The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have often spoken of the great and far-reaching significance of the Christ Impulse for the evolution of humanity on earth, and we have tried to characterize the whole essence of this Christ Impulse, which we usually summarize in the words “the Mystery of Golgotha,” from the most diverse angles. Recently, it has been my task to research some very specific and concrete aspects of this Mystery of Golgotha and its related matters. These investigations have presented themselves to me in such a way that I feel it is my duty to share the results of these investigations with our circle of friends, especially now, in this time of ours. I have succeeded in extracting some important information from what is called the Akasha Chronicle, and which we have often spoken about, with regard to the life of Christ Jesus.

We have already spoken at length during our last meetings about the radical changes that are taking place in the development of humanity in our time, and it is precisely in connection with these changes that it is necessary to convey to individual human souls, who have come together in the anthroposophical movement as we understand it, new data about the life of Christ Jesus. I only ask you to treat what I have to say in this regard with particular discretion and to keep it within our branches. Because even the little that has had to be published so far about the Christ Jesus life and what was not known from the gospels or tradition has already caused a certain wildness, a wild passion, and I don't even want to talk about the strange critics who are against our current , but even among those who have at least once shown goodwill towards this current, has caused a certain wildness, a wild passion, such as the story of the two Jesus children. Nothing seems so repulsive to our time, so inwardly repulsive, than drawing attention to the real results of spiritual research, to specific individual results of spiritual research. One still accepts it when the spiritual in general is spoken of, even when individual remarkable abstract theories about spiritual life are put forward. But one no longer wants to accept it when details from the spiritual life are presented in the same way as one presents details from the life of the physical plane. Much that must be said in connection with what I have to present will still be said. Now I would like to begin with the narrative itself, starting from a particular point, and I ask you to accept this narrative as a kind of fifth gospel that falls into our time as the four other gospels fell into their time. This is the only introduction that will be given. We will discuss further motivation tomorrow.

I would like to begin with the point in time that is indicated in the Gospel of Luke as the appearance of the twelve-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem among the scribes, where he attracts the attention of these scribes with the great, powerful answers he is able to give them. And so, as related in the Gospel of Luke, his relatives, who had lost track of him, find him. We know that this appearance is based on the fact that a great change in the life of Jesus had taken place, which can only be understood with the help of spiritual science. We know — and this may be briefly repeated — that approximately at the beginning of our era two Jesus-children were born, that one of them descended from the so-called Solomonic line of the House of David, and that in this Jesus-child was incarnated the spirit or the I, we may say, of Zarathustra. We know that this Jesus child grew up with a great gift, which must seem understandable when one knows the fact that this Jesus child carried the ego of Zarathustra within him. We know that the other Jesus child was born at about the same time from the Nathanic line of the House of David, and that this child had entered the physical plane with very different character traits than the Jesus child from the Solomonic line. While the boy Jesus of the Solomon line showed a special talent for everything that came from his environment and showed that it originated from human culture, up to the point where human culture had come at that time, the other Jesus boy was actually untalented in relation to everything that humanity had achieved in its development. He could not really relate to what he was supposed to learn about all that people had conquered in the course of historical development. Instead, this boy Jesus showed a wonderful depth and abundance of heart and mind, such a wealth of feeling that he cannot be compared to any other child when looking at the point in our human development where this child can be found and observed in the Akasha Chronicle.

Then the two boys grew up, and at the very moment when they were both about twelve years old, the ego of Zarathustra passed from one Jesus boy to the other, and it was the Jesus boy from the Nathanic line, with the ego of Zarathustra within him, who gave the great, powerful answers before the scribes in Jerusalem. So it was that the peculiar nature — one cannot say it any other way — of the Jesus child of Nathan and the I of Zarathustra had united. We know then — and this has been presented by me on earlier occasions — that the physical mother of the Jesus child of Nathan soon died, as did the father of the other child, and that now from the mother of the other Jesus child — the Solomonian Jesus child also soon wasted away because he was actually without an ego, withered away —, that now from the mother of the Solomonian Jesus child and the father of the Nathanian Jesus child a family became. The step-siblings, who were descended from the mother and father of the Solomonic line, also came over and now lived in Nazareth, and within this family, that is, with his stepmother or foster mother, the Jesus child with the Zarathustra ego now grew up within him, without his knowing, of course, at this age, that he had the ego of Zarathustra within him. He had within him the capacities that the ego of Zarathustra must have; but he did not know how to say: I have the ego of Zarathustra within me.

What now emerged, what had already been announced in the great answers he had given to the scribes, but what emerged more and more, that was - so I have to describe the life of this Jesus boy, the life from about the twelfth to the eighteenth year of life - that something like an inner inspiration asserted itself in his inner being , a direct knowledge that arose in him, a knowledge of a very peculiar kind, a knowledge that was so natural to him that he perceived something in his own soul, as the ancient prophets in the primeval times of Judaism had received their divine-spiritual revelations from divine-spiritual heights, from spiritual worlds. They had been accustomed to describe in their memory the message that once came to the ancient prophets from the spiritual world as the great Bath-Kol, as the voice from the spiritual world, the great Bath-Kol. As if the great Bath-Kol had risen again in him, but now in him alone, it seemed to the twelve-, thirteen-, fourteen-, eighteen-year-old Jesus, a rare, wonderful maturity of inner inspiration, a revival of those inner experiences that only the ancient prophets had.

What is particularly striking when one focuses on this point in human development in an Akashic chronicling manner is that within the whole family and within the whole environment in Nazareth, this boy was alone and lonely in relative youth with his inner revelation, which went beyond everything that others could know at that time. Even his stepmother or foster mother at the time understood him very poorly, and the others even less so. And it is less important when judging this boy Jesus to form all kinds of theories, but rather to have a sense of what it means to be a mature boy between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to feel something completely alien within oneself feelings of revelation that were impossible for anyone else at the time, and to stand alone with these revelations, unable to speak to anyone, and what was even more, to have to feel that no one would understand if you spoke to them. It is difficult for a man to endure such things; to experience such things between the ages of twelve and eighteen is something monstrous. And to this monstrosity was added another.

He had an open mind, this boy Jesus, for what a person in his time was capable of receiving. Even then, with the eyes of his soul open, he saw what people, by virtue of their nature, were able to absorb and process spiritually and soulfully, and what they had received over the centuries from the ancient prophets revealed to the Jews. Deeply pained, with the most profound sorrow, he felt: Yes, it was so in primeval times, so the great Bath-Kol spoke to the prophets; that was an original teaching, of which scant remnants have remained among the Pharisees and other scribes. If the great Bath Kol were to speak to any human being now, there would be no one to understand the voice from the spiritual world. Humanity has changed from the time of the old prophets. Even if those great, those glorious revelations of primeval times were to resound today, the ears to understand them would be missing. This came to the soul of this Jesus child again and again, and with this suffering he was alone.

It is impossible to convey the depth of feeling that turned to what suffering, so characterized as I have just done, befell this Jesus child. And it may be said without fear of contradiction: No matter how much we may have said in theory about the Mystery of Golgotha, the magnitude of the cosmic or historical aspects is not at all overshadowed when we consider the individual concrete facts more and more as they present themselves in their factuality. For it is only by observing these facts that one can fully appreciate the course of human development, how an ancient wisdom was also present in the Jewish people and how impossible it was to understand this ancient wisdom at the time when it only, one might say, tentatively in a single soul between the ages of twelve and eighteen, but only caused this soul agony because no one could have understood how this Bath-Kol had expressed herself, how this revelation was only there for this soul to suffer endlessly. The boy was completely alone with these experiences, which, so to speak, represented the suffering of the historical development of mankind in such a concentration.

Now something developed in the boy that, I would like to say, can be observed in its rudiments here and there in life, which one must think of only infinitely magnified in relation to the life of Jesus. Pain and suffering experienced from similar sources to those described here are transformed in the soul, so that the person who experiences such pain and suffering within himself naturally transforms into goodwill, into love, but not just into feelings of goodwill and feelings of love, but into the power, into an enormous power of love, into the possibility of living this love spiritually and emotionally. And so, as Jesus grew up, something very peculiar developed in him.

Despite the hostility of his brothers and sisters and his immediate surroundings because they could not understand him and regarded him as someone who was not quite himself, it could not be denied that, as it showed up at the time for the physical eye, it now shows up for the Akashic Records that wherever this young lad went, if he spoke to anyone, even if they could not understand him, they at least responded to what he said, there was something like an actual overflow of a certain something from Jesus' soul into the other soul. It was like the passing over of a fluid of goodwill, of love, that was what radiated. It was the transformed suffering, the transformed pain. It came to those who came into contact with Jesus like a soothing breath of love, so that one felt one had something special in front of one, by being in some way in his presence. It was as if he were a kind of carpenter or joiner, and Jesus worked diligently in the Father's house. But in the hours when he came to himself, what I have just characterized took place. These were the inner experiences of Jesus of Nazareth, let us say between the twelfth and sixteenth or eighteenth years of his life.

Then, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, he began a kind of wandering. He wandered around a lot, working here and there in the trade he practised at home, coming into contact with Jewish and pagan areas. Even then, something very strange was already showing in a peculiar way in his dealings with the people he met, as a result of his experiences in his earlier years. And it is important to bear this in mind, because it is only by taking this into account that we can penetrate more deeply into what actually happened back then in the development of humanity.

He came, I would say, working from place to place and there to the families. After work, as we would say today, he sat with the families, and there one sensed everywhere that train of goodwill, of love, of which I spoke. You felt it everywhere, but you felt it, so to speak, through action; because everywhere he went, in the years when he traveled around between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, you had the feeling: There really is a special being sitting here. They didn't always express it, but they had the feeling: There is a special being among us. And that expressed itself in the fact that when he had moved away from the place, it wasn't just that they talked about what had happened between him and the others for weeks, but often it turned out like this: When the people sat together in the evenings while he was away, they had the feeling that he was entering the room. It was a shared vision. They had the feeling: He is among us again. And that happened in many, many places: that he had gone away and yet was still there, appearing spiritually to people, living spiritually among people, so that they knew: we are sitting with him.

As I said, in terms of the subjective it was a vision; in terms of the objective it was the tremendous effect of the love that he had expressed in the way described, and which expressed itself in such a way that the place of his appearance was in a certain sense no longer bound to the outer physical space, to the outer physical space conditions of the human physical body. It is tremendously helpful for understanding the Jesus figure to see again and again how indelibly he is imprinted in the minds of those to whom he once came, how he, so to speak, remained with them spiritually and returned to them again. Those who once knew him did not lose him from their hearts.

Now, during this wandering, he also came to pagan areas, I said, and in a pagan area he now had a very special experience. This experience makes a particularly deep impression when considering the Akasha Chronicle of this point in human development. He came to a pagan area. At this point, I would like to make it very clear: if you ask me where this was, where he came, I still have to tell you today: I don't know. Perhaps later research will reveal where it was, but I have not yet been able to find the geographical location. But the fact is absolutely clear. There may be reasons why one cannot find the geographical location, but why the fact itself can be absolutely clear. In fact, precisely by telling you these things, I do not want to withhold from you at any moment the admission of what has not yet been investigated in this matter, so that you can see that I am really concerned in this matter with communicating only what I am fully able to vouch for.

So he came to a pagan place. There was a dilapidated place of worship. The priests of this place had long since left the place; but the people all around were in deep misery, afflicted by diseases. Precisely because an evil disease was raging there, the pagan priests had left the place of worship for this and other reasons. The people felt not only sick, miserable, burdened and laden, but also abandoned by the priests who had performed the pagan sacrifices, and suffered terrible torments. Now he came here to this area. It was around the time of his twenty-fourth year. Even then, he was already to a great extent characterized by the fact that he made a very special, a tremendous impression by his mere appearance, even if he did not even speak, but only when he was seen approaching. There is really something very special about this appearance of Jesus for the people of that time among whom he appeared. One felt something quite incredible when he approached. One must bear in mind that one is dealing with people from a completely different age and a different region. When he approached, one could see people feel: There is something very special here, something radiates from this being that does not radiate from any other person. Almost everyone felt this, some sympathetically, others without sympathy. It is not surprising that it became known and spread like wildfire: a special being is coming! And those around the altar believed that another old pagan priest had come or had sent someone to perform the sacrifice again. And the crowd that gathered became more and more numerous; for like wildfire it spread that a very special being had arrived. Jesus, when he saw the crowd, had infinite compassion for them, but he did not have the will, although they stormily demanded it, to perform the sacrifice again, not the will to perform this pagan sacrifice. But when he saw this crowd, his soul was filled with the same pain over the decayed paganism as it had been filled with the pain over the decayed Judaism in the years from the twelfth to the sixteenth, eighteenth year of his life. And when he looked at the crowd, he saw demonic elemental entities everywhere among the crowd, and finally also at the sacrificial altar where he was standing. He fell as if dead; but this falling occurred only because he lapsed into a state of being removed from the world due to the dreadful sight he had witnessed.

While he lay there, as if dead, the crowd was seized with fear. The people began to flee. But he, while lying there in a different state, had a vision of the spiritual world that illustrated to him what ancient paganism was like when the original wisdom of paganism was still present in the sacrificial rites of the pagans in the ancient mysteries in their original sacred form. It revealed to him what paganism was in primeval times, how it had revealed itself to him earlier in a different way, what Judaism was like. But just as this happened in a spiritual-soul, invisible way, just as what arose in inspiration, just as it had come to the old prophets, wanted to speak to him, so he had to experience the greatness of paganism in a different way, had to see what can only be described by saying that he saw, as he lay there, the pagan places of sacrifice, which were so arranged in their cultic furnishings that they were a result of the original mystery revelations, and were actually like the external representation of the mystery ritual. At these sacrificial sites, when the sacrifices were performed, the prayers of the people were accompanied, during the ancient times when this still existed in its original form, by the infusion of the powers of those spiritual entities from the ranks of the higher hierarchies to which the heathens could rise. As if he saw a vision before his mind's eye: Yes, when sacrifices were once made at such an altar, in the times when paganism was in its old glory, then the forces of the good pagan gods flowed into the sacrificial acts. But now - now, not through an inspiration, but through an immediate imagination - he had to experience the decline of paganism in great vividness. He now had to experience this, the decline of paganism too! And instead of the good powers flowing into the sacrificial acts as they had done in the past, demonic elemental entities now came to life, all kinds of elemental emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman. He saw them now, and that was how the descent of paganism appeared to his mind's eye.

That was the second kind of great pain that he could feel: once the heathens had cultic rites that connected humanity with the good beings of certain hierarchies. This has become so decadent, so corrupt, that there are places like this where all good forces have been transformed into demonic forces, that it has come to such a pass that the people around them have been abandoned by the old pagan gods. So in a different way, the decline of paganism came before his soul than with Judaism, in a more inward, much more vivid way.

Indeed, one must know a little about the difference in feeling and sensing between when this feeling and sensing is the outflow of such direct imaginative experience or of theoretical knowledge. By fixing one's gaze on this point in the Akasha Chronicle, one indeed gets the impression of an infinitely meaningful but infinitely painful experience of the developmental history of humanity, which in turn is compressed into this imaginative moment.

He knew now: Divine spiritual powers once lived among the heathens; but if they lived now, there would be no people and no possibility for people to truly restore that ancient relationship. He now experienced this misery of humanity, concentrated and compressed into a brief experience. And as he rose to perceive what had once been revealed in the good, in the best old days of paganism, he heard words – so one can say – which felt to him like the secret of all human life on earth and its connection with the divine spiritual beings. I could not but express in words of our German language what had been spoken to the soul of the fallen, as if dead, Jesus, who at that very moment began to come to himself again. And for certain reasons I had to communicate these words first to our friends who were gathered at the time, when we laid the foundation stone for our building at Dornach. What was heard at that time, as primeval wisdom, is expressed in German words as follows:

Amen
The evils prevail
Witnesses of dissolving unity
Of selfhood guilt incurred by others
Experienced in daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
Since man has separated himself from your kingdom and forgotten your names, you fathers in the heavens.

You see, my dear friends, it is something similar to an inverted Lord's Prayer, but that is how it should be.

Amen
The evils
Witnesses of selfhood that is released
From the guilt of selfhood owed to others
Experienced in the daily bread
In which the Will of Heaven does not rule
Because man has separated himself from your kingdom
And forgot your names
You fathers in the heavens.

After this had appeared to him as the secret of man's existence on earth and his connection with the divine-spiritual being, he came back to himself and still saw the fleeing demons and the fleeing people. He now had a great moment of life behind him. He now also knew how it stood with the development of mankind in relation to paganism. He could say to himself: Even in the wide fields of paganism there is a descending development. He had not gained this knowledge through external observation, but through observation of the soul, this knowledge which showed him: paganism, like Judaism, needs something quite new, a quite new impulse!

We must firmly grasp that he had these experiences. He had the Zarathustra-ego in him, but he did not know that he had it in him, not even then. So he had experiences as experiences, because there was no teacher who could have explained it to him theoretically; he had these experiences as experiences.

Soon after he had had this experience in relation to paganism, he began his journey home. It was around the age of twenty-four when he came home. It was around the time when his father died, and now he was living with the family and with the stepmother or foster mother in Nazareth again. The strange thing was that everyone around him seemed to understand him less and less. Only his stepmother or foster mother had gradually developed a certain understanding of the tremendous — albeit incomplete — emotional and loving process taking place in this soul. And so it happened that sometimes, even though the mother was still far from understanding him intimately, they would exchange a few words, even if they were still superficial in relation to what Jesus felt, so that the mother grew more and more to what lived in the soul of Jesus.

During this time, however, he had another special experience, which brought him the third great sorrow. Between the ages of twenty-four and thirty, he became more and more involved with a community that had formed some time before, the Essene community. This Essene community consisted of people who recognized that there was a certain crisis in human history, that Judaism and paganism had arrived at a point in their descending development where people had to seek a new way to find union with the divine spiritual world again. And in relation to the old mystery methods, it was basically something new, which lay in the way of life that the Essenes sought in order to come up again to the union with the divine-spiritual world. These Essenes had particularly strict rules of life, in order to seek union with the Divine-Spiritual again, after a life of renunciation and devotion, after a life that went far beyond mere mental and intellectual perfection.

These Essenes were actually quite numerous in those days. They had their headquarters at the Dead Sea. But they had individual settlements in various regions of the Near East, and their numbers increased to such an extent that here and there someone was seized by the Essene idea, by the Essene ideal, through circumstances that always arise in such areas, felt impelled to join the Essenes. Such a person then had to give up everything that was his to the order, and the order had strict rules for its members. A person who was in the order could not keep any individual property. Now one person or another had this or that small property here or there. When he became an Essene, this property, which might be far away, fell to the Essenes, so that the Essenes had such properties everywhere. They usually sent younger brothers there, not the one from whom the property originated. From the common property, everyone could support anyone who was deemed worthy, a measure that best shows that at different times, different things benefit humanity, because such a measure would be extremely harsh in our time. But there was such a thing for the Essenes. This consisted in the fact that everyone was authorized to support from the common fund people whom he considered worthy, but never those who were related to him. That was strictly excluded, not close or distant relatives. There were different degrees in the order itself. The highest degree was a very secret one. It was very difficult to be admitted to it.

It is really the case that at that time, with regard to Jesus' life, Jesus was already so that to an enormous degree what I have described as a fluid emanating from him, which had an effect on people like embodied love itself, one might say. This also had an effect on the Essenes, and so it came about that he, without actually being a formal Essene, was drawn to the Essene community. Between the ages of twenty-four and thirty, he became so familiar with the Essenes that we can say that he had learned many of the things he experienced and discussed with them, which were their deepest secrets.

What once was the glory of Judaism, he learned between the ages of twelve and eighteen; what the secret of the Gentiles was, he learned between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. So now, by dealing directly with the Essenes and letting him partake of their secrets, he came to know the secret of the Essenes as it developed up to a certain union with the divine spiritual world. He could say to himself: Yes, there is something like a path to find the way back to the connection with the divine spiritual. And one really sees, after he had been tormented twice, in relation to Judaism and paganism, how it sometimes dawned on him while he was among the Essenes, something like a cheerful confidence that one could indeed find a way up again. But experience was soon to disabuse him of this cheerful confidence.

Then he learned something that was not learned theoretically, again not learned as a doctrine, but in direct life. Once, after he had just joined the Essenes, he went through the Essenes' gate and had a powerful vision that deeply affected his soul. He saw in the immediate vicinity how two figures fled from the Essenes' gate, and he already knew in some way that they were Lucifer and Ahriman; they fled from the Essenes' gate, as it were. He then had this vision more often when he walked through Essene gates. Essenes were already quite numerous at that time, and one had to take them into consideration. Now the Essenes were not allowed to go through the usual gates that were painted. This was connected with the way they had to shape their soul. The Essenes were not allowed to go through any gate that was painted in the manner of the time. He was only allowed to go through unpainted gates. There was one such gate in Jerusalem, and in other cities as well. The Essene was not allowed to go through a painted gate. This is proof that the Essenes were quite numerous at that time. Jesus came to some of these gates, and very often the same apparition repeated itself to him. “There are no pictures there,” he said to himself; ‘but instead of pictures, I see Lucifer and Ahriman standing at the gate.’ And so it formed in his soul – which one must take only from the point of view of spiritual-soul experience in order to fully appreciate it; by saying it that way, describing it theoretically, it is of course easy to accept, but one must consider how the experience of the soul takes shape when one experiences these things in direct spiritual reality. It was through this experience that he developed, let me repeat the word I have already used: the conviction of experience, which can only be expressed in such a way that he could say to himself: It seems as if the Essene way is the one, as has been shown to me in various ways, by which one can, through the perfection of the individual soul, find the way back into the divine spiritual worlds; but this is achieved at the expense of the Essene setting up their way of life in such a way that they keep away from everything that would in any way allow Lucifer and Ahriman to approach them. They set everything up so that Lucifer and Ahriman could not reach them. So Lucifer and Ahriman had to stand outside the gate. And now he also knew, by following the whole thing spiritually, where Lucifer and Ahriman always went. They went to the other people outside who could not make the Essene way! That struck terribly at his mind, giving a stronger sorrow than the other experiences. It weighed so heavily on him that he had to say to himself: Yes, the Essenes could lead individuals upwards, but only if these individuals devoted themselves to a life that could not be granted to all mankind, that was only possible if individuals separated themselves and fled from Lucifer and Ahriman, who then went to the great multitude.

So it lay on his soul, how a few could experience again what the old prophets had experienced from the great BathKol, what appeared to the heathens at the ancient sacrifice. If what the descendants of the heathens and Jews can no longer experience, if the individual would attain on the Essene way, then the necessary consequence would be that the great remaining mass would be all the more afflicted by Lucifer and Ahriman and their demons. For the Essenes achieve their perfection by sending Lucifer and Ahriman, who flee, to other people. They attain their perfection at the expense of others, for their path is such that only a small group can follow it. This was what Jesus now learned. This was the third great pain, which became even more pronounced for him because, as if emerging from his Essene experiences and entering into the community of the Essenes themselves, he had something like a visionary conversation with the Buddha, whose community, a closer community, much in common with the Essene movement, only centuries older. The Buddha revealed to him from the spiritual world: Such a community can only exist if only a small group of people participate in it, and not all people. It seems almost primitive when one says that the Buddha revealed to Jesus that the Buddha monks could only go around with the offering bowl when there were only a few such monks and the others were, so to speak, paying for it with another life. It sounds primitive when you put it that way. But it is different when the responsible spiritual power, as here the Buddha, reveals this in a situation in which Jesus of Nazareth now finds himself.

And so, in the life between the twelfth and thirtieth year of life, Jesus of Nazareth had experienced the development of humanity in threefold suffering, right down to the last detail. What now lived in his soul, what had been crowded together in this soul, he was able to develop in a conversation with this mother after the age of twenty-nine, after his stepmother or foster mother had gradually come to understand his nature and had become close to him. And important, infinitely important, was a conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and his stepmother or foster mother around the time of his thirtieth year, a conversation that was conducted in which everything that Jesus of Nazareth experienced during those years was truly poured out, as it were, into a few hours, and which became significant because of it. There are few spiritual experiences that are as significant, at least for a certain level of spiritual experience, as the one that one has when one focuses one's gaze on what Jesus of Nazareth had to say to his stepmother or foster mother.

At the beginning of yesterday's lecture I pointed out how different are the impressions received by the soul when, on the one hand, it allows the well-balanced, calm, passionless, emotionless, truly wise nature of the Bhagavad Gita to work upon it, and on the other hand that which holds sway in the Epistles of St. Paul. In many respects these give the impression of being permeated by personal emotions, personal views and points of view, by a certain, for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, agitating sense of propagandism; they are even choleric, sometimes stormy. If we allow the manner in which the spiritual content of both is expressed to work upon us, we have in the Gita something so perfect, expressed in such a wonderful, artistically rounded way, that one could not well imagine a greater perfection of expression, revealed poetically and yet so philosophically. In the Epistles of St. Paul, on the other hand, we often find what one might call an awkwardness of expression, so that on account of this, which sometimes approaches clumsiness, it is extremely difficult to extract their deep meaning. Yet it is nevertheless true that that which relates to Christianity in the Epistles of St. Paul is the keynote for its development, just as the union of the world-conceptions of the East is the keynote of the Gita. In the Epistles of St. Paul we find the significant basic truths of Christianity as to the Resurrection, the significance of what is called Faith as compared with the Law, of the influence of grace, of the life of Christ in the soul or in the human consciousness, and many other things; we find all these presented in such a way that any presentation of Christianity must always be based on these Pauline Epistles. Everything in them refers to Christianity, as everything in the Gita refers to the great truths as to liberating oneself from works, to the freeing of oneself from the immediate life of action, in order to devote oneself to contemplation, to the meditation of the soul, to the upward penetration of the soul into spiritual heights, to the purification of the soul; in short, according to the meaning of the Gita, to the union with Krishna. All that has just been described makes a comparison of these two spiritual revelations extremely difficult, and anyone who merely makes an external comparison will doubtless be compelled to place the Bhagavad Gita, in its purity, calm and wisdom, higher than the Epistles of St. Paul. But what is a person who makes such an outward comparison actually doing? He is like a man who, having before him a fully grown plant, with a beautiful blossom, and beside it the seed of a plant; were to say: “When I look at the plant with its beautiful, fully-developed blossom, I see that it is much more beautiful than the insignificant, invisible seed.” Yet it might be that out of that seed lying beside the plant with the beautiful blossom, a still more beautiful plant with a still more beautiful blossom, might some day spring forth. It is really no proper comparison to compare two things to be found side by side, such as a fully-developed plant and a quite undeveloped seed; and thus it is if one compares the Bhagavad Gita with the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Bhagavad Gita we have before us something like the ripest fruit, the most wonderful and beautiful representation of a long human evolution, which had grown up during thousands of years and in the Epistles of St. Paul we have before us the germ of something completely new which must grow greater and greater, and which we can only grasp in all its full significance if we look upon it as germinal, and hold prophetically before us what it will some day become, when thousands and thousands of years of evolution shall have flowed into the future and that which is planted as a germ in the Pauline Epistles shall have grown riper and riper. Only if we bear this in mind can we make a proper comparison. It then also becomes clear that that which is some day to become great and which is first to be found in invisible form from the depths of Christianity in the Pauline Epistles, had once to pour forth in chaotic fashion from the human soul. Thus things must be represented in a different way by one who is considering the significance on the one hand of the Bhagavad Gita, and on the other of the Pauline Epistles for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, from the way they can be depicted by another person who can only judge of the complete works as regards their beauty and wisdom and inner perfection of form.

If we wish to draw a comparison between the different views of life which appear in the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we must first inquire: What is the chief point in question? The point in question is that in all we are able to survey historically of the two views of life, what we are chiefly concerned with is the drawing down of the “ego” into the evolution of mankind. If we trace the ego through the evolution of mankind, we can say that in the pre-Christian times it was still dependent, it was still, as it were, rooted in concealed depths of the soul, it had not yet acquired the possibility of developing itself. Development of an individual character only became possible when into that ego was thrown, as it were, the impulse which we describe as the Christ-Impulse. That which since the Mystery of Golgotha may be within the human ego and which is expressed in the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that could not formerly be within it. But in the ages when there was already an approach to the Christ-Impulse—in the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha—that which was about to take place through the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into the human soul was slowly prepared, particularly in such a way as that expressed in the act of Krishna. That which, after the Mystery of Golgotha, a man had to look for as the Christ-Impulse in himself, which he had to find in the Pauline sense: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that he had, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to look for outside, he had to look for it coming to him as a revelation from cosmic distances. The further we go back into the ages, the more brilliant, the more impulsive was the revelation from without. We may therefore say: In the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha, a certain revelation came to mankind like sunshine falling upon an object from without. Just as the light falls upon this object, so did the light of the spiritual sun fall from without upon the soul of man, and enlightened it. After the Mystery of Golgotha we can speak of that which works in the soul as Christ-Impulse, as the spiritual sunlight, as though we saw a self-illumined body before us radiating its light from within. If we look at it thus, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha becomes a significant boundary line in human evolution. We can represent

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Bearing this in mind we can express this whole relation by means of the terms we have learnt in Sankhya philosophy. We may say: If we direct our spiritual eye to a soul which, before the Mystery of Golgotha, is irradiated from all sides by the light of the spirit, and we see the whole connection of this spirit which pours in upon the soul from all sides radiating to us in its spirituality, the whole then appears to us in what the Sankhya philosophy describes as the Sattva condition. On the other hand, if we contemplate a soul after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, looking at it from outside as it were, with the spiritual eye, it seems as though the spiritual light were hidden away in its innermost depths and as if the soul-nature concealed it. The spiritual light appears to us as though veiled by the soul-substance, that spiritual light which, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is contained in the Christ-Impulse. Do we not perceive this verified up to our own age, indeed especially in our own age, with regard to all that man experiences externally? Observe a man today, see what he has to occupy himself with as regards his external knowledge and his occupation; and try to compare with this how the Christ-Impulse lives in man, as if hidden in his inmost being, like a yet tiny, feeble flame, veiled by the rest of the soul's contents. That is Tamas as compared with the pre-Christian state, which latter, as regards the relation of soul and spirit, was the Sattva-state. What part, therefore, in this sense does the Mystery of Golgotha play in the evolution of mankind? As regards the revelation of the spirit, it transforms the Sattva into the Tamas state. By means of it mankind moves forward, but it undergoes a deep fall, one may say, not through the Mystery of Golgotha, but through itself. The Mystery of Golgotha causes the flame to grow greater and greater: but the reason the flame appears in the soul as only a very small one—whereas before a mighty light poured in on it from all sides—is that progressing human nature is sinking deeper and deeper into darkness. It is not, therefore the fault of the Mystery of Golgotha that the human soul, as regards the spirit, is in the Tamas condition, for the Mystery of Golgotha will bring it to pass in the distant future that out of the Tamas condition a Sattva condition will again come about, which will then be set aflame from within. Between the Sattva and the Tamas condition there is, according to Sankhya philosophy, the Rajas condition; and this is described as being that time in human evolution in which falls the Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity itself, as regards the manifestation of the Spirit, went along the path from light into darkness, from the Sattva into the Tamas condition, just during the thousand years which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we look more closely into this evolution, we may say: If we take the line a-b as the time of the evolution of mankind, up to about the eighth or seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha, all human civilisation was then in the Sattva condition.

 7th Century B.C. 15th, 16th Century A.D. A-------------------------x------------------------x-----------------------B
 Chald-Egypt. Graeco-Latin Period. Our own age. 

Then began the age in which occurred the Mystery of Golgotha, followed by our own age some fifteen or sixteen centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. Then quite definitely begins the Tamas age, but it is a period of transition. If we wish to use our customary designations we have the first age—which, in a sense, as regards certain spiritual revelations, still belongs to the Sattva condition—occurring at the same epoch as that which we call the Chaldean-Egyptian, that which is the Rajas-condition is the Graeco-Latin, and that which is in the Tamas condition is our own age.' We know, too, that what is called the Chaldean-Egyptian age is the third of the Post-Atlantean conditions the Graeco-Latin the fourth, and our own the fifth. It was therefore necessary one might say, in accordance with the plan of the evolution of mankind, that between the third and fourth Post-Atlantean epochs there should occur a deadening, as it were, of external revelation. How was mankind really prepared for the blazing up of the Christ-Impulse? How did this preparation really occur?

If we want to make quite clear to ourselves the difference between the spiritual conditions of mankind in the third epoch of humanity—the Chaldean-Egyptian—and the following epochs, we must say: In this third age in all these countries, in Egypt as well as in Chaldea, and also in India, there still was in humanity the remains of the old clairvoyant power: that is to say, man not only saw the worlds around him with the assistance of his senses and of the understanding connected with the brain, but he could also still see the surrounding world with the organs of his etheric body, at any rate, under certain conditions, between sleeping and waking. If we wish to picture to ourselves a man of that epoch, we can only do so by saying: To those men a perception of nature and of the world such as we have through our senses and the understanding bound up with the brain was only one of the conditions which they experienced. In those conditions they gained as yet no knowledge, but merely, as it were, gazed at things and let them work, side by side in space and one after another in time. If these men wanted to acquire knowledge they had to enter a condition, not artificially produced as in our time, but occurring naturally, as if of itself, in which their deeper-lying forces, the forces of their etheric bodies, operated for producing knowledge. Out of knowledge such as this came forth all that appears as the wonderful knowledge of the Sankhya philosophy; from such a contemplation also went forth all that has come down to us in the Vedas—although that belongs to a still earlier age. Thus the man of that time acquired knowledge by putting himself or allowing himself to be put into another condition. He had so to say his everyday condition, in which he saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and followed things with his ordinary understanding; but this seeing, hearing and understanding he only made use of when occupied in external practical business. It would never have occurred to him to make use of these capacities for the acquiring of knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge and perception he made use of what came to him in that other condition in which he brought into activity the deepest forces of his being.

We can therefore think of man in those old times as having, so to say, an everyday body, and within that everyday body his finer spiritual body, his Sunday body, if I may use such a comparison. With his everyday body he did his everyday work, and with his Sunday body—which was woven of the etheric body alone—he perceived and perfected his science. One would be justified in saying that a man of that olden time would be astonished that we in our day hew out our knowledge by means of our everyday body, and never put on our Sunday body when we wish to learn something about the world. Well, how did such a man experience all these conditions? The experiencing of these was such that when a man perceived by means of his deeper forces, when he was in that state of perception in which, for instance, he studied Sankhya philosophy, he did not then feel as does the man of today, who, when he wishes to acquire knowledge must exert his reason and think with his head. He, when he acquired knowledge, felt himself to be in his etheric body, which was certainly least developed in what today is the physical head, but was more pronounced in the other parts; man thought much more by means of the other parts of his etheric body. The etheric body of the head is the least perfect part of it. A man felt, so to say, that he thought with his etheric body; he felt himself when thinking, lifted out of his physical body; but at such moments of learning, of creative knowledge, he felt something more besides; he felt that he was in reality one with the earth. When he took off his everyday body and put on his Sunday body, he felt as though forces passed through his whole being; as though forces passed through his legs and feet and united him to the earth, just as the forces which pass through our hands and arms unite them with our body. He began to feel himself a member of the earth. On the one hand, he felt that he thought and knew in his etheric body, and on the other he felt himself no longer a separate man, but a member of the earth. He felt his being growing into the earth. Thus the whole inner manner of experiencing altered when a man drew on his Sunday body and prepared himself for knowledge. What, then, had to happen in order that this old old age—the third—should so completely cease, and the new age—the fourth—should come in? If we wish to understand what had to happen then, it would be well to try to feel our way a little into the old method of description.

A man who in that olden time experienced what I have just described, would say: “The serpent has become active within me.” His being lengthened out into the earth; he no longer felt his physical body as the really active part of him; he felt as though he stretched out a serpent-like continuation of himself into the earth and the head was that which projected out of the earth. And he felt this serpent being to be the thinker. We might draw the man's being thus: his etheric body passing into the earth, elongated into a serpent-body and, whilst outside the earth as physical man, he was stretched down into the earth during the time of perceiving and knowing, and thought with his etheric body.

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perceiving should come about? It had to be no longer possible for those moments to occur in which man felt his being extended down into the earth through his legs and feet; besides which perception had to die out in his etheric body and pass over to the physical head. If you can rightly picture this passing over of the old perception into the new, you will say: a good expression for this transition would be: “I am wounded in the feet, but with my own body I tread under foot the head of the serpent,” that is to say, the serpent with its head ceases to be the instrument of thought. The physical body and especially the physical brain, kills the serpent, and the serpent revenges itself by taking away from one the feeling of belonging to the earth. It bites one in the heel.

At such times of transition from one form of human experience into another, that which comes, as it were, from the old epoch, comes into conflict with that which is coming in the new epoch; for these things are still really contemporaneous. The father is still in existence long after the son's life has begun; although the son is descended from the father. The attributes of the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin were there, but those of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, still stirred and moved in men and in nations. These attributes naturally became intermingled in the course of evolution, but that which thus appears as the newly-arisen, and that which comes, as it were, out of the olden times, continue to live contemporaneously, but can no longer understand each other properly. The old does not understand the new. The new must protect itself against the old, must defend its life against it; that is to say, the new is there, but the ancestors with their attributes belonging to the old epoch, still work in their descendants, the ancestors who have taken no part in the new. Thus we may describe the transition from the third epoch of humanity to the fourth. There had therefore to be a hero, as we might say—a leader of humanity who, in a significant manner, first represents this process of the killing of the serpent, of being wounded by it; while he had at the same time to struggle against that which was certainly related to him, but which with its attributes still shone into the new age from the old. In the advance of mankind, one person must first experience the whole greatness of that which later all generations experience. Who was the hero who crushed the head of the serpent, who struggled against that which was important in the third epoch? Who was he who guided mankind out of the old Sattva-time into the new Tamas-time? That was Krishna-and how could this be more clearly shown than by the Eastern legend in which Krishna is represented as being a son of the Gods, a son of Mahadeva and Devaki, who entered the world surrounded by miracles (that betokens that he brings in something new), and who, if I may carry my example further, leads men to look for wisdom in their everyday body, and who crushes their Sunday body—the serpent; who has to defend himself against that which projects into the new age from his kindred. Such a one is something new, something miraculous. Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind. He had to defend himself against Kansa, the inhabitant of the old Sattva age; and amongst the most remarkable of the miracles with which Krishna is surrounded, the legend relates that the mighty serpent Kali twined round him, but that he was able to tread the head of the serpent under foot, though it wounded his heel. Here we have something of which we may say the legend directly reproduces an occult fact. That is what legends do; only we ought not to seek an external explanation, but should grasp the legend aright, in the true light of knowledge, in order to understand it.

Krishna is the hero of the setting third Post-Atlantean epoch of humanity. The legend relates further that Krishna appeared at the end of the third cosmic epoch. It all corresponds when rightly understood. Krishna is therefore he who kills out the old perception, who drives it into the darkness. This he does in his external phenomena; he reduces to a state of darkness that which as Sattva-knowledge, was formerly possessed by mankind. Now, how is he represented in the Bhagavad Gita? He is there represented as giving to a single individual, as if in compensation for what he has taken away from him, guidance as to how through Yoga he can rise to that which was then lost to normal mankind. Thus to the world Krishna appears as the killer of the old Sattva-knowledge, while at the same time we see him at the end of the Gita as the Lord of Yoga, who is again to lead us up to the knowledge which had been abandoned; the knowledge belonging to the old ages, which we can only attain when we have overcome and conquered that which we now put on externally as an everyday dress; when we return once more to the old spiritual condition. That was the twofold deed of Krishna, He acted as a world-historical hero, in that he crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and compelled man to re-enter the physical body, in which alone the ego could be won as free and independent ego, whereas formerly all that made man an ego streamed in from outside. Thus he was a world-wide historical Hero. Then to the individual he was the one who for the times of devotion, of meditation, of inner finding, gave back that which had at one time been lost. That it is which we meet with in such a grand form in the Gita, which at the end of our last lecture we allowed to work upon our souls, and which Arjuna meets as his own being seen externally; seen without beginning and without end—outspread over all space.

If we observe this condition more clearly we come to a place in the Gita which, if we have already been amazed at the great and mighty contents of the Gita, must infinitely extend our admiration. We come to a passage which, to the man of the present day, must certainly appear incomprehensible; wherein Krishna reveals to Arjuna the nature of the Avayata-tree, of the Fig-tree, by telling him that in this tree the roots grow upwards and the branches downwards; where Krishna further says that the single leaves of this tree are the leaves of the Veda book, which, put together, yield the Veda knowledge. That is a singular passage in the Gita. What does it signify, this pointing to the great tree of Life, whose roots have an upward direction, and the branches a downward direction, and whose leaves give the contents of the Veda? We must just transport ourselves back into the old knowledge, and try and understand how it worked. The man of today only has, so to say, his present knowledge, communicated to him through his physical organs. The old knowledge was acquired as we have just described, in the body which was still etheric, not that the whole man was etheric, but knowledge was acquired through the part of the etheric body which was within the physical body. Through this organism, through the organisation of the etheric body, the old knowledge was acquired. Just imagine vividly that you, when in the etheric body, could perceive by means of the serpent. There was something then present in the world, which to the man of the present day is no longer there. Certainly the man of today can realise much of what surrounds him when he puts himself into relation with nature; but just think of him when he is observing the world: there is one thing he does not perceive, and that is his brain. No man can see his own brain when he is observing; neither can any man see his own spine. This impossibility ceases as soon as one observes with the etheric body. A new object then appears which one does not otherwise see—one perceives one's own nervous system. Certainly it does not appear as the present-day anatomist sees it. It does not appear as it does to such a man, it appears in such a way that one feels: “Yes! There thou art, in thy etheric nature.” One then looks upwards and sees how the nerves, which go through all the organs, are collected together up there in the brain. That produces the feeling: “That is a tree of which the roots go upwards, and the branches stretch down into all the members.” That in reality is not felt as being of the same small size as we are inside our skin: it is felt as being a mighty cosmic tree. The roots stretch far out into the distances of space and the branches extend downwards. One feels oneself to be a serpent, and one sees one's nervous system objectified, one feels that it is like a tree which sends its roots far out into the distance of space and the branches of which go downwards. Remember what I have said in former lectures, that man is, in a sense, an inverted plant. All that you have learnt must be recalled and put together, in order to understand such a thing as this wonderful passage in the Bhagavad Gita. We are then astonished at the old wisdom which must today, by means of new methods, be called forth from the depths of occultism. We then experience what this tree brings to light. We experience in its leaves that which grows upon it; the Veda knowledge, which streams in on us from without.

The wonderful picture of the Gita stands out clearly before us: the tree with its roots going upwards, and its branches going downwards, with its leaves full of knowledge, and man himself as the serpent round the tree. You may perhaps have seen this picture, or have come across the picture of the Tree of Life with the serpent; everything is of significance when one considers these old things. Here we have the tree with the upward growing roots, and the downward-turning branches; one feels that it goes in an opposite direction to the Paradise-tree. That has its deep meaning: for the tree of Paradise is placed at the beginning of the other evolution, that which through the old Hebrew antiquity passes on into Christianity. Thus in this place we are given an indication of the whole nature of that old knowledge, and when Krishna distinctly says to his pupil Arjuna “Renunciation is the power which makes this tree visible to mankind,” we are shown how man returns to that old knowledge when he renounces everything acquired by him in the further course of evolution, which we described yesterday. That it is which is given as something grand and glorious by Krishna to his only individual pupil Arjuna as a payment on account, whilst he has to take it from the whole of humanity for the everyday use of civilisation. That is the being of Krishna. What then must that become which Krishna gives to his single individual pupil? It must become Sattva wisdom; and the better he is able to give him this Sattva wisdom, the wiser, clearer, calmer and more passionless will it be, but it will be an old revealed wisdom, something which approaches mankind from without in such a wonderful way in the words which the Sublime One, that is to say, Krishna Himself, speaks, and in those in which the single individual pupil makes reply. Thus Krishna becomes the Lord of Yoga, who leads us back to the ancient wisdom of mankind, and who always endeavours to overcome that, which even in the age of the Sattva, concealed the spirit from the soul, who wishes to bring before his pupil the spirit in its ancient purity, as it was before it descended into substance. Thus in the spirit only does Krishna appear to us in that mutual conversation between Krishna and his pupil to which we referred yesterday.

Thus we have brought before our souls the end of that epoch, which was the last one of the ages of the old spirituality; that spirituality that we can so follow that we see its full and complete spiritual light at its beginning, and then its descent into matter in order that man should find his ego, his independence. And when the spiritual light had descended as far as the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, there was then a sort of reciprocal relationship, a Rajas relationship between the spirit and the more external soul-part. In this epoch occurred the Mystery of Golgotha. Could we describe this epoch as belonging to the Sattva-condition? No! For then we should not be describing just what belonged to that epoch! If anyone describes it correctly, as belonging to the Rajas-age—making use of that expression of Sankhya philosophy—he must describe it according to Rajas, not in terms of purity and clearness, but in a personal sense, as aroused to anger about this, or that, and so on. Thus would one have to describe it, and thus did St. Paul portray it, in the sense of its relation to Rajas. If you feel the throbbing of many a saying in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, to the Corinthians, or to the Romans, you will become aware of something akin to rage, something often like a personal characteristic pulsating in the Epistles of St. Paul, wrenching itself away from the Rajas-condition—that is the style and character of these Epistles. They had to appear thus; whereas the Bhagavad Gita had to come forth clear and free from the personal because it was the finest blossom of the dying epoch, which, however, gave one individual a compensation for that which was going under, and led him back into the heights of spiritual life. Krishna had to give the finest spiritual blossoms to his own pupil, because he was to kill out the old knowledge of mankind, to crush the head of the serpent. This Sattva-condition went under of itself, it was no longer there; and anyone, in the Rajas age who spoke of the Sattva-condition spoke only of that which was old. He who placed himself at the beginning of the newer age had to speak in accordance with what was decisive for that time. Personality had drawn into human nature because human nature had found the way to seek knowledge through the organs and instruments of the physical body. In the Pauline Epistles the personal element speaks; that is why a personality thunders against all that draws in as the darkness of the material; with words of wrath he thunders forth, for words of wrath often thunder forth in the Epistles of St. Paul. That is why the Epistles of St. Paul cannot be given in the strictly limited lines, in the sharply-defined, wise clearness of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita can speak in words full of wisdom because it describes how man may free himself from external activity, and raise himself in triumph to the spirit, how he may become one with Krishna. It could also describe in words full of wisdom the path of Yoga, which leads to the greatest heights of the soul. But that which came into the world as something new, the victory of the spirit over that which merely pertains to the soul within, that could at first only be described out of the Rajas-condition; and he who first described it in a manner significant for the history of mankind, does so full of enthusiasm; in such a way that one knows he took part in it himself, that he himself trembled before the revelation of the Christ-Impulse. The personal had then come to him, he was confronted for the first time with that which was to work on for thousands of years into the future, it came to him in such a way that all the forces of his soul had to take a personal part in it. Therefore he does not describe in philosophic concepts, full of wisdom, such as occur in the Bhagavad Gita, but describes what he has to describe as the resurrection of Christ as something in which man is directly and personally concerned.

Was it not to become personal experience? Was not Christianity to draw into what is most intimately personal, warm it through and through, and fill it with life? Truly he who described the Christ-Event for the first time could only do so as a personal experience. We can see how in the Gita the chief emphasis is laid upon the ascent through Yoga into spiritual heights; the rest is only touched upon in passing. Why is this? Because Krishna only gives his instructions to one particular pupil and does not concern himself with what other people outside in the world feel as to their connection with the spiritual. Therefore Krishna describes what his pupil must become, that he must grow higher and higher, and become more and more spiritual. That description leads to riper and riper conditions of the soul, and hence to more and more impressive pictures of beauty. Hence also it is the case that only at the end do we meet with the antagonism between the demoniacal and the spiritual, and it confirms the beauty of the ascent into the soul-life; only at the conclusion do we see the contrast between those who are demoniacal and those who are spiritual. All those people out of whom only the material speaks, who live in the material, who believe that all comes to an end with death, are demoniacal. But that is only mentioned by way of enlightenment, it is nothing with which the great teacher is really concerned: he is before all concerned with the spiritualising of the human soul. Yoga may only speak of that which is opposed to Yoga, as a side-issue. St. Paul is, above all, concerned with the whole of humanity, that humanity which is in fact in the oncoming age of darkness. He has to turn his attention to all that this age of darkness brings about in human life; he must contrast the dark life, common to all, with that which is the Christ-Impulse, and which is first to spring up as a tiny plant in the human soul. We can see it appearing in St. Paul as he points over and over again to all sorts of vice, all sorts of materialism, which must be combated through what he has to give. What he is able to give is at first a mere flickering in the human soul, which can only acquire power through the enthusiasm which lies behind his words, and which appears in triumphant words as the manifestation of feeling through personality. Thus the presentations of the Gita and of the Pauline Epistles are far removed from each other; in the clearness of the Gita the descriptions are impersonal, while St. Paul had to work the personal into his words. It is that which on the one hand gives the style, and tone to the Gita, and on the other to the Pauline Epistles; we meet it in both works, almost, one might, say in every line. Something can only attain artistic perfection when it has acquired the necessary ripeness; at the beginning of its development it always appears as more or less chaotic.

Why is all this so? This question is answered if we turn to the wonderful beginning of the Gita. We have already described it; we have seen the hosts of the kindred facing each other in battle, one warrior facing another, yet both conqueror and conquered are related to one another by blood. The time we are considering is that of the transition from the old blood-relationship, to which belongs the power of clairvoyance-to that of the differentiation and mingling of blood which is the characteristic of our modern times. We are confronted with a transformation of the outer bodily nature of man and of the perception which necessarily accompanies this. Another kind of mingling of blood, a new significance of blood now enters into the evolution of mankind. If we wish to study the transition from that old epoch to the new—I would remind you of my little pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood—we must say that the clairvoyance of olden times depended upon the fact that the blood was, so to say, kept in the tribe, whereas the new age proceeded from the mixing of blood by which clairvoyance was killed, and the new perception arose which is connected with the physical body. The beginning of the Gita points to something external, to something connected with man's bodily form. It is with these external changes of form that Sankhya philosophy is mostly concerned; in a sense it leaves in the background that which belongs to the soul, as we have pointed out. The souls in their multiplicity are simply behind the forms. In Sankhya philosophy we have found a kind of plurality; we have compared it with the Leibnitz philosophy of more modern times.

If we can think ourselves into the soul of a Sankhya philosopher, we can imagine his saying: “My soul expresses itself in the Sattva or in the Rajas or in the Tamas condition with respect to the forms of the external body.” But this philosopher studies the forms. These forms alter, and one of the most remarkable changes is that which expresses itself in the different use made of the etheric body, or through the transition as regards blood-relationship we have just described. We have then an external change of form. The soul itself is not in the least affected by that with which Sankhya philosophy concerns itself. The external changes of form are quite sufficient to enable us to consider what takes place in the transition from the old Sattva age to that of the new Rajas, on the borders of which stands Krishna. It is the external changes of form which come into consideration there.

Outer changes of form always come into consideration at the time of the change of the ages. But the changes of form took place in a different way during the transition from the Persian to the Egyptian epoch from what they did in that from the Egyptian to the Graeco-Latin; still an external change of form did take place. In yet another manner took place the transition from the Ancient Indian to the Persian, but there too there was an external change of form. Indeed it was simply a change of form which occurred when the passing-over from the old Atlantis itself into the Post-Atlantean ages took place. A change of form: and we could follow this by holding fast to the designations of the Sankhya philosophy, we can follow it simply by saying: The soul goes through its experiences within these forms, but the soul itself is not altered thereby, Purusha remains undisturbed. Thus we have a particular sort of transformation which can be described by Sankhya philosophy according to its own conceptions. But behind this transforming there is Purusha, the individual part of the soul of every man. The Sankhya philosophy only says of this that there is an individual soul-part which is related through the three Gunas-Sattva, Rajas and Tamas—with external form. But this soul-part is not itself affected by the external forms; Purusha is behind them all and we are directed to the soul itself; a continual indication of the soul itself is what meets us in the teaching of—Krishna, in what he as Lord of Yoga teaches. Yes, certainly I but the nature of this soul is not given us in the way of knowledge. Directions as to how to develop the soul is the highest we are shown; alteration of the external forms; no change in the soul itself, only an introductory note.

This first suggestion we discover in the following way if man is to rise through Yoga from the ordinary stages of the soul to the higher, he must free himself from external works, he must emancipate himself more and more from outer works, from what he does and perceives externally; he must become a “looker-on” at himself. His soul then assumes an inner freedom and raises itself triumphantly over what is external. That is the case with the ordinary man, but with one who is initiated and becomes clairvoyant the case does not remain thus; he is not confronted with external substance, for that in itself is maya. It only becomes a reality to him who makes use of his own inner instruments. What takes the place of substance? If we observe the old initiation we meet with the following: Whereas man in everyday life is confronted with substance, with Prakriti—the soul which through Yoga has developed itself by initiation, has to fight against the world of the Asuras, the world of the demoniacal. Substance is what offers resistance; the Asuras, the powers of darkness become enemies. But all that is as yet a mere suggestion, we perceive it as something peeping out of the soul, so to say; we begin to feel that which pertains to the soul. For the soul will only begin to realise itself as spiritual when it begins to fight the battle against the demons, the Asuras.

In our language we should describe this battle, which, however, we only meet with in miniature, as something which becomes perceptible in the form of spirits, when substance appears in spirituality. We thus perceive in miniature that which we know as the battle of the soul when it enters upon initiation, the battle with Ahriman. But when we look upon it as a battle of this kind, we are then in the innermost part of the soul, and what were formerly material spirits grow into something gigantic; the soul is then confronted with the mighty foe. Soul then stands up against Soul, the individual soul in universal space is confronted with the realm of Ahriman. It is the lowest stage of Ahriman's kingdom with which one fights in Yoga; but now when we look at this as the battle of the soul with the powers of Ahriman, with Ahriman's kingdom, he himself stands before us. Sankhya philosophy recognises this relationship of the soul to external substance, in which the latter has the upper hand, as the condition of Tamas. The initiate who has entered initiation by means of Yoga is not only in this Tamas state, but also in battle with certain demoniacal powers, into which substance transforms itself before his sight. In this same sense the soul, when it is in the condition not only of being confronted with the spiritual in substance, but with the purely spiritual, is face to face with Ahriman. According to Sankhya philosophy, spirit and matter are in balance in the Rajas condition, they sway to and fro, first matter is above, then spirit, at one time matter weighs down the scales, then spirit. If this condition is to lead to initiation, it must lead in the sense of the old Yoga to a direct overcoming of Rajas, and lead into Sattva. To us it does not yet lead into Sattva, but to the commencement of another battle-the battle with what is Luciferic.

And now the course of our considerations leads us to Purusha, which is only hinted at in Sankhya philosophy. Not only do we hint at it, we place it right in the midst of the field of the battle against Ahriman and Lucifer: one soul-nature wars against another. In Sankhya philosophy Purusha is seen in immense perspective; but if we enter more deeply into that which plays its part in the nature of the soul, not as yet distinguished between Ahriman and Lucifer; then in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas we only find the relation of the soul to material substance. But considering the matter in our own sense, we have the soul in its full activity, fighting and struggling between Ahriman and Lucifer.

That is something which, in its full greatness can only be considered through Christianity. According to the old Sankhya teaching Purusha remains still undisturbed: it describes the condition which arises when Purusha clothes itself in Prakriti. We enter the Christian age and in that which underlies esoteric Christianity and we penetrate into Purusha itself, and describe this by taking the trinity into consideration: the soul, the Ahrimanic, and the Luciferic. We now grasp the inner relationship of the soul itself in its struggles. That which had to come was to be found in the transition in the fourth epoch, that transition which is marked through the Mystery of Golgotha. For what took place then? That which occurred in the transition from the third to the fourth epoch was something which can be described as a mere change of form; but now it is something which can only be described by the transition from Prakriti into Purusha itself, which must be so characterised that we say: “We feel how completely Purusha has emancipated itself from Prakriti, we feel that in our innermost being.”

Man is not only torn away from the ties of blood, but also from Prakriti, from everything external, and must inwardly have done with it. Then comes the Christ-Impulse. That is, however, the greatest transition which could take place in the whole evolution of the earth. It is then no longer merely a question of what might be the conditions of the soul in relation to matter, in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, for the soul no longer has merely to overcome Tamas and Rajas to raise itself above them in Yoga, but has to fight against Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is now left to itself. Hence the necessity to confront that which is presented to us in that mighty Poem—the Bhagavad Gita—that which was necessary for the old times-with that which is necessary for the new.

That sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, shows us this conflict. There we are shown the human soul. It dwells in its bodily part, in its sheaths. These sheaths can be described. They are that which is in a constant state of changing form. The soul in its ordinary life lives in a state of entanglement, in Prakriti, In Yoga it frees itself from that which envelopes it, it overcomes that in which it is enwrapped, and enters the spiritual sphere, when it is quite free from its coverings. Let us compare with this that which Christianity, the Mystery of Golgotha, first brought. It is not here sufficient that the soul should merely make itself free. For if the soul should free itself through Yoga, it would attain to the vision of Krishna. He would appear in all his might before it, but as he was before Ahriman and Lucifer obtained their full power. Therefore a kind divinity still conceals the fact that beside Krishna—who then becomes visible in the sublime way described in our last lecture—on his left and on his right there stand Ahriman and Lucifer. With the old clairvoyance that was still possible, because man had not yet descended into matter; but now it can no longer be the case. If the soul were now only to go through Yoga it would meet Ahriman and Lucifer and would have to enter into battle with them. It can only take its place beside Krishna when it has that ally Who fights Ahriman and Lucifer; Tamas and Rajas would not suffice. That ally, however, is Christ. Thus we see how that which is of a bodily nature freed itself from the body, or one might also say, that which is bodily darkened itself within the body, at the time when Krishna, the Hero, appeared. But, on the other hand, we see that which is still more stupendous; the soul abandoned to itself and face to face with something which is only visible in its own domain in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

I can well imagine, my dear friends, someone saying: “Well, what could be more wonderful than when the highest ideal of man, the perfection of mankind, is placed before our eyes in the form of Krishna!” There can be something higher—and that it is which must stand by our side and permeate us when we have to gain this humanity, not merely against Tamas and Rajas, but against the powers of the spirit. That is the Christ. So it is the want of capacity to see something greater still, if one is determined to see in Krishna the highest of all. The preponderating force of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna-Impulse is expressed in the fact that in the latter we have incarnated in the whole human nature of Krishna, the Being which was incarnated in him. Krishna was born, and grew up, as the son of Visudeva; but in his whole manhood was incorporated, incarnated, that highest human impulse which we recognise as Krishna. That other Impulse, which must stand by our side when we have to confront Lucifer and Ahriman (which confrontation is only now beginning, for all such things, for instance, as are represented in our Mystery Dramas, will be understood psychically by future generations), that other Impulse must be one for which mankind as such, is at first too small, an Impulse which cannot immediately dwell even in a body such as one which Zarathustra can inhabit, but can only dwell in it when that body itself has attained the height of its development, when it has reached its thirtieth year. Thus the Christ-Impulse does not fill a whole life, but only the ripest period of a human life. That is why the Christ-Impulse lived only for three years in the body of Jesus. The more exalted height of the Christ-Impulse is expressed in the fact that it could not live immediately in a human body, as did Krishna from his birth up. We shall have to speak further of the overwhelming greatness of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna. Impulse and how this is to be seen. But from what has already been characterised you can both see and feel that, as a matter of fact, the relation between the great Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul could be none other; that the whole presentation of the Gita being the ripe fruit of much, much earlier times, may therefore be complete in itself; while the Epistles of St. Paul, being the first seeds of a future-certainly more perfect, more all-embracing world-epoch, must necessarily be far more incomplete. Thus one who represents how the world runs its course must recognise, it is true, the great imperfections of the Pauline Epistles as compared with the Gita, the very, very significant imperfections—they must not be disguised—but he must also understand the reason those imperfections have to be there.

The three lectures of today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow will be interconnected. Today I want to look at some things that will lay the groundwork for certain perspectives on man's relation to the cosmos and to all of life.

Consider the development of the human soul as we can observe it here between birth and death, living in the physical body. Among other things, we might notice that two properties, or complexes of energy, are necessary to the soul if it is to lead a fulfilling earthly life between birth and death—we have frequently directed our attention to such things.

What needs to be acquired, on the one hand, is memory. Just imagine that memory was not among our earthly possessions! You only need to consider how different our soul life would be if we could not look back to days past, all the way back to a certain moment after our birth, and could not retrieve what we have experienced from these more or less unplumbed depths. Our consciousness of our I, as we now possess it, is dependent on the way our experiences connect. I have drawn your attention to this frequently. Now, you all know that memory only begins to appear at a certain point in our earthly life. It is not present before then, and so all our experiences prior to that first remembered point in time are wrapped in forgetfulness. Therefore we can say: From a certain point in our earthly life onward, our soul life is related to our body in such a way that, in greater or lesser detail, our experiences can always be called up in us as memories—we can remember them.

This faculty of memory can only be developed under the influence of our earthly life, and developing a memory is one of the tasks of our earthly life. During that long period of our development when we were beings of the Moon, we did not have a faculty comparable to our earthly memory. In order for our organism to be able to develop memory, we have had to become a part of the organism of the earth, with all its forces deriving from the mineral realm. Memory develops as a result of the interaction between the human soul and the earthly, physical body. It is only during the Earth period of evolution that memory, in the form in which we develop it in our physical, earthly body, becomes necessary to the spiritual world. It only became necessary with the arrival of the Earth period because until then there were other things that took the place of memory. During the Moon period, for example, man's powers of dreamlike clairvoyance took the place of memory. Just imagine that every time you experienced something the experience would be written down in some particular place to which you always had access—as they occurred, all your experiences would be written down there, one after the other. Then all you would have to do to find an experience would be to look in that place where everything had been written down. And this is in fact the kind of experience undergone by man on Old Moon. Everything he experienced in his old, dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness was, so to speak, engraved in a subtle etheric substance. Everything that man was able to experience through his dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness was written into the substance of the world. And whenever a human soul needed something comparable to our memory of today, it simply had to direct its dreamlike, clairvoyant awareness toward what was engraved in the fine etheric substance of the world. Man on Old Moon looked at the traces left behind by his own experiences in the way people of today look at the objects of the external world. All one had to do to see something one had experienced was simply to observe the world substance. There, written into the substance of the world, one found the previous contents of that old, dreamlike, imaginative consciousness.

This way of living in the world was therefore very different from today's. Just imagine that you could re-think everything you ever thought, because it was following you about like the tail of a comet—that is a translation of the actual experience of Old Moon into the terms of present-day thinking. This condition had to end because mankind needed to become individualised. Man had to learn to present himself as an individuality. He can only do this if his experiences remain his own property rather than being immediately engraved into the world substance. His experience must be engraved only into his own fine etheric individuality, his own fine etheric substance. So long as man lives on Earth, whatever is developed in his waking consciousness is accompanied by movements of his etheric body. The shape of the physical body marks the boundary of these accompanying movements. To a certain extent they are unable to pass beyond the limits of the skin. Thus, for the whole of life between birth and death, the fine etheric substance, whose movements accompany experiences of thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences of will, is rolled up within the physical body. We have often described how it all unrolls and is received by the world substance when the physical body is laid aside in death. Then, after death, we can begin to look back on everything that has been engraved into our etheric individuality and watch it be absorbed into the substance of the cosmic ether.

I have briefly mentioned how things stand with memory, which develops in response to the physical body's forces of resistance. The situation is similar with respect to something else that is important for our life on earth and which we rightfully acquire for ourselves there.

In addition to memory, our life on Earth also requires us to develop habits. Habits are another thing that we did not yet possess on Old Moon in the form that we have them on Earth. On Old Moon we possessed neither memory nor the ability to form habits—not in the earthly form they have today. If you observe human development from childhood onwards, you will see how habits gradually begin to develop as certain actions are repeated again and again. As we are educated, we receive guidance which establishes certain actions as habits. At first these have to be learned, but once they have become habits our souls perform them more mechanically.

During the Earth period, if the I is to unfold properly, habits must be developed in the right way. What took the place of habits during Old Moon? During that period, every time we needed to accomplish something or whenever something was supposed to happen through us, we were directly influenced by one or the other being from the higher spiritual world. Our deeds were always held in check by the impulses we received from the beings of a higher world. At that time we were much more a member of the whole organism of the hierarchies than is the case now, in the Earth period.

If we had remained in this state, we should never have developed the power to be free, for every detail of our actions would depend on the impulses of higher beings. They would have to exercise their power whenever we acted. We can only receive into ourselves the gift of freedom by being released from the sphere of the beings of the higher hierarchies and by entering into a condition in which repeatedly[,] acts can become habits. In this manner it is possible for actions to originate in us. And so, acquiring the capacity to form habits is also intimately connected with the way humanity achieves inner freedom.

Even during the Earth period, the state we leave behind when we enter through birth into physical existence resembles our previous state on Old Moon. Up there in the spiritual world, before we are born and step down into earthly existence, we are powerfully influenced by higher spiritual impulses. There in the spiritual world it is always higher spiritual beings who guide us to what we need to do; they help us prepare an earthly existence that will proceed in accordance with our karma. When we enter the physical body we are torn from this world in which habits do not exist—this world which is subject only to the uninterrupted impulses of higher spiritual beings. To a degree we still possess an echo of our condition in the spiritual world when we enter physical existence. This expresses itself in the way we behave as children up to the age of seven. As children we follow habits less and are more under the influence of imitation. At first we begin to do things under the direct influence of what is happening around us: we imitate the examples that are shown to us. This is an echo of the way we had to act in the spiritual world. There it was necessary for us to receive an impulse for every single thing we did. That is why children imitate to begin with, directly following the impulses that come to them. Independence, the capacity of the soul to act independently, only emerges in the course of time, just like the capacity to live in accordance with habits.

Both memory and habits are important ingredients of our soul life. Both these significant elements of our soul life are metamorphoses. They are transformations of quite other conditions in the spiritual world. Memory is a transformation of the way imaginative dream experiences leave their traces behind them in the spiritual world; habit arises when one is torn free from the impulses of higher spiritual beings.

Looking at these matters in the way we have just done enables one to arrive at a concept of how differently constituted from the world on this side of the threshold is the world on the other side of the threshold. We need to be able to think in this way. Again and again it must be emphasised: On the other side of the threshold everything is different. We go to the trouble to characterise the spiritual world by using words that apply to the physical world, it is true. But again and again it must be made clear that we have to gradually accustom ourselves to shaping these pictures in a manner that is as different as possible from that in which we picture the physical world. Only in this way can we ever arrive at adequate and correct pictures of the spiritual world.

At the same time, considerations such as the preceding ones give us a glimpse of what is important and essential to our earthly existence. It is utter nonsense to believe that earthly existence should be valued lightly. I have already drawn your attention to this mistake, from various points of view. Like all the other phases of human development, earthly, physical existence has its purpose. We reap permanent, eternal gains from what our soul experiences by having a physical body and by way of what we experience under the influence of memory and habit, which are gifts of the physical body. Gradually, in the course of repeated Earth lives, we acquire these gains. Again and again, therefore, we have to more or less give up the power of memory and return to the state to which we were accustomed during Old Moon; we have to give back to the substance of the cosmos what has been engraved in us during our life on Earth. And this is what does happen as soon as we die. We have to submit ourselves to the impulses of the higher spiritual beings once more in order that the ability to follow their impulses can be translated into habit when we have returned to an earthly body.

At this point I should also to draw your attention to something I have already mentioned frequently in the past, for it is very, very important and cannot be repeated often enough. We acquire memory and habits during our life on Earth. For a start, let us look at memory. Considering it as we just have done, memory seems to be a natural gift of the Earth. And, as you know, a person can always develop the power and ability to remember, no matter how weak his memory seems at the time. Suppose that, as memory developed, nothing were to happen except what is entirely natural—nothing but what is precisely in accordance with the way in which it would develop under the influence of the mineral forces at work in the physical organism of the Earth. In that case we would not develop a memory such as the one to which we are accustomed. Normally we do much more than this—you all know that we do much more toward developing a memory. Perhaps it would be better to say, more is done to us. We learn things by heart. After a certain age we are required to learn things by heart, to memorise them. It makes a difference whether our memory is acquired by simply allowing it to develop more or less of itself, or whether we are required to do more than would just happen automatically. Eventually we retain a poem if we read it often enough or if it is recited to us frequently. But this is not sufficient for education these days; in addition we are required to memorise poems. Why, we are even punished if we have not memorised the poem assigned to us. This is how things are in the present cycle of human development.

I ask you, please, do understand what I am now saying. No one should go about saying that today I was thundering on about memorising, saying it should be done away with. That is not what I am saying! In our time it really is necessary for us to memorise certain things, for our cycle of development requires that our memory be trained in a quite particular way.

What, then, happens in our souls when memorising is brought in to help our natural inclination to acquire a memory? In this case, we summon Lucifer. And it is right that luciferic forces be called in to help build memory. Once more I want to emphasise that you are not to say: Oh, one must protect oneself from Lucifer; let us cease requiring our children to memorise anything! This is a bad habit that some have acquired. Again and again they express the belief that one must protect oneself from Lucifer and Ahriman by doing everything possible to prevent them from having access to us. The person who tries to protect himself from them is the one to whom they really do have thorough access! Luciferic and ahrimanic powers must be reckoned with in world development. They must retain their place in it; what matters is that this happen in the right way.

Let us look at a special case: Why is it necessary to call upon luciferic powers to help us to develop memory? The people of today are no longer aware of it but, in the past, in times not so long ago in the development of humanity, memory was of a different strength than is the memory of today. We need a relatively long time to memorise a longer poem. The ancient Greeks did not need so much time. Many of the ancient Greeks knew the Homeric poems from beginning to end. But they did not learn them in the fashion in which we memorise things today, for then the power of memory was constituted differently. How were things memorised during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch? What happened in those days was a kind of repetition of what had happened to an even greater degree in the Atlantean period itself, and which I have described in my writings about development in the time of Atlantis. On Old Moon there were powers which made it possible to draw behind one the contents of dreamlike imaginative experiences, like the tail of a comet. These powers from Old Moon were carried over and were transformed from a more outward power, which involved interaction with the world, into a more inward power. As it was transformed into an inward power, memory began to awaken in Atlantean humanity and the world seemed to bestow it on them automatically. And in Atlantis man did not have to exert himself very much to develop his memory, for it was like a power which he encountered in his dealings with the external world and which flowed into him from there. This state of affairs was repeated during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Then what had previously happened to him in his interactions with the world without his needing to do anything further about it, was to a certain extent repeated within the human being.

Now that man has entered the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, he finds it increasingly necessary to exert himself in order to acquire the power of memory. What came to him automatically during the time of Atlantis, and again during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, must now be made his own so that it can contribute to his individualisation and freedom. Whenever something is required that really corresponds to a previous ability—as when powers that were once natural are summoned to help build memory—we are dealing with a manifestation of Lucifer. Whenever we artificially call upon something in our age that was natural in the age of Greece, something like the effortless acquisition of memory, it becomes luciferic. But in order to summon up a strong impression of this luciferic element in your souls be aware of the role that Lucifer has played in the development of humanity. You must be aware of this as we describe these things. During the Greco-Roman times Lucifer was more or less kept within bounds. He was still in his rightful place. But he is no longer kept in his rightful place in the same way. Now, in order for man to be able to further develop his memory, it is necessary for him to enter into an agreement with Lucifer. Now it has become necessary for man to do something actively for his memory; during the Greco-Roman epoch memory came of itself without his needing to do anything further about it. Thereby what merely happened to the human being during the Greco-Roman epoch today has become a luciferic deed.

In the same moment that luciferic activity appears, however, the other side of the balance becomes active: the ahrimanic side. And, on the one hand, at the same time that humanity has been memorising things and thus calling on the assistance of Lucifer to build their memory it has, on the other hand, also been developing an ahrimanic support for memory by writing things down. On frequent occasions I have indicated that the people of the Middle Ages were not mistaken in feeling that printing was a particularly ‘black art.’

But everything that aids memory externally is to some degree ahrimanic. Again, I am not saying that it is right to flee from everything that is ahrimanic, although perhaps it is precisely in our circles that too much is done to call up Ahriman. One loves him far too much!

Herein lies the task of mankind—to establish a position of balance, and not believe that Lucifer and Ahriman are to be escaped without more ado! It is rather to confess, boldly, courageously and energetically, that these two kinds of beings are necessary to world development and that the powers coming from the ahrimanic and luciferic sides are there for man to put to use in his own activities and development. These are there for man to use, but it also is necessary for him to establish a balance between Lucifer and Ahriman in the most varied spheres. Lucifer and Ahriman must balance each other. So we must pursue our activities in such a way that they are able to balance one another. This is the reason why it was necessary for the luciferic and ahrimanic elements to intervene in Earth evolution. And from our previous studies we know that the description that stands at the beginning of the Old Testament is an important symbol for the intervention of the luciferic element. There it is described how woman tempts man and how the luciferic element intervenes—indirectly, through woman—in the development of the Earth. This is how the intervention of the luciferic element, which we locate in the Lemurian period, is symbolised in the Bible.

The intervention of the ahrimanic element followed after that, during the Atlantean period. And, just as a knowledge of the human being was required in the fourth post-Atlantean period in order to understand the biblical symbol of Lucifer, so today the fifth post-Atlantean period needs this knowledge in order to begin to understand the counter-symbol and be able to present it to the human soul in an adequately sketched, if incomplete, fashion. (I have mentioned this earlier.) Just as Lucifer stands at the side of Eve, so Ahriman stands at the side of Faust; and just as Lucifer approaches woman directly, so does Ahriman directly approach man. Just as man is tempted indirectly through woman, Gretchen is indirectly lied to through Faust. Since Ahriman is the one who is at work, lies are the means by which Gretchen is tempted. Ahriman is the spirit of deception whom we can picture as standing opposite Lucifer, the spirit of temptation. This is one way we can name them: Lucifer, the tempter, and Ahriman, the deceiver.

There is much in the world that is there purely for the purpose of protecting mankind from luciferic temptation. There are rules, teachings, descriptions of moral impulses, and institutions established in the course of human development—all these are there to protect mankind from luciferic temptations. Today, the right means for protecting oneself from the ahrimanic fall, the fall into untruth, are much less developed.

All the luciferic parts of the human being are related to the passions and emotions. Where falsehood and deception play a role, however, one can feel Ahriman at work in man's development. In our time it is not only necessary for people to arm themselves against luciferic challenges. They must also prepare themselves against the challenges of Ahriman, now that he has entered the field.

Some of this is contained in the Faust poems, which show how man can fall to Ahriman, even in such a matter as the misunderstanding of words. In his Faust, Goethe gives us a fine picture of how Faust passes through various ahrimanic dangers. There are various confusions between Lucifer and Ahriman, to be sure, but for reasons mentioned today and previously, Goethe was right to use Ahriman rather than Lucifer in his own Faust. There is much in both the first and second parts that is ahrimanic, right into such details as the role of misunderstood words. At the end of the second part there is a conversation. Faust believes the talk is about some diggings; but a grave is what is actually meant! ‘Graben’ (to dig, en-grave)—and ‘Grab’ (grave) are the words! Ahriman's impulse resounds here, right into the misunderstanding of ambiguous words. Goethe had an extraordinarily fine sense for representing ahrimanic impulses. In a manner more instinctive than conscious he wove untruth and distortion into those places in Faust where ahrimanic impulses are at work. It is very important to understand this.

Just as memory and habit are to a certain degree metamorphoses and transformations of modes of activity in the spiritual world, so also are there further capacities which we develop in the spiritual world which are transformations of what we have acquired here in the physical world and what has been revealed here. We have been characterising memory and habit as the results of transformations, as metamorphoses of spiritual experiences of an earlier time. But some things, for example, such as the relationship of our ideas to external objects, only appear for the first time in the physical world. Objects surround us. We picture them in our thoughts. What we call physical truth is the agreement of our ideas with the objects; this is truth on the physical level of existence. If we express an idea for which the physical plane does not provide a proper model, then it is not true. Whenever we speak of physical truths this always refers to an agreement between what we are thinking and the physical facts. In order to relate to the truth in this manner it is necessary for us to live in a physical body and be able to use it to look at external things. It would be nonsense to imagine that such a relation to the truth could already have existed on Old Moon. That is an accomplishment of life on Earth. Only when we acquire a physical body is something like this agreement between ideas and external objects possible. This, however, provides Ahriman with his field of action. And how does this provide him with it?

Matters such as those we have just been talking about give one a feeling for the interconnections between the spiritual world and the physical world. Ahriman has a proper task in the spiritual world and he should also exercise a certain influence on the physical world. But he should not actually enter the physical world! He should not be admitted to matters involving the agreement between external objects and the ideas we acquire through our physical bodies. He carried out certain activities on Old Moon. If he is allowed to carry out those same activities here on Earth he distorts the connection between our ideas and external objects. Wherever man is engaged in bringing his ideas into agreement with external objects and external facts Ahriman is supposed to keep his fingers off—if I may express myself symbolically. But he does not keep them off, not Ahriman—truly not! If he kept his fingers off there would be no lying in the world!

Now I am not sure whether it is necessary to prove that there is still lying in the world. But, if there is lying in the world, then it is proof that Ahriman is at work there in a manner in which it is not proper for him to work. This activity of Ahriman in the physical world is one of the things that humanity must overcome. You might say, though: There is much beauty in the world, but in some respects it really is a bungled job; if God the Father were entirely perfect He would have created human beings in such a way that they could not stoop to lying. Such a Father God would have told Ahriman that he is to have nothing to do with the physical world! And, as we have again heard today, Ahriman is not the only one who takes a certain pleasure in discovering what is wrong with the world. There are also philosophers of Pessimism about, philosophers who derive their views from the negative qualities of humanity. The nineteenth century produced not only some pessimistic philosophers, but also some who went beyond Pessimism to become representatives of ‘Miserable-ism.’ Among the other views of the world, that one also emphatically exists! Julius Bahnsen²⁹ was not only a pessimist, he was a ‘miserablist’.

Why, then, is Ahriman allowed into the physical world? In the last lecture I gave you an example of how strongly he is permitted to work in the world. As you will recall, I described how an event was arranged so that it would go according to an exact plan. This event was observed, not by the usual kind of audience, but by thirty young lawyers and students of jurisprudence—in other words, by men who were preparing themselves to become judges of human deeds. The event had been planned beforehand so that what was going to happen was known in detail. What the experiment demonstrated about establishing a correct relationship between how people think about happenings in the external world and what actually goes on is shown by what occurred after the event. The thirty were asked to describe what had happened. Twenty-six of them gave a false description; only four could give a true description and even their descriptions were only approximations of the truth. Thirty people witness an event that follows a carefully prepared plan and it is possible for twenty-six of them to give thoroughly false descriptions of it! That shows you how effective Ahriman is! There you can see how actively present he is! But what would happen if he were not there? Then we certainly would be some kind of lambs. We would feel the impulse to think of things exactly in accordance with the facts before us, and we would consistently allow ourselves to speak only about the facts we observe. But we would have to do this! There could be no talk of freedom! We would have to act in this way; we never could act otherwise; and we never could become free beings. If we are to be able to speak the truth as free beings it must be possible for us to lie, and we are therefore obliged to develop within ourselves the power to conquer Ahriman every time we speak. He has to be there, ‘provocative and active, doing his devil's work’. Those words should give you a picture of Ahriman's presence and of how error only occurs when we follow him directly instead of remembering that he is the one to be overcome as, provocative and active, he goes about his devil's work. Some speak about flight. They say, pulling long faces: ‘But is this not perhaps something ahrimanic? Oh, I must not have anything to do with this!’ In many cases, the only thing all this signifies is that the person in question is moving toward the comforts of Lucifer and leaving freedom behind.

What would help would be to acquaint oneself with the impulses that need to be overcome. To a certain extent we need Ahriman on one side and Lucifer on the other in order to bring about a balance between them.

These are the preliminary considerations I wanted to share with you today. They provide the necessary foundations for the spiritual-scientific vistas on life and the cosmos that will open out before us tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

• 29. Julius Bahnsen (1830 – 1881).

I spoke yesterday of the great Polish drama “The Undivine Comedy” by Krasinski and of its very special significance. One can truly say that it was consciously brought into the world as the outcome of a dialogue with the Spirits working in the evolution of humanity, who in the middle of the 19th century spoke to those who were willing to listen to them.

Let us for a moment hold in our minds the thoughts that came to us from the realisation that what was astir in the inmost depths of the evolutionary process made its way into the external literary culture of the time. From Gutzkow's novel “The Mahaguru” as well as from “The Undivine Comedy”—I chose only two particularly striking examples from many that might be quoted—we see that as it were behind the scenes of external happenings, significant impulses are at work in the cultural life of mankind. From many sources we have gained knowledge that directs our minds and hearts to the great moment of world-evolution in which we are living, the moment when it is essential to be mindful of the new element that must be received into the evolution of humanity—but with the co-operation of human souls who are able to understand it. There are different ways of characterising the importance of the present time, but perhaps one thing only need be said and this will be sufficient to bring home the significance of the point of time at which we are standing.

In ages of antiquity men received a heritage consisting of wisdom yielded by atavistic clairvoyance and of knowledge gained atavistically. But this heritage petered away and the tide of materialism arose—particularly since the last three or four centuries and reaching a peak in the 19th century. This tide of materialism veiled all possibilities of vision into the spiritual world—and a new path, a new method, is now appearing in spiritual science. As I have often said, this development ultimately becomes a natural process in the souls of men. The situation today still is that the vast majority of souls have yet to learn that there are many earthly lives. But when the souls now living are re-incarnated, for the most part they will know, not merely as a theory, that there are many earthly lives; they will live on into an age when it will be known quite as a natural matter of course: there are many earthly lives. Just as human souls now remember back to a certain point in childhood, and thoughts from childhood constantly arise, so it will be natural one day for the living impression to well up from within: “We have been here many times.” Human souls will evolve to this stage just as they have evolved from primitive stages of life. This development will come about of itself but the following is inevitable.—

The souls who have learnt nothing from spiritual science today will die and return in new incarnations. Then, having learnt nothing from spiritual science, they will not know what to make of the impression that will rise up from within them of the truth of repeated earthly lives, and they may well be driven to despair. For this inner impression that will arise quite naturally in the soul must be grasped through thoughts, and the thoughts that are necessary before it can be understood are those yielded by spiritual science. These thoughts should make the whole history of the Ego and the fact of its existence in man intelligible to us; and he alone who has within him the force of these thoughts will be able to understand the impression that will come of itself, as a kind of remembrance.

But the foundation for understanding this remembrance will from now onwards have to be laid through spiritual science; knowledge of the continued existence of the Ego will have to be acquired. And those who have not acquired it will have to admit, when these remembrances well up in them: “I do not understand my own self.” This will be a terrible cry of despair in future times. It must be realised that only through knowledge and understanding of what will inevitably come in the future can human souls be kept from falling into despair. When the Ego which passes from incarnation to incarnation asserts itself in the future—and this means in our future incarnations—men must be able to understand this Ego. And they will do so if they have worked on their souls through the thoughts of spiritual science.

The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled in order that the Ego might be fully understood, and this can never happen if—as in the case of the Polish Count described yesterday—men preserve in their souls nothing but feelings of the Past—sacred though these feelings may be and connected with the events centred in the Mystery of Golgotha. Such feelings will enable these events to be grasped as matters of history, but that cannot lead to any true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. True understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha depends upon the fulfilment of the words; “Not I but Christ in me.” It will then be possible for Christ in His living activity within earth-evolution not to remain inaudible to men. He must be made audible through that which, under his inspiration, spiritual science has to say, no sentiments or feelings tied to remembrances, can lead mankind to future well-being. But neither can the interests of the future be furthered by one who lives only in and for the Present—the tyrant described in the lecture yesterday. The tyrant does indeed, assert the Ego, but not Christ within the Ego. A deep riddle is presented to us in this Polish drama: two personalities stand in contrast to one another, one of whom has the Christ of tradition, of history, but runs the risk of falling away from Him. And what comes to expression in the wife and in the child of the Count relapses into a purely atavistic connection with the spiritual world.

A great danger for our time is indicated here. It is that those who are not willing to assimilate in a new way the knowledge of mankind's connection with the spiritual worlds, although they feel that such connection exists, will cause part of their being to lose the requisite link with the spiritual world. Mankind would fall asunder into those who—like the old Count—must necessarily despair and die because they cling exclusively to the Past, and those who rise into the spiritual worlds in an atavistic way—like the Count's wife and child. Because they have not received the Christ into their inmost being in full reality, they pass into the spiritual world without finding in themselves a point of anchorage.

What is it that the members of the Count's family have not fully developed? They have not fully developed the Ego: they are remains from the age which in the regular course of the evolution of humanity has been at an end since the Mystery of Golgotha, but markedly so since the last few centuries. They are remains from an age of antiquity when the Ego had not yet completely taken root in man; they are Ego-less human beings who, because they cannot take the Christ into the Ego which has not developed into the necessary intensity, lose the Christ. And standing in contrast to them is the tyrant, who has developed the Ego and bears it in himself with all strength; without taking the Christ into the Ego, he desires to bring happiness to the world but is incapable of doing so. At the point of death—out of the vision which the tyrant understands as little as he understands how to resign himself to death—there breaks from his lips the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”—This is an indication of the fact that for those human beings who have, it is true, acquired the Ego but have not taken Christ into this Ego, there is one moment only when it is possible for them to come into relationship with Christ: it is the moment when they pass from this world into the other world. But because Christ came from that other world into this world in order there to find the way to human hearts, men must inevitably lose Him when, after the moment of death, they arrive in that other world. All the deeper impulses at work in our time belong to a sphere where momentous issues are at stake—I can say no more than that they “are at stake.”

But now we must go rather more deeply into things that are already known to us but must be studied in a certain setting if we are to understand them in the light of the conditions prevailing in our time. We know that, properly speaking, the evolution of the earth must be divided into an epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha and an epoch following the Mystery of Golgotha. We know, too, that in the epoch before the Mystery of Golgotha, Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits also worked into the souls of men. Particularly in considering the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha it must be realised that foolish chatter about avoiding Ahriman and Lucifer at all costs will get us nowhere. For Ahriman and Lucifer were allowed by the normal, progressive spiritual Beings to work in the earthly evolution of men.

Now we know that there are spiritual Beings actually ranking higher than men but who during the Old Moon period of evolution did not reach the height that would have been possible for them; they did not reach it, but for all that they rank higher than men. So that bearing in mind the intervention of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, we can now understand better what is called the ancient, primeval wisdom in earth-evolution. For example, the ancient wisdom that was misused in the Lemurian epoch and perished with the Lemurians; the wisdom that was then misused in the Atlantean epoch and brought about the destruction of Atlantis. What was it that was then among men? What was it, in reality? To say that the great wisdom then existing was misused, applied in practices of black magic and so forth, is a very abstract way of speaking and leads to no very definite idea. Let us think, for example, of the character of this wisdom in the last periods of the Lemurian epoch. Whence had it come? Spiritual Beings who had not completed their full development during the Old Moon epoch but who were nevertheless at a higher level than men, had mingled with the earthly evolution of humanity. Man was already there—but, as you can well imagine, in his most primitive state. What was subsequently developed by human beings during the Atlantean and Post-Atlantean epochs did not yet exist. In those Lemurian times, man was a being wholly devoid of intelligence, for intelligence was to develop only gradually during the course of earth-evolution. Man was primitive in his will, in his actions, in his soul-development—altogether like a child. Now had there existed only bodies of men with the higher members of those bodies that had been developed for them by the progressive spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, men would not have been capable at that time of evolving any outstanding wisdom. But in that Lemurian age a very lofty altogether extraordinary wisdom existed. For example, among those primitive men there was widespread knowledge of how to handle a child during the period between birth and the seventh year so that as the result of a certain transformation of his etheric body which then worked back upon the brain, he could be made extremely clever. Radical educational methods have to be applied today if this result is desired—and everyone is aware how very often these efforts are unsuccessful. But in any case the art of affecting the brain itself by exercising a certain influence on the etheric body of the brain, so that the child in question becomes extremely clever, is entirely lost today. Furthermore—and I hasten to emphasise it—this art is in no circumstances whatever legitimate in our time, for if it became at all general, even in its most elementary form, it would lead to terrible abuses.

How is the existence of such an art in Lemurian times to be explained? It is explained by the fact that Beings who had not completed their development on the Old Moon, but had evolved only the first six of their seven members, incorporated in men who otherwise would have been utterly primitive. The spiritual Beings who on the Old Moon were at a higher level than men but had not attained the apex of their development, took on these primitive human bodies and went to work with arts which far transcended all earthly knowledge. You can imagine what such Beings in human bodies were capable of accomplishing,—Beings who at a level higher than the human had developed the sixth member—the Life-Spirit—entered into these primitive, flexible, pliant bodies. And they became terrible magicians, dread magicians!

And again, what kind of arts were general in the Atlantean epoch? First and foremost there was the wisdom which must be applied in order to cause talents in ancestors to be transmitted, purely through heredity, to their descendants and actually to be enhanced in these descendants. The Beings whose development had not been completed on the Moon but who for all that were of a higher rank than earthly man, were deeply versed in this art—with most significant effect. Let me put it like this: it was as if by methods connected with star-constellations and the like, one were to lead over the qualities of a genius to his descendants, but in such a way that these spiritual qualities were not merely inherited, but intensified, enhanced. These higher Beings working in human bodies were capable of mighty achievements. All this was swept out of existence. Very many things were connected with these particular arts. For example, it was possible by their means to observe the course of spiritual evolution and to guide the spiritual forces into the stream of heredity.

And so even superficial observation will show that there is a very great deal in world-evolution which in an earlier age had its justification but which in the form it now bears is no more than a relic that has been preserved. Both in unimportant and important domains it is so. In his novel “The Mahaguru” Gutzkow wanted to indicate something of the kind in an important domain. He wanted to give emphasis to the question: In what form does something that had great significance in ancient times—in the Atlantean epoch, when it was still possible for men to regulate the stream of heredity—in what form does it appear when it is carried over into an age and into a community where the traditions of it had indeed been preserved but where nothing more was known of the earlier art than an inferior form of it called in occultism “Occult Chemistry?” Gutzkow showed that something of the kind existed in Tibet. Naturally, the priesthood in Tibet had no knowledge of how through forces of heredity they could produce a body for the individuality whom they believed should pass from one body into another—but they preserved the old customs. So there we have an example of the external reality presenting an aspect utterly different from what it had been in conditions once prevailing in the evolution of humanity. Reading “The Mahaguru” makes one want to cry out: Oh, how reality itself can become a maya in face of the prevailing conditions!

And now think of something else.—You can well imagine that the men of Lemurian and Atlantean times did not resemble the men of today, for what developed, inwardly in the soul at that time also gave configuration to the outer form; the whole outer form of man was different—it was pliant and flexible. The human form in the times of Lemuria and Atlantis was not ape-like; the bodies of the actual ancestors of men were not ape-like.—It would seem, therefore, that world-evolution must have made an exception in the case of certain people who have written of themselves that they can remember having descended from apes!¹—But we will not go into that now.—Men did not resemble apes, but if you picture our children presenting a much, much more infantile appearance, with an elemental quality of being extending over the whole body, you may be able to get an idea of the character of the human body in those times. As you can read in the book “From the Akasha Chronicle,” because Beings surviving from the Old Moon evolution had incarnated in these pliant, flexible bodies, these bodies became animal-like rather than human. Distorted forms arose, with strangely contorted limbs.—And there you have the origin of the figures of gods to be found among certain peoples. These curious figures with non-human faces and huge limbs, originate from the knowledge that the incarnating Moon-Beings were united with human bodies.

If in the Atlantean epoch there had been painters and sculptors, they would have been able to portray or model these figures of Moon-Beings incarnated in human bodies. But in Tibet this was no longer possible. Hence the canon must be strictly obeyed, for the artists would otherwise have made figures with whatever terms they liked. If a man did not obey the canon but created something out of his own play of fancy, he incurred the death-penalty. Naturally, one may ask: Is there any justification for condemning to death someone who makes only one tiny change in the figure of a god? Is there really any justification for it? In Tibet, of course, there is no longer any justification, but once upon a time there was, for as you have heard, these Beings were actually present in bodies, and if they were not faithfully portrayed, any deviation amounted to a lie. In those ancient times a lie had infinitely greater power than it has nowadays. If at the present time everyone who tells a lie were to suffocate as the result—well, I prefer to leave it at that, for I think that the fear of suffocation would be too great to allow people to risk telling lies! I assume that nowadays people will not suffocate—but at that time a lie would have caused actual suffocation. For the thought expressed in the word contained a power to give form to the air in the larynx, and then suffocated the man—and anyone who had incorrectly portrayed on earth a Being who had not fully completed his development on the Old Moon would have suffocated, in other words, a process of nature would have caused his death.

The evolution of humanity is an exceedingly complicated matter and to understand it one must go deeply into spiritual science. To find the right approach to world-evolution it is essential to study what it is the mission of spiritual science to make known from spiritual worlds. For spiritual science is, as it were, a first impulse to which other impulses must increasingly be added, in order that humanity in the future may advance along the right path. You will have realised from what I have been saying recently² that a course must be steered between a Scylla and a Charybdis, that a very definite path must be laid down in spiritual science.—This must be taken with the deepest earnestness. Our modern natural science is developed by materialistic methods. During these last weeks I have tried to describe its characteristics to you. I have said that a materialistic method in natural science is fully justified. It can be characterized by saying that it is adapted to cloak the spiritual reality lying behind. Why, then, must this materialistic method be there in our present time?

In our present time an earlier knowledge of nature must be superseded by a new knowledge of nature. I have told you something about this earlier knowledge of nature. Just think what kind of knowledge it was! To be able to mould a human head into an instrument editable for genius, through specific measures applied scientifically in the old sense of the word—this signified colossal knowledge!—or again, so to regulate heredity that qualities of genius were transmitted to descendants—the knowledge required for this was even more penetrating and comprehensive, far, far surpassing all the theories of evolution, the physics, chemistry and so on, of today. But that ancient knowledge was to be veiled and obscured by the materialistic method employed in natural science today—which is fully justified in the purely physical domain. It must be remembered that at the time when that lofty knowledge of nature existed, man was not a free being; he was only at the beginning of the gradual evolution of freedom. He was led and guided and what came to pass in the process of his guidance was for the most part brought about by the higher Hierarchies. And it was single individuals who deviated from the regular course, who advanced too far along the path to freedom, who were responsible for the fall into the abyss and the inevitable destruction of Atlantis. But with the constantly increasing freedom of will, man would have been unfit for knowledge of this kind. To possess knowledge such as once existed on the earth is unthinkable today because man's will has attained freedom to an extent that would enable him still to misuse this knowledge. How, then, is this free will guided into the right channel?

From indications I have given recently you will have gathered that by adopting the method employed in natural science, with all its scrupulous exactitude, the free will is directed into the right channel; moreover, this method is a wonderfully effective pedagogical means for the development of the free will. We have therefore no cause whatever to quarrel with the method employed in natural science, the justification of which for our present time we fully acknowledge. You will find that what is contained in our lecture-courses and books completely refutes the allegations of individual opponents—to the effect, for example, that we repudiate natural science. It is sometimes necessary to take exception to the pretensions of certain investigators and so-called scientific authorities; but nothing derogatory to the achievements of natural science will ever be found in our literature. To say that anything in our literature is a repudiation of natural science would be sheer calumny, for among us there can be no question of such repudiation. But at the same time it must be realised that attacks upon us may well be made from the side of so-called natural science—and if necessary, we must then repel the attack. But true adherents of spiritual science must become more and more conscious of the necessity to understand the natural-scientific method and to protect this method from being tainted by all kinds of non-scientific concepts—for example concepts of the atom and movement of the atom, of which I have recently spoken. These are fantasies of natural science, and the difference must be clearly seen.

Efforts must be made to distinguish between genuine natural science and scientific fantasy. How often do we not hear it said today that one thing or another is scientifically established—whereas it is nothing of the kind, because words are simply accepted as facts. Never was blind belief in authority greater than it is at the present time in the domain of science, for everyone allows things to be determined entirely by those in whom they happen to believe. The purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha was that what came into the world through Lucifer might gradually be corrected in a certain way—it is indicated symbolically in the Bible: “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil”—that is to say, ye shall know good and evil from outside. But when in the sphere of perceptions one perceives from outside, it is impossible to receive from that world anything other than perceptions. As soon as one begins to reflect about the perceptions, to speculate about them and derive all kinds of ideas from them, one is on the way to finding what has been imbued into them by Ahriman and Lucifer. The ideas must come out of the spiritual world and be united with the perceptions: then these ideas are in the real sense divine! In human life there must be a marriage between the ideas which are given to men from out of the Spiritual and what he perceives in the outer world through his senses. But this union must first be achieved. How this principle applies in the scientific domain you can gather from my essay “Truth and Science.” The belief that in the scientific sense, ideas, thoughts, could also be found from outside, from the perceptions, is based on illusion, on illusion caused by Ahriman and Lucifer. But as long as the Powers associated with the words “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil” (which means to search for the ideas in the outer world) were sanctioned, that is to say, until the Mystery of Golgotha—as long as Lucifer and Ahriman were allowed to work in this sphere, there was no objection to be made. But that state of things is now over. Now, in the matter of the permeation of perceptions from outside, they are all the more unjustified.

This too was brought into evidence in the middle of the 19th century through a crisis of a particular kind. This crisis announced itself in great and outstanding achievements: spectral-analysis, for example, came on the scene, swept away the conception that when one looks upwards to the stars one has to do with spiritual Beings—and showed that substances to be found everywhere in the universe also exist on the earth. The old union between ideas and perceptions is no longer possible, for such discoveries make it essential that the ideas shall again find the spiritual path into our souls. The same applies to Darwinism. To reason entirely on the basis of what is found by outer perception—that is to say, to seek for the ideas in the outer world—can only lead to a purely materialistic conception and interpretation of the world. In short, the crisis is in evidence everywhere and there is also widespread rebellion against the fact that the ideas must flow out of the spirit-realm into the souls of men if humanity is to make progress. In other words: we must understand the nature of Ahriman and Lucifer and be on the alert when they try to make us continue the principle indicated in the words; “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil.” We must learn to observe both Ahriman and Lucifer. And we shall be able to do this if we permeate the Ego, as it has now unfolded, with Christ.

But something else too resounded through the world in primeval times, resounded from a different side, after man had acquired the power to distinguish good and evil, to direct his gaze outwards, that is to say, to use his senses and through them to acquire ideas based on sense-perceptions. The decree went forth: Man must be driven out of the spirit-realm in which he has hitherto been living, in order that he may not also eat “of the Tree of Life.” But Christ will forever give men to eat of the Tree of Life, and the ideas which stream directly out of the spirit-realm into human souls must be inwardly experienced. But they can be experienced in the real sense only when the human soul takes Christ into itself. Then we have something quite different from the concept of Knowledge; then we have the concept of Life. Just as a strict eye must be kept on Lucifer and Ahriman in order that when they allow knowledge derived from the outer world to penetrate into us we may perceive that this knowledge is coming from them, so we must realise that through the impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha, ideas were to flow into men to be the substance of life—the substance not of knowledge alone, but of life. And when from this standpoint of life we study the different religions of the world, it will be far, far from our minds to investigate these religions with the object of discovering whether they are or are not in keeping with our own view of the world. To apply only the concept of knowledge to these religions is not our task; we must apply the concept of life.

There are definite forms of religion in the world. We should not set out to discover whether we can consider these forms to be true, but whether through their ritual and ceremonies they are able to give nourishment and life to the souls of men, and—as the souls of men differ—it follows that their life can be sustained by different forms of nourishment. If we grasp this truth we shall realise that we can never lend ourselves to quarreling with any form of religion but that we must endeavour to understand it in so far as it is life-nourishment for human souls to whom it is given as life not as knowledge only, but as very life. Then we shall see that the standpoint from which a religion begins to quarrel with some branch of science is entirely misplaced. We shall also realise that religion will inevitably adopt a hostile attitude towards progress in natural science and spiritual science alike. For the religions are still unwilling to get away from the old Tempter, they still want to invoke only that God Who said to man that He will give them life, that they themselves are not to eat of the Tree of Life. The representatives of religions do not want to invoke God alone but also the Luciferic Spirit and the Ahrimanic Spirit; they want the eyes for distinguishing good and evil to be opened through religion. Religion wants to be “knowledge.” But it cannot be “knowledge” because it is life-substance. And under the sway of this temptation which still whispers in their ears, the representatives of the different religions believe they possess facts of knowledge in their religions, whereas the question of knowledge cannot, in reality, come into consideration between religion and science. We have no cause whatever to combat religious bodies, because we ask them about the sustenance they provide for life, not about what knowledge they possess. Religious communities will always be tempted to ask whether science as it advances is in keeping with what they regard as knowledge. But because life is in process of constant evolution, advancing science can never be in keeping with religions which invariably tend towards conservatism.

And now you can picture the whole conflict which in the nature of things will ever and again be urged. I should like you to think rightly about this conflict and to realize that as a matter of course the representatives of religious bodies, because they are under the sway of temptation, will always, from their standpoint, combat spiritual science, just as they combat natural science. But you must also realise that these opponents fight because they lack understanding. This does not excuse them at all, but it must none the less be realised that they fight because of lack of understanding; they cannot take the right standpoint. As a sign and symptom, let me bring to your notice words written by a man who perceived the inevitable approach of the natural-scientific age and the natural-scientific way of thinking, and who was told by a friend that one should not be concerned with knowledge that is not contained in the Bible or preserved in the traditions of the Church. Since the 14th century, of course, things have changed in this connection.—Dante's “Divine Comedy” is a great, world-embracing poem. But Dante lived at the time when the epoch during which men confined themselves to purely historical Christianity was passing away. For Dante, Virgil was simply the exile banished to hell. Dante did not know much about anything that differed from the Christianity confronting him as a great system and régime. But in the case of Petrarch it was different, 1 century later, in the 14th century, Petrarch read Virgil with far greater credence. He turned not only to Greek but also to Roman spiritual culture. When one of his friends wrote to Petrarch saying that there had appeared to him in a dream a spiritual Being who exhorted him to avoid all non-Christian literature, he (Petrarch) gave a very significant answer. I stress the importance of this incident because it shows how the friend—and through him, Petrarch—was enjoined from the spiritual world to concern himself only with what the Christianity of that time regarded as truly Christian. Petrarch wrote the following beautiful words which held good at that time for the approaching epoch and still hold good today. Petrarch replied to his friend Boccaccio in momentous words, affirming his standpoint, why he read this non-Christian literature, and what it meant to him (Petrarch: Letter to Boccaccio (“Epistolae seniles” I. 5):

“Why then should we shun the pagan poets and writers who do not use the name of Christ simply because they have never heard it? Surely there is greater danger in the books of sceptics who speak of Christ and at the same time dispute Him—but those who claim to be the defenders of the true faith read these writings with the greatest eagerness. Believe me: much that is simply the product of sloth and timidity is attributed to thoughtful deliberation. Men often cast scorn on what is out of their reach; it is characteristic of ignorance to condemn what it cannot comprehend and nobody will concede to it strivings of which it is incapable.

“Here lies the root of the misguided judgments of what is unknown; it is not so much the blindness of those who pass judgment as their laziness that is in evidence. We, however, should not allow ourselves to be frightened away from the sciences by any pious admonitions, or by indications of the near approach to death. If the sciences are imbibed with inner sincerity they quicken the love of morality and take from us, or at least diminish, the fear of death; if we abandon them, this will excite the suspicion that disbelief lays claim to be knowledge. The sciences are not a hindrance to one who has the right mastery of them, but they are a help to him; they level his path of life and do not thwart him.

“For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind. ...

“I know well that many have achieved great sanctity without culture, but I know too that nobody has been kept from sanctity by culture. ... If I am to tell you my own opinion, it is this: The path to holiness via ignorance may possibly be smooth, but it is faint-hearted. All good things have a single goal but many paths lead thither and fellow-travelers along these paths differ greatly; the one moves more slowly, the other more quickly, the one in obscurity, the other visibly, the one bowed with humility, the other buoyant with exultation. All journeying is blessed; but the noblest is that which proceeds freely and openly before the world. The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity, be it never so pious; and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

The same could be said about our spiritual science! And not only to X³ but to all the others who fight against us, one could rejoin with the words written by Petrarch to his friend; “For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind.”

And when people harp on the “contradiction in the first and third Gospels” and refuse to admit that the contradiction disappears as soon as the existence of two Jesus boys is taken into account; when they insist upon “simplicity” and say that the fantastic statements of “the one up there” (on the Goetheanum hill) can well be ignored; when they will not admit that all the forms of life are incorporated in our Building, but talk about “distorted, fantastic forms,” one must quote the words of Petrarch: “The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity; be it never so pious, and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

Such thoughts make us realise that it can never be our principle to combat any religious body and that it is sheer calumny when anyone accuses us of being an enemy of religious Movements. The very fact of such an accusation proves that there is no willingness even to try to understand us. This at least we must know; and we must resist every tendency to adopt an aggressive attitude to any religious community just as we must keep ourselves free from the same kind of attitude to natural science because that will soon disclose its attitude to spiritual science! There is no reason whatever for us to combat any religious body. Combat cannot be begun by us because it does not lie in our nature to attack. And it must be taken as an axiom that if peace is denied us, it is because the hostile neighbour is not inclined for peace. Let the principle of leaving us in peace be put to the test and then see whether peace is maintained! Let it be put to the test! But naturally, we ourselves must be permeated with the right feeling and attitude. For example, much wrong is also done when from our side, too, dogmas or rites of one kind or another are attacked, often without having been understood; but if we rightly understand them, the principle referred to holds good. I would therefore enjoin you to understand the principle of peace. Just as I was obliged to enjoin you to have forbearance with conditions prevailing at the present time, so must I enjoin you to be alert and watchful, in order that we may do what is necessary to guard the holy treasure entrusted to us. For more and more we shall have to wend our way through the world with an unwavering inner strength if we are to stand firmly on the ground where spiritual science would have us stand.

The Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ Principle are intimately connected with the need to see spiritual reality in the world. Mere looking will never suffice even to understand the Mystery of Golgotha purely as an historical event. The Mystery of Golgotha must be comprehended spiritually; and those who devote themselves to knowledge where everything is derived from outside and will not open their eyes to the new revelations of the Mystery of Golgotha which can ever and again flow to us, will not grasp the import of a poem sung by yet another voice in the middle of the 19th century concerning that which—ever changing yet ever present—holds good in earthly humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. Let me read you a section of this poem which describes how one who cannot grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha confronts this Mystery:⁴

Here is another example of how a human soul feels impelled to give expression to what has come to pass. And now that we have let these pictures pass through our souls, let me remind you of something that I have already said here: that we must change our mode of perception if we are to look with true vision into the spiritual world. We must not believe that the spiritual world can be seen as we see the material world of sense. We must even accustom ourselves to different modes of expression,—In the physical world we see trees, rivers, mountains. But of spiritual being we must say: they see us, they perceive us. To understand the Mystery of Golgotha truly, it is necessary to know this, because the Mystery of Golgotha can be understood only in the Spiritual. But that is how we aspire to understand it.

The time must come when through a true understanding of the words “Not I, but Christ in me,” it will be possible to rise into the spiritual worlds with the right knowledge. This epic poem “Ahasver” by Julius Mosen was published in the year 1838, and the fact that he was able to put the legend into such a form also indicates that the tragic destiny by which Mosen was overtaken profoundly affected him. He was bedridden nearly all his life, for his physical body was almost totally paralysed; this was precisely what enabled him to grasp such lofty ideas. We are reminded of the sinner in the novel “The Mahaguru” who, when he was already out of his mind, discovered the true nature of his art; and we are reminded, too, of the Count's wife in the Polish drama, who had to fall into a pathological state in order to find the connection with the spiritual world. It is the task of spiritual science today to help human beings to rise into the spiritual world in the healthy, normal state of consciousness.—All these things are signs of the task and of the value to be attached to the task of the spiritual-scientific Movement. Compressed into a few brief words, this is the truth that can inspire us as a source of strength: “The Mystery of Golgotha itself reveals that it must be understood spiritually, that we must seek for Christ as Spirit.” And then we must also say: “Christ is seeing us, Christ is perceiving us.”

We will inscribe this deeply in our hearts, keep it constantly in our minds, and our conscience must be satisfied when, in presenting our spiritual-scientific knowledge, we are saying with inner sincerity: May Christ be a witness of what we promulgate as Spiritual Science. We believe that this may indeed be so—and it can inspire us as men were once inspired by the cry of Bernard of Clairvaux: “It is God's Will!” These words became deeds. May it be the same among us—for we may believe that we understand Christ truly when we live under the inspiration of the words: Christ knows us.—And if you understand it aright, to a soul that sees our spiritual science in the true light, to a heart that feels it in its true light, I can impart no more esoteric saying than this: Christ is seeing us.

May these words live in our souls: “Christ is seeing us”—for so we may believe if we rightly understand spiritual science.—Christ is seeing us.

• 1. Statements to this effect are made in the book “Man: How, Whence and Whither” by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. (Theosophical Publishing Company)
• 2. See “The Occult Movement In the 19th Century”—notably Lectures IX and X.
• 3. A newspaper article had been written by a priest living in the vicinity of the Goetheanum.
• 4. Dr. Steiner now read part of the epic poem on Ahasver, or Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew, by Julius Mosen. The Wandering Jew is the legendary figure of a Jerusalem shoemaker who, taunting Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, was told by Him to “go on forever till I return.”—Note by Translator.
  
  In a lecture entitled. “Elemental Beings” (Berlin, 16th May, 1908), Dr. Steiner speaks as follows of the legend of Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew: “An important legend sets before us what a man must experience who descends too deeply into the temporary, transitory nature of the one incarnation. If we think of an extreme case, we can imagine it like this: ‘What is it to me that I should carry over something to later incarnations? I live in this incarnation, I like it, it suits me very well. I am not concerned with what I am supposed to make of it.’ Where does this thought lead? It leads to a man who sits at the wayside when a great Leader of humanity passes by. He, however, rejects the ideas of the Leader of humanity; he repulses him and thinks: ‘I will know nothing of thee, who wouldst guide the kernel of my being into future incarnations where mankind will be outwardly more perfect. I wish to remain united with my present form.’—A man who thrusts from him such a Leader of mankind will appear again in the same form. And if this attitude hardens, then he shall also thrust from him the Leader in the next incarnation. He will appear again and again as the same figure. ... Those who listen to the great Leader of humanity will preserve the soul with its eternal life-kernel. Mankind will have gone forward but they too will appear in an ever-progressive form. He, however, who thrusts the Leader of humanity from him must reappear again and again in the same form. This is the legend of Ahasueris who has thrust from himself the Christ, the Leader of humanity. ...”

Yesterday we contemplated the significance the Mystery of Golgotha has for human evolution on our earth. But as every event in the world is connected through literally endless interrelationships with the evolution of the whole cosmos, we will fully understand the Mystery of Golgotha in its true essentiality only by throwing light on its cosmic significance as well.

We already know that the Being we designate the Christ Being descended to our earth from supra-terrestrial regions and that It was seen in Its descent, so to speak: in ancient Persia by means of the clairvoyant faculty of Zarathustra It was perceived in the sun, then by Moses in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai, and finally by those who experienced the Christ event, in the presence of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

We know further that the events of this earth, and particularly the evolution of mankind, are related to our solar system; for we have shown that the development of humanity, in the form it has actually taken, could never have come about had not a cosmic body, in which our present sun and moon were still united with the earth, cast out first the sun and later the moon, thereby establishing for the earth a sort of position of equilibrium between sun and moon. Because man could not keep pace with the rapid development of the beings who sought the sun as their field of action, the earth had to be separated from the sun; and because a continued union of earth and moon would have entailed a rapid hardening, an ossification, for mankind, the moon, together with its substances and beings, had to be cast out as well. This made it possible for humanity to develop in the right way. But we learned yesterday that a certain remnant of this tendency to rigidity has nevertheless remained; and it would have sufficed to lead mankind into a state of corruption at the end of our Earth evolution had the Christ impulse not come. These considerations will give us an insight into our whole evolution.

At one time, then, sun, moon, and earth constituted a single cosmic body. Then the sun split off, leaving only earth and moon united. Finally our present moon withdrew, and the earth remained as the scene of human evolution. This occurred in the old Lemurian time, the period preceding the so-called Atlantean age which we have already discussed from various points of view. From that time forth, from the Atlantean into our own time, the earth has developed in such a way that the sun and the moon forces have acted from without. Let us now consider the further progress of earth development up to the entry of the Christ impulse, and let us concentrate on a quite definite moment of our earth development: the moment in which the Cross was raised on Golgotha and the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus. Let us focus our attention on this moment in the evolution of our earth.

Up to this point all that mankind had experienced had been determined by the entry, into the inner being of man, of the combined powers of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings; and we have seen that as a consequence of this intrusion man became amalgamated with the outer world in maya, or illusion: Ahriman prevented the outer world from manifesting itself in its true form, making it appear like a world consisting only of matter and solid substance—as though no spirit underlay all matter. For a long time, therefore—and this is still the case today regarding many factors in earth development—the human being was placed in a state brought about by error, because he receives from his environment only the material sense impressions which he then elaborates in his conceptions. So by reason of this influence of Ahriman, or Mephistopheles, he has a false picture of the outer world and forms illusory and erroneous conceptions of the spiritual world.

But all spirit is bound up with physical effects, and we have seen what physical effects accompanied this distortion of outward perception. We have seen that, as a consequence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, human blood became ever less fitted to provide the faculty of seeing the outer world in its true light: a steady aggravation of illusion was bound up with the blood's deterioration, with the dissolution of blood as it had been in the age of consanguinity, with the dispersion and killing off of blood by commingling it. No longer could men consult the old wisdom they had once possessed as a legacy, a wisdom that told them: It is an error to believe that the outer world is nothing but matter; for if you consult the remnants of the old wisdom you inherited, these will tell you that a spiritual world underlies the physical world.

But these remnants kept dwindling, with the result that man became ever more dependent upon the physical world in regard to his entire soul life and his knowledge. That is what transformed all his physical impressions into delusions and deceptions; and had it not been for the intervention of the Christ influence he would ultimately have lost his whole heritage of ancient wisdom by being gradually reduced to complete dependence upon the outer sense world and its impressions. He would have forgotten the existence of a spiritual world—that is what would inevitably have occurred: he would have become blind to the spiritual world.

It is now incumbent upon us to consider in all its gravity a truth such as this: the danger of man falling into ever greater delusion and error concerning the outer world. It is not a simple matter to do this—to contemplate in all its implications and its seriousness such a fact as man's lapse into error regarding the outer impressions of the sense world. Try to understand what it means to recognize as maya, as delusion, all external impressions of the senses as they confront us in the physical sense world. We are asked to learn that phenomena and impressions, as they exist in the sense world and as they impress us, are false; and that we must learn to see their true form behind the external impressions they give.

There is one event to which it is especially difficult, as a rule, to apply the truth, to say to oneself: The form in which it confronts me in the outer world is untrue, is illusion—maya. Can you think what event I have in mind? It is death. As a result of the sort of impressions we have described, our comprehension has come to grasp only external physical events; and for this reason death, when faced in the physical world, bears certain attributes that render it impossible of contemplation other than from the standpoint of the outer physical world. Death is a phenomenon concerning which mankind has inevitably become entangled in particularly erroneous and fatal views; and the inference we must draw from this is that the form in which death presents itself is but maya—a delusion.

Before our eyes in the outer physical world a great variety of phenomena present themselves. There are the stars that intersperse cosmic space, yonder, the mountains, the plants, the animals; here is the world of our minerals, and here, too, we have man, together with all the facts we can gather by means of sense observation. And if we enquire into the origin of these phenomena, of this outer physical-sensible world which appears to us as a world of matter, we must answer, Their origin is in spirit: spirit underlies our physical-sensible world. Then, were we to seek the primordial form of spirit from which springs all that is physical and of the senses, we could not regard it as other than the basis of all being. In Christian esotericism this is the aspect of divinity known as the Father principle. It underlies everything that is creature. So what exactly is it that was hidden from man when all things became obscured by maya, or illusion? It was the divine Father principle. Instead of the mirage of the senses, man should see everywhere and in all things the divine Father principle, of which all things and he himself are a part. The Father principle, then, does not appear in its true form. Because of the decline in human faculties, of which we have spoken, we see the Father principle veiled by delusion, by maya.
What do we find woven into this great delusion? Among all the phenomena we perceive, one stands out as essentially fundamental: death. Therefore we should tell ourselves that the outer objects confronting our senses are in reality the Father principle, are expressions of the divine-spiritual Father element. And since death is interwoven in the totality of the sense world, it is something that pertains to the divine-spiritual Father principle. Owing to the nature of man's development the divine Father principle has become obscured for him by many a veil, and ultimately by the veil of death. What must man seek? The Father, the cosmic Father; and just as he must learn to think of every object as being in truth the Father, so he must come to feel that death, too, is the Father. And why does a false picture of the Father appear to us in the physical sense world? Why is it distorted into the grotesque image appearing to us so deceptively as death? Because the Lucifer-Ahriman principle has been infused into every phase of our life.

What was needed, therefore, to disabuse man of this false, deceptive view of death and to provide a true conception of it was enlightenment arrived at by means of the facts in the case. Something had to occur whereby he could learn that what he had known about death, what he had felt about it—everything he had been impelled to do as a result of his conception of death—was untrue. An event had to take place which would show him the true aspect of death: its false form must be obliterated and its true one set forth. To substitute, through His deed, the true aspect of death for the false one, that was Christ's mission on earth.

It was owing to the interference of Lucifer-Ahriman in human evolution that death became the distorted image of the Father. Death was the consequence, the effect, of the influence of Lucifer-Ahriman. So what had to be done by Him Who would rid the world of this false face of death? Never could human life be released from this distorted form of death had not its source been removed—Lucifer-Ahriman. But that is something no earthly being could have accomplished. An earthly being can extinguish, within earth development, anything brought about by earthly beings themselves, but not the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. This could be driven out only by a being that had not been on the earth but out in cosmic space when Lucifer-Ahriman intervened, a being that came to earth at a time when Lucifer-Ahriman had already fully entered the human body.

Now, this Being did come to earth and removed Lucifer-Ahriman, as we have seen, at exactly the right moment—eliminated the cause of all that had brought death into the world. This deed called for a Being having nothing whatever to do with any causes of death among men. It had to be a being in no way connected with any cause of human death—that is, with anything brought about by Lucifer and later by Ahriman, with any individual human deeds done under the Lucifer-Ahriman influence—in short, with anything whereby men became guilty, fell a prey to evil. For the death of a being affected by any of these causes would have been justified. Only an undeserved death, undertaken by one without guilt—an utterly innocent death—could extinguish all guilty death.

An innocent Being, accordingly, had to suffer death, wed death, submit to death; and by so doing He infused into human life those forces which will gradually create knowledge concerning the true aspect of death; that is, the realization that death as it appears in the sense world is not truth—that on the contrary, this death had to occur to provide for life in the spiritual world; that precisely this death forms, in fact, the basis of that life.

Thus the innocent death on Golgotha furnished the proof, which will gradually be comprehended by humanity, that death is the ever-living Father. And once we have achieved the right view of death, once we have learned from the event of Golgotha that external dying is of no importance, that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt the Christ with Whom we can unite; once we have realized what Christ achieved, even though we see the image of death hung on the Cross, in rendering death a mere external event, that His life in the etheric body was the same before death as it was after this death, and that therefore this death cannot touch life—once we have understood that here is a death incapable of extinguishing life but is, rather, itself life, then the Christ on the Cross becomes the eternal emblem of the truth that death is in reality the giver of life. The plant comes forth from the seed: death is not the destroyer of life, but its seed. It has been sown in our physical sense world in order that the latter may not fall away from life, but may be raised into life. The refutation of death had to be furnished on the Cross by a contradictory death, by a death that was innocent.

We must now enquire what, exactly, was brought about by this event. From the previous lectures we know that as the fourth principle of his being man has an ego, and that as this develops, the blood is its outer physical instrument. Blood is the expression of the ego, hence with its steady deterioration the ego fell to an ever increasing extent into error, into maya, or illusion. Hence, also, man is indebted for the growing power of his ego to the circumstance that he is provided with blood. But this ego, in turn, he owes in its spiritual aspect to the fact of his having learned to distinguish himself from the spiritual world, of his having become an individuality. This capacity could not have been bestowed upon him otherwise than by temporarily cutting off his view of the spiritual world; and the agency that effected this was precisely death. Had man always known that death is the seed of life he would not have achieved independence for his ego, for he would have remained linked with the spiritual world. As it was, however, death appeared, gave him the illusion of being separated from the spiritual world, and so trained his ego to independence.

This ego principle, however, grew more and more independent: it exaggerated its independence, strained it past a certain point; and this condition could be counteracted only by the withdrawal of the force which had caused it. Hence the factor which would have induced exaggerated egotism, which would have fostered not merely the ego principle, egoism, but egotism—this factor had to be driven out. And this was accomplished in such a way that in the future it can be more and more eradicated from the individual egos as well: it was accomplished when death came on the Cross of Golgotha and the blood flowed from the wounds. In the blood flowing from Christ's wounds we have the factual symbol of the excessive egotism in the human ego. Just as blood is the expression of the ego, so the blood that flowed on Golgotha is the expression of excess in the human ego. Had not the blood flowed on Golgotha, man would have become spiritually hardened in his egotism and would have been doomed to the fate we described yesterday. But the blood that flowed on Golgotha gave an impetus for the gradual disappearance of the force that makes an egotist of the ego.

But every physical event has its spiritual counterpart, and as the blood flowed from the wounds on Golgotha there occurred a corresponding spiritual event: at this moment it happened for the first time that rays streamed forth from the earth into cosmic space, where formerly there had been none. We must visualize, then, as created at this moment, rays streaming from the earth into cosmic space. Darker and darker had the earth become with the passing of time—up to the event on Golgotha. Now the blood flows on Golgotha—and the earth begins to radiate light.

If in pre-Christian time some clairvoyant being had been able to observe the earth from a distant cosmic body he would have seen the earth's aura gradually fading out, and darkest immediately preceding the event on Golgotha. Then, however, he would have seen it shine forth in new colors. The deed on Golgotha suffused the earth with an astral light that will gradually become an etheric and then a physical light. Every being in the world continues to evolve. What is today the sun was first a planet; and just as the old Saturn became a Sun, so our earth, now a planet, will gradually develop into a sun. The first impetus in this direction was given when the blood flowed from the wounds of our Redeemer on Golgotha. The earth began to shine—for the time being astrally, visible only to the seer; but in the future the astral light will become physical light and the earth will be a luminous body, a sun body.

I have explained repeatedly that no new cosmic body comes into being through the agglomeration of physical matter, but through the creation, by a spiritual being, of a new spiritual center, a new sphere of activity. The formation of a cosmic body begins in spirit. Every physical cosmic body was first spirit. What our earth will ultimately become consists at present of the astral aspect of its aura which began to ray forth from the earth at the time we are here considering: that is the first nucleus of the future sun-earth. But what a man of that time would have perceived with his misleading senses is a phantom: that has no truth, it dissolves, it ceases to be; and the farther the earth moves toward its sun state, the more will this maya be consumed and perish in the fire of the sun. But through having been suffused at that time with a new force, through the newly created possibility for the earth to become a sun, it became possible as well for this same force to permeate man. This was the first impulse toward what I described yesterday: the radiating of the Christ force into the etheric human body; and thanks to the streaming in of this astral force it could start absorbing new vitality such as it will need in the distant future.

So if you will visualize the period in which the event of Golgotha occurred and then compare it with a later period—that is, if you compare a future condition of humanity with that which prevailed at the time of the event of Golgotha—you will find that at the time the Christ impulse intervened, the earth of itself had nothing left to infuse into the etheric bodies of men. Some time later, however, the etheric bodies of those who had found a contact with the Christ impulse were irradiated: men who understood the Christ absorbed the radiant force that has been in the earth ever since—the earth's new radiance. They have taken the light of Christ into their etheric bodies. The Christ light streams into the etheric bodies of men.

And here we must ask, What takes place, now that there is always something of the Christ light in human etheric bodies? What occurs in that part of the etheric body in which the Christ light has been received? What happens to it after death? What is it, in short, that gradually permeates the etheric body as a result of the Christ impulse? It is the possibility that was given at that time, as an effect of the Christ light, for something new to appear, something living and breathing and immortal, something that can never perish in death. While men on earth are still misled by the illusory image of death, this new factor will nevertheless be rescued from death, will have no part in it.

Ever since that time, then, the human etheric body has held something that is not subject to death, to the death forces of the earth. And this something which does not die with the rest, and which men gradually achieve through the influence of the Christ impulse, now streams back again—out into cosmic space; and in proportion to its intensity in man it generates a certain force that flows out into cosmic space. And this force will in turn create a sphere around our earth that is in the process of becoming a sun: a sort of spiritual sphere is forming around the earth, composed of the etheric bodies that have come alive. The Christ light radiates from the earth, but there is also a kind of reflection of it that encircles the earth. What is here reflected as the Christ light, appearing as a consequence of the Christ event, this is what Christ called the Holy Spirit. Just as the event of Golgotha provided the first impetus for the earth to become a sun, so it is true that beginning with this event the earth began to be creative, surrounding itself with a spiritual ring which, in turn, will in the future develop into a sort of planet circling the earth.

Thus a momentous process that commenced with the event of Golgotha has since been unfolding in the cosmos. When the Cross was raised on Golgotha and the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus, a new cosmic center was created. We were present when that occurred: we were present as human beings, whether in a physical body or outside this physical life between birth and death. That is the way new worlds come into being; and we must comprehend that while we behold the dying Christ we stand in the presence of the genesis of a new sun.

Christ espouses death, which on earth had become the characteristic expression of the Father Spirit. Christ goes to the Father and unites with His manifestation, death—and the image of death is seen to be false, for death becomes the seed of a new sun in the universe. If we feel this event, if we can sense this unmasking of death and realize that the death on the Cross becomes the seed from which a new sun will germinate, then we shall understand why mankind on earth must have felt and conceived of it as the supreme transition in human evolution.

There was once a time when men still possessed a vague, dim clairvoyance. They lived in a spiritual element; and as they looked back upon their lives—from their thirtieth to their twentieth year, from the twentieth to the tenth, and so on back to their birth—they knew that they had come to this birth from divine-spiritual heights. For them birth was not a beginning: as spiritual beings they saw not only their birth but their death as well, and they knew that something of spirit dwelt within them which this death could not touch. Birth and death in their present meaning did not exist as yet: they came later, and they acquired their untrue, deceptive form in the outer image of the Father. Death became the characteristic feature of this external aspect of the Father.

Then men, in contemplating death, saw it apparently destroying life, and death became more and more an image representing the contrast to life. Though life brought a large measure of suffering, death was considered the greatest suffering of all. What view of death must have been held by one who saw earth events from without, saw how these earth events were reflected in humanity before the appearance of the Christ? If he had descended from divine-spiritual heights as a higher being with views differing from those of men, he would have been constrained, in contemplating mankind, to speak as Buddha spoke. This Buddha had come forth from his royal palace where he had been reared, and where he had seen only what elevates life. Now, however, as he came forth, he saw a suffering human being, then an aged man, and finally even a dead man. These experiences wrung from him the utterance: “Sickness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering.” That is indeed the way it was felt by men; and in these words the common feeling burst forth from the great soul of Buddha.

Then Christ appeared. And then, after the lapse of another six hundred years—just as six hundred had passed between Buddha and Christ—there were those who understood, when envisioning the Cross and the dead Man upon it, that what hung upon the Cross was the symbol of that seed from which springs forth life in abundance. They had learned to sense the true nature of death. Christ espoused death, entered this death that had become the characteristic expression of the Father, united with this death; and from the union of Christ Jesus and death sprang the inception of a new life sun. It is a false picture that shows death as synonymous with suffering: it is maya, illusion. Death, if permitted to approach us as it did Christ, is in reality the germ of life; and in the course of future ages men will come to recognize this. What men will contribute to a new sun and a new planetary system will be proportionate to what they receive of the Christ impulse and then give of themselves in sacrifice, thus steadily adding to the radiance of the sun of life.

Here the objection might be raised, So says spiritual science; but how can you reconcile a cosmology of that sort with the Gospel?—Christ enlightened those who were His disciples; and in order to prepare them for the most comprehensive revelations He employed the method that is indispensable if the loftiest truths are to be adequately understood: He spoke to His disciples in parables or, as it is worded in the German Bible, in “proverbs” (Sprichwörter)—that is, in transcriptions and parables. Then came the time when the disciples, having steadily matured, believed themselves able to receive the truth without its being clothed in proverbs; and the moment arrives in which Christ Jesus is prepared to talk to His apostles without proverbs, without parables. The apostles craved to hear the name, the significant name, for the sake of which He had come into the world.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in parables: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in parables, but shall shew you plainly of the father.

Try to feel the moment approaching in which He would speak to His disciples of the Father.

At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray to the Father for you:
For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.
I came forth from the Father ...

He had, of course, come forth from the Father's true form, not from the deceptive image.

I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.

Now it dawns upon the disciples, whose understanding had ripened, that the world as it surrounds them is the expression of the Father, and that what is most significant precisely where the outer world is most densely shrouded in maya, in illusion, is equally the expression of the Father: that Death is the name for the Father. That is what came to them in a flash of comprehension. Only, the passage must be read aright.

His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no parable. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.

Jesus answered them, Now ye believe. [1]

Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.

These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Did the disciples know whither He was about to depart? Yes, from now on they knew that He would go to meet death, to wed death.—And now read again what He said to them after they had learned the meaning of the words: “I came forth from death”—that is, from death in its true form, the life-Father—“and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” And to this the disciples replied: “Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”

Now the disciples knew that the true form of death bases in the divine Father Spirit; that death as it is seen and felt by men is a deceptive phenomenon, an error. Thus Christ reveals to His disciples the name of death behind which is hidden the fount of transcendent life. Never would the new life sun have come into being had not death entered the world and been overcome by Christ. Death, therefore, when contemplated in its true form, is the Father; and Christ came into the world because a false reflection of this Father had arisen in the aspect of death. Christ came to create the true form, a true image of the living Father-God. The Son is the issue of the Father, and His mission was to reveal the true form of the Father. Verily, the Father sent His Son into the world that the true nature of the Father be made manifest: life eternal, veiled behind temporal death.

All this is not a mere cosmology of spiritual science: it is what is needed to extract the full, profound import from the Gospel of St. John; and he who wrote that Gospel thereby established, so to speak, the loftiest truths of which he could say,

In these mankind will find sustenance for all future time.

And in proportion as mankind learns to understand and practice these truths it will attain to a new wisdom and will grow into the spiritual world in a new way. But as this will come about only by degrees, it was necessary that in the meantime the guides of Christian development should provide for the creation of what may be called auxiliary books to function side by side with the Gospel of St. John, books not intended only for the most willing and understanding—such as is the John Gospel, meant as a legacy of Christ for all eternity—but suitable for the immediate present.

Thus there appeared in the first place a book from which people of the first Christian centuries could learn, in the measure of their understanding, the essence of what they needed to comprehend the Christ event. Even here, of course, there were but few in proportion to the whole of mankind who could glean from this auxiliary book the exact nature of what it contained for them. This first book of its kind, not intended for the innermost circle but still for the chosen ones, was the Gospel of St. Mark. This Gospel embodies precisely those features that held an intimate appeal, so to speak, for a certain type of understanding then prevalent (we shall come back to this). Then it gradually became less intelligible, human comprehension turning more in the direction of seeing most clearly the full force of Christ in its inner value for the soul and in a certain contempt for the outer physical world.

Next followed a period in which men were imbued with the feeling: 'Worthless are all temporal goods; true riches are found only in the properly developed inner self of man. This was also the time in which, for example, Johannes Tauler wrote his book, Von armen Leben Kristi (The Pitious Life of Christ): the time in which the Gospel of St. Luke was the one best understood. Luke, a disciple of Paul, was one of those who gave Paul's own gospel a form adapted to the time, stressing the “pitious life” of Jesus of Nazareth, born in a stable among poor shepherds. We recognize das arme Leben Kristi as mirroring the account in the Luke Gospel, a second subsidiary book for the further development of humanity.

In our time there will be those who can best learn what they are able to understand, as it accords with our age, from the Gospel of St. Matthew. People of our period, though perhaps referring less frequently to the name “Matthew,” will nevertheless select more and more what corresponds with the Matthew Gospel. The time will come when people will point out that it is impossible to understand the super-sensible events that took place at the Baptism in the Jordan, as we have described them. That is an understanding which will come to many only in the future. We are approaching an epoch in which He Who, in the thirtieth year of His Life, received the Christ into Himself, will be increasingly thought of as“the simple man of Nazareth”—even by theological research.

Those who feel this way about it, those to whom the simple man of Nazareth is of supreme importance and who attach less significance to the Christ than to the lofty initiate—those, in short, who want Jesus of Nazareth—will feel the Matthew Gospel to be preeminently significant, at least in its import. A materialistically thinking age can say: We open the Matthew Gospel and find a genealogic record, a table of heredity that shows us the ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth chronologically. It runs from Abraham down through three times fourteen generations to Joseph; and we are told that Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on and so forth. It runs to Joseph and Jesus of Nazareth; and the reason this is stated is to make quite clear the possibility of tracing back to Abraham the physical line of heredity of that body into which Jesus of Nazareth, as an individual, had been born. Leave out Joseph, and the whole table becomes meaningless. To speak of a super-sensible birth in the face of this table robs the latter of every vestige of sense; for why should the writer of the Matthew Gospel take the trouble to trace a line of ancestry through three times fourteen generations if he intended to follow this by saying that in respect of the physical flesh Jesus of Nazareth was not descended from Joseph? The only way in which the Gospel of St. Matthew can be understood is by stressing the fact that through Joseph the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth was born into a body which had actually descended from Abraham. The purpose of this table was to emphasize the impossibility of omitting Joseph, within the meaning of the Matthew Gospel; and it follows that neither can Joseph be ignored by those who fail to understand the super-sensible birth in the sense of the Baptism in the Jordan.

But the Matthew Gospel was originally written in a community which placed the greatest value not upon Christ, but upon the individuality that stood before men in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the initiate. Underlying the Matthew Gospel was the initiate wisdom known to the Ebionite Gnostics, and this Gospel bases upon a document from that source as its model. Prime importance was placed on the initiate, Jesus of Nazareth; and all else connected with the matter becomes far clearer still by reason of its being embodied in the Ebionite gospel. But this is precisely what makes possible a certain approach to the Matthew Gospel—one which is not exactly demanded by it, for actually it is not implied, but which can be read into it: The Gospel of St. Matthew may be interpreted as implying that we are not dealing here with a super-sensible birth. On the other hand, what is presented in the Matthew Gospel may be regarded as the symbol of a God—one who is simply called a God, one who, as a God, is really only a human being—even though this was not what Matthew meant. But those who nowadays base their standpoint upon Matthew—and they will do so more and more—will interpret the matter in that way.

In order that no man wishing to approach the Christ may be denied the opportunity of doing so, the Matthew Gospel provides for those who are unable to rise from Jesus to Christ: it is a rung in the ladder which they can ascend to Jesus of Nazareth. The mission of spiritual science, however, is to guide men upward to an understanding of the Gospel of Gospels, the Gospel of St. John. Every other Gospel should be regarded as complementary to it. In the John Gospel are to be found the reasons for the existence of the others, and we shall understand these aright only by studying them on the basis of the John Gospel.

A study of the Gospel of St. John will lead to a comprehensive understanding of what took place on Golgotha; to an understanding of the Mystery by means of which death, in the untrue form it had assumed in human evolution, was refuted. And men will further learn to grasp the fact that through the deed of Golgotha, not only was it revealed to human cognition that death is in reality the source of life, but man was provided with an attitude toward death which permitted him to infuse more and more life into his own being, until ultimately it will become wholly alive—that is, until he will be able to rise from all death, until he has overcome death. That is what was revealed to Paul when he saw the living Christ on the road to Damascus—when he knew: Christ liveth—as he gazed with his newly found clairvoyance into what constituted the environment of the earth. As an Old-Testament initiate he knew that until then the earth had lacked a certain light, but now he saw that light in it; hence the Christ was present; hence also, He Who had hung on the Cross was the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth.

Thus there came to Paul, on the road to Damascus, an understanding of what had taken place on Golgotha.

Verse for Thursday. My dear sisters and brothers! To protect ourselves against the raids of Lucifer and Ahriman we must know them and learn to distinguish between them. Lucifer is in mystical esoterics such as we find in Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroek, Tauler and Suso. Lucifer is in this pure devotion to the divine, in this pure, noble striving towards the spiritual in a good way, and one can say that he was pious in the souls of these mystics.

But as soon as a personal note flows into this pure striving and this devotion, as soon as a mystic would enjoy this, it would amount to a luciferic infringement. We must watch that nothing like this comes into our striving. It's relatively easy to be wakeful in mystical immersion, but more difficult in visionary perception. Lucifer is in this too. He puts all kinds of illusions before a mystic that are hard to distinguish from real visions. Something subjective gets mixed into all vision, for instance, someone sees certain apparitions, deceptive figures or the like repeatedly. One has to direct one's attention to this. One must be wakeful here also. If one sees eyes or faces or if one imagines them one isn't exposed to error as easily; one thereby gets the strength to ward off Lucifer. It's no reproach to say that bad qualities live in man's subconsciousness; they must be there, it's something that goes with earth life. A man may already have attained a certain degree of holiness, and yet drives are slumbering in his subconsciousness that would horrify him if he saw them. The greatest watchfulness and wakefulness must hold sway here also.

Lucifer is at work in all emotional and visionary things, in mystical immersion, also in all enthusiasm and in artistic activity, in what an artist creates and in what creates in the artist.

Some materialists may only express themselves in material things outwardly. Then if one has the good fortune to look into their souls one finds a deep religious striving, a longing for the divine. Lucifer is the instigator here also.

Ahriman works in everything that has to do with the will. He approaches us in everything that becomes manifest as gesture in words or writing, in everything that appears as mediumistic writing, whether it's acquired or natural, or if one feels compelled to write something. Whereas Lucifer brings about appearances of figures, heads of light, etc., that are created by a medium. If one feels that one is forced to write something one can counteract this by stopping and by not giving in to the inspirations that one thinks that one is feeling or perceiving; one opposes these whisperings with the firm will not to follow them. One acquires undreamed of forces in occult life through this effort of the will.

Ahriman is in what we say, in words that we form and transmit to other men. As soon as the ear hears sounds, the larynx emits sounds and words are put into writing Ahriman comes and hardens the sound, word or writing. That's why it's important to strengthen the soul and to check one's thoughts in the most subtle way.

Swedenborg's visions, dreams and world view are permeated with Ahriman and so is what Kant took from Swedenborg's writings.

People keep on asking: Should I think that what I see, hear or feel there is of importance? Is it true? Certainly one should attach importance to it, certainly it's true, every little thing in occult life is important and is true. The main thing is to know what's behind it. We should pay great attention to everything and watch and be awake. And we should acquire a certain tact so that we don't chatter about such experiences. One should try to find out whether Lucifer or Ahriman is at work in them. Something that can often happen to us is that as we're walking down the street we see someone in a vision and then a few minutes later we actually run into him. When we have this premonition of his coming we may have something to tell him, so we speed up our steps in order not to miss him. But this isn't permissible; we shouldn't use occult abilities for our own advantage in physical life.

If spiritists conjure up Goethe's spirit and thereby want to prove the soul's immortality, since they think that it's the soul as it's living now, then this might not be the case. It could be Goethe's soul as it was in say 1819 and that Lucifer is creating an illusion here. One has to press forward to Goethe's real soul, which has progressed, and then one has a real proof of immortality.

People often approach esoteric exercises with much frivolity. Some start to do them but soon stop due to laziness, half-heartedness, etc. But what breathing is for the body, meditations are for the soul. If one would stop breathing Ahriman would immediately intervene as the master of death. A soul must get to the point where it doesn't have to force itself to do meditations; it shouldn't want to live without them. One shouldn't wish and yearn to press into spiritual worlds before the soul is sufficiently strengthened. Quiet and peacefulness in the soul is the main condition. That's the only way that the soul can become strong enough to find the middle path between Lucifer and Ahriman.

That's very difficult, my dear sisters and brothers. But then we must remember what's said at the beginning of John's Gospel and later in chapter 8:12-14. When we stand in the tumult and chaos of the spiritual world and visions and figures come from all sides and we don't know how to get in or out and are torn this way and that, then we should place

In the beginning was the word

before our souls, or

I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

Then everything will dissipate and we'll be able to see what's right and true. We should repeatedly place the rosicrucian formula

EDN
ICM
PSSR

before us in this sense. And also we will be increasingly able to find the right thing on this difficult path if we think of the simple but profound verse with which our esoteric lessons are closed: In the spirit lay the germ of my body ...

At present we live in the midst of events that arouse every feeling of the human soul in the deepest and most significant way. We live in the midst of events that cause death to pass over the earth very, very frequently, in a comparatively short time, death that has always been looked upon by our spiritual science as a riddle which must be solved. The times in which we live send pain and suffering to many human souls, but let us hope that these times also bear within them forces for the unfolding of man's future development. Many things are born out of pain and suffering, and in these fateful days spiritual-scientific thoughts in particular are well suited to awaken in us forces of confidence and of hope. Let me therefore unfold a few thoughts before your souls. Although not directly, they are nevertheless, indirectly connected with feelings that come to the surface in these stormy and sorrowful times.

What we can see and feel in the manifold events of the present time, is the fact that many people abandon the physical plane, at a comparatively early age of their earthly life. What characterizes the events of the present, is that they call away many young lives from the physical plane.

We know that when a human being passes through the portal of death, he must leave his physical body to the elements of the earth. When he passes through the portal of death, he is, to begin with, still united with his etheric body, his astral body and his ego. And we know that after a comparatively short time the etheric body becomes severed from the human being, who then continues along the path which he must tread between death and a new birth; he passes through the after-death experiences with his ego and his astral body and together with those members of his spiritual nature which can only be acquired in the spiritual world. Afterwards, however, as he continues along his path during the time between death and a new birth, also the etheric body becomes severed from the human individuality and goes its own ways.

Now it must be evident to everyone of us that the etheric body of a man who died young must have an entirely different constitution than that of a man who died after having reached, so to speak, a normal age. We know that the ordinary natural science of to-day always speaks of the fact that forces never go lost, but transform themselves. Natural science recognises this truth in regard to the external world of physical life; it admits that forces do not go lost, but merely transform themselves. Spiritual science must teach that this truth should be recognised in regard to the spiritual world.

When an etheric body abandons a human being who has passed through the portal of death at an early age, that etheric body might still have maintained that man's life on the physical plane for many decades. The constitution of an etheric body must be of such a kind as to enable it to provide the life-forces required by a human being until he reaches an advanced age. But when a human being passes through the portal of death in his 25^th, 26^th or 30^th year, the etheric body that abandons him still possesses the forces that might have enabled it to preserve physical life up to the 60^th, 70^th or 80^th year. These forces live in the etheric body; they do not go lost.

Particularly at a time such as the present one, in which so many etheric bodies are entrusted, as it were, to the spiritual worlds, we should contemplate the following problem: What takes place with the etheric bodies of those who have passed through the portal of death in their early youth?—In order to obtain a sound answer to this question, it will be a good thing to become acquainted first of all with the path trodden by man's etheric body, while he is passing through his life between birth and death.

Man's external physical body (we know this, for it is a trivial truth) grows older and older. But this is not the case with the etheric body. It may perhaps be difficult to understand this, but the etheric body does not in any way grow older; the etheric body grows younger and younger, in the same degree in which the physical body grows older, until it reaches, as it were, a certain childlike stage of etheric existence, when the human being passes through the portal of death after having reached a normal age. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we begin our physical life on earth through birth, then our etheric body, that has become united with our physical body, is, comparatively speaking, old, and in the course of our earthly life it grows younger and younger, until it reaches its childhood stage, when we pass through the portal of death. We might also say: When a human being dies in his young years, his etheric body has not grown young enough, but has instead maintained a certain age. What does this really mean?—A concrete example, already known to many of you, but that I must nevertheless repeat here, a real event of recent times, experienced by quite a number of our friends, may throw some light upon this question.

This concrete example is really connected with a child, with the little boy of one of our members. After an evening lecture at Dornach, we were told that the son of our friend Faiss was missing—a little boy of seven. It was soon evident that a terrible accident must have happened, for a large furniture van had arrived in the late afternoon, moving towards the Goetheanum Building. Curiously enough, this furniture van had appeared in a part where perhaps no furniture van had been seen for a long time, or perhaps never at all, and where perhaps no furniture van would ever be seen again. At a certain spot, this large van had overturned; this had happened towards evening. Nothing else had been noticed, but the little boy was missing. When our friends, with the help of other people, began to lift the van between eleven and twelve at night (the owners intended to lift it the following day for it had fallen most awkwardly and was moreover a very heavy van), sparing no effort in doing so, and when they at last succeeded in lifting it, with the help of other people, it appeared that the little boy, Theodor Faiss, had passed by just when the van had collapsed, so that it fell on top of him. This child (he was only seven years old) was an exceptionally lovable child, with exceptionally beautiful qualities.

In order to see this in the light of spiritual science, let me remind you of a logical train of thoughts which I have often advanced in our circles. I have frequently explained to you that a superficial manner of thinking, an untrained manner of thinking, easily mixes up cause and effect; indeed, such confusions in regard to cause and effect are very frequent. I tried to explain this with the aid of an example, which was only meant, as a comparison. Take the following case: You see a man, who is walking along the bank of a river; you see him fall into the river and try to reach him. Where he fell into the river, you see a stone. You then try to draw the man out of the water; he is dead. What would be more natural than to think that he had stumbled over the stone, thus falling into the water and drowning? But this need not be true at all; a physical investigation may show us that his destiny in no way led him to the stone or anything else, but that at the very moment when he reached the stone, he had a stroke, and this stroke was the cause of his felling into the water. If we were not to investigate matters, we would simply say that the cause of his death was the fact that he fell into the river. Yet this would be the exact opposite of the truth.

In the case of things that are connected, with the spiritual world, it is far more difficult to perceive the true relationship of cause and effect. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we have before us [a] case resembling that of the boy who found his death under circumstances that were so extraordinary (other things too occurred that made it appear extraordinary), we should not think—if we consider the whole case from a higher standpoint—that for instance, the following course of events took place: That the furniture van arrived and overturned, and that the child simply happened to be crushed by it, so that the van was the real cause of the child's death. In a similar case, we think correctly and contemplate it from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, if we say instead that the boy's Karma had reached its end and that the van really arrived at that particular spot because the child had to encounter its death. The van therefore merely provided the external conditions that enabled the child to meet its death, as prescribed in its Karma. Trivially speaking, we might say: The child's Higher Self, that wished to pass through the portal of death, gave orders that this situation should arise, it ordered that these events should occur. Of course, those who think in accordance with the mentality of our time, will find that this is quite an insane idea. Spiritual science must however show that many things which are looked upon as insane by the materialistically minded people of the present time, really correspond to the truth.

In this particular case, however, it is significant that the etheric body of a child of seven severed itself from the child's individuality, from that part of its being which then continued along its path in the spiritual world, united with its ego and astral body. Now I do not mean to speak of the further path taken by the individuality of little Theodor Faiss, but I would rather draw your attention to the fact that this etheric body was of such a kind that its life-forces nurtured that boy's physical existence for only seven years; nevertheless it contained forces that might have enabled it to sustain a whole existence between birth and death, feeding it with life-forces. These forces remained in that etheric body and the significant fact is that all those who had any spiritual connection with the Building which we intend to erect at Dornach in the service of spiritual science, know from that day, which is connected with the death of little Theodor Faiss, what has become of his etheric body.

Many things must be achieved in connection with the Building. Let me now say a few things in regard to the inspirations which must now be brought down from the spiritual worlds. Helping forces are needed if everything that must be brought down from the spiritual world is really to come down. Ever since the death of little Theodor Faiss, we can see that our Dornach Building is enveloped by the greatly enlarged etheric body of this child, as if by an aura that reaches very far. Indeed, we may even determine the limits of this enveloping aura. If you contemplate the Dornach Building you will know (and those who have seen it know this) that it is a double cupola building. (A drawing is made). Here is a separate fire-box building, constructed in a special way, according to principles dictated by spiritual science, and here is another building, where the glass windows for the Goetheanum are cut. Casually I might also add that here you may see the so-called “Haus Hansi”, the house in which I live. Now it is strange to see that little Theodor Faiss' aura, enveloping the whole Building, reaches as far as this spot, near the woods; then it goes past the fire-box building and through the very midst of the building where the windows are cut, and finally past Haus Hansi, but without enclosing it. Consequently, when we enter the Goetheanum, we actually enter this etheric aura.

I have often explained to you that when the etheric body frees itself from the physical body it grows large. Consequently we should not wonder at the large size of this etheric body. It contains mediating forces, and in these we may find certain impressions from the spiritual world, which are needed to create the forms and the artistic structure of our Building. Those who work upon the Building know how much they owe to this etheric aura. And I shall never hesitate to confess that ever since little Theodor's death, the work upon the Building became possible, because the boy's etheric body spreading over the Building supplied the mediating forces that were needed to draw down inspirations from the spiritual world. It would be far easier to hide this fact, or to take on airs as if these mediating forces were not needed. But this is not the essential point; the essential point is to recognise the true facts.

If we consider the facts which I have described to you just now, we can grasp how matters really stand with an etheric body that had to cut itself off from the existence of a human being at a moment when death closed this existence at an early age. It is important to note that the etheric body does not remain, as it were, a mere misty shape, in which the physical body lies embedded. Even the true aspect of the physical body cannot be recognised if we merely describe a mass of muscles, bones, etc. It can only be recognised if we see in it, as it were, a kind of temple, an abode of the Godhead—if we see it standing before us like a microcosm. We recognise what pertains to the physical body only if we realise that its forms are really taken from the whole universe and that in regard to his physical body the human being is a wonderful structure. Those who know the feelings voiced in the first dialogue of my second Mystery Play, “The Souls' Probation”, can have an idea of how the individual human being is placed into his physical existence; all the hierarchies are at work on his physical body, a whole world of divine Beings has the task of placing a human being into his physical existence. If we bear in mind to some extent the observations of clairvoyant knowledge, we fully learn to know the significance of the physical body.

You see, clairvoyant knowledge arises when our soul-spiritual part is lifted out of our physical-corporeal part, so that we are endowed with consciousness and with perceptive forces in the soul-spiritual sphere, outside the body.

From a purely external standpoint, there is really no difference between one who is able to perceive clairvoyantly and one who is asleep, for in both cases the soul-spiritual part is lifted out of the physical-corporeal part. The clairvoyant consciousness is able to perceive outside the physical body, so that it can have an idea of what takes place with the human being when he is asleep.

To facilitate matters, let me draw you a diagram. (A drawing is made.) Now let us assume that this is the physical-corporeal and that the soul-spiritual part of a sleeping human being. When a man is awake, the soul-spiritual part is of course contained in the physical-corporeal part; but let us now imagine a sleeping human being. On the bed lie his physical body and his etheric body; they do not contain his astral body and his ego, as is the case when he is awake. We might say, however: The activity that our astral body and ego carry on within our physical body while we are awake, does not cease completely while we are asleep. To begin with, and seen purely from outside, the sleeping human being lying there on the bed has a lifeless aspect, but to a clairvoyant consciousness the physical and etheric body of the man lying there asleep on the bed do not present a lifeless aspect. The seer must give an entirely different description of a sleeping human being, of this physical and etheric human being, lying there asleep on his bed. A clairvoyant seer must say: The whole day long the sun shone over that region of the earth, where the human beings are now sleeping. Now it is night. (I am speaking of normal conditions; when people are asleep during the night and awake during the day, I am not speaking of the conditions of life in great cities, of metropolitan habits). Darkness envelops that region on which the sun shone the whole day long. And now it is strange to notice the following: The earth, as a living Being, begins to think, and the organs through which the earth thinks are the sleeping human bodies.

The human beings think through their brain, and in the same way the earth thinks through these sleeping human bodies. The earth always perceives by day; it perceives through the fact that the sun shines upon it out of the cosmic spaces. That is the earth's perception. And during the night, the earth works out in thoughts all its perceptions. “The earth thinks”, says the clairvoyant seer; the earth thinks because it makes use of the sleeping human beings. Every sleeping human being becomes, as it were, a brain-molecule of the earth. Our physical body is organised in such a way that it can be used by the earth for it's thinking activity, when we do not use it ourselves.

Just as the earth thinks through the physical body, so it “imagines” (you know what imaginative knowledge is)—it imagines all that is not earthly upon the earth itself, all that belongs to the earth from out the cosmos. The earth imagines this through the etheric body.

We may discern in the sleeping human body parts of the earth's brain, and when the human being is asleep, we may discern in his etheric body the imagination of that part of the universe which belongs, to begin with, to the earth. The etheric body contains, in a play of wonderful pictures, all the forces that must stream into the earth out of the etheric world, so that the earth's events may take place.

As a physical being man belongs to the earth, and just as truly does he belong to the heavens as an etheric being. We can only use our physical body as an organ of thinking, because it is organised for that purpose, because the earth sets it free, as it were, for this purpose, when we are awake. And we can only use our etheric body in such a way that it provides us with life-forces, because the heavens place it at our disposal; when we are awake, and because the heavenly forces of imagination are transformed into life-forces within us, when we are awake.

Thus we cannot speak of our etheric body merely as a misty form, but we should rather speak of it as a microcosmic form reflecting the heavens. When we are born, the etheric body is handed over to us as a specially perfect form. When we are born, our etheric body glistens and shines inwardly, because it is so full of imaginations that come towards it from the great universe. It is a magnificent reflexion of the universe! All that we acquire during our life as culture, knowledge and forces of the will and of feeling, is all drawn out of our etheric body as we grow old in the course of our existence between birth and death. Heaven's cosmic forces give us what they must give us during our life between birth and death, and so we are once more young as etheric beings, when we have lived through a normal life between birth and death, for then we have drawn out of our etheric body everything that could be drawn out of it.

But when an etheric body belonging to a youthful body passes through the portal of death, it still contains a great, great deal of unused heavenly light. That is why it becomes a mediator of the forces which I have described to you. Quite apart from what takes place with the individuality of a human soul such as the one of which we spoke just now, its etheric body almost becomes a heavenly gift, a gift of the spiritual worlds. Such an etheric body can therefore have the inspiring influence that I have described to you.

It would lead us too far to speak of the peculiar Karma of a human soul that is able to make such a sacrifice. This cannot be produced artificially; it must be connected with the whole Karma of the human being that is called upon to make this sacrifice, thus fulfilling something within the process of development of the world that is destined to play a part in the spiritual progress of humanity—and this is the aim of our Building at Dornach, that will house our spiritual-scientific endeavours.

Consider now that we live in a time in which many of these etheric bodies, though they may not be as young as Theodor Faiss, but which are nevertheless etheric bodies coming from youthful human lives, inhabit, as it were, the spiritual atmosphere. Those who crossed the threshold of death on the bloodstained battlefields, pass through this portal of death in a different way than those who pass through it when they die in bed, or as a result of an ordinary accident. In a certain way, they pass through the portal of death so that they reckon with their death, even though this may be more or less unconscious, but in a certain way the astral body reckons with death. We can always say that these deaths are sacrifices. All the etheric bodies, of youthful human beings that thus ascend to the spiritual world contain unused forces. And at present we are facing an epoch in the evolution of humanity in which the souls of men will be able to look up consciously to the spiritual worlds and say to themselves: A time has gone by which sent many, many unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world. These unused etheric bodies contain forces. And from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, we may say even at the present time that these unused etheric bodies contain forces that will be very significant for the evolution of humanity.

When similar things are discussed, it should be emphasized that they cannot apply to every war that was waged in the evolution of humanity upon the earth. What takes place spiritually, what should be contemplated with the aid of spiritual science, is not so easy as natural science thinks. Other wars belonging to the past, require to be spoken of differently. And what I am now explaining to you only applies to the present fateful times.

Now imagine the following: On various occasions we had to emphasize the fact that to-day we do not pursue spiritual science arbitrarily, but that this is connected with the evolutionary process of humanity. It is connected with the progress of humanity that the human beings should gradually become acquainted with spiritual science. We know that every epoch of human evolution has its particular task. You will find this in many of my lectures. And we can realise that man's future salvation, man's welfare in the nearest future, can only flourish if that which spiritual science can reveal, becomes the spiritual property of an ever growing number of human souls.

Consider now—you, who are filled with a heartfelt enthusiasm for spiritual science—consider the difficulties connected with the propagation of spiritual-scientific truths at the present time! Consider the strong opposition that spiritual-scientific truths encounter on the part of people outside. Consider how these truths are slandered, how people look upon them as something insane, distorted and mad, how they consider them to be empty fantasies. Indeed, I might mention striking cases, yet they would all be merely a portion of what everyone can feel, if he is filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and faces a world, desirous that this world should take up spiritual science ... a world that is so little inclined to take it up!

The spiritual scientist may now say: What the mere earthly forces of humanity are able to attain, seems so weak, so very weak, in comparison to the tasks of spiritual science! But in the near future, the unused etheric bodies of those who had to carry life and soul through the portal of death, on the battlefields where the events of our time are taking place, will be there—and these etheric bodies with their unused forces will be inspiring forces, they will be helping forces in the near future. We only need to look up, but not in an intellectual or theoretic way, we only need to look up to the heavenly etheric bodies of those who in the present fateful times passed through the portal of death in their youth; we only need to direct our souls, as it were, in the mood of prayer towards these etheric bodies ... all those who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science only need to direct their souls towards these forces, and they will obtain help from these etheric bodies. Help will come! Those who are genuinely filled with a spiritual-scientific mentality and having a deep life in common with these etheric bodies will find that among the many fruits that will fall into the lap of our earnest time there will also be the one that the souls of men who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science will receive the instreaming forces of the youthful etheric bodies that were sacrificed in these terrible times; these forces will flow into them. The souls of those who will live in physical bodies in the near future, and who genuinely feel this, will be filled by the forces of the etheric bodies that were thus sacrificed; their forces will stream into them. And these will be heavenly forces, that is to say, forces pertaining to the spiritual world! Entirely different forces will in future hold sway in the world, so that the world may receive what it should receive: a spiritual-scientific mentality. If we but find the possibility of recognising what is taking place now, if we recognise it in accordance with the explanations given to you just now, this fateful present will acquire a deep, deep significance, also for those who pursue spiritual science.

I already explained to you how wonderful are the imaginative forms contained in man's etheric body! Yet they would present a different aspect, if they had not passed through a human etheric body. We may also apply to this field the saying: “Out of nothing, comes nothing.” Although this is not an absolute truth, it is nevertheless valid for this particular field. The etheric body that man receives through the fact that the human soul enters physical existence through birth, contains a whole collection of forces pertaining to the spiritual world. These forces are gradually used up during physical life. They do not come from nothing, they exist in the spiritual world. They may, of course, also be found in the spiritual world, but it is difficult to discover them directly in the spiritual world; for this we would have to unfold far greater powers. They can be used and they can help us more easily when they have passed through a human being who died young, and in that case they appear together with what they contain through the fact that they passed through that human being. All the forces that lived in the youthful etheric body of little Theodor Faiss would be in the spiritual world even if he had not existed, but without him, it would be a Herculean task to draw them down. Ever since they have become accessible to us through that boy, it is far easier to be inspired by them, so that there is a difference.

Think how important it is for the whole progress of human evolution that in the near future such a great number of etheric bodies with their unused forces will be at the disposal of humanity! Since these forces (I must always call them heavenly forces) have passed through human beings, they have become, as it were, emancipated from the cosmic laws on which they depend. Outside, in the cosmos, these forces that are drawn directly out of the cosmos, cannot possibly be used in an evil way.

Let us now consider the following: All those who pass through the portal of death as a result of the war, or through some other accident, would not yield such a great number of etheric bodies, had the war not broken out. Of course, all these forces also exist in the cosmos, but they could not be employed by the human beings on earth, for it would be too difficult to use them. Another reason why they could not be employed is that they would be entirely used up in the life of men who die at a normal age. This is a very significant fact, it is most important that these heavenly forces should have passed through human bodies, for this renders them, as it were, free from the ordinary course of development. Yet this very freedom also makes it possible that these forces be used for other purposes than the salvation of humanity.

These forces could be used in different ways. Let us take for granted that human life develops in the light of freedom. Let us then assume that Ahriman succeeds in darkening human thought and reason to such an extent as to induce him to reject spiritual science. The etheric bodies would then still be there, but no souls would be there, filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and able to place these forces at the service of the earth's progress. Lucifer and Ahriman would in that case be able to exercise their influence and they would make use of these etheric forces, either by leading them into the world built up by Lucifer, or into that built up by Ahriman.

Consider the tremendous importance of this fact! It means, that it will depend on man, as it were, how these forces, bestowed upon the world through death-sacrifices, will be embodied in the evolutionary process of the earth. They serve the evolutionary process of the world through the fact that they can inspire us with what spiritual science has kindled. If materialism were to take hold of every mind, or if nationalism were to spread out exclusively in the form of passion, then Lucifer and Ahriman would be able to use these forces for their own end and in that case these forces would be unable to further the progress of the earth. If we consider these connections, then the deep significance which spiritual science has for the human development on earth rises up before us. And only then shall we be able to say: In order that these forces, sacrificed through death, may be rightly used for the progress of human development, it is necessary that the new spirit, which is the outcome of spiritual science, should take hold of those human beings who are capable of grasping it. If we consider spiritual science in connection with the spiritual process of evolution, which comes to the fore so clearly in these fateful days, then we realise that spiritual science is something tremendously great and sacred. The new spirit which can be acquired through spiritual science thus becomes something that may be compared with the mood of prayer and it may be comprised in the words:

O cosmic spirit, let us be completely filled with the spirit that grows out of spiritual science; so that we may not fail to wrest from Ahriman and Lucifer that which can be of help to the earth, for its salvation and its progress!

Our Building is intended to be a symbol of the soul-attitude that humanity should adopt through spiritual science; for that reason, it is built in such a way that its forms are an artistic expression of what spiritual science is able to give us.

I would be obliged to speak of many things were I to explain to you all that is contained in the details of this Building. But you will learn to know them when you shall see the Building in the course of time and participate in what takes place within it.

To-day I will just mention one thing connected with the explanations which I gave just now. There will be a plastic group in a significant place of our Building, where it turns to the East. This plastic group in particular expresses something that should completely fill our consciousness at the present time. Apart from the details that will be added to the group, we may say that it consists of three chief figures. Three Beings express themselves in this plastic group. In this sculpture we shall see a kind of rock with a projecting part, and in this projection there will be a cave. The central figure of the group will stand upon the projecting rock. It is quite indifferent what name we give to this central figure, but we may see in it the representative of man on earth, man's representative in the highest meaning of the word. And if we see the ideal of humanity in that human being who for three years bore within him the Christ, then we may also see the Christ in this central figure of our plastic group. Yet we should not simply face the statue with the thought: “That is meant to be the Christ”, for this would be wrong. Instead, we should experience everything in an artistic way, that is to say, we should not interpret things symbolically from outside, but everything should result from what the forms themselves reveal.

Above, you may see a second shape. This Being has a head resembling (I can only say, resembling) a human head. It is really formed in such a way that it has a strongly developed skull and particularly a strongly developed forehead. Whereas in man these parts are relatively rigid, everything in that Being is extremely mobile. That is to say, everything is an expression of the soul. Just as we can move our hands and fingers, but not the upper parts of our head, so this Being can move everything up there. And the sculptural work expresses that everything up there is mobile. In this Being, the lower part of the physiognomy recedes in a marked way. One might say that the mighty skull dominates the face, that recedes. (I can only discuss a few details, for every line of this sculpture is significant). It is characteristic that the ear of this Being is connected with that part which has, in the case of man, deteriorated and become his larynx. The lobe of the larynx grows upwards and forms the lower part of the ear, whereas the upper part of the ear is formed by the forehead. On the other side, we can see two protuberances that remind us of birds' wings, and in between there is a form that, as a whole resembles a transformed human countenance. The wings, larynx and ear are one form. We may therefore say that this Being lives with its wings in the harmony of the spheres; it swings through the spaces, through the waves of the harmony of the spheres, and this becomes localised in the ear. (In man, all this has deteriorated). Through the fact that the Representative of Mankind raises His left hand, the wings of that Being break against the rock. You may now guess that this falling shape with the broken wings is meant to be Lucifer.

Below in the cave, we can see another shape. Its wings do not resemble birds' wings, but those of a bat. Its body is like that of a dragon, or of a worm, and its head again reminds us of a human head. Whereas in Lucifer's forehead everything is powerfully developed, the forehead of this second Being recedes and is quite undeveloped. Instead, the lower parts, towards the jaw, are strongly developed. This Being is enwrapped in gold; it is the gold contained in the earth. The gold of the earth takes on the shape of strong fetters that chain this shape to the cave. It writhes under the influence of Christ's hand pointing downward, the hand of the Representative of Mankind. The shape in the cave is Ahriman; it is Ahriman fettered by the gold of the earth.

The above explanations can really give you, as it were, an idea of the whole. Yet this idea merely indicates the essential point. The essential point that we must bear in mind is that we should never imitate the mistake of the old theosophists, who always work with symbols; the essential point which we must bear in mind is that everything in spiritual science that tends towards human feeling should be transformed into something artistic. We should therefore not say: that these sculptures express “this or that”, but they should reveal to us, through what they are artistically and through what we can see in them, the relation of man, or of Christ, to Lucifer and Ahriman. For that reason, it is impossible to express this with the artistic means of the past. Every movement of the fingers and of the hands, the way in which the hands are shaped, are significant, for they must express something significant. At first we may think that Christ raises His left hand and sends out forces with the intention of breaking Lucifer's wings and of causing him to fall. We might also think that the right hand of Christ pointing downwards sends out forces that fetter Ahriman. Yet it would be quite wrong to think so.

In order to explain the significant fact contained in this, let me remind you of one of the greatest works of art that have so far been produced, of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There we see Christ sending the righteous men to heaven and the sinful ones to hell. We see Christ sending one part of mankind to a good world and the other part to an evil world. The Christ that is portrayed on Michelangelo's picture is not the Christ whose true nature we must, from now onwards, learn to know through spiritual science. The true Christ never condemns in wrath, nor does he mete out praise in ordinary love. His influence goes out of him simply because he is there; Lucifer's wings do not get broken, but it is Lucifer himself who breaks them, as a result of what takes place within his soul through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. And Ahriman fetters himself, as a result of what takes place within his soul, through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. When Christ raises his left hand and points downwards with his right hand, he only expresses purest compassion with the world. Lucifer, there above, cannot bear this, he cannot bear the proximity of Christ's hand. And what he thus experiences within him induces him to break his wings. It is not Christ who breaks them, it is Lucifer himself who breaks his own wings.

Michelangelo was not as yet able to portray the real Christ. Christ is such a significant Being and it is so difficult to understand Him, that this understanding can only be reached in the course of time. Only in [the] future shall we be able to grasp the Christ Who induces the other beings to condemn or to redeem themselves, simply through the fact that He is there. The Christ on Michelangelo's painting still has Luciferic and Ahrimanic traits, for he sends the sinners to hell in wrath and leads the righteous to heaven, so that his passions are active. But in our sculpture, Christ is mute impersonal, and the Beings that approach Him must judge themselves.

You may therefore see that man's position in the world that contains the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces will be significantly expressed in our Building. You will see in it the artistic expression of Beings that can only be found in the spiritual world. Naturalism in art and everything towards which art has striven in recent times as a result of materialism which took hold of man, must be overcome by the art which we cultivate here. Even in the sphere of art, something entirely new must enter the world through spiritual science, something that is able to overcome even the greatest artistic achievement—the Christ, portrayed in Michelangelo's Last Judgment.

It is permissible to say this, if we emphasize on the other hand something that we should not forget: that in spite of everything, our Building is but a first, primitive beginning. Everything in this Building is still imperfect and elementary, it is merely a beginning, yet it is the beginning of an entirely new impulse. We should of course bear in mind that everything is imperfect, yet at the same time we should not fail to notice in this the new impulse that will enter human life.

Consider how easy it is to ignore a gift of cosmic life consisting of the unused forces pertaining to the etheric bodies of human beings! Consider how these unused forces of the human etheric bodies can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, if we do not find the possibility of including them in the evolution of the earth, for the welfare of the earth!

Here we touch upon a great mystery, connected with the evolution of humanity upon the earth. It is the mystery of the connection existing between the Christ-impulse and the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. This connection of the Christ-impulse with the Lucifer-impulse and with the Ahriman-impulse will be grasped more and more clearly in the near future.

Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces surge through the world, but owing to the fact that man is conscious of Christ, owing to his Christ-consciousness, he is like a sailor who must steer his boat through the storms called up by Lucifer and Ahriman. He can steer his boat through that ocean, whose living substance consists of Lucifer and of Ahriman; he can do this in spite of everything, because he sits in his Christ-boat.

The true reason why we come together in our Group-meetings is not that of learning in a theoretical way one or the other truth which spiritual science can reveal, but the true reason why we assemble is that everything that lives in our souls should be filled with the spirit that can flow out of spiritual science. The essential point is not WHAT we think, but HOW we think, feel and will. The smallest or the greatest things in the evolution of the earth may rise up before our soul's eye, yet everything shows us how necessary it is for the human beings of the future to become acquainted above all with the significance of the triad, Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman. Michelangelo was unable to grasp this, and in the times that have gone by men were unable to see how these three Beings stand within the world. The true nature of Christ will only be grasped in the right way if we can see Him in relation to the forces which are active in the same way in which the North and the South poles are active: in relation to the forces of Lucifer and of Ahriman.

Many things connected with these thoughts will be discussed in the next few days for those who can remain. To-day I wished to bring before your souls thoughts that render the spiritual-scientific attitude so important even in regard to the significant things that will in the near future appear in the spiritual world to those who can discern the spiritual behind the physical events.

O how earnestly one would like to entreat the guardian spirits and the guardian divinities, of the earth and of humanity to give man strength, so that the things needed for the welfare of mankind may take place!

There above, will be the unused etheric forces of those human beings who passed through death in their youth. But here on earth there must be human hearts and human souls who look up to these forces so that they can be included in the right direction of human evolution. It is not only essential that these forces should exist up there, for they can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, but it is essential above all that here below physical bodies should be inhabited by human souls that send up their reverent thoughts to these sacrificed etheric bodies. On this circumstance will depend the way in which these forces will stream into the evolution of humanity, these forces that arose on the battlefields streaming with blood, where sacrifices are made and suffering is borne.

This indicates more or less what spiritual science is able to contribute to the future development of humanity, if a certain number of people really takes in that which can only be recognised through spiritual science.

Before I close this lecture, let me once more address to your souls a few pragmatic words that express what the present time, so fraught with destiny, is able to give us:

From the courage of the fighters
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the nation's sacrifices,
Shall grow forth a spirit-fruit,
If souls will lead, in spirit-consciousness,
Their mind and heart into the spirit-realm.

Original German Text:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten—
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen giestbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

In the course of the preceding lectures I have had to say some things that could with justification be called paradoxical. For these things may well sound paradoxical when they are set against the materialism of our day. But that is how matters stand: what calls itself science today is only concerned with the facts that are available to the senses; but knowledge from the other side of the threshold is related to a different region of the world—perhaps it would be better to say, to a different form of the world—from that in which these facts lie. Remember some of the things that we have needed to discuss. Remember how the external human form led us to a description of man's relation to the cosmos. It was said that the structure of the human head—the head as it actually is—could not have developed within the bounds of a life on Earth, and could not even have begun there. It is the result of Moon forces which have been specially adapted to the case of each individual person so that it also refers back to his preceding incarnation. And the rest of the human body, excluding the head is, in turn, to some extent being prepared to become the head of the next incarnation. Thus, the human head refers back to a previous incarnation; the human body anticipates the next incarnation when it will have undergone a transformation. The human Gestalt really does connect directly with the previous incarnation and with the incarnation to come. A great cosmic relationship is revealed when the human being is considered in this light.

As you know, the rudiments of an understanding for the relation of the external human Gestalt to the twelve signs of the zodiac has been preserved from an earlier, wiser age. Although we naturally do not want to speak in the manner of the dilettantism that is so typical of contemporary astrological investigations, something needs to be said about the deep cosmic secrets that lie behind this way of apportioning the parts of the human body to the cosmos.

You know that astrology assigns the human head to the sign of the Ram, the throat and larynx to the Bull, the part of the body where the arms are attached and also what the arms and hands express to the Twins, the circumference of the chest to the Crab, everything to do with the heart to the Lion, the activities contained by the abdomen to the Virgin, the lumbar region to the Scales, the sexual region to the Scorpion, the thighs to the Hunter, the knees to the Sea-Goat, the calves to the Waterman, and the feet to the Fishes.

In this manner, the whole human body, including the head, is related to the forces that rule the cosmos and are symbolised by the fixed stars of the zodiac.

Now we have also spoken of how the head itself is actually a transformation of the whole body—namely of the body of the preceding incarnation. And we find another twelve-fold division in the head, where the principal representatives of the sense organs come together. That, too, is a genuine twelve-foldness. The following diagram shows how matters stand.

We will let this (see drawing) represent the whole human body, dividing it among the twelve signs of the zodiac so that the head is given to the Ram, the throat to the Bull, and so on. And now, bearing in mind what has been said about the composition of the whole of the sense organism, this part here, which has been allocated to one sign, must be divided again among all twelve signs. Thus, here the whole process must be repeated again. I urge you to take note of this characteristic, which is true of all the great laws of the cosmos. Whenever there is a twelve-fold order, one part of it will have an independent existence as well as being just one part of the whole. In this case it is the head which, as a part of the whole, is allocated to one constellation, but also, as the unique, special case, is allocated to all twelve constellations. If what has been said is true, one must presuppose that the body of one incarnation becomes the head of the next incarnation. In the next incarnation, what is now the whole head must serve a single sense. A second sense will be formed out of what at present is manifest as the organs of speech, the larynx and everything in its vicinity. This will be metamorphosed and transformed in the next incarnation. A third sense will be formed from the expressive capacities of the arms and so on. The whole of the body that we bear in this world will become the head of our next incarnation; it will undergo a systematic metamorphosis so that the present twelve-fold order of the body can reappear as the twelve-fold order of the head.

One can certainly look for clues that indicate whether a twelve-foldness really is to be found in the head. Now most of you will be aware that there are twelve principle nerves that originate in the human head. When they are properly interpreted—rather than in the pitifully confused fashion of contemporary physiology of the brain—one can recognise that what was distributed over the whole body in the preceding incarnation reappears in these twelve nerves. So the apparent paradox of, for example, the reappearance in the head of what today is in the hands need not cause us to falter. In fact, one may even find it quite easy to grasp such things in their broad outlines. For if we thoroughly examine the physiology of the hands and arms do we not truly see that they already show a disposition to become organs of speech? Do not the hands and arms speak their own eloquent language? Why, then, should it be so difficult to believe that the situation might at some time be quite altered, so that the same things reappear at a different level of being, as sense organs within the head? Only those who have no inkling of what a true metamorphosis of being involves can laugh at the idea that what is now expressed in the body through the knees is being prepared so that it can reappear distributed over the entire body as the sense of touch, as the organ of touch. Our human knees, with their wonderfully constructed kneecaps are highly sensitive in some respects. This characteristic is being prepared to become our sense of touch in our next incarnation; then it will the organ of touch for the whole body. This is the kind of metamorphosis experienced by our various parts, and deep secrets of existence are revealed to us by such matters. But in order to come to a right view of these secrets of existence it is also necessary for us to approach them with reverence. We must not fall into the cynical mood prevalent in current science. In order to listen in on the secrets of being, we must approach them with reverence. For a considerable time now, the prevailing views of the world have reflected humanity's terrible pride and megalomania. The extent of the pride and megalomania at work in contemporary intellectual and scientific life generally goes unrecognised. But for anyone who is aware of it, the megalomania that sometimes emerges in particular individuals comes as no surprise.

In the pursuit of spiritual science it has often been necessary for me to draw attention to the terrible presence of this pride, a pride that has become especially evident during recent phases of human development. Frequently I have spoken about the way men write about human deeds. Just read what the textbooks and other books have to say about the human spirit of discovery. Look, for example, at what is said about the discovery of paper—this same paper about which one can become so despondent these days when one sees all that is printed on it. But just look at all that is said about the capacity that enables a human being to discover such things! I have often pointed out that a wasp's nest consists of the very same material; it is made of genuine paper. The elemental beings who govern the building of wasps' nests really discovered this substance millions of years before humanity discovered it. Other examples can be found-thousands of them. Look at a telescope. It can be turned in two different ways; it can be rotated as well as adjusted up and down. The example of the telescope has already been noted by Schraieg, an author who made several attempts to draw our attention to such things. Look at what man has made here! He has built it with two different devices for rotation: above there is a device that is called a hinge-joint in mechanics, and below is a device called a tenon-joint. These make it possible to rotate the telescope in two different ways and provide the twofold rotation that is required. Now, as you can easily test for yourselves with a telescope, it would be mad to reverse their positions and put a tenon-joint above where the hinge-joint is, and a hinge-joint below instead of a tenon-joint. That would not be advantageous. This invention, this mechanical device, can be held up as an example of the kind of significant discovery of which mankind is capable. But each of you is carrying about a much more ingenious version of this same device. In the back part of your head, where it sits upon a vertebra of your neck, you have a hinge-joint above and a tenon-joint below. That is why you are able to turn your head up and down, as well as to rotate it sideways. So you can find in the human organism the very same thing that is the object of present-day human thought.

There is nothing that has ever been discovered—or ever will be discovered—that cannot be found somewhere in the human organism. All the mechanical devices men have ever discovered or will discover, everything capable of contributing to human evolution, is to be found in the human organism. A human being only lacks the things that have nothing to contribute to human evolution; they are either lacking, or are included in a form very different from the form in which mankind has introduced them into its evolution. Considering the whole nature and spirit of evolution, there must have been a time, far, far back in an early age, when this extraordinary mechanical joint, and many other things as well, first came into being. Now it exists. And we will find that this formation is always present, no matter how far back we trace what we refer to as the course of human development—namely that part of it in which humanity possessed its present form. And however could it have developed through purely mechanical means? Just consider how this device is especially suited to certain purposes—so well suited, in fact, that it is well-adapted for use on a telescope. Any other device would be useless. Could it have come about through that fundamental law applied by the superficial Darwinians—the most superficial, I might add—namely, that something well-adapted to a purpose must have developed out of what is less well-adapted? But what could be less well adapted in this case. Anything less well-adapted would make it entirely impossible for man, in his present form, to live. A man simply could not live as he now lives, and so it is impossible to imagine that there has been a transition from the less-adapted to the better-adapted in such a case. Those who have developed the critique demanded by popular, superficially-grasped Darwinism have always drawn attention to such truths.

How will mankind's relationship with the cosmos be explained in future ages? My answer to this question will also sound somewhat paradoxical. You will recall that I have explained how the current belief that the heavens will reveal their own nature is just an empty phrase. Copernicus investigated the secrets of the heavens in the belief that the heavens would reveal themselves to him. In truth, however, the secrets of the heavens explain what lives on Earth and, conversely, the secrets of the Earth explain the secrets of the heavens.

Paradoxical as it may sound, people of the future will study embryological development and find great cosmic laws revealed in what they can observe. Universal secrets will be revealed to them as they watch how the embryo develops out of the cell and its surroundings to become a whole human being. And what can be observed in the heavens will be received as the principles in accordance with which one explains what happens here on earth in the plants, animals and, particularly as regards embryology, in man. The heavens explain the earth—Earth explains the heavens. You have heard me explain that before. A real and serious principle of knowledge of the future, one that must be expanded, still sounds like a paradox to us today.

Today I would still like to speak about a third, similar paradox. It is related to what we have just said about Lucifer and Ahriman in connection with Goethe's Faust. There is a certain justification in our seeing everything that is expressed in human emotions, passions, feelings, and so on, as the revelations of Lucifer. We can observe that the luciferic realm works more from within. Lucifer has to be there alongside Eve as she sets about making herself beautiful. She must appear beautiful to herself so that she can become the being who finds herself essentially beautiful and whose beauty brings about the Temptation. In order for the counterpart of this to enter into the course of Earth evolution, Ahriman must act: he must act so that the sons of the gods will find the daughters of mankind beautiful, that is, so that they see beauty in objects. Lucifer had to act in order to influence Eve so that she would feel herself beautiful and could bring about the Temptation. In order for it to become possible to behold an object as beautiful, and possible for beauty to become an external cause, Ahriman was necessary. The former happened in the Lemurian period, the latter, in the Atlantean period.

But one must become more and more familiar with the agency of Lucifer and Ahriman. Naturally, I can only describe individual details regarding the manifestations of Ahriman and Lucifer. But you should try to collect all the individual characteristics I have described into comprehensive pictures of them both.

Some of you might well be acquainted with the paradoxical events that are typical of what can be encountered if one moves in circles which engage in occultism, quasi-occultism, occult fraud, and all that is connected with these. In such circles there is something one can experience again and again. Suppose some prominent celebrities were among the members of a society which claimed to be occult. Such groups always include some such celebrities. They are believed. They are the authority upon which one swears. And now something emerges that is promulgated as a dogma. Now, suppose there emerged the dogma that a certain person in the group is the reincarnation of a great and towering individuality, someone who had accomplished things that would have been impossible for other men, someone who followed a path, let us say, and wrote down great truths, thousands of copies of which are spread across the globe. These writings are greatly admired, even though all they contain may be generalities. But that does not matter. Repeatedly this happens: precisely those things that are the most superficial will be regarded as ‘utterly profound’ by thousands upon thousands of people, provided they are served up with the required sentimental ‘soul-sauce’.

I will describe something typical, rather than single out a particular case. The first thing you will often observe when something like this occurs is that various persons will rise up in terrible revolt against what is happening. They will say, ‘We want nothing to do with dogma. Such a thing is nonsense and we do not want any of it; we shall never believe it.’ They instigate a kind of campaign against it. Then some celebrity or other appears to defend the matter in question, and has a meeting with one of the rebels. Then you can observe how, in the space of a few hours, the rebel does a complete about-face and becomes the most rabid of the followers. Sometimes it does not even last an hour—not even a single hour is required. Such things can be experienced repeatedly. Others come along thereafter, asking themselves, ‘How can it be? These women, or men—and, as a matter of fact, it does not just happen with the women, but with the men as well—were thinking quite clearly about the situation a short while ago. Now, after just a short conversation with this occult celebrity, they have been transformed and seem to believe the whole thing.’ Some of you sitting here know that these things do happen. Has the person really been convinced in such cases? No, there can be no question of conviction in the sense in which we usually speak of it, referring to the consciousness of normal waking life. Matters have to be understood in an entirely different light. And for the sake of understanding them, let us consider Ahriman's character for a moment.

One of the chief characteristics of Ahriman, you see, is that he has not the slightest acquaintance with the impartial relation to truth that a human being experiences here on earth. Ahriman knows nothing about this impartial relation to truth, nothing about striving for truth by simply trying to arrive at ideas that accord with an objective world. Ahriman knows nothing of this. He is not concerned with such things.

Ahriman's fundamental place in the cosmos, which I have often described, means that it is a matter of complete indifference to him whether an idea he has formulated is in accordance with reality. Although we would not call them true in the human sense, the truths Ahriman constructs are always determined by their effects. He never says anything just to be in accord with something else, but only in order to achieve some end. What he says is said in order to achieve some effect or other.

It would be ahrimanic, for example, if I were to tell someone something about our building in order to get them to undertake a certain task—saying things that I know will influence the person to undertake the task without any regard for whether or not what I say is true.

I believe you will be able to imagine that such a thing is possible-to calculate what to say to a person in order to create a certain effect while remaining indifferent to the objective truth of what is said. There are all kinds of minor instances of such things happening to people. One could recall various things, but just imagine all that the aunties say when they are trying to be matchmakers and bring two people together. They will say that it is the bride or the bridegroom who are doing things. They are not really concerned whether what they say is right, only with the influence it has on bringing about the match. That is just one little exemplary illustration! Ahriman, of course, does not bother himself with such insignificant cases. But everything in human life provides us with analogies.

Thus, when Ahriman speaks he is interested in the effects of what he says. And when this kind of thing is going on, he helps by formulating his statements to assist the process. Now, suppose it were useful for Ahriman to produce a group of people on earth who believe in some particular thing—in the kind of thing I was just now talking about. The ability to win people over to ahrimanic truths can be acquired by someone who has been sufficiently initiated into corrupt occultism, provided that this form of initiation has not awakened in him the impulse to replace that occultism with the rightful kind. He can link himself to Ahriman so as to be able to convince people of ahrimanic truths—if I may use this paradoxical turn of speech-truths that are not true at all in the human sense, but which will have their effects! That is what is always at the root of such events as I have been describing: in the space of a brief hour, ahrimanic arts are employed to influence the person who has been a thorough-going rebel. In association with Ahriman it is possible to influence a person and bring him to believe that some human being or other is the reincarnation of a particular, towering individuality. All that one has to learn is how to inject truths into some sphere of life—in this case, into the human sphere—while taking account of their effect, but not their objectivity.

To be sure, there are some men who are so ignorant and foolish that they simply take on ahrimanic influences unconsciously, without any other person having to resort to the ahrimanic arts. But the ahrimanic arts are also being practised among mankind—arts which are directly applied and are achieved through association with Ahriman. And these things resulting from the association of men with Ahriman have an especially great significance for our times. For a considerable time now, things have been happening to humanity that can only be understood by someone familiar with the secrets to which we have just been ever-so-lightly alluding.

Ahriman never concerns himself with whether or not an idea agrees with the objective world. He is only interested in its effects and in how it can be used.

Other matters are important to Lucifer. He possesses different qualities, which have already been mentioned. But in order to better acquaint ourselves with these matters, we need to pay special attention to one particular quality of Lucifer. For neither is he concerned with whether an idea accords with the objective world. Most emphatically not! He wants those ideas to be evolved which will generate the greatest possible human consciousness. Understand well what I am saying: he wants to generate the greatest possible amount of human consciousness—as intense and as widely spread as possible. This widespread consciousness that interests Lucifer is also connected with a certain human inner sense of gratification, which accompanies it. And this kind of gratification also belongs to Lucifer's domain. Perhaps you will remember me describing how, until a certain phase of the Atlantean epoch, everything to do with sexuality happened unconsciously. Various peoples have beautiful myths pointing to the unconscious nature of the sexual process in earlier times. It only became conscious during the course of time. Lucifer played an essential role in bringing this unconscious sphere more and more into the light of consciousness. This is what Lucifer wants: his goal is to bring about a human consciousness that is not right for its time; at the wrong period of time he wants to give men consciousness of something—conscious to a degree that could only be rightly developed at another point in time. Lucifer is not willing, without further ado, to allow mankind to be determined by anything external. He wants everything that affects consciousness to work from within. This is what gives all visionary life, which is pressed outward from within, its luciferic character. One must get to know Lucifer, for as spiritual forces working in the cosmos it is, of course, necessary for him and his powers to be put to work in the proper place. But as one gets to know him, one can be especially struck by Lucifer's dreadful lack of the slightest understanding for even the most harmless of delights, if they apply to something external. Lucifer has not the slightest understanding of man's harmless delight in what is around him. He understands what can be kindled by all manner of inward things. He has a great understanding for how a person can develop a passion in which he indulges and which gives him pleasure, so that as much unconscious material as possible is drawn up into consciousness. But in spite of his wisdom—for, naturally, Lucifer possesses a lofty wisdom—he cannot understand the innocent jokes that people make about external events. Such things lie entirely outside Lucifer's domain. And one can protect oneself from luciferic bombardment—which he is exceedingly ready to attempt—by learning to live in the innocent delights, delights that come to us innocently from without and entertain us. When we take pleasure in a good caricature, Lucifer gets incredibly angry.

These are the kinds of relationships that are revealed when one leaves behind the concreteness of the sense world and steps across the threshold. There, in that sphere, all possesses the character of living being; nothing has the character, typical of the physical world, of being just a thing. As soon as one enters even the elemental world, everything is alive. So you can see that we can pretty well say that it is a matter of indifference to both Ahriman and Lucifer whether or not an idea is in harmony with the objective world. Ahriman is interested in the effects of what he says; Lucifer is interested in expanding human consciousness in certain situations where man should not be conscious. Such awareness is accompanied by a kind of inner pleasure, although it is not right for the present cycle of time.

In both cases things are achieved that ideas, formed solely on the basis of their agreement with the external world, could not achieve. For the reasons I have described, malicious occult circles cultivate an alliance with Ahriman. They also cultivate an alliance with Lucifer in order to find pleasant methods for bringing about visionary experiences—in other words, methods that kindle visions from within.

Of course, Lucifer and Ahriman also work in the human unconscious. There they accomplish the same things that the malevolent occult circles deliberately set about doing, the same things in which these circles are engaged, in alliance with Lucifer and Ahriman. And much of the criticism that must be levelled against the way our own fifth post-Atlantean epoch is unfolding in that great world out there, can be traced back to luciferic and ahrimanic impulses. At present, luciferic and ahrimanic streams have a strong grip on the world and their effect is chaotic. This is shown not only by the great amount of lying and falsification that goes on, but also by everything that is said, simply because it corresponds to emotions and passions without any regard for justifying it by showing how it accords with objective reality. For, in the present phase of human development, if we want to be in the exclusive care of benevolent powers we cannot disregard the objective truth of our assertions and mould them to the shape of our passions. Atlantean humanity was capable of inwardly determining truths that would accord with the corresponding objective reality. This capacity persisted into the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, at the latest. But, as we know, it exists no longer. It is precisely for the purpose of allowing mankind to learn to observe and investigate the external world without basing its assertions on subjective passions, that we are going through our present cycle of development.

Thus, today, when truths are nevertheless formed on a subjective basis without any attempt being made to bring them into agreement with the external world, there is a luciferic stream at work. This luciferic stream has allied itself with ahrimanic streams. One brings about a form of consciousness that is wrong, the other brings about falsehood or lying. And what we are describing is already very, very widespread at the present time. These days, many souls have been lured away from a right awareness for whether an idea harmonises with the objective world. They are not in the least concerned about it. And if someone does show concern for whether his ideas agree with the objective reality, he is not understood. In such cases, a person is met on all sides by a distinctive attitude—it is difficult to find the right word for it, an attitude of surprise—people are surprised that it is even possible to think in this fashion. In such circles one meets the least agreement precisely when one is attempting to point to characteristics of reality by simply drawing attention to the things of the world and repeating them in one's ideas, basing everything one says on what is there. Sometimes this is scarcely understood. It is not understood that this is radically different from what happens when someone simply shapes his assertions to match one or the other of his passions, be these personal or national. Therein lies a radical distinction of which people of today are not even aware. Many is the time that people fail to consider whether their assertions are in accordance with the facts; they simply form them in accordance with their own preconceptions and along already-established lines of thought. But what matters today is whether or not our assertions are in accordance with the facts. Otherwise we cannot hope to accomplish the transition to an epoch in which the spiritual world can be seen in the proper light. We will never be able to discover the facts of the spiritual world unless we develop an attitude that acknowledges the facts of the physical world. The right way of experiencing the spiritual world must be developed here in the physical world. That is why we have been placed in the physical world: it is our task here to seek for ideas that are in harmony with objective reality, so that we acquire this ability and so that it becomes a habit we can carry with us into the spiritual world.

But today so many people base their assertions on nothing but emotion and are not in the least interested in whether they agree with objective reality. This is precisely the opposite of the direction in which humanity must move if it is to progress. And, especially in our materialistic age, the notion of thinking in accordance with reality has been so frightfully distorted by the influences we have been describing; thinking that is in accord with reality has become a rarity. And an honest attempt to think in accordance with reality today collides with all the contemporary thinking that is at variance with reality. A dreadful example of this is the way in which our anthroposophical Movement again and again collides with thinking that has not been measured against reality. But the facts are there, and in the end one cannot remain silent if one is sincere about this Movement.

These collisions between attempts to think in accordance with reality and thinking that is an enemy of reality show what is involved in standing up for the truth today. That other thinking is opposed to reality in the manner we have described. It is true that every age must fight with the forces of opposition; but in every age it is necessary to get to know them in the particular shape and particular metamorphosis they have assumed. The stream of the Pharisees, for example, has not died out; today it is present in another form. And we will only be able to proceed with the necessary clarity if we really understand this distinction between thinking that is in harmony with reality and thinking that is an enemy of reality.

Cologne, 18 December, 1913

Before continuing with the study of the life of Jesus Christ, I would like to mention some indications about the way such things are found. With few words such a comprehensive subject can of course only be characterized. But I want you to have an idea of what we can call occult research, at the stage where one can penetrate to such concrete facts as those which, for example, we considered here yesterday.

To begin with, we can say that this research rests on a study of the Akasha Chronicle. In general terms, I described how such reading in the Akasha Chronical is to be understood in articles in the magazine “Lucifer-Gnosis” which appeared under the title “From the Akasha Chronicle”. It should be clear that different facts about cosmic events and cosmic being must be researched in different ways, so now I would like to be more specific about what has already been said.

Basically in the universe there is nothing but consciousness. Except for consciousness, everything else belongs in the domain of maya, or the great illusion. You can find these facts in two places—in others as well—but especially in the description of the evolution of the earth from ancient Saturn to Vulcan in An Outline Of Occult Science, where the evolution from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun, from Sun to ancient Moon, from Moon to Earth, and so on, are described as stages of consciousness. This means that if one wants to reach these important facts, he must ascend to a stage of cosmic events where they consist of stages of consciousness. Therefore, if we are describing realities we can only describe various stages of consciousness. It is also included in another book published this summer: The Threshold of the Spiritual World. Shown there is how through a gradual ascension of the seer's vision it rises from the objects and processes around us, which disappear into nothingness, melt away so to speak, and finally reaches the region where there are only beings in various stages of consciousness. So the true realities of the world are beings in the various stages of consciousness. Due to the fact that we live in the human stage of consciousness, and in this stage of consciousness have no complete overview of the realities involved, the effect is that what is unreal appears to us as real.

You have only to ask yourselves the following question. Is a human strand of hair a reality, even in a narrow sense? Does it have an independent existence? It would be nonsense to say that a human strand of hair has an independent existence. It does make sense to consider it as growing from the human body, otherwise it is not possible for it to exist on its own. Everyone would agree that it is nonsense to speak of a strand of hair as having an independent existence. A plant is often seen as an individual being, but is no more an individual being than is a strand of hair. For what the strand of hair is to the head, the plant is to the earth organism, and it makes no sense to consider the plant in isolation. We must think of the earth as analogous to man and all plants on the earth as belonging to the earth, as does the hair on one's head. It is no more possible for a plant to exist as an independent being outside the earth organism than it is for hair to exist without a head to grow on. It is important to know when to cease considering something as an autonomous being. But everything which the human being can attain to which does not have its roots in consciousness is not an independent being. Everything is rooted in consciousness, only in different ways.

Let us take thought, that is, what we as humans think. At first these thoughts are in our consciousness, but not merely in our consciousness. At the same time they are in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the angeloi, the angels. But whereas we may have one thought, all our thoughts are the angels' thoughts. The angels think our consciousness. Thus you can see that when we ascend to clairvoyance, we must develop a different feeling towards perceiving the beings of the higher worlds than is the case in ordinary reality. If we thinks as we do in the physical-sensory earthly existence, we cannot achieve higher clairvoyance. One must not merely think, one must also be thought, and be aware that one is being thought. It is not easy—for human words have not yet been devised to describe what the feeling about this perceiving is. But to use a comparison: we make all kinds of movements and if we don't observe these movements in ourselves, but in the eyes of another and see there the reflection of our own movements we say to ourselves: by observing in this way we know that we are doing this or that with our hands or with our facial expressions. One already has this feeling at the next stage of clairvoyance. We know in general that we are thinking, but we see ourselves [doing it] in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy. We let the angels think our thoughts. We must realize that we are not conducting our thoughts, but that the beings of the next hierarchy are conducting them. We must feel the interweaving, undulating consciousness of the angels. We then receive information about the continuous impulse of evolution, for example about the truth of the Christ-impulse, how it continues to be active now. The angels can think this impulse; we humans can also think and describe it, if we devote our thoughts to the angels so they think in us. We can achieve this by continuous practice, as I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. From a certain moment on we connect a feeling, a sensation with the words: “Your soul doesn't think any more, it is a thought which the angels think”. And when this becomes a truth for the individual human experience, we experience the thoughts about the truths of the Christ-impulse, also other thoughts about the wise guidance of earth evolution.

Those things related to the epochs of the earth's evolution—the ancient Indian epoch, the ancient Persian epoch and so forth—are thought by the archangels. By means of further [meditative] practice we are able not only to be thought by the angels, but to be experienced by the archangels. You must then come to the point where you know that you are delivering your life to the life of the archangels. In The Threshold of the Spiritual World I go into this in more detail: how you have the feeling, when you continue the exercises—I also spoke about this in Munich, using a grotesque example—as if you were to stick your head in an anthill, and the ants are the thoughts in movement. Whereas in ordinary life we think that we think our thoughts, through practice we realize that the thoughts think in us, because the angels think in us. And continuing with practice we arrive at the feeling that we are brought to various regions of the world by the archangels and thus learn about those regions. To correctly describe the [ancient] Indian or Egyptian cultures one must understand the meaning of: “Your soul has been brought to this or that time by an archangel”. It is as though our life body fluids knew that they support the life process and are carried through the organism as the blood is. Thus the seer knows that he is conducted through the life process of the world by the archangels. But where individual experiences of the soul are concerned, they can only be investigated if the soul gives meaning to the words: The soul delivers itself as food to the Archai, the spirits of personality.

What I just said sounds grotesque, but it is nevertheless true that one cannot investigate such concrete facts as the life of Jesus of Nazareth before one gives meaning to the words: One is eaten as spiritual food and thus serves the Spirits of Personality. Obviously this sounds like madness to people who live in the outer world. Of course it does! Nevertheless it is just as true as the piece of bread that enters our stomachs becomes our food, and if it could think it would know that its existence has meaning and purpose in that we make it our food. It is just as true that we humans have the purpose of serving the Archai as food. While we walk around here on earth we are at the same time beings who are continually consumed, eaten by the Archai. You will not deny that people in ordinary life don't know this, and that they would call it madness if someone told them something like this. Man is for the Archai what a grain of wheat is for you as a physical human being. Don't only know this theoretically, but live in respect to the Archai as a grain of wheat would live were it to be ground to porridge by our teeth and pass through our pallets and stomach with the awareness: I am human food. Therefore also know: I am the Archai's food, I am digested by the Archai; that is their life, which I live in them. To vividly know this means to enter the consciousness of the Spirits of Personality, the Archai. Just as what it means to enter the consciousness of the Archangels when one knows: Your soul is brought to this or that epoch by the Archangels; and what it means to enter the consciousness of the Angels when one knows: My thoughts are thought by the angels. If we wish to enter the higher worlds, the conditions of experience must be different. It is necessary to be knowingly consumed by the Spirits of Personality if concrete facts such as the life of Jesus of Nazareth in human evolution are to be investigated.

Perhaps what I have said will serve to show that this occult research is completely different from research in the outer world. If you can think the analogies through, they provide the correct hints: You can imagine yourselves as the grains of wheat ground into porridge by your teeth in order to have a mental image, which is an analogy for reading in the consciousness of the Archai. One must be mentally ground up and feel it. It means that higher research is not possible without inner pain and suffering. If it is so abstract that it doesn't hurt, as is research in the physical world, then research in the higher worlds cannot be achieved if it is to be more than complete fantasy.

Therefore my efforts yesterday in describing the life of Jesus to separate it from abstract concepts and descriptions. Remember what I said in an attempt to point out what is important. I said: this was the life of Jesus of Nazareth from his twelfth, eighteenth and up to his thirtieth year. What I described is less important than having a vivid feeling of what Jesus' soul went through, to feel the pain of loneliness, the endless pain of having to stand alone with the untruths about which there were many ears to hear. I wanted to point out Jesus of Nazareth's feelings. His great threefold compassion for humanity from his twelfth to his thirtieth year. Not by describing the events to yourselves or to others, will you know something about the meaning of Jesus' experience as preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather that by conceiving of an idea—a mental picture—which shocks and moves your souls, a picture of what that man Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer before the Mystery of Golgotha in order that the Christ-impulse could stream into the earth's evolution.

In this way a vivid idea of the Christ-impulse is brought about in that the suffering is reawakened, so that one must describe these facts which are related to such things by trying to bring to mind feelings. You can see this in how I tried to characterize in few words what Akasha research is. The more you are able to feel in yourselves the billowing, undulating feelings in a being such as Jesus of Nazareth was, the more you fathom such mysteries.

I have often spoken about what happened then—that through the baptism in the Jordan, after Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies [physical, etheric, astral] were spiritualized by the Zarathustra-I in them, the Christ-being entered them, that is, a being from the realm of the spiritual world descended whose destiny was to live bound in a human body for three years. It is important to understand what that fact means. Because this fact is fundamentally different from all other facts in the earth's evolution. Here we are entering into something which is not merely a human event in the earth's evolution. This must by clear.

We can consider this from a human standpoint. Then we say: “Once there was a man as we have described him. He received the Christ-being, the Christ-impulse”. But we can also consider it differently, although the considerations are rather skimpy on representations, that's doesn't matter. By means of our spiritual-scientific preparation, we will be able to make something of them.

Imagine that we are sitting in a council considering the Mystery of Golgotha not as men, but in a council of the higher hierarchies as the beings of the higher hierarchies are considering the Mystery of Golgotha. In a spiritual sense this change in viewpoint is possible. A comparison could be: We have a mountain before us and halfway up is a town. We can see the town from below, but it can also be observed from the summit. Naturally we mostly observe the Mystery of Golgotha from a human point of view. But we could also climb up to the sphere of the higher hierarchies. How then would we speak of the Mystery of Golgotha? We would have to say: When the earth's evolution began, the beings of the higher hierarchies had certain intentions for humanity. They wanted to guide the earth's evolution in a certain way. But Lucifer inserted himself into this intended guidance of humanity's earthly affairs. So if we are looking down at earth evolution as a being of the higher hierarchies, we see that Lucifer changed the direction of this evolution from our original intention.

And we say: Not everything that happens down there happens through us. Lucifer is continually intervening. Due to Lucifer's intervention, and later Ahriman's, a foreign element is present in human evolution. It could be expressed in such a way that the beings of the higher hierarchies say: “To a certain extent the sphere of the earth has been lost to us. There are forces there which distance the earth with its humanity from us”.

Guidance by the higher hierarchies is gradual; each participates according to its powers, first of all the lowest. All the hierarchies participate in earth's evolution, up to highest, but these latter leave certain tasks to their subordinates—to the Angels, Archangels and Archai. So they are the first to be active in the evolutionary process.

We transfer ourselves—in all humility of course—to the council of the higher hierarchies, not the council of men. Then we can say: “Our messengers, the Angels, Archangels and Archai are there; they could carry out our orders very well if foreign powers were not present in the sphere of earth”. So the great council decides something like the following: "Since we were not able to prevent Lucifer and Ahriman from interfering in the earth's evolution, our subordinates, the Angles, Archangels and Archai, have lost the ability, from a certain point in time, to do for humanity what had to be done according to our intentions." And this point in time was when the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

As this point in time approached, the gods of the higher hierarchies had to say: “We are losing the possibility for our subordinates to intervene in human souls. Because we could not deter Lucifer and Ahriman, we have only been able to act through our subordinates until this point in time. Thus forces arise in human souls, which can no longer be conducted by the Angels, Archangels and Archai. The human beings are turning away from us through the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman”.

That was really—if I may express it so—the mood in heaven as the point in time approached which was calculated to be the beginning of the new era. Because their subordinates could no longer sufficiently care for humanity from a certain point in time, it became the “angst” of the gods. You will not misunderstand this, for you are prepared by spiritual science to understand that expressions have a different sense and feeling value when used to characterize the higher worlds.

This divine anxiety grew, ever more tantalizing, ever more worryingly—if I may say so—in the heavens. So the decision was made to send the Sun Spirit down, to sacrifice him by deciding: “He shall choose a different lot from now on than that of sitting in the council of the gods: he shall enter the arena where human souls live. We sacrifice this Son Spirit to them. Until now he has lived among us, in the spheres of the higher hierarchies; now he will enter the earth aura through the portal of Jesus”.

That's how it looked from above in the council of the gods as the Mystery of Golgotha approached. It was an affair of the gods who guide the earth, not merely a human affair. It can be understood as not merely asking: What must be done so humanity is not lost on its precipitous path? Rather the question: What should we gods do in order to create a counterbalance for what has happened because we had to allow Lucifer and Ahriman into earth evolution?

And one can then create a feeling that the Mystery of Golgotha is other than a mere earthly affair, that it is an affair of the gods, an event of the world of the gods. Truly, it was more important for the gods that they had to give up Christ to the earth than it was for humanity to receive Christ.

And what is knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha more than recognizing it as earth's central event? That when one observes the Mystery of Golgotha it is seen as an affair of the gods, that the gods opened a window to heaven, that the gods revealed their affairs to human eyes for a while and that men could observe these godly affairs! One must learn to feel this observing the Mystery of Golgotha by imagining that if one were to pass by the closed house of heaven, one could look through that window and see what otherwise is invisible behind the walls of the domicile of the gods.

The person with reverent feelings about the occult nature of the Mystery of Golgotha is like someone who walks silently around a house that is always closed, only suspecting what is happening inside. At one point there is a window through which he can witness a small part of what is happening inside. For humanity the Mystery of Golgotha is such a window to the spiritual world. Therefore we must feel what happened as the Christ-being descended into the body—or rather the three bodies—of Jesus of Nazareth. We should absorb this idea ever deeper, that we are witnesses to a godly affair through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When we speak of such things words must be used in a different way than in ordinary life. One must speak about such things as the gods' “angst” and “fear” before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One must use words about the spiritual affairs of humanity in a different way. It is very easy for those who are all too ready to denigrate what is meant in the most sacred sense—whether from stupidity, frivolousness, pride or other reasons. All they have to do is twist the meaning of words into how they are used in exoteric life. In that way it is possible to turn them into the opposite of what is meant, even though they come from the need to announce the truths of the spiritual world which are so difficult to wring from the soul. Their meanings are reversed, thereby making them sound ridiculous or satanic.

This is all too widespread in our times. And those who should be protecting the treasure of the sacred-spiritual truths, which are so necessary for human souls just in these times, are not wakeful enough.

How great is the comfort with which we like to feed our spirit! How often must we see lamentable things! If when speaking of the spirit one goes even a little beyond materialism, people declare themselves satisfied because that way they don't have to strain themselves, in particular they don't have to strain their sensibilities. What we must feel is that because we are taking part in a consideration of the most sacred developments in earthly evolution, we have a responsibility toward the treasures of knowledge relating to the spiritual world. There is great frivolity in our times about such things, and people tend to take it all lightly. You will notice it popping up here and there, but will only recognize its abominable nature if you're alert enough and your hearts are kindled enough for the most sacred of the spiritual truths. Perhaps then you can assess the value of the spiritual treasures and become their good guardians, for we are all called to guard them together.

Perhaps the easiest way to speak of something so important is: that the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely a human affair, but also an affair of the gods, and that we can observe this affair of the gods. But the way this is described will be distorted in such a way that I hesitate to even mention it. The time will perhaps come when it will be realized that we must reformulate the words of the sensible world when we use them for the super-sensible world, and that it is easy to insinuate other meanings to them.

Popular Christianity says what I have just indicated with the words: “The Father sacrificed his son for humanity”. These words describe what is felt by human hearts in a popular sense, though the true meaning is: The Mystery of Golgotha is an affair of the gods.

And if we consider all of what I have said, we can have an idea of what happened during the event which we call the baptism by John in the Jordan. The temptation, which is also described in the Gospels, followed. From the viewpoint of the Akasha Chronicle we would say: After Jesus of Nazareth took the Christ-being into himself he had to go into the wilderness. There he had clairvoyant visions, which are described fairly accurately by the words of the clairvoyant Gospel writers. It could also be said that now the Christ-being was really bound to the three bodies of Jesus. That means that he descended from the spiritual world and became limited to the capacities of the three bodies. Therefore it would be false to think that Christ, because he belonged to a higher world from which he had descended, could now immediately envision that higher world. That is not the case. Whoever finds this incomprehensible should think again about what it means to be clairvoyant. You are all clairvoyant! All! There is not one here who is not clairvoyant. So why don't you all see clairvoyantly? Because you haven't developed the organs in order to use the forces which reside in all humans. It is not a question of having the capacities, but rather of being able to use them.

The Christ-being had all possible capacities, but in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth he only had the capacities which corresponded to those three bodies. That is why they had to be prepared in such a complicated manner, for the capacities of these three bodies were indeed high capacities, greater than the corresponding capacities of all the other people on the earth. But Christ was bound to them just as your clairvoyant capacities are bound to the organs which you have, only cannot yet use. It was possible through the capacities which the Zarathustra-soul had left behind in Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies, the remnants of which now served Christ to confront a being who could arouse all the pride and arrogance that a human soul is capable of. This being confronted the Christ Jesus.

At that moment he sensed what that being was attempting in the language of visions—what the Bible describes with the words: “All the kingdoms you see before you”—kingdoms of the spiritual world—“can be yours if you recognize me as the lord of this world.” If one is full of pride and arrogance and brings it into the spiritual world, one can own this world's kingdom of Lucifer because arrogance submerges everything else if everything except arrogance is left behind. But man is not prepared for that; it would mean confronting a terrible destiny.

The Christ Jesus faced this possibility. Then two images appeared before his soul. The first was of his experience on the way to the Jordan river, which I described yesterday as having met the despairing man. And once again the figure which had appeared to that despairing man in a dream stood before Jesus of Nazareth's soul, who now said: “Recognize me as lord of the world”. Then he recognized that figure as the one he had seen at the gates of the Essenes: Lucifer! Therefore he knew that now Lucifer was speaking to him, and he repulsed the attack. He defeated Lucifer.

Then two beings came to attack him, and he had the impression which was more or less what the Bible describes. They said to him: “Show all your fearlessness, your strength, show what you can do as a man by throwing yourself from the heights and not fear being injured”. In such a case consciousness of strength and courage should awaken in the human soul, but it can also make him a sensualist. Two figures stood before him. Because Jesus had had the impression that it was Lucifer and Ahriman who had flown away from the Essene gates, he now had the impression that within one of them was the same being whom the leper had encountered and who had presented himself as death. Because of these experiences he recognized Lucifer and Ahriman. Thus he relived what he had experienced on the road to the Jordan. He also repulsed this attack. He defeated both Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman came again. A kind of temptation ensued. He said to Christ Jesus something similar to what the Bible describes: “Make these stones into bread to show your power.” But now Jesus could not give a complete answer to what Ahriman demanded. He was able to repulse the first and the second attacks: the attack by Lucifer alone and the attack of both together. But now he could not repulse Ahriman's attack. The fact that he could not totally repulse Ahriman's attack had meaning for the effectiveness of the Christ-impulse on earth.

I must characterize what this mean in a popular, almost frivolous way: Make these stones into bread, so they become food for humanity. The higher hierarchies were not able to completely eliminate Ahriman from the field of the earth's evolution until the Vulcan epoch. It will never be possible through purely spiritual efforts to defeat Ahriman's inner temptations: the desires, cravings and lusts which arise from within, and what arises as arrogance and sensuality. When Lucifer attacks men alone he can be defeated by spirituality. Also when Lucifer and Ahriman attack together from within, they can be defeated through spiritual means. But when Ahriman is alone, he engulfs his effectiveness in the material events of earth evolution. That cannot be completely fended off.

Ahriman, Mephisto, Mammon—they mean the same. They are immersed in money and in everything connected with human egotism. The fact that it is necessary for human life to be commingled with materialistic things means that humanity must reckon with Ahriman. If Christ was to help earthly humanity in the right way he had to allow Ahriman to act. Ahriman, the material, must be active until the end of the earth's evolution. His work had to remain undefeated by Christ, not completely overcome. The Christ must accept the struggle with Ahriman until the end of earth evolution. Ahriman had to remain.

We as humans can overcome the attacks of Lucifer and the attacks of Lucifer and Ahriman together. The struggle in the material outer world must be fought out until the end of the earth's evolution. Therefore Christ had to hold Ahriman in check, but allow him to stand alongside him. For this reason Ahriman remained active during the three years that Christ worked in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and he entered the soul of Judas and was decisive in the betrayal of Jesus. What happened through Judas is related to the temptation in the desert after the baptism in the Jordan.

Slowly and gradually the Christ-being united with the three bodies of Jesus. It took three years. At the beginning the bond was loose, and then it gradually pressed into the three bodies. Only when death approached were the three bodies truly permeated with the Christ-being. And all the suffering and pain experienced during the three stages of his development was immeasurably increased as he gradually was able to completely immerse himself in the three human bodies. It was a continual pain, but a pain which was transformed into love—and love—and love.

And then the following happened. When we consider how the Christ Jesus lived during the first, second and third years he spent with his closest disciples, we find it to be different in each year. In the first year Christ was, as I said, only loosely bound to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. So there were moments when the physical body was in one place or another and the Christ-being was elsewhere. The other Gospels report that the lord appeared to his disciples when his physical body was somewhere else—meaning that Christ wandered about the land in spirit.

That was in the beginning. Then the Christ-being bound himself more and more to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Later, when Christ was with the circle of his closest disciples, they were so intimately united with him that he was never separated from them. The more he lived into his body, the more he lived in the inner being of his disciples. He traveled about the land with his disciples. He would speak through one of them, then through another disciple of the inner group, so that as they went about the land it was no longer only Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples; but Christ spoke through them. He lived in the disciples with such power that the facial expressions of a disciple through whom Christ spoke changed so much that the people who heard him had the feeling that he was the master. Another, though, who was really Christ, was so modest that he looked ordinary. In this way he spoke through one then another throughout the land. That was the secret of his effectiveness during the last of the three years.

As he went about with his disciples in this way and he seemed ever more dangerous to his enemies, they wondered: “How can we hunt him down? We can't arrest the whole bunch. For we can never know when we grab the one who is speaking if he's the right or the wrong one. If we grab the wrong one, the right one escapes.” That was their greatest fear. They knew that one spoke and then a different one did. And the right one was unrecognizable, for he took on the ordinary form of another.

There was something wonderful about that group. Therefore a betrayal was needed. The way this is usually described is mistaken. What is it supposed to mean that Judas had to kiss the right one? According to the usual accounts it should not have been difficult to trap Jesus of Nazareth. So the kiss would make no sense if someone who knew which was the right one had to point him out to those who could already have known anyway. But because of the reasons I have related, the enemies did not know who the right one was.

Only when the great suffering—the Mystery of Golgotha—was before him was the total union of the Christ-being with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth accomplished. What happened then is beautifully described in the other Gospels. For the seer who reads in the Akasha Chronicle about what happened, it is a fact that while Christ was hanging on the cross something like an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around Golgotha. I can't say if it was an eclipse of the sun or a powerful darkening of the clouds, but a darkening like what can be observed during an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.

When occult vision observes life on earth during such a darkening, all living things are shown to him differently than when there is no such darkening. In plants the connection of the etheric body and the physical body is different; and also in animals the astral body and the etheric appear completely different. During an eclipse of the sun it is different on the earth from when the sun is simply missing in the night. Of course this is not the case when in the ordinary sense the sky is covered with clouds; only when an especially thick darkening occurs. And such a darkening took place then. As I said, I cannot yet tell if it was an eclipse of the sun, but what can be seen was like an eclipse of the sun. While this transformation of the earth was taking place, also in the physical sense, he whom we call the Christ-being went over into the earth's living aura. Through the death of Christ Jesus the earth received the Christ impulse.

The greatest event to occur on earth must be described in such simple, stammering words, because it is impossible to even approximate this greatness with human words.

When the body of Jesus was taken down and placed in a tomb, a natural event occurred. A whirlwind arose, then the earth split open and the body of Jesus was taken into it as the shrouds were blown away from the body. It is awesome to see that the arrangement of the shrouds described in the Gospel of John coincides with this vision.

These two events: the darkening of the earth, the earthquake and the powerful whirlwind show at one point in the earth's evolution how natural events coincide with spiritual events. Otherwise such things only occur with living beings as, for example, when thinking and a decision of the will precede a hand's movement. In ordinary life we are only concerned with such mechanical phenomena. Only at a very special moment did a spiritual and two physical phenomena coincide—also in other earthly phenomena, but most especially with this one.

I don't think that the consideration of these concrete facts, which it is now possible to describe to a small number of people as a kind of Fifth Gospel, can detract from the grand ideas we have more theoretically worked through about the Mystery of Golgotha. On the contrary, I believe that if we try to let these concrete facts work on us more and more deeply we will feel what was previously presented more theoretically, more abstractly, strengthened. We will realize through these facts that in this our own time in earthly evolution important events will take place.

By means of these concrete facts you will perhaps be able to achieve the right feelings and nuance of soul about the Mystery of Golgotha, and it is this nuance of feeling that I wished to present to your souls with what I have related from the Fifth Gospel. Perhaps some of you will be able to attend other lectures on the Mystery of Golgotha, or we may be able to continue here in Cologne. For we must say: Regardless of the fact that people nowadays show so little interest in hearing about the facts we have spoken about today, there is a great necessity for such facts to flow into human evolution, especially now. Therefore they have been disclosed, although it is quite difficult to speak of these things. Nevertheless, although I may be inclined not to speak of them, I do so from a sense of inner responsibility, as long as there are people to hear them. They will be needed in humanity's evolution. Those who are hearing them now will surely need them for the spiritual work they are doing for further human development.

You see, gradually we are learning through our considerations what should arise in our souls in order to be useful members of advancing human evolution. That is the meaning of human development on earth—that human souls be more aware of their tasks.

The Christ has come. His impulse is working. For a long time he could act only in the unconscious; then he had to act through what was understood until that time. But it will be ever more necessary for man to learn to understand him, the Christ, who through the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth has entered the earth's aura and humanity's development.

In the last few days I have spoken to you about how the knowledge that human beings acquire on the physical plane as earthly human beings is initially a kind of dead knowledge, a knowledge that relates to what we must call knowledge of the next higher world, like the dead to the living. I have tried to make clear how this dead, as it were mechanical knowledge of the physical man on earth comes to life when we raise ourselves to the level of those steps of knowledge through which man can learn something of the so-called higher worlds.

Dead knowledge! Knowledge today is indeed dead, but as physical knowledge on earth it was not always dead. It only became so. And you all know the time when human knowledge on earth became so dead. I have often spoken to you about how, when we go back to ancient times, to times of the development of the earth before the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place, even ordinary earthly knowledge was more alive because there was a kind of ancient inheritance [of higher knowledge]. There was always something of the ancient inheritance of higher knowledge mixed into ordinary earthly knowledge. You can follow this in the various documents of knowledge and religion of mankind. Just see how in the Bible, in the Old Testament, when the supersensible worlds are mentioned, it is always spoken of either as a dream or as the inspiration of the prophets. There we always have a natural descent from living knowledge. The old atavistic inheritance of clairvoyance, which had remained with them as a lunar legacy, had not yet been extinguished in man. This was extinguished at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

I ask you to take this sentence quite literally. Because if any of you repeats this sentence anywhere in such a way that you report that I said that the old atavistic knowledge was extinguished by the mystery of Golgotha, then you are saying the exact opposite of what I have just expressed. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, this knowledge had been lost through the entirely natural process of human development, and the Mystery of Golgotha provided a substitute for what had gradually been lost, bringing life into the human soul from a different direction. So that today we are confronted with the following fact: if one goes back into ancient human traditions, one finds all kinds of knowledge even before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. But in this knowledge, the ancients did not suspect anything of a realization of the Most High, the Most Important for man, but basically it was subordinate things that one believed one recognized in this way. Everything important, everything related to the supersensible worlds, was traced back to an ancient wisdom, to a wisdom that was given to mankind, as it were, through a primeval revelation. That is what you expressed in one of our four mysteries. And it was presented in such a way that this heritage was then passed on from generation to generation in the wisdom schools. In the book “Christianity as Mystical Fact” you will find that we have tried to show how, through the Mystery of Golgotha, a substitute was created for this dying old wisdom, how, as it were, the Primordial Mystery became a historical fact at Golgotha, and how, through the cross of initiation being perceptibly set up at Golgotha for all men, life was to be poured into the human soul. So that one can say since then: There is our dead knowledge, which man gains through his own effort on the physical plane, and there is something in addition to this that flows into his soul through the fact that, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the substantial that was to enter the earth aura through the Christ has flowed into the earth aura, and now flows into the human soul as a second source of human knowledge.

So that one can say: From the spiritual-scientific point of view, the matter must be viewed in such a way that man's physical knowledge of the earth is dead, but that life enters into it when man allows this physical knowledge of the earth to be fertilized by that which the Mystery of Golgotha can be for him. And then we have the next higher level of knowledge, which we call imaginative knowledge. This is now already a living, a truly living thing. And this living realization, this imaginative realization, is about the things that we have discussed in recent days.

As important, I would like to emphasize again today what I already said yesterday, that this imaginative realization is still related to the nature of the human soul. It is a return to the moon age. And it is so akin to the nature of the human soul that, in fact, as I described yesterday, atavistic dream-like moon-knowledge can still emerge in human nature today, and that much of what can be recognized through a higher art of clairvoyance can, so to speak, come together with what comes out through atavism, provided the moon clairvoyant has the necessary modesty.

But beyond this [imaginative knowledge], there is everything that enters the human soul through inspiration. Substantively, these are the facts of the ancient solar evolution, with which the human being was connected. And what man has taken up into himself as an element of life during the old solar development is also preserved down there in the depths of human nature. This must be illuminated by conscious knowledge if inspiration is to occur.

Yesterday I indicated that in real, true art there is an unconscious emergence of these things that belong to the ancient facts of the sun and that man has preserved as hereditary traits; that when this, which is deep in the hidden depths of the soul, is raised up into the conscious life of the soul, it can become conscious to man as artistic inspiration. Man then lives only in the consequences that arise from below; he does not live in the causes. If I had to hint to you that the thought below the threshold of consciousness is very different from the thought we have when we bring something from the subconscious thoughts through the memory back , it must be emphasized that what actually lives in the depths of the artist's soul is even more different, radically different, from what then rises to the artist's consciousness.

Now we have to engrave an idiosyncrasy quite sharply in our minds if we want to understand the whole of inspiration at all. You see, for the person who is touched by inspiration, there is no difference between an objective law of nature and that which he experiences in his soul as a thought, as a soul experience. He feels the law of nature as belonging to him just as he feels that which lives in his own soul as belonging to him. Let me put it this way: When the person who is inspired decides to do something, when he acts on some motive, then there is a lawfulness underlying it. This lawfulness one is initially authorized to feel as a lawfulness of one's own heart, as one's own experience. But one feels it in the same objectivity as one feels the rising of the sun in objectivity. I can also say it this way: when I pick up the watch, I experience it as my affair on the physical plane. In the case of physical knowledge, I will not experience it as my affair when the sun rises in the morning. But with regard to that which really comes from the impulse of the inspired world, one experiences what happens in nature as belonging to oneself.

Human interest truly extends beyond natural affairs. Natural affairs become man's own interests. As long as one does not feel the life of the plant within oneself as intimately as the experiences of one's own heart, there can be no truth in inspiration. As long as you do not feel a falling stone, splashing on the surface of the water and making drops splash up, in the same way as you can feel what is going on in your own being, inspiration is not true. I could also say: Everything in man that is closer to him than nature in its fullness does not belong to the inspired truths. But it would be utter nonsense to believe that if someone were to smash the inspired person's skull, the inspired person would feel this objectively in the same way as he feels the eruption of a volcano. Subjectively, he makes this distinction self-evident; but at that moment, when someone is smashing his skull, he is not an inspiration. But for everything that is in this sense the realm of inspiration, his interest is extended beyond the whole of nature. And I have already pointed out in the Hague Cycle how it is the broadening of interest that is the main thing in the case of extended knowledge. Anyone who cannot detach himself, at least for a short period, from what concerns him alone, cannot, of course, achieve inspiration. He does not always need it; on the contrary, he will do well to sharply distinguish his own interests from those that are to be the subject of his inspiration. But when man extends his interest beyond objectivity, when he tries to feel the life of the plant in its becoming as he feels what is happening in his own life, when what grows and germinates and becomes and passes away out there is as intimately familiar to him as the life within his own being, then he is inspired with regard to everything that comes to him in this way.

But then this way of taking an interest is necessarily linked to a gradual ascent to a way of judging people like the Goethean way of judging people that we have mentioned. Goethe learned to

endeavor [for living thoughts] to distinguish the human being's actions from the human essence. And this is something extremely important! What we do or have done belongs to the objective world, is karma put into action; what we are as a personality is in a state of continuous becoming. And the judgment we pass on anything a person has done must, in principle, be on a completely different level than the judgment we pass on the value or worthlessness of a human personality. If we want to approach the higher worlds, we must learn to face the human personality as objectively as we face a plant or a stone objectively. We must learn to be able to take an interest in the personality of those people who have done deeds that we may have to condemn in the most eminent sense. It is precisely this separation of the human being from his deeds, the separation of the human being from his karma, that one must be able to carry out if one is to be able to gain a right relationship to the higher worlds.

And here, if we truly want to stand on the ground of spiritual science, we must also see that this is one of the cases where we come into sharp opposition to the materialistic thinking of our time. This materialistic thinking of our time has, as a tendency, to draw the personality of man more and more into judging his actions. Just think, in recent times, in the field of external jurisprudence, more and more the tendency has emerged that one must not only pass judgment on a particular act when a person has committed it, but one must also observe the whole of human nature, take into account what the person's soul is like, how he came to do it, whether he is inferior or fully developed, and the like. And certain circles even demand that not only doctors but also psychologists be consulted as experts in the assessment of offenses and crimes by the external judiciary. But it is presumptuous to judge the essence of man instead of deeds, which concern only the external life.

Among the more recent philosophers, only one has paid any attention to this. You will find him mentioned in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, though from a different point of view. It is Dilthey who has pointed out that jurisprudence must in turn free itself from psychological jurisprudence and from everything similar.

What a person does concerns two areas: firstly, his karma. This takes effect of its own accord through its causality and is no concern of other people. Christ Himself did not judge the sin of the adulteress, but wrote it into the ground, because it will be lived out in the course of karma. Secondly, the human deed concerns human coexistence, and only from this point of view is the human deed to be judged. It is not the place of the external social order to judge man as such.

But spiritual science will gradually develop into something other than judgment; it will develop into understanding. And those psychologists who might be called upon today to act as experts when judgments are to be passed on the external deeds of man will be of no use, for they will know nothing of a person's soul. The assessment of a person should not correspond to judgment, but to understanding; because the tendency should be to help, and not to judge, under all circumstances. To help, and not to judge! But one can only help if one has an understanding of what is going on in a human soul.

However, if one tends to help in truth rather than in lies, one will be most misunderstood by the world. For the one who is to be helped will be least inclined to judge the one who wants to help in the right way. The one who is to be helped will want to be helped in the way he thinks best! But that may be the worst help one can give him if one helps him in the way he thinks best himself. An understanding gained on the basis of mental and spiritual life will often lead us to do something quite different for the person we want to help, rather than doing exactly what he or she presumes we should do for them. Perhaps sometimes even withdrawing from such a person will be much better than cajoling; perhaps brusquely rejecting something will be a much better, more loving help than flattering and accommodating oneself to what the person in question wants. Someone who treats him strictly can be much more loving to a person than someone who gives in to him in every way. And of course misunderstanding is inevitable in this field, that is quite natural. Perhaps the one who makes the greatest effort to enter into a person's soul in this way will be most misunderstood. But that is not the point, the important thing is to seek understanding under all circumstances and not to exercise judgment.

In the context of our spiritual-scientific lectures, it was often necessary to speak of Ahriman and Lucifer. Of course, especially after the explanations that have been given recently, one can understand how human nature can be seized more or less strongly by Ahriman and Lucifer. For basically, life is a constant oscillation between Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses, only that the state of equilibrium is sought by the being of the world itself, and life consists precisely in maintaining this state of equilibrium. But now consider a great, an enormous difference. One can do two things: one can pass judgment, declaring that some deed of a person is influenced by Ahriman or Lucifer, and one can judge the person accordingly. Or one can do the other: one can recognize that a deed of a person is influenced by Ahriman or Lucifer, and one can try to understand the person on the basis of this fact. And between these two judgments lies the greatest conceivable difference. For to pass judgment on the basis that something Ahrimanic or Luciferic is in man requires that one never pass judgment from any other point of view than this: one judges human beings no more by this knowledge, that Ahriman and Lucifer live in man, than one judges any plant because it blossoms red and not blue. The idea that anything in man is Ahrimanic or Luciferic must be excluded from any kind of judgment, just as our judgment must refrain from making any value judgment if we want to recognize the plant, whether it be red or blue.

Above all, we must try to keep our knowledge free of all emotion, of all subjectivity. And we will be able to do this more and more, the more we strive to do so, the more we really strive to take such things, as they have just been expressed, with the utmost seriousness.

Goethe, for example, endeavored, especially in his most mature period, to present events between people as natural phenomena. Of course, not from the point of view that there is a mechanical necessity in human relationships as there is in natural relationships. On the contrary, the position of the human soul in relation to the events of human life gradually becomes such that one regards the events of human life with the same objective love with which one regards natural phenomena. This gives rise to that inner tolerance that arises out of knowledge itself.

But in this way one acquires the possibility of gradually allowing into knowledge that which otherwise may not enter into knowledge at all: namely, the terminology that arises from feeling and will. When I explained psychoanalysis to you, we just concluded on one day that we had to speak a condemning word about it; but we first proved that it followed from the matter itself. And why could this judgment be made? Here one may also express something subjective. Why was I allowed to express what seems to be a completely subjective judgment about psychoanalysis? Because I have endeavored – I am expressing something subjective, but then it is the case that things are perhaps most easily understood – to study psychoanalysis in the way I study something that is very pleasant and very congenial to me. That is to say, to have the same objective love for the one as for the other. And we must gradually struggle through to this, really struggle through; otherwise we seek nothing but sensation in knowledge, seek only what is pleasant in knowledge. But one never has knowledge if one seeks only what is pleasant in knowledge!

For our physical life, the sunlike can never enter the human being's consciousness except by giving him pleasure or repelling him. Only feelings enter from the sunlike, and we must approach the sunlike with our understanding, we must penetrate down into what is otherwise foreign to man. We said that the moonlike is related to man, but the sunlike is no longer related to man. We must bring down, carry down into regions where we would otherwise not penetrate, our understanding, if we want to bring the sunlike of inspiration close to us.

Real knowledge of the higher worlds indeed requires preparation in the whole mood of our soul, and without this mood in our soul we cannot penetrate into the higher worlds. I do not mean merely penetrating clairvoyantly, but also pursuing things with understanding. One cannot understand the things related in Occult Science if one wishes to take them in with the frame of mind one would otherwise have for something outwardly indifferent, I mean for something mathematical or the like; but one can only take them in if one first prepares oneself in one's mind for them. He who wants to absorb the inspired knowledge with the ordinary understanding of the physical plane is like the man who believes he can enter a plant with his physical body and be in it in its life. That is why people have always been prepared before they were given knowledge of the higher worlds, they have always been prepared slowly so that the soul's state was such that this knowledge of the higher worlds could affect the mind in the right way. It had to have this effect on the mind because this peculiar way of relating to the higher world requires a certain strain on the mind, a certain holding together, a gathering of the soul's inner strength. Above all, it requires that one is not wounded, that a certain inner exertion of strength is necessary in order to relate to the knowledge of the higher worlds in the right way.

Therefore, it is necessary for the human being to create a counterweight, a true counterweight, one that allows him, so to speak, to tip the scales in his soul in the other direction. We must look at the matter very carefully.

If you make an effort with your soul – and you have to do that if you really want to grasp the spiritual worlds, even just what is given from the spiritual worlds; you cannot follow a lecture on the spiritual worlds if you don't listen carefully, if you don't make an effort with your soul – if you really try to understand what is said about the spiritual world, you feel that you have to make an effort. One should not be surprised at this. One should not say, yes, that tires me, because it is quite natural to tire! But if it tires one so much, then, as long as we are earth people, a consequence will naturally arise. And this consequence is that selfishness is aroused in man. The more man feels himself in himself, the stronger is his selfishness. Take the most ordinary phenomenon: as long as you go through the world in good health, you are not selfish with regard to the physical body; the moment you become ill, the moment everything hurts, you become selfish with regard to the outer body. That is quite natural. And it is simply nonsense to demand of the sick person that he should not be selfish in relation to his illness. That is simply nonsense. And when someone says, “I may be ill, but I accept my illness selflessly,” that is of course also just a false pretence.

But it is the same when you go through the soul effort that is necessary to work your way up into the higher worlds, to climb up. There you also enter into the selfish. You should not deceive yourself, but should hold the truth before you, especially if you want to penetrate into this world. You have to say to yourself: You are working your way into a mood of selfishness if you want to enter the higher worlds, because you have to feel these efforts within you.

I would like to compare this working into the higher worlds with something. I would like to compare it with a peculiar kind of artistic activity, as it was present in our friend Christian Morgenstern. This certain idiosyncratic manner of his — I have often emphasized it — was different in Morgenstern than in other poets. When he worked his way into the serious, it was different with him than with other poets; it was to a much higher degree self-carrying into the region of the serious. Therefore, he needed a counterweight, something like in the gallows song:

A weasel
sat on a pebble
amid the tumbling stream.
Do you know
why?
The mooncalf
told me
in silence:
The most cunning
animal
did it for the sake of the rhyme.

He needed these light poems, these satirical poems, as a counterweight, for balance. Those who can always make a long face poetically, who sentimentally look up to the higher worlds, are not true poets. The true ones are those who need the counterweight, the counterpart.

Now, of course, we are looking everywhere, aren't we, for the possibility of understanding the phenomenon of egoism that must accompany the striving into the higher worlds. We must not judge egoism when it occurs in such a region, because we must understand it as a natural phenomenon. We must not have the egoism of always wanting to be rid of egoism, because then we are not being true to ourselves. We create, for example, the counterpart in relation to many things [through the exercises] in “How to Know Higher Worlds”; first of all the inner counterparts. But also in what we have created as eurythmy there is a kind of counterpart in this peculiar way of bringing the etheric body into its appropriate movements, and of gaining an understanding for this whole language of the human being. It will encourage young people in particular to live in a way that is in harmony with the spiritual world.

But something that must be emphasized on this occasion is that an element should be particularly sought by the person who really wants to gain a right relationship with the spiritual worlds. This is the element of humor. Do not be surprised at this, but it must be clearly stated, or at least more clearly stated than it has always been done. It is really necessary not to face the striving for the higher world humorlessly! It is this humorless facing that produces such terrible excesses. For if the person who imagines himself to be Homer or Socrates or Goethe were to realize how endlessly ridiculous he must feel in this role, it would help him tremendously to recover his views! But such things can only fail to occur to someone who keeps humor at a distance from his untrue, sentimental life. Because if someone really, yes, I would even say, had the “misfortune” of having been Homer, and through a correct recognition in a later incarnation came to the conclusion that this was the case, then this realization would really appear to him in a humorous light at first. Precisely because it is true, it would at first appear to him in a humorous light. One would truly laugh at oneself at first!

It is difficult to speak about this chapter in the right way, especially in a nutshell. But keeping one's soul open and free to humor is a good way to take the serious in real earnest. Otherwise, sentimentality contaminates and belies the seriousness, and sentimentality is the worst enemy of true seriousness for the serious things in life. I could even imagine that someone who, as a foreign lady once said, only wants to face the seriousness of spiritual-scientific knowledge “with a face down to the stomach” might have found it unpleasant that I spoke of thoughts these days that look like a mouse in one's hand. But one frees oneself from the seriousness of the facts by trying to present them in such a form. For one easily distorts the facts when one approaches them with mere sentimentality, because then one feels sufficiently uplifted to the higher worlds in one's sentimentality and does not believe that one should also still come up to the spiritual worlds through the pliable, elastic, mobile understanding. And truly, it is easier to speak of conquering the elemental world when one is “altruistic, truly altruistic.” It is easier to get some hazy ideas about the elemental world from that than to really make the thing so vivid that one has the transition of thought from a dead object to a living being. This vivid characterization is what we should strive for. So that we gradually train ourselves to ascend into these spiritual worlds without all sentimentality. The serious side is coming. The effort arises precisely from the difficult work of acquiring spiritual science. And what matters is that we gain the strength to correctly understand the place of the spiritual scientific world view within today's materialism and, through this strength, to become a proper member of the spiritual scientific movement. We can gain this strength in no other way than by trying to understand in the right way how these spiritual worlds can be clothed in words, in concepts, that are taken from the physical world, even though the spiritual worlds themselves are so unlike the physical world.

Inspiration as such deals with those inner facts in human nature that are the legacy of the ancient solar evolution, that are connected with everything that makes man capable of accomplishing in the world that which is from heaven, that which is right from heaven. But to do that, the human being must reflect not only on what can be worked out in the individual life within the soul work that is present between birth and death; rather, the human being must reflect on what is in the hidden depths of his soul so that the divine worlds can work into his organization. He who is to be a poet in the world must have the brain of a poet, that is to say, his brain must be prepared for it by the spiritual world. He who wants to be a painter must have the brain of a painter. And in order to give a person a painter's brain or a poet's brain, those forces and impulses must work in human nature that were already substantially present during the cosmic development in the old solar age and were linked to human nature when the human being himself was not nearly as condensed as he is on earth, when the human being himself had only just reached airtightness. Do you think that during the time of the old sun, man consisted only of warmth and air? In what works on warmth and air in man, there lies, as an inheritance from the time of the old sun, what can prepare the human brain to be a painter's or a poet's brain.

From this you can see, however, how we must say, through this observation of what is seen in man and how it goes from the microcosm into the macrocosm: man is one with his surroundings through what is ancient solar inheritance; for air and warmth are just as much outside as they are inside. I have often pointed out that the amount of air I have in me now is out of me in the next moment; it is always going out and coming in, exhaling, inhaling. The air has my form, and in the moment when I exhale the air, it is indeed the same air; it is then only outside, outside of the human being. But as truly as my bones are myself, so truly is the air form, from the moment of inhalation to the moment of exhalation, that which belongs to my own being. As truly as the bones belong to me from my birth to my death, so the air stream belongs to me from the moment it is inhaled to the moment it is exhaled. It is just as much me as my bones are me, only the me-ness of that air stream lasts only from one inhalation to the next exhalation, and the me-ness of my bones lasts approximately from birth to death. Only in terms of time are these things different: the air man dies with the exhalation and is born with the inhalation. And just as our bones are born before our physical birth and gradually decay, something is born in us when we breathe in, and something in us dies when we breathe out. That which is born in us when we breathe in dies when we breathe out; this belongs to the genetic makeup from the old sun, it was laid down back then.

We see how the human realm expands out into the cosmos, how man grows together with it. But we should learn to understand how man lives in the spiritual realm at all. Our time does not even have the talent to grasp this connection between man and the spiritual in the most primitive way. We must come back to that. It would never have occurred to an ancient person to form words as they are formed today when it is necessary to form a word for any compound substance. Now, at most, chemists look for hypothetical conditions to find appropriate names when something is to be named according to the principles of chemistry. These names are very unpleasant for people to pronounce, sometimes they have an awful lot of syllables! Let yourself be informed about this, for example, by those of our friends who are chemists! But where things are not named according to these principles, the names are not connected to the things.

This was not always the case. Today I have spoken to you about inspiration; I have shown you how inspiration leads back to the ancient solar heritage of man. But man had come to the sun through breathing. That is to say, what is now breathing and what lives in the element of air was laid down in former times. So there must be a relationship between human breathing and inspiration. You only have to consider what the word inspiration actually originally means. The intimate relationship between breathing and 'inspiration' is already expressed in this word, because it is basically the word for inhaling. Those who want to deny the spirits would only have to look at the development of language. We have already hinted at this from another angle: one would find the spirits of speech, but also how these spirits of speech work in human nature! Then we will find how we are embedded in the spiritual worlds, how the spirits work with us, how the spirits work with us in everything we do in life. And we will feel ourselves in a real way: our self expanded to the great self of the world. Intuition will become what theory is. And that is the way to really enter into the spiritual worlds.

But we really have to go into these things as well. We have to take them in detail, we have to try to take them seriously, to take some of what has just been said about the relationship between human beings and the spiritual worlds in relation to the simplest of circumstances seriously.

This is what I would like to suggest to you at the end of these lectures, which were intended to show you from a certain point of view how there is a descending current in man and an ascending current, and how man stands in the ascending and descending currents.

And when Faust opens the book and utters the words:

“How the powers of heaven ascend and descend
And pass the golden buckets!”

there you have what I have been trying to convey to you during these days, this rising and descending of the heavenly powers, which Faust first gazes at and cannot understand. But it is expressed in this way in the Faustian legend, so that we can already see in the “Faust” where modern times must strive. It must be very clear to us that we want with our spiritual science what people should strive for. We cannot but recognize that spiritual science must become the spiritual possession of humanity. And as soon as we have come to work together in this becoming a new spiritual possession, we must do everything to realize it, to achieve this goal for humanity.

And with that, I consider these considerations to be concluded for the time being.