neighbor trunks,
And the hill muffled hollow thunders,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show me
Then myself, and my own chest,
Secret deep wonders open up.

That was the progress Goethe had made through his endeavors. Now, after he had humbly followed in nature's footsteps step by step, he no longer felt like a sluggard of knowledge, and closer to the spirit that had previously rejected him. Now he was allowed to look into his soul with a different kind of satisfaction and bliss. What he had once sought to grasp in a single flight, he had now recognized in the most diligent study of detail. He had ascended in humility. Now he was face to face with the spirit that lives not only as an earth-spirit in the outer world, but also lives in the human soul. It led him to the secure cave within, to self-knowledge. He had gained a view of nature that now really allows the spirit to recognize nature:

You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in the air and water.

Now he had ascended – albeit always with the powers that had triggered his Frankfurt aspirations back then – but he had ascended in humility. And now what lived in his own soul presented itself to him as the eternal, the immortal. With what he was able to connect, after he recognized this “spirit of the earth” in the outer world, the spirit led him to self-knowledge. Now he felt ready to find within himself the strength that he had previously sought by storming. And so we learn from the great Goethe how we, with him, should mature in the depths, carefully and humbly, and say: This cannot affect our soul now, but it wants to wait patiently and let it mature. Those who do so will say: It is good that you have done so, and have also opened up many things, because that had to mature in you first and then flourish. We can learn from Goethe: faith in the development of the human soul, faith in the necessity of maturing, so that we can believe in the immortality of the eternal, [so that we gradually grow into the spiritual world];

At the time when he found a cave in his inner soul in which the secrets of his own heart were revealed, he did not believe he was finished, but strove ever higher. And we will see how “Faust”, which appeared in fragment form in 1790, rises ever higher.

At that time, much of what he experienced was only external. But more and more, he connected with the experiences of the inner soul: he penetrated into the mystical. [After Goethe had seen the living earth spirit in the outer world, he also found his inner strength: “And the deep shafts of my own spirit open up” - the Goethe of 1790 strives deeper and deeper. Humbly and modestly, he looks up.] Thus he came to feel intensely in his deepest soul: There is something immortal, and the human soul can recognize it because it can recognize in itself that which is immortal. That was the testament that he left behind, sealed, in the completion of his “Faust”; which was expressed in the final words:

All that is transitory is but a parable.

I want to speak today OF something that will help to deepen our understanding of truths that must now be given to humankind by anthroposophy. We have often spoken of the two poles of forces of the human being: the pole of will and the pole of intelligence. To understand the nature of the human being we must be constantly mindful of these two poles.

The human is a being of will and a being of intelligence. Between them—at any rate from birth until death—lies the element of feeling, constituting the bridge between the intelligence and the will. You know that these forces separate from each other in a certain sense when people reach what is called the threshold of the spiritual world.

Our study today will be concerned more particularly with the relationship in which humanity stands to the surrounding world, on the one side as a being of intelligence and on the other as a being of will. We shall deal with the latter first.

In the life between birth and death, human beings unfold the force of will as the impulse of their actions and activity. As it comes to expression through the human organism, the force of will is a very intricate, complicated matter. Nevertheless in one aspect, everything of the nature of human will bears a great likeness, amounting almost to identity, with certain forces of nature. It is therefore quite correct to speak of an inner relation between the forces of will in the human being and the forces of nature.

You know from earlier studies that even while people are awake, they are in a condition resembling sleep wherever their will is involved. True, we have in our consciousness the ideas lying behind what we will, but how a particular idea takes effect in the form of will—of that we know nothing. We do not know how the idea, “I move my arm,” is connected with the process leading to the actual movement of the arm. This process lies entirely in the subconscious and it may truly be said that people are no more conscious of the real process of will than they are of what takes place during sleep. But when the question arises as to the connection of human will with the surrounding world, we come to something that will strike the kind of consciousness that has developed in the course of the last three to five centuries as highly paradoxical. It is generally thought that the evolution of the earth would be the same even if human beings had no part in it at all. A typical natural scientist describes the evolution of the earth as a series, let us say, of geological, purely physical processes. And even if scientists do not expressly say so, they have in mind that from the earth's beginning until its hypothetical end, everything would go on just the same even if it were uninhabited by human beings. Why is this view held by natural science today? The reason is that when anything takes place, for example in the mineral kingdom, or the plant kingdom, let us say on November 9, 1919, people believe that its cause lies in what has happened in the mineral kingdom prior to this particular point of time. People think: the mineral kingdom takes its course and what happens at any point is the effect of what went before; the mineral effect is due to a mineral cause.

This is the way people think and you will find evidence of it in any text book of geology. Conditions obtaining at the present time are said to be the effects of the Ice Age, or of some preceding epoch but the causes are attributed entirely to what once took place in the mineral kingdom as such; the fact that humanity inhabits the earth is ignored. The belief is that even were humans not present, everything would run a similar course, that the external reality would be the same—although, in fact, humankind has always been part of this external reality. The truth is that the earth is one whole, humanity itself being one of the active factors in the earth's evolution. I will give you an example.

You know that our present epoch—thinking of it for the moment in the wider sense, as comprising the period since the great Atlantean catastrophe—was preceded by the Atlantean epoch itself, when the continents of Europe, Africa, and America in their present form were not in existence. At that time there was one main continent on the earth—Atlantis as it is called—extending over the area that is now the Atlantic Ocean. You know too that at a certain period in this Atlantean evolution, immorality of a particular kind was rampant throughout the then-Civilized world. Human beings had far greater power over the forces of nature than they later possessed and employed these forces for evil purposes. Thus we can look back to an age of widespread immorality. And then came the great Atlantean catastrophe. The orthodox geologist will naturally trace this catastrophe to processes in the mineral kingdom; indeed it is a fact that one part of the earth subsided and another arose. But it will not occur to those who base their thinking on the principles of modern natural science to say to themselves that the deeds and activities of human beings were among the contributory causes. Yet so it is. In very truth the Atlantean catastrophe was the outcome of the deeds of people on the earth.

Outer, mineral causes are not alone responsible for these great catastrophic events that break in upon earth existence. We must look for causes lying within the sphere of human actions and impulses: Humanity itself belongs to the chain of causative forces in earth existence. Nor does this apply only to an event of such magnitude but to what is happening all the time. Only the connection between what goes on within human beings and cosmic happenings which take effect in tellurian events remains hidden, to begin with. In this respect the whole of our natural science amounts to a great, all-embracing illusion. For if you want to get at the real causes you will not discover them by studying the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms alone.

Let me give you the following illustration of what comes into consideration here. We will approach it, so to speak, from the opposite side. Here (X) is the center of the earth. When something takes place in the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, or the animal kingdom, it is a matter of seeking the causes. The causes lie at certain points which are to be found everywhere. You can picture what I mean by thinking of the following. In the region around Naples in Italy, you will find that the earth over a wide area will emit vapor if you take a piece of paper and set it alight. Vapors begin to rise from the ground beneath you. You will say: the force which drives up the vapors lies in the physical process generated by the lighting of the paper. In this case, the physical process is that by lighting the paper you rarify the air and because of the rarification of the air the vapors inside the earth press upward. They are kept down by the normal air-pressure and this is diminished by setting light to the paper. If I merely want to give an example of effects of a purely mineral nature—such as these vapors arising out of the earth—I could say for the sake of illustration that here, and here (points in the diagram), a piece of paper is set alight. This shows you that the causes of the rising of the vapor do not lie below the soil, but above it. Now these points in the diagram a, b, c, d, e, f—do not represent pieces of paper that have been set alight; in this instance they represent something different. Imagine, to begin with, that each point on its own has no significance but that the significance lies in the system of points as a whole. Do not think now of the pieces of lighted paper, but of something else which at the moment I will not specify. Something else is there as an active cause, above the surface of the earth; and these different causes do not work singly, but together. And now imagine that there are not six points only, but, let us say, 1,500 million points¹ all working together, producing a combined effect. These 1,500 million points are actually there. Each of you has within you what may be called the center of gravity of your own physical structure. When people are awake, this center of gravity lies just below the diaphragm; when they are asleep it lies a little lower. There are therefore some 1,500 million of these centers of gravity spread over the earth, producing a combined effect. And what issues from this combined effect is the actual cause of a great deal of what takes place in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms on the earth. It is a scientific fallacy to trace back to mineral causes the forces manifesting in air and water and in the mineral realm; in reality the causes are to be found within the human beings.

This is a truth of which there is scarcely an inkling today. It is known to very, very few that the causes of processes active in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms lie within the human organism. (This does not apply to all the forces working in these kingdoms of nature, but to a large proportion of them.) Within humankind lie the causes for what happens on earth. Therefore mineralogy, botany, zoology, cannot be cultivated truly without anthropology—without the study of the human being. Science tells us of physical, chemical, and mechanical forces. These forces are intimately connected with the human will, with the force of human will that is concentrated in our center of gravity. If we speak of the earth with an eye to the truth of these matters, we must not follow the geologist in speaking of an earth in the abstract, but humanity must be accounted an integral part of the earth. These are the truths that reveal themselves on yonder side of the threshold. Everything that can be known on this side of the threshold belongs to the realm of the illusions of knowledge, not to the realm of truth.

At this point the question arises: What relation is there between the forces of will that areconcentrated in our center of gravity, and the external, physical, and chemical forces? We are speaking, remember, of present-day humanity. In normal life, this relation takes effect in the metabolic processes. When people take into themselves the substances of the outer world, it is their will that actually digests and works upon these substances. And if nothing else were in operation, then what is taken into the organism from outside would simply be destroyed. The human will has the power to dissolve and destroy all extraneous substances and forces; and the relation between the human being and the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms of nature today is such that our will is connected with the forces of dissolution and destruction inherent in our planet.

We could not live were this destruction not to take place—but for all that it is destruction. This must never be forgotten. And what are often described as unlawful magical practices are based essentially on the fact that certain human beings learn to employ their will wrongfully, in such a way that they do not confine the destructive forces to their normal operations within the organism but extend them over other human beings, deliberately and consciously applying the forces of destruction that are anchored in their will. That, quite obviously, is a practice that is never, under any circumstances, permissible.

Through our will we are connected with the earth's forces of decline. And if as human beings we had only our forces of will, the earth would be condemned through us, through humankind, to sheer destruction. The prospect of the future would then be far from inspiring; it would be a vista of the gradual dissolution of the earth and its ultimate dispersal in cosmic space. So much for the one pole in the human constitution.

But the human is a twofold being. One pole is, as we have seen, connected with the destructive forces of our planet; the other pole—that of intelligence—is connected with the will by the bridge of feeling. But in waking life, human intelligence is of little account as far as the planet earth is concerned. During waking life we cannot really establish a true relationship to earth existence through our intelligence. What I have told you in regard to the will happens while we are awake, although we are not conscious of it. If you see a rock crumbling away and ask where the actual causes of the crumbling lie, then you must look into the inner, organic nature of the human being. Strange as this will seem to the modern mind, it is indeed so. But as I said, the earth would face a sorry future if the other pole of human nature were not there—the pole of the up-building forces. Just as the causes of all destruction lie in the will that is concentrated in our center of gravity, so the up-building forces lie in the sphere into which we pass during sleep. From the time of falling asleep until that of waking, we are in a condition figuratively described by saying that with our “I” and astral body we are outside the physical body. But then we are entirely beings of soul and spirit, unfolding the forces that are in operation between falling asleep and waking. During this time we are connected, through these forces, with everything that builds up the earth planet, everything that adds to the forces of destruction the constructive, up-building forces. If you did not go about the earth, the destructive forces actually proceeding from your will would not be working in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. If you never went to sleep, the forces whereby the earth is continually up-built would not stream out of your intelligence. The constructive, up-building forces of the planet earth also lie in humanity itself. I do not say: in the individual human being—for I have expressly said that all these single causes form a collective whole. The up-building forces lie in humankind as a whole, actually in the pole of intelligence in our being but not in our waking intelligence. Waking intelligence is really like a lifeless entity thrusting itself into earth evolution. The intelligence that works, unconsciously, during our sleep—that is what builds up the earth planet. By this I am only trying to explain that it is a fallacy to look outside the human being for the destructive and the constructive forces of our earth; you must look for them within the human being. Once you grasp this, what I am now going to say will not be unintelligible.

You look up to the stars, saying that something is streaming from them that can be perceived by human sense organs here on earth. But what you behold when you gaze at the stars is not of the same nature as what you perceive on the earth in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. In reality it proceeds from beings of intelligence and will whose life is bound up with those stars. The effects appear to be physical because the stars are at a distance. They are not in reality physical at all. What you actually see are the inner activities of beings of will and intelligence in the stars. I have already spoken to you of the ingenious description of the sun given by astrophysicists. But if it were possible to journey to the sun by some means of transport invented by a Jules Verne, it would be found with amazement that nothing of what was to be expected from these physical descriptions exists. The descriptions are merely a composite picture of solar phenomena. What we see is in reality the working of will and intelligence which at a distance appears as light. If inhabitants of the moon—supposing in this sense there were such beings—were to look at the earth, they would not detect its grassy or mineral surfaces but—also perceiving it as a light effect or something similar—they would detect what takes place around the centers of gravity of human bodies and also the effects of the conditions in which human beings live between going to sleep and waking. That is what would actually be seen from the universe. Even the most perfect instrument would not enable the chairs, for instance, on which you are now sitting, to be seen; what would be seen is all that is taking place in the region of your centers of gravity and what would happen if you were suddenly to fall asleep—it is to be hoped that this would not happen in every case! But wherever it did happen, it would be perceived out in the universe.

So that to the outer universe, what takes place through human beings is the perceptible reality—not what surrounds us in earthly existence. A very common saying is that everything perceived with the senses is maya—the great illusion—no reality but simply appearance. Such an abstraction is of little account. It has meaning only when one enters into the concrete, as we have now been doing. To say glibly that the animal, plant, and mineral worlds are maya means nothing: What is of value is the realization that what you perceive outwardly depends fundamentally upon yourselves and that—not of course at each moment but in the course of human evolution—you make yourselves an integral part of the chain of causes and effects.

Even when such a shattering truth is uttered—and I think it may well be shattering—it is not always seen in the aspect where it becomes of importance in life. Such a truth assumes importance only when we perceive its consequences. We are not physical beings only; we are moral—or maybe immoral—beings in earthly existence. What we do is determined by impulses of a moral nature.

Now just think with what bitter doubt modern thought is assailed in this domain. Natural science provides a knowledge of the earthly that is confined to the connection between purely external causes and effects; and in this cycle of natural causes and effects, the human being too is involved. So it is alleged by external, abstract science which takes account of one aspect only of earthly existence.

The fact that moral impulses also light up in people is admitted but nothing is known about the connection between these moral impulses and what comes to pass in the round of external nature. Indeed the dilemma of modern philosophy is that the philosophers hear on the one hand from the scientists that everything is involved in a chain of natural causes and effects—and on the other hand have to admit that moral impulses light up in people. That is the reason why Kant wrote two “Critiques”: the Critique of Pure Reason, concerned with the relation of the human being to a purely natural course of things, and the Critique of Practical Reason where he puts forward his moral postulates—which in truth, if I may speak figuratively, hover in the air, come out of the blue and have no a priori relation with natural causes.

As long as we believe that what takes place in the external manifestations of nature can be traced only to similar manifestations, as long as we cling to this illusion, the intervention of moral impulses is something that remains separate and apart from the course of nature. Nearly everything that is discussed today lies under the shadow of this breach. In their thinking people cannot use the earthly round as such with the moral life of humanity. But as soon as you grasp something of what I have tried briefly to outline, you will be able to say: Yes, as a human being I am a unity, and moral impulses are alive within me. They live in what I am as a physical being. But as a physical human being I am fundamentally the cause—together with all humankind—of every physical happening. The moral conduct and achievements of human beings on the earth are the real causes of what comes to pass in the course of earth existence.

Natural history and natural science describe the earth in the way we find in text books of geology, botany, and so forth. What is said there seems entirely satisfactory according to the premises formed through modern education. But let us suppose that an inhabitant of Mars were to come down to the earth and observe it in the light of Martian premises. I am not saying that such a thing could happen but merely trying to illustrate what I mean. Suppose a being from Mars, having wandered dumbly about the earth were then to learn some human language, read some geology, and thus discover what kind of ideas prevail concerning the processes and happenings on the earth. This being would say: But that is not all. By far the most important factor is ignored. For example, I have noticed crowds of students loitering about in their beer houses, drinking and indulging their passions. Something is happening there: the human will is working in the metabolism. These are processes of which no mention is made in your books on physics and geology; they contain no reference to the fact that the course of earth existence is also affected by whether the students drink or do not drink. That is what a being not entirely immersed in earthly ideas and prejudices would find lacking in the descriptions given by human beings themselves of happenings on earth. For a being from Mars there would be no question but that moral impulses, pervading human deeds and the whole of human life, are part and parcel of the course of nature. According to modern preconceptions there is something inexorable in the play of nature, indeed pleasantly inexorable for materialistic thinkers. They imagine that the earth's course would be exactly the same were no human beings in existence; that whether they behave decently or not makes no fundamental difference or really alters anything. But that is not the case! The all-essential causes of what happens on the earth do not lie outside the human being; they lie within humankind. And if earthly consciousness is to expand to cosmic consciousness, humanity must realize that the earth—not over short but over long stretches of time—is made in its own likeness, in the likeness of humanity itself. There is no better means of lulling people to sleep than to impress upon them that they have no share in the course taken by earth existence. This narrows down human responsibility to the single individual, the single personality.

The truth is that the responsibility for the course of earth existence through ages of cosmic time, lies with humanity. Everyone must feel themselves to be a member of humanity, the earth itself being the body for that humanity.

Someone may say: For ten years I have given way to my passions, indulged my fancies and have thereby ruined my body. With equal conviction such a person should be able to say: If earthly humanity follows impure moral impulses, then the body of the earth will be different from what it would be were the moral impulses pure. The day-fly, because it lives for twenty-four hours only, has a view of the world differing entirely from that of human beings. The range of our vision is not wide enough to perceive that what happens externally in the course of nature is not dependent upon purely natural causes. In regard to the present configuration of Europe, it is far more important to ask what manner of life prevailed among human beings in the civilized world two thousand years ago than to investigate the external mineral and plant structure of the earth. The destiny of our physical earth planet in another two thousand years will not depend upon the present constitution of our mineral world, but upon what we do and allow to be done. With world consciousness, human responsibility widens into world responsibility. With such consciousness we feel as we look up to the starry heavens that we are responsible to this cosmic expanse, permeated and pervaded as it is by spirit—that we are responsible to this world for how we conduct the earth. We grow together with the cosmos in concrete reality when behind the phenomena we seek for the truth.

I so often tell you that we must learn to perceive the concrete realities of things for the most part taught as abstractions today. Nothing much is accomplished by adopting oriental traditions such as: the external world of the senses is maya. We must go much deeper if we are to arrive at the truth. Such abstractions do not carry us far, because in the form in which they have been handed down they are nothing but the sediment of a primeval wisdom that did not hover in abstractions but teemed with concrete realities which must be brought to light again through spiritual intuition and research. When you read in oriental literature of maya and of truth as its antithesis, do not imagine that what you read there today can be really intelligible to you. It is only a much later compilation of matters that were concrete realities to the ancient wisdom. We must get back to these concrete realities. People think today that they have some understanding of cosmic processes when they assert that the external world of sense is maya. But nothing can be understood unless one presses on to the underlying realities. The moment it is realized: we have not to ask how the present mineral world has developed out of the mineral processes of another age; we have rather to ask about what has been going on in humankind—at that moment the real meaning of the saying, “the outer world is maya,” becomes clear. Then we begin to perceive in the human being a reality far greater than is usually perceived. And then the feeling of responsibility for earth existence begins.

If you will try to get to the inner core of these things—and it must be by inward contemplation, not by means of the kind of intelligence employed in natural science—you will gradually find your way to the realization that humankind is composed of free human beings. Nature does not, in truth, counteract our freedom, for as human beings we ourselves fashion the nature immediately surrounding us. It is only in its partial manifestations that nature counteracts our freedom. Nature counteracts our freedom to an extent no greater than if—to give an example—you are stretching out your hand and someone else takes hold of it and checks the movement. You will not deny freedom of will simply because someone else checks a movement. As people of the present day we are checked in many respects because of some action of our predecessors that is only now taking effect. But at all events it was an action of human beings.—What human beings? Not anyone against whom we can turn with reproach, for we ourselves were the ones who, in earlier earthly lives, brought about the conditions obtaining today.

We must not confine ourselves to the mere mention of repeated earthly lives but think of the connection between them in such a way that even in external nature we perceive the effects of causes we ourselves laid down in earlier lives. Naturally, in reference to the single, individual human being, we must speak of contributory causes only, for in all these things, as I have said, it is a matter of the collective inter-working of human beings on the earth. None of us should, for that reason, exclude ourselves as individuals, for each of us has a share in what is brought about by humanity as a whole and then comes to expression in what constitutes the body for the whole of earthly humanity in its on-flowing life.

I have been endeavoring to give you an idea of how a spiritual scientist must regard the statements made in ordinary scientific text-books. Suppose I were to draw a series of figures:

And now suppose some creature who had never lived in our world were to crawl out of the earth and, having some rudiments of arithmetical knowledge, were to look at the figures and say: First figure, second figure, third figure. The third is the effect of the second, and the second the effect of the first. Effect of the first figure—a triangle; effect of the second circle. This creature would then be combining cause and effect. But it would be a fallacy, for I have drawn each figure separately. In reality the one is independent of the other. It only appears to be dependent to this creature who associates what comes first with what follows, as if the one were the outcome of the other. This, approximately, is how the geologist describes the process of the earth: Diluvial epoch, Tertiary epoch, Quaternary epoch, and so on. But this is no more true than the statement that the circle is the outcome, the effect of the triangle, or the triangle the effect of the rectangular figure. The configurations of the earth are brought about autonomously—through the deeds of earthly humanity, including the mysterious workings of the intelligence during the periods of sleep when human beings are outside their physical bodies.

This shows you that the descriptions given by external science are very largely illusion—maya. But merely to speak about maya is of little account. To the assertion that the external world is maya we must be able to reply by stating where the actual causes lie. These causes are hidden to a great extent from our powers of cognition. The part played by humankind in shaping earth existence cannot be fathomed by means of external science but only by an inner science. My book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment speaks of the human being's inner activity between the time of going to sleep and waking. This can be revealed by knowledge that reaches down to the sphere of the will Human beings know nothing of the connection between the will and the outer world for the processes of the will are hidden and concealed. We do not know what is really going on when by lifting our hand we set in operation a process of will; nor do we know that this process continues and has an effect in the whole course of earth existence.

This is indicated in the scene in my mystery play, The Portal of Initiation, where the actions of Capesius and Strader have their outcome in cosmic manifestations—in thunder and lightning. It is, of course, a pictorial representation, but the picture contains a deeper truth; it is not fantasy but actual truth. For a fairly long period in evolution, truths of this kind have been voiced only by true poets whose fantasy must always be perception of super-sensible processes.

This is very little understood by modern people who like to relegate poetry, indeed all art, to a place separate and apart from external reality. They feel relieved not to be asked to see in poetry anything more than fantasy. True poetry, true art, is of course, no more than a reflection of super-sensible truth—but a reflection it is. Even if poets are not themselves conscious of the super-sensible happenings, if their soul is linked with the cosmos, if they have not been torn away from the cosmos by materialistic education, they give utterances to super-sensible truths, in spite of having to express them in pictures drawn from the world of sense.

Many examples of this are contained in the second part of Goethe's Faust, where as I have shown in the case of particular passages, the imagery has a direct relation with super-sensible processes.² The development of art in recent centuries affords evidence of what I have been saying. Take any picture painted by no means very long ago, and you will find that as a rule, landscape is given very secondary importance. The painting of landscape has come into prominence only since the last three to five centuries. Earlier than that you will find that landscape takes second place; it is the human world that is brought to the forefront because the consciousness still survived that in regard to objective processes of earth existence the human world is much more important than the landscape—which is but the effect of the human world. In the very birth of preference for landscape there lies, in the sphere of art, the parallel phenomenon of the birth of the materialistic trend of mind—consisting in the belief that landscape and what it represents has an existence of its own, entirely apart from humanity. But the truth is quite the reverse. Were some inhabitant of Mars to come down to the earth he would certainly be able to see meaning in Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper,” but not in paintings of landscapes. He would see landscapes—including painted landscapes—and the whole configuration of the earth quite differently and with his particular organ of sense could not fathom their meaning. Please remember that I am saying these things merely in order to illustrate hypothetically what I want to convey.

So you see, the saying: “the external world is maya” cannot be fully understood without entering into the concrete realities. But to do this we must relate ourselves intimately with earth existence as a whole, know ourselves to be an integral part of it. And then we must grasp the thought that there can be external and apparent realities which are not the truth, not the true realities. If you have a rose in your room, it is an apparent reality only, for the rose as it is in front of you there cannot be the reality. It can be true reality only while it is growing on the rose tree, united with the roots which in turn are united with the earth. The earth as described by the geologists is as little a true reality as a plucked rose is a reality.

Spiritual science endeavors never to halt at the untrue reality, but always to seek what must be added, in order to have the whole, true reality. The meager sense of reality prevailing in our present civilization expresses itself in the very fact that every external manifestation is taken as reality. But there is reality only in what lies before one as an integrated whole. The earth by itself, without human beings, is no more a true reality than the rose plucked from the rose tree. These things must be pondered and worked upon; they must not remain theories but pass over into our feelings. We must feel ourselves members of the whole earth. It is of importance again and again to call up the thoughts: this finger on my hand has true reality only as long as it is part of my organism; if it is cut off it no longer has true reality. Similarly, the human being has no true reality apart from the earth, nor has the earth without humankind. It is an unreal concept when modern scientific investigators think, according to their premises, that earth evolution would run the same course if humanity were not there. I recently showed you that it would not be so, by telling you that the bodies laid aside by human beings at death become a leaven in earth evolution and that if no human bodies—either by burial or cremation—became part of the earth, the whole course of physical happenings would be other than it is in consequence of these bodies having been received into the earth.

In the lecture today I wanted to speak in greater detail of the connection between the two poles of will and intelligence in human beings and their cosmic environment.

• 1. Representing, approximately, the total population of the earth.
• 2. Twenty-eight lectures given in the year 1915. Geisteswissenschaftliche Erlauterungen zu Goethe's Faust.