The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ladies and Gentlemen,

There are world riddles which not only meet us when we turn our attention to the great events of life, but which meet us at every touch and turn in everyday life. We could bring forward many such riddles of life, one such is that which shall occupy us today: the question of the origin of evil. It is one of those riddles which meet us in everyday life but which can only find an answer if we go back to the sources and origin of life. Such a question especially shows us in the way it has been treated by man since ancient times that really it can only fruitfully be approached by what we call spiritual science or the theosophical world view. Without that important insight in the world, without that penetration to the sources of existence which can flow to us through this stream of cultural life, an answer is not possible. Hence you will have to undertake with me a really wide path to the sources of existence in order to penetrate this, in a certain connection, everyday enigma. He who only regards the world with that mood flowing out of materialism which follows the course of actions only with the senses cannot find an answer to this question in the remotest degree.

Evil arises for us, but of course not in its real sense, in the inferior being in human life. The wise person who is also a believer asks how it is reconcilable with a wise ordering of the world which one also calls providence, that this providence lets man sink to what we call evil—that the Godhead lets man become evil in order then to punish him. Not merely the simple believer understands it thus but we hear the same in a poem which the young Goethe composed when he calls these words to a divine spirituality:

Thou let'st the poor man come to grief,
Then leavest him to his pain.

This question becomes really impenetrable to one who stands on less religious ground. Without a soul-spiritual basis we come to no ordered concept of evil, let alone any connection with the cosmic spirit. Since man was able to think, the leaders of man, the thinkers, have tried to solve the question: Whence comes evil? What meaning has it?

We must look back for once into that past age of Persian myths and the continuous conflict of Ormuzd against the evil powers already designated as Ahriman, a continuous fighter against the good. Ahriman is there shown us as the force which in conflict causes a strengthening of the good spirit. If with a great leap we immerse ourselves in the deep meaning of a German thinker, Jakob Böhme, then we find his writings and the continuous course of his life entirely filled with the question as to the origin of evil. Jakob Böhme says that a multiplicity only arises out of a unity, but the multiplicity must be guided however only by the will of the unity, as for example the two hands, which if they are not directed by one will are separate members. Without this guiding unity we can create no great work. These hands can storm against each other, they can mangle each other. The possibility is just then given when that which we call freedom is given to the two. As long as the two hands are determined by the personality, and as long as one will rule them, they will not turn against each other.

And here a feeling already flows into Jakob Böhme that evil has something to do with love. When the Divine Being flowing through the world so loves the world that it extends Being to everything and holds nothing back, in order to give to the multiplicity as great a freedom as possible then the many can strive against each other.

We could speak at length about this if we let the thinkers pass before us, we could bring forward many examples from the great epochs but we would always get only a kind of philosophical answer. Today however we do not want philosophical answers, and so without deviation we would occupy ourselves with the spiritual world in order to get a firm point for the answering of our question. In order not to expand our mode of observation too far I should like at once to go to the heart of the matter, and for this we must bring quite briefly the nature of man before the soul. We are clear that evil must have something to do with human nature.

If we consider man from the standpoint of what the eyes see and the hands grasp then we only have but one part of human nature in the sense of spiritual science. We only see the physical part of man which he has in common with all apparently lifeless beings. Everything to be found in the human body is also existing there, only of course these mineral forces exist in man in quite a special manner. They are so complicatedly interwoven) so manifoldly built up that the physical body would fall asunder through its own physical laws unless something penetrated it like water penetrates a sponge, something which combats in each man in each moment all disturbances in the physical body. We call this fighter the etheric or life body. In each one of you the physical body would be exposed in every moment to decay unless that fighter, that victor which we call the etheric or life body were in you. Man has this in common with the whole of living nature, this fighter is there in everything that lives. In the moment when at death the physical body is separated from the etheric body then it follows physical laws, it decays and passes over into lifeless nature. The etheric body is something that is regarded by science today as something impossible. Yet we cannot enter further into that but must bring forth the matter only sketchily. Besides the etheric body man has a third member of his being. For one whose spiritual eyes are opened this third member is always visible. You can present this third member logically to yourselves.

We ask ourselves—Are the physical and etheric bodies everything? A simple consideration is enough to show that there is really something existing which stands far nearer to man than his bones, muscles, blood and nerves. Something lies quite close as a reality that is the sum of what we call feelings, instincts, passions. That belongs to us in reality and is existing in the same space where blood, muscles, nerves, exist. We have this part of human nature in common only with the animals, not with the plants.

Now there is a fourth member through which man is the crown of creation. The fourth member of his being is that which enables him to comprise everything which is in him, in the name ‘I’. This name ‘I’ is a name which already hides the secret nature of his being in the distinction which it shows compared with all other names which we have in language. Each person can call a chair “chair”, a table “table” etc., yet the name ‘I’ no one can hear from outside, it must come from one’s own soul. Each object can have its name resounding to us from outside, the ‘I’ can only be heard coming from oneself. All world views which were built on what we call spiritual science have always felt this. In the old Hebraic religion you find for this intimate name of the soul the unutterable Name of God. Why is it so called? If the soul is to hear her true name then something speaks in the soul which can be united with the soul without penetrating it through any organ from outside. The ‘I’ must resound from out of the soul itself. A spark of divine being is in the soul in which it utters its own name ‘I’.

That which a distorted philosophy has also wanted to find is the true significance of the word “Jahve”, the unutterable name of the divine soul-part in man. This was also meant when, in ancient Egypt, the veiled image of Sais was referred to. We can read the inscriptions: “I am Who was, Who is, and Who will be. My veil no mortal has lifted.” An investigator, a German romanticist said something correct out of an extraordinary instinct although he did not go deep enough: “No mortal has lifted the veil, we must become immortal.”

It was the view of the great Egyptian priestly magi that the ‘I’ was veiled but that the coverings must fall away. No other can solve the nature of the ‘I’ than the ‘I’ itself when it becomes conscious of its true nature by descending into its own depths where it grasps itself in its own immortality; then it knows what is concealed behind the veil. Of course only the very few today are inclined to gaze into the nature of the ‘I’, the utterance of Fichte still holds good: Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an ‘I’. Since Fichte we have seen the coarse materialism flow into the culture of the 19th century. People today are very satisfied when they can partially know something physical and demonstrate it materialistically. They regard themselves as being more like a piece of lava in the moon than an ‘I’. It would be nonsensical to speak of the higher members of man's nature if in the sense of spiritual investigation one were to speak of the fourth member as a mere phenomenon of the physical body. Naturally spiritual investigation must have something in this sphere which must appear very stupid to a person who so often thinks today that everything must rest on the basis of scientific facts. That which occurs in the etheric body, the astral body and the ‘I’ is not the effect of the physical body but the reverse. What transpires in the physical and etheric bodies is the work of the astral body. Only when one gradually raises oneself to this view is one able to answer this question.

Just consider for example processes which meet us every day. Something arouses in us the feeling of shame. There is something in me of which I desire my environment should see nothing—I blush. Another process is the feeling of fear, noticeable through pallor. With shame a stream of blood rises to the head. With fear the blood recedes back from the head into the inner part of the body. What has happened? A soul process works on the body. Each of these events appears as the result of a soul process. They are indications of how soul working plays into the material. These effects in what is material are not so easily perceptible today. They have more or less withdrawn because of the mighty transformations which the physical body has undergone (as compared with earlier forms of existence). But the further we go back in human evolution all the more do spiritual influences get the upper hand.

There are indeed people today who go so far as to deny the working of the soul on the material body. One might not think that people exist with such materialistic views but there is in America a theological school which calls itself pragmatism. They have brought their views to an expression which reveals the grotesqueness of the materialism advocated therein. We need merely bring this utterance for once to our mind: “Man does not weep because he is sad, but he is sad because he weeps.” It is obvious here how the materialistic world view comes into contradiction with the healthy human understanding.

It is a fact that must appear natural to us that such consequences are drawn, and they appear today in numerous spheres; only they do not come to the surface in such grotesque fashion. If we now keep firm that physical processes are effects of the spiritual-psychic then it will no longer appear wrong to us if, going back into very ancient times of human evolution we find these effects are all the more significant the further we go back, so that we have to reckon with far-reaching spiritual influences in ancient times of human evolution which today are concealed.

You know perhaps that the theosophical view says that human existence runs its course in repeated earth lives. We will only bring that forward briefly. Man goes through many earth lives in his evolutionary path to ever higher perfection. We say in spiritual investigation that everything that lives is subject to transformation. Everything in the world is subject to such transformation, not only man but also mighty worlds are subject to continual change. Just as when we regard the single human being and say “That which transpires in the present life between birth and death is the result of former incarnations,” so we can look to a whole heavenly body and we only understand such a body in the sense of spiritual science when we know that it has acquired in former lives that which it has become today. We also say of the earth and planets that they have passed through other incarnations. As the spiritually highly developed man can look back to former earth lives so earlier planetary conditions can be perceived from the standpoint of spiritual science. We point back to the previous planetary condition of the earth, and this pre-earth is called in spiritual science Cosmos of Wisdom.

A glance at what is around you can make clear to you why we look back to this pre-earth as the cosmos of wisdom. Just regard man’s physical body. Look at one piece. Take a piece of the thigh bone which is composed of countless scaffoldings and members. It is an artistically constructed structure built with wonderful wisdom. It is so constructed through engineering art full of wisdom that the thigh bone, in spite of its relatively small strength, is able to carry the upper body. No engineer is able to construct such a bridge-like structure with such wisdom, and whoever looks at this wonderful human structure knows what great wisdom is contained in it. We know however also that other members of man are not yet so wise. We need merely think how the passions and impulses of the astral body work. What we eat and drink often contain heart poisons, and yet the heart is built so full of wisdom that it can bear these attacks for decades. Everywhere we find this Wisdom spread out. In the structure of the body we find this wisdom everywhere, in each blossom, in each animal, and we see how the world is penetrated by this wisdom.

Let us look at the beaver and his dam, building it with marvellous art—if one measures the angles then one will find they are quite exactly measured. So we could observe bit by bit everything that surrounds us. Could we now extract this wisdom from out the world unless it were there within it? The materialistic mood denies that the wisdom which man draws out is in the phenomena. But a natural thinking would tell you that something which man extracts from nature must be contained in it. As little as one can drink water from a glass if none is in it, just as little can one extract wisdom from the world if none is in it. But this wisdom is there and spiritual science knows that this wisdom was in all things at the beginning of earth evolution. Thus in a plant seed for example was a beech; as a proof of this we see a beech tree grows from it and not an oak. The earth carried the wisdom which meets us today already when the things around us were still in germ. Just as truly as the seed comes not from the earth but from the plant, so truly the seed from which our earth was born arose from what the earth was previously. That was the cosmos of wisdom. That which you see today in each leaf, in each organ in man's form, in everything spread out around you, slowly and gradually arose, formed itself member by member and only appeared after wisdom had struggled with wisdom. We had an embodiment on the previous stage of our earth where the wisdom of things was worked out in which, so to say, the things in their wisdom were worked over. What has our earth, to which this Wisdom has come over, for a task? It has its special mission. Just as its predecessor developed the wisdom which surrounds us today bit by bit, similarly our earth today develops bit by hit another cosmic force, and this force is love. Therefore in spiritual investigation we call the earth the Cosmos of Love. The evolution of the earth so runs its course that love appears as a force becoming more and more dominant, and when the earth will have reached its goal then everything will be penetrated by the force of love. Hence we call the earth the cosmos of love. Just as on the previous cosmos the beginning was made with un-wisdom and only gradually was the form of wisdom worked out, so this earth runs its course so that gradually love is worked out. Then when the earth has reached its goal love will be spread out everywhere, everything will be permeated with love, and the earth will have beings on it who will find love just as we find wisdom in everything that surrounds us. Those who will be on the new embodiment of the earth will stand wonderingly before love, just as we stand in wonderment before wisdom. Our earth has the holy mission of letting flow the impulse of love into things. The impulse is here to fulfil this mission, to make it deed. Thus we have to think of the structure of our earth as the cultivation of love going through the entire earth evolution of man. If we see this then we have a handle for understanding today's question, only we must be clear that man is not the only being around us. You know the spiritual investigator does not speak of the spiritual worlds as of something far off in the clouds, but he speaks of them in a natural and self understood way. A person born blind who has his eyes opened suddenly sees everything flooded with light and radiance. He sees a new world around him which was existing before just as light and colours existed before his eyes were opened. In this world which only an unlogical thinking can deny, other beings are existing with other forms of spirituality than man has. We can form an idea of these spiritual beings by bringing to mind that man is in a continual evolution. He must ascend ever higher and higher. In each incarnat-ion he experiences something, he becomes an ever more perfect being.

What perspectives thus open out? We see the great ideals of Man, the Man of the future elevated like a God. We see that as man today stands higher than animal and plant thus will the future man stand to his present existence. Spiritual science knows already today that beings stand above man at his present stage in evolution who are as perfect as we will be in a far future. They are beings highly exalted above man and who long ago passed through the stage we are at today, who have a purely spiritual life and no longer have need to descend to a physical body. Thus we see as man begins his earthly existence, as he leads over what was existing of him from the cosmos of wisdom, then not only he enters the cosmos of love but also higher spiritual guiding beings.

Who are these? The same as those who let their wisdom flow into the cosmos of wisdom. The same as those who built that cosmos of wisdom out of their creative wisdom. What we have finished before us today has been created by these beings. They are the possessors of productive wisdom. They have put in their wisdom. Because previously in the cosmos of wisdom they developed creatively in reference to wisdom, they have acquired the power of letting love trickle as it were on the earth to all earth men, and bit by bit this love flows to the earth. We need merely cast a brief glance at this earth, then we see how love gradually developed. It appears to us in ancient times in the narrowest limits. Who loved each other in ancient times? At first only small groups of those blood-related. Then we see love spread beyond the narrowest blood relationship. The circle love draws together becomes ever wide. At first we see marriage only between those closely related. Then love spreads to a whole tribe, and then in the Old Testament the whole people is loved, and he who does not belong to the people is foreign. The way is far but we have taken the great step where love is led over from the principle of blood relationship into the spiritual, to the great brother-bond which should span the earth to the Christ-Principle. This is referred to in the utterance: Who does not forsake father and mother, brother and sister and follow Me … etc.

This utterance is not to be taken literally. It refers to the fact that love should leave the narrow circle of blood relationship and become spiritual. It should embrace each soul; that is the great mission of Christianity, to make love more and more spiritual until it reaches the form of an all embracing love with which the whole earth should be permeated, so that the beings of the next world will find this love in all things as we have found wisdom. So we see that during earth existence the mission is fulfilled in that what man has brought over from the pre-earth is permeated with love. The assimilation of love is the task man has to develop in the earthly course of the human race. Thus we can see that a whole force which leads men together, progresses ever further into ever widening circles.

That is possible only to love. Let us go back once more from the cosmos of love to the cosmos of wisdom. What was existing of man at the transition? That which I described as the four members of his being making man the crown of creation was not yet existing at the beginning of our earth evolution, only the beginnings of the physical, etheric and astral bodies. But just as a seed decays and yet rises again letting a plant arise, so man disappears at the transition from the cosmos of wisdom to the cosmos of love, to arise again on our present earth and gradually the ‘I’ develops. This I must be there as the counterpart to the force of love. Love has other conditions of existence than wisdom. Wisdom can run where all the single members are dependent on each other. Wisdom can rule where a being in love holds sway. But if love is to pass from one being to another that can only happen where it is a free gift which must be there as a Father force.

Only such beings have the force for love who have the divine force for the ever greater acquirement of freedom.

The I is the counter-pole of love. The I impressed itself in the same measure as love impressed itself. That could only happen gradually in evolution. In the beginning blood speaks, the blood which is related to the loved being. Here love appears to us at the most primitive stage. Love develops more and more to a soul-spiritual force, and therewith the ‘I’ makes itself free. But in order to understand the true evolution of man within the cosmos of love we must keep one thing in mind. We must see that in the cosmos things go on as in a school. Here some always remain behind. similarly this happens in the cosmos. Those beings of whom we have spoken who stand exaltedly above man, those created in productive wisdom could pass over to love. But some remained behind who did not reach the final goal of the cosmos of wisdom, who did not finish their task. They still had to work at wisdom and could not yet stream out love which was not yet given to them.

They are beings who stand between the exalted beings and man. Spiritual science calls them the Luciferic beings under the dominion of Lucifer. One may laugh but just as, for example, magnetic forces are around us, so are the luciferic. They extend into the cosmos of love from out of the cosmos of wisdom. They were the beings who endowed man with their small wisdom. They created the subjective, intellectual wisdom of man in the ‘I’ which first became impregnated as it were therewith. An independence was given to this I which only suited it on the cosmos of wisdom if this love-filled wisdom had reached a definite stage. Thus the ‘I’ got a force which it should now transform in independence. Only in the measure in which the Christ principle illuminated it did the ‘I’ become capable of placing itself in harmony with all the forces of its environment on the earth. Before this approach to the Christ ideal is attained such beings again and again take firm hold in man, who are the opposing powers of the ‘I’. Their force is a separating force which will separate the ‘I’ too soon. The Luciferic beings lead a conflict against everything which brings men together.

This force has also its good task. It hinders man falling into, as it were, a primeval mash of love. Just as man had to be prepared for love, so earlier they had to be prepared for wisdom. Thus this luciferic principle is to be seen as the principle of illumination of independence. So we have two forces which lead humanity in two different directions and therewith we have the principle of the independent I which consolidates itself out of this conflict. Without this independence love would not be possible; without this independence the origin of evil would not be possible; love makes evil necessary. Hence comes the principle of love which arises from the spirits of love, and the principle of wisdom which arises from the spirits of wisdom. Both lead us from soul to soul, spirit to spirit, I to I. Evil rests on this spiritual fact. The possibility of evil was given with the possibility of love. Only because the God of the earth is the God of Love, and beings became independent I-men was the origin of evil possible. Love made evil possible.

Man first attains free love and true greatness through the Luciferic powers, and only thereby he takes the forces of evil into himself. The forces of love must penetrate the whole earth, must have overcome evil, have converted it as it were by the end of the earth's course. We see that what man owes to evil is a good. He owes to evil freedom. The origin of evil lies in the Luciferic principle as lies also the origin of freedom, with which is given the possibility of the development of love.

If we think of the earth without everything evil then only a tiny force of love is necessary to overcome the forces of evil. The forces of love grow because they have the task of transforming the existing evil in love. Thus we really see something of what Böhme felt, that evil strengthens the mission of love. Thus we see together with the origin of evil the meaning of evil, and if we consider evil spiritually scientifically then we see evil justified in a certain way. Then wherever it meets us we regard it with other feelings.

If this penetrates our feelings then it makes quite a different impression on us, not for one who just grasps it speculatively but for one who grasps it theosophically. If we have quiet hours and elevate our spirit to the great riddles then we must experience something so mighty that in evil we yet feel the good. Thus we permeate ourselves with feelings which then go with us in life at every step. We face the whole world thinking, feeling and acting, and that is most essential. Oh, we will become mild if we see what formerly enraged us. These feelings which result as the foundation from those quiet hours constitute the theosophical life. We shall consider this tomorrow even more applied to daily life. Today we have only been able to indicate the function of evil in fleeting outline.

We have attained the view that we are short-sighted if we bring forward as an objection to the evil, the wisdom, the love, the spirit of the world. We have seen that this spirit of love powerfully flows through the world, and is such a good spirit that once it brought evil into the world in order to bring about the most effective, beneficial good.

In our deliberations over the past three hours, we have included as an episode the description of our building here, its facilities and the goal associated with it. Today, we will now have a lot to tie in with these building deliberations, which I would like to see in the broadest sense as a consideration of time. We have indeed had to emphasize that this building, as a representative of our anthroposophical spiritual science, should at the same time be a manifestation of the times, so to speak, in its forms, in its entire design, it should express that which wants to and must be part of our contemporary development from the present into the near future. When we speak today of the great tasks of our time and in particular when we must point out that a certain inclination to receive spiritual things must arise in a larger part of humanity and that this is a special demand of the time, then such an indication is directly derived from all that the Science of Initiation and Initiation Wisdom can currently gain from the spiritual world. But there is no need to approach the spiritual world directly to convince oneself of the necessity of a spiritual impact in our time. In one of the last lectures here, I spoke of the fact that we are indeed facing a major transformation of the world, including its outward appearance. Today it can already be more or less apparent to everyone that, as a result of current events, the outer world domination is falling to the English-speaking population. We do not want to talk about this falling into world domination, but we do want to talk about, and have already talked about, the fact that this is linked to a fundamental sense of responsibility, a sense of responsibility that is quite clear about the fact that wherever there is the possibility of exercising a certain domination over the world, the urge to permeate what one can do with the spiritual impulse that is currently demanded by the development of humanity must take hold. For not to penetrate what one can do, or not to want to penetrate it, means to lead human development towards its decline.

It is really not without significance, especially at this time, to engage in retrospective reflection, and from the abundance of what could be unrolled here before you from such retrospective reflection, I would like to present one thing to you. A remarkable coincidence of events led to a subtle man giving a lecture in a German city in 1870, just as the Battle of Sedan was being fought – but this was not yet known in the city – where this man, whom I call a subtle man, gave his lecture and was already able to point out certain successes that Germany had at the time. But this reference to these successes was at the same time accompanied by the demand that a spiritual deepening must take place among those who have the success. And soon after, after fuller successes had been achieved, the same man wrote an essay on the necessities of the development of the times. In this essay, which now lies almost fifty years behind us, there are remarkable things, things that bear witness to a twofold aspect. Firstly, it explicitly states that it is urgently necessary to avoid two one-sidedness. One of these consists in turning only to the abstract spiritual, the other in turning only to the contemplation and worship of the material. And what the man in question demanded of his contemporaries and their descendants was something he called “ideal realism”.

It can be seen from this that such a demand was made at that time, when there was a certain longing for a renewal of spiritual life. But if one follows everything that was put forward at that time out of this longing for a renewal of spiritual life, then one sees the complete powerlessness to find anything that could represent a connection between spiritual striving and material striving, that could arise as a reality for the concept of ideal realism. So it was an important demand, but one that was voiced out of a mere intuited yearning, out of a profound impotence, out of the impossibility of finding any real content. It was an indefinite feeling, nothing more. But the explanation of this feeling was connected with something else. The man in question, and in agreement with many others who at that time felt something of a longing for a renewal of spiritual life, pointed out that if a new spirit did not come, the broad masses of Europe would storm and destroy everything that had so far been surrendered to humanity in the way of culture. At the time, a man who spoke a lot here in Switzerland, Johannes Scherr – I ask you to bear in mind that what was said was said fifty years ago! He pointed out the great danger that the broad masses of humanity would become self-aware in a certain sense, but this at a time when the bearers of education had turned away from a spiritual world view and turned to materialistic concepts and ideas. In those days, such things were spoken of in sharp and serious words.

What followed? The time came when a materialistic wave swept over the whole of Europe. It was a time when it was easy to delude oneself about the great dangers inherent in not wanting to know anything about a spiritual impact. Only now and then did one or the other arise to point out that, despite the conscious persistence in comfortable everyday life in the subconscious depths of human souls, the yearning for spiritual life is more present than at any time in world-historical development.

But all such voices were taken as the voices of the feuilleton. Such voices were not appreciated in their full seriousness. And basically, we are still living in that time today. Basically, the wave of the most terrible misfortunes of the last five years has passed through most European souls at most in such a way that they reflect on and empathize with the external consequences, but do not want to go into what needs to be addressed if there is to be any further development of humanity in the future in any favorable sense at all.

What we are facing today in Europe has been decades in preparation. But the souls of men have not prepared themselves. The souls of the majority of people today are as unreceptive as possible to the impact of a spiritual wave from the spiritual world, which is beating at the gates of life, which wants to come in and which people do not want to accept in their souls and hearts. What is necessary is that people turn to a spiritual view of the world, above all to a real knowledge of man himself. The human being cannot be recognized without recognizing the spiritual world, because man lives with two-thirds of his being in the spiritual-soul world, only with one-third in the physical-material world. And without seeking to understand spiritual life, man remains without knowledge of his own nature. In a much more comprehensive sense than is even suspected by most people today, we must ask: What is the nature of the realm of human soul life that we encompass with the word thinking? What kind of essence is the realm of human soul that we encompass with the words willing or acting? Between the two lies the soul, the life of feeling. Knowledge of the life of feeling or soul would arise if one were only to turn one's attention to the life of thoughts and actions, to the life of will.

Please follow me for a short time in a contemplation of what our thinking is. Man is, of course, aware that he inwardly accompanies with his thinking the life that makes an impression on him from there or from over there. This thinking — one lives in it. But one should also become aware that the greater part of life is filled with the fact that this thinking is permeated by all kinds of dream-like elements. Most people are not aware of how much of their thinking is an involuntary element. All involuntary thinking is basically of a dream-like nature. Try to realize, in a superficial self-knowledge, how far you direct your thoughts from the center of your will in everyday life. Try to realize how far you have the aspiration to direct thoughts inwardly, to shape thoughts yourself. Try to realize to what extent it is the case that the soul lets thoughts come, lets them break in. They give themselves up to it, the thoughts, one weaving itself together with the other, and man comfortably surrenders himself to this involuntary play of thoughts. There is no great difference between this everyday play of thoughts and between the dreams that dawn from sleep.

Dream-like elements also intrude into human thinking from other sides. Today, one participates in the outer life. How does one participate in this outer life? One informs oneself about what is going on in the world; one informs oneself in such a way that one allows oneself to be carried into one's experience, so to speak, by what comes into life through this or that impulse. One surrenders to some popular agitation. Just examine how much of this devotion to a popular agitation arises from one's own will and how much can simply be attributed to being carried along by the surges of life! And I could tell you many, many things that rush into thinking and dominate it, without the will of the human being itself having a direct effect on this thinking.

The specific historical task in writing my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” was to point out how human freedom is only possible at all if this involuntary, dreamy thinking is not present, but rather impulses from the fully conscious will assert themselves. This thinking - what nature is it then? When is it real thinking? When it really comes from the fully conscious will, when we grasp the thought in such a way that it is we ourselves who grasp the thought. At the moment when the thought grasps us, we are no longer free. Only when we can grasp the thought out of our own power, out of our own being, are we free. But then the thought can be nothing but an image. If the thought were anything other than an image, it would be a reality, and then it could not leave us free. Everything that is a reality weaves us into the stream of the real. Only that which is an image leaves us free. Imagine how everything you see in a room has a real effect on you. You are only completely free in relation to the images that look back at you from the mirror. These cannot harm you on their own, you cannot be offended by these images. If you are to do something in response to these images, then it must be you who takes action. If a fly lands on your nose – it is, after all, an insignificant animal – you are not free, you make a reflexive movement. And so it is with everything that is there. You are only free in relation to what you can perceive as an image that is not reality, that is an image. Why are the contents of our thinking images? Well, we need only recall from my 'Occult Science in Outline' how man was connected with a previous embodiment of our earth planet, with the development of the moon. If you read everything that is said there about the development of the moon, you will say to yourself: During this development of the moon, man was connected with quite different entities and also with quite different natural forces than he is in his earthly existence. He has gone through this moon existence. The after-effect of it is in him. He has developed from this moon existence to the earthly existence. And if you read more carefully what I have discussed there, you will say to yourself: During the time on the moon, man did not yet think in the same way as he does as an earth human being. He lived in unconscious imaginations then, and these unconscious imaginations were not at his disposal, any more than the images in dreams are at his disposal today. Only the thoughts are at our discretion, to which we as human beings are only now gradually developing in the fifth post-Atlantic period. What we have today as thinking is a further development of what we had as pictorial experiences of the soul during our lunar existence.

If you understand this quite clearly, then you will also see that everything that creeps into thinking, as I have just characterized the dream-like aspect of thinking in everyday life, is a remnant of what the human being had as soul life during the moon-end. If today man abandons himself to his surging thoughts, if he shuts out his will from his thoughts, if he lets what is dream-like in nature play into his thinking, then the conditions of the moon-life somehow play into his thinking.

You will see that this influence of the moon's existence on our everyday thinking has a wide, very, very wide scope. Everywhere you can feel how the involuntary element of what arises purely and shoots up mingles with thinking and imagining. This is a remnant of the moon's existence. So you have two opposing forces at work in human nature itself. The one kind of thing draws us towards letting our will dominate our thinking, towards becoming free in our thinking element. The other power constantly wants to mix into this free thinking that which is a remnant of the old moon culture: a Luciferic element. The Luciferic element constantly mixes into our everyday thinking. We cannot reject it. We would have to reject everything that we cannot yet reach with our conscious free thinking, but we must strive for knowledge. We must be clear about this in our consciousness. It is merely a phrase when someone says they want to escape Lucifer. That is nonsense, because the Luciferic constantly plays into everyday existence. But today, if one really wants to engage with the demands of the development of humanity in the present, one must have the good will to know within oneself that these two powers, the actual earthly powers and the luciferic powers, interact in our soul existence. Only in this way can one gain a real knowledge of what is inside the human soul.

In this way, I have, I would say, outlined one pole of the human soul. Take the other pole, which lies more on the side of the will. The will also plays a part in thinking; but we have now considered thinking permeated by the will. Now let us consider the volition that is permeated by thinking. How does volition, which leads to action, play a role in the ordinary everyday life of a human being? We can realize this by considering the connection between our everyday real actions and the whole of cosmic existence. Just think: when you take a single step, when you walk from here to there [forward], you bring about, even if only to a very small extent, a different state of equilibrium in the whole earth. When you step here [backwards], you step to a different place than when you step here [forwards]. You influence the balance of the earth in a different way when you step here [backwards] than when you step here [forwards]. But when you look at it properly, you will see that you yourself are constantly influencing the balance of the earth through your movements, and you will come up with yet another way of influencing it. Just imagine you take something that comes purely from nature. If, for example, there is a tree branch on a tree trunk, this tree branch, the way it is attached to the tree trunk, has a certain relationship to the whole earth. It has a certain equilibrium relationship to the whole earth. The whole earth and the branch together form a whole. The moment you break off the branch and lay it down beside it, you have changed the whole equilibrium of the earth, even if only to a small extent. The tree weighs less, and the broken branch weighs differently in a different place. You change the balance to a different degree if you lay the branch there or if you lay it there.

This is something that you bring into the whole earthly existence of your own accord. But at least initially you are only bringing out the relationship between your human being and the surrounding world. But you can do more. For example, you can shape something out of this tree branch. What I mean is, you can artificially shape it into something that is an object for some use. You have thought up the form, and you have carved away the other parts that do not belong to this form. Now you exert a completely different influence with your object, not only by breaking off, not only by putting aside, but by giving a certain form to what you have taken from nature. Just think how much people in the technical and artistic fields do in this direction, how they shape what they wrest from nature, and how they influence the earthly through this!

And now I ask you: When man does this, when he changes nature, when he takes what he takes from nature and forms it into his machines, into his works of art, does he do this out of his thinking? — Let us consider it in so far as he does it out of his thinking: He does it out of the pictorial nature of thinking. To the earthly, it is absolutely unimportant what happens, just as the images that arise in the mirror make no particular impression on the objects in the room. But the human being gives reality to these things. That is the other side of things when the human being, after having developed out of the lunar existence, surrenders to thinking: When man forms something and places it into the world, just as the dreamlike plays into our thinking and, in the dreamlike, the old lunar state, the Luciferic, plays into all our mechanization, into all our reshaping of the world, that which is not yet connected with earthly existence, what we ourselves place into this earthly existence. What is that actually?

What we place out of our free soul life into earthly existence does not follow from the old moon existence, but is added to the present earthly existence. It will only have full significance when something else has entered into earthly existence. Just as the child that is carried in the womb of the mother, or perhaps is not yet carried but is only waiting in the spiritual world for its embodiment, is still a future event, so everything that a person forms is actually destined for the future and is still in its embryonic state in the present. And we only look at it truthfully when we look at it in its embryonic state, in its significance for the future. When we shape something in life today, we do not take nature as it is, but change it out of our thoughts, thus creating for the future. But if we regard what we create for the future as belonging to the present, if it becomes so ingrained in our lives that we consider it solely in terms of its usefulness for the present, then the future becomes ingrained in our actions, just as the past becomes ingrained in our thinking in dream-like thinking; then the Ahrimanic takes hold of our actions.

In human life, only the child, who, when playing, also shapes objects but shapes them without purpose, not seeking utility, is protected in his unconsciousness from taking what he does in life for the present and not in preparation for the future. We should be aware that we shape the machines and works of art we produce for the next existence, for the existence on Jupiter, that the earthly existence must first be shed and that only a future existence will give meaning to our actions.

This is the great error of modern times: that people place what they produce in the mechanical and artistic spheres directly in their present earthly usefulness and do not want to be aware that we have to work for our future earthly existence. The Ahrimanic can thus creep into our volition by applying a mere utilitarian point of view to what we do mechanically or artistically or otherwise in life.

But we must ask ourselves: Has this utilitarian point of view always been there? — This utilitarian point of view was not present as such in the older times of Greek culture, for example, and even less so in the older cultures. There was, if only as an atavistic presentiment, an awareness that man creates beyond earthly existence. Particularly since the fifteenth century, the striving for mere utility in what man produces has grown strong. And today, world programs are already being made from the mere point of view of utility.

Just as it is impossible to exclude from our thinking the realm of dream-thoughts, so it is impossible to exclude the utilitarian point of view. Therefore no one should speak the thoughtless words that he wants to flee from Ahriman. That is nonsense. He cannot. Ahriman plays a part in all our actions, with the exception of our child's play, in which we strive for no purpose, no use, but which is done for the sake of the action itself. In all our other actions we can only strive for some kind of ideal. But how? We must be clear about how two forces play into our human existence here again. What forces? One is the force that makes us act for reasons of utility, but the other is this: when we do something in life where we do not just let ourselves be carried by life like puppets, when we do something in life without leading such a puppet existence, then something is always going on with ourselves: we become more skillful, we become wiser, we can do things better afterwards. That is the other power. Most people today pay no attention to it, especially after they have passed the age of eighteen, when they are already “quite wise” and “quite clever” for their present-day view of life, that one can become more and more skillful in what one does throughout one's life. One is a sense of usefulness, the other is a constant self-discipline to pay such attention to what one does that one observes how one enhances one's human existence by doing this or that, by experiencing this or that. What plays into our human existence has a completely different meaning than the mere external point of view of usefulness and the moment. Take a more elevated example, I might say, and consider Raphael's pictures. Raphael worked on his pictures throughout his short life. The time will certainly come when none of Raphael's pictures will remain, perhaps after-images, but having nothing directly to do with Raphael. A time will surely come when the earth will no longer have any of these images of Raphael's, when no embodied earthly human being will be able to see Raphael's images. But Raphael will still be there, and that which Raphael has become by creating these images will also be there. By creating these images, Raphael has been furthered in a corresponding incarnation. He carried this through life between death and a new birth, appeared in a new earthly incarnation, did something there that he carried through life, that remains, even when the earth perishes in the cosmos. That which Raphael became through his paintings is what remains. One can even define the utilitarian point of view so subtly that one includes the fact that pictures exist in this utilitarian point of view. If you think about it, you will not find much difference between gross utility and the utility that is created by the fact that Raphael's pictures exist. But something else is that Raphael's individuality and soul have been transformed by the fact that he made his pictures. This is carried over from earthly existence into the existence on Jupiter. This is what develops.

Here, I would like to say, we have a more exalted example of what becomes of human souls, which can be distinguished from external action. This distinction must be borne in mind in a comprehensive sense. One must realize that the earth will one day be shattered in the cosmos, that nothing will remain but human souls. When nothing remains but human souls, the harvest of the development of human souls will be what distinguishes this earthly existence at its end from the earthly existence at its beginning. From this point of view, what one can call an obligation to further oneself in earthly development begins. There begins the obligation to make something of oneself, so that one can be something for the Cosmos. And there begins the thought: The earth will shatter, the earth will split apart, the human souls will be alone!

The strength needed to bear this thought, I would say to grasp it in all its poignancy, this strength will be completely lost to people. And thus the evolution of the earth will cease to make sense if people do not contrive to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha spiritually. For basically, the mystery of Golgotha, properly understood, contains the germ of such thoughts, to be grasped from a correct, spiritual world view that is appropriate for today. Consider just one very specific popular saying that the Gospels ascribe to Christ Jesus: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That which He gives to the human soul will remain, will be there even when the earth has shattered and shattered in the cosmos.

Now I ask you – and now I come back to my consideration of time – can that which religions and theology have gradually made of the Mystery of Golgotha still give man this perspective? No, that is impossible! Theology and religions have also become materialized. But a materialized mystery of Golgotha does not extend in its meaning beyond earthly existence. Anyone who is serious about Christianity today - I have explained it to you from different points of view, and today you have heard it again from a new point of view - cannot help but seek a spiritual understanding of this mystery of Golgotha.

In other words, however, this means that spiritual science, real knowledge of the spirit, is necessary for humanity today. As I said at the beginning of today's reflection, fifty years ago people were powerless to fill their ideal realism with anything that had reality. Hence the sailing into European misfortune. But today the question arises: Do those who can avert a new disaster, where spiritual science speaks today, want to continue living as those to whom spiritual science has not yet spoken had to live fifty years ago? — Then, indeed, earthly catastrophes will come, against which what is happening now is a trifle. Today it is not possible to say anything other than this. Fifty years ago, when people demanded a new spiritual life, they were unable to create it because the time had not yet come. Today the time has come. Today, not wanting to turn to this spiritual life means not being serious about the development of humanity! This is the responsibility I must speak of, which must be spoken of today, especially to those who can take on this responsibility today for the reasons already stated. Today, man must look at the horizon of world-historical observation. He cannot reduce his existence. Imagine you have a cupboard. The cupboard breaks apart. You have its pieces in front of you, you look at them. The cupboard has broken apart due to some natural event, and you have its pieces in front of you. What do you do? You take the pieces, take nails, and put the pieces together to make the old cupboard again. But it will fall apart again very soon if the pieces are rotten, if the nails can no longer hold, or if the pieces are torn in other places. Europe has fallen apart like an old cupboard: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, German-Austria, the former Germany, the former Russia, Ukraine – these are the pieces, the debris of the cupboard. And the Western powers are trying to hammer these rotten pieces of the cupboard back together with nails that will not hold. People do not realize that they are dealing with rotten pieces. They want to glue the old together, whereas what is needed is to bring a completely new substance into human development. That is the idea at stake. Only spiritual science can draw our attention to this idea in a penetrating way today. And the question is: should the world, after what has seized Europe today, and what will very soon seize Asia and, beyond Europe, America, be glued and nailed together merely from its old rotten pieces for the sake of humanity's comfort, or should the connection be sought to renew the whole human being from the spiritual? — We will talk about this further tomorrow.

The times in which we live will be able to suggest to us very clearly how urgently it is necessary for people in our present time to explore the meaning of life. And the meaning of life on earth can never become clear to us if we merely turn our gaze to that which takes place in the world of the senses. For everything that takes place in the world of the senses acquires its deeper meaning only through the fact that the spiritual in this sensual also comes to expression. Our time is a difficult time of trial. And those who are willing to remain loyal and firm to our cause must understand in particular how this time of ours is a difficult time of trial, and how it will only be able to reveal its meaning - again its meaning! - to our soul if we rise to that which expresses itself spiritually even in such difficult events that take place on the physical plane.

In view of the fact that we are looking at fields where the gate of death rises up in countless cases, and in view of the thought that many of our friends have already left the physical plane in large numbers, we would perhaps do well today to turn our attention to what can be said about the world into which a person passes when he passes through the gate of death here. From this point of view — and you know that there are many, many points of view from which we can start our observations — we want to consider life between death and a new birth today.

In our spiritual science, we first try to recognize the human being as he stands before us: we know that he stands in such a way that he unfolds his physical and spiritual sides before us. We know that these spiritual aspects remain supersensible for the physical plane; the spiritual can only reveal itself, announce itself through the physical. And when we look at the human being here on the physical plane in order to understand him in the sense of our spiritual science, we say: First of all, as you know from my book Theosophy, the four main aspects of the human being reveal themselves to us: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I. From the etheric body upwards, the aspects of human nature are supersensible to physical observation. But we do experience our I and our astral body. We experience them inwardly. We experience them through the fact that we are able to know ourselves as I, even if this I remains invisible and supersensible. In short, one can understand, even if one remains with what only the physical world reveals, why we consider the human being in terms of these four aspects.

Now let us imagine that we can also look at the human being who lives between death and a new birth in a similar way, that it is also possible to speak of members of the human being who is in the process of life between death and a new birth. You know that we hand over the physical body to the elements, to the substances of the earth; the ether body is handed over to the general ether world; after some time, that which is mainly in our astral body, but of which the earthly human being knows nothing, that also dissolves to a certain extent, and the I then goes its way through the world that we are currently experiencing between death and a new birth.

Now we should not believe that the human being who stands between death and a new birth is not an equally differentiated, an equally structured being as the human being here in the physical world. We can also speak of members of human nature between death and a new birth; only then we will have to speak in the following way.

Here, when we look at the human being on the physical plane, the ego appears to us as that which comes to us first, if we may use the expression, as the highest. The physical body is shared with all minerals, the etheric body with all plants, and the astral body with all animals. The I is unique to us. In the spiritual world, the I, which appears to us here as the highest link in human nature, is the lowest link in human nature in the world between death and rebirth. Just as we begin here with the physical body, so in the spiritual world one must begin with the ego, which is shrouded, as if in a mist of the astral, only during the time when the human being passes through the soul world, but which is nevertheless the lowest link of the human being between death and a new birth. And just as we envelop ourselves here when we enter the physical world from the spiritual world through birth or through conception, we also envelop ourselves in the spiritual world, one might say with spirit members. We actually already know the names for these members of the spirit. We just look at them a little from a different angle. When we have passed through the gate of death, we envelop ourselves in the spirit self. This is, of course, a member of human nature that the human being will develop in the future during the Jupiter evolution. What I now call the spiritual self for the world between death and a new birth is not exactly the same as what will develop when the human being progresses from the earth to Jupiter; rather, what the human being will develop on Jupiter will be a kind of external image, a kind of counter-image for the senses of the spiritual essence in which the human being envelops himself when he passes through the time between death and a new birth. It is indeed the case that this link, in which the human being envelops himself when he passes through the time between death and a new birth, can also be described as a spirit self.

In the further course, man then envelops himself in that limb, which can be described as the spirit of life, which in turn is a spiritual counterpart to something that will only arise in the physical process during the development of Venus. And the actual spiritual man is that which develops in man as the spiritual counter-image of that which, in the physical image, man will have in the highest sphere, to which we can still look today, during the volcanic development, in his physical development. So that we can say: As man here envelops himself in the astral, etheric and physical body, so he envelops himself by growing into the spiritual world, into spirit-self, life-spirit, spiritual man.

Now I would like to describe to you in more detail how things turn out from the initiated knowledge, as one might say. You already know half of these things. When a person has passed through the gate of death here, his physical body is given back to the elements of the earth. This release of the physical body is an extremely important one for the life between death and a new birth. Of course, it seems trivial to say that death is actually birth for the spiritual world; but nevertheless it is also a justified word. We just have to get used to making our concepts somewhat flexible, so that we do not cling to our concepts directly to what the earth presents to us. We are accustomed to forming our concepts only according to what the earth presents to us. We must be able to change our concepts. Life in the spiritual world is completely different from life on earth. The spiritual experience that a person has in the spiritual world when he passes through the gate of death is that the physical body falls away from him. This is a momentous, an enormously momentous experience! And the first thing to be said about this experience is that it is completely contrary to the beginning of the spiritual life after death, as the birth of man is to our physical life between birth and death. No man can, after all, look at his birth with the physical power of knowledge of the earth. Man does not experience birth with his physical powers of knowledge here on earth. Just as we do not experience the physical birth, as the human being has no memory – this only begins later – of the events of his birth and how this is right for life on earth and must be so, so it is the opposite for the life between death and a new birth. Because the moment, the instant of, I cannot say dying, but of having died, remains as something that man can look at again and again during the whole process of life between death and a new birth. Just as we never remember the events of our birth in our physical life, just as clearly we have our entire lifetime between death and a new birth in front of us, the moment of death, but from the other side, from the side of spiritual experience, so to speak from the other shore. For the earthly human being, death can, with a certain justification, be a frightening thing. It represents the decay of the physical earthly human being. The opposite is the case when the human being looks back on having died between death and a new birth: Then it always represents the victory of the spirit over the physical, then death represents the most beautiful, the greatest, the most glorious, the most sublime that can be experienced at all. And because a person is able to look at their mortality between death and a new birth, this reflection on mortality is what gives us consciousness after death, so that we know: we have shed our physical body. And that we experience this, that we always have this before us, is given to us by our self-awareness after death, just as we attain our self-awareness here in the physical world by having our physical body.

When we are outside the physical body with our astral body and I from falling asleep to waking up, we have no consciousness of the physical world. When we wake up, we have to physically push into ourselves, and then the consciousness of self can flourish again. Every time we look at death after death, when the whole event, this - speaking from the other side - sublime, beautiful event stands before our soul, then after death the consciousness ignites again and again. It depends entirely on the constant contemplation of this moment. And there is something else connected with this. It is somewhat difficult to talk about these things, because, as I said, there are no corresponding experiences here in the physical world, but one must try to characterize these things as they are. When we look beyond our continued existence after death and consider our dying, then we have above all the feeling, the impression, that where we died, now that we have died, there is nothing, not even space. It is, as I said, difficult to describe, but that is how it is: there is nothing there. And in the external sense: The thing appears magnificent and sublime for the reason that everywhere else a new world is opening up for us. The flooding spiritual world presses in from all sides, but there is nothing there from which we have died out.

Theoretically described, the matter may have something terrible about it, but in the sensation after death it is not terrible. In the sensation after death, it allows a deep satisfaction to well up in the soul. One learns, as it were, to expand into the whole world and to look at something that is like an emptiness in the world. And from this arises the feeling: That is your place in the world, the place that is out of all the vastness, and that is yours. And you get the feeling, precisely from this emptiness, that you have a purpose for the whole world, that every single human existence - you get it initially, of course, as an explanation for yourself - must be there. This place would always be empty if I were not there - so every soul says to itself. That everyone, everyone as a human being, has been assigned a place in the universe, this feeling, this incredibly inwardly warming feeling, arises from this contemplation: that the whole world is there, and that this whole world has been driven out as if from a symphony the single note that one is, and that must be there, otherwise the world would not be there. This feeling arises from looking back at the experience of death. It remains, because it is what primarily gives the sense of self, self-awareness, between death and a new birth.

Then, for a relatively short time — but that is enough — there is still a union with the etheric body. Everything one has experienced in life, even the smallest events, suddenly stand there as in a large life tableau, for days; they remain for days. One has the very intense feeling: the earth on which one has stood so far moves on, but one remains behind, one begins to stand still. One does not go along with the spatial movement of the earth. And in doing so, the life tableau expands.

One does not actually speak when one speaks of a memory of life, because one has memories in such a way that one looks back in time. But that is not the case; it is simultaneous; it is a tableau, it is a moving tableau. Even, as I said, the smallest events extend to that.

Then one separates from this ethereal experience. Then, as one is accustomed to saying, the disengagement of the etheric body takes place. That with which one was connected as the etheric body, one has it, while one previously addressed it as one's inner being, now externally, and it becomes ever larger and weaves itself into - that is actually the correct expression - the spiritual world, into which one has now entered. Only in this spiritual world is the empty space that I have spoken of; that remains empty. And the etheric body weaves itself in all around on the outside, becoming bigger and bigger.

Now, we must be very clear that it would be a mistaken idea – I must confess, I have been convinced in all cases in which I have been able to study this fact, which I am now talking about, intensively, that it would be a mistake – to believe that we would not see what we have woven into the general spiritual world as our etheric body in the time between death and a new birth. We see it forever. We always look at it, it belongs to our outer world. What previously belonged to our inner world in our etheric body now belongs to our outer world. We look at that. And it is important that we can look at it, because through it so much of the spiritual outer world becomes understandable to us as a relationship exists between what we have interwoven and the entire spiritual outer world.

You may remember from the lectures I once gave in Vienna about the time between death and a new birth that I said: First of all, the human being is interwoven in a world that is full of wisdom. While he searches for wisdom here with effort, he is completely immersed in the light of wisdom. And this wisdom, in which he is immersed, overwhelms him. And it would overwhelm him further if he could not weave into it that which he has woven into the wisdom of his etheric body during his lifetime, if he could not weave that into the world. In this way, the tremendous abundance of light in the general world ether is attenuated for him, and he begins to understand what it is that interweaves, ensouls and spiritualizes the world in the general world ether.

Thus we have that which, as it were, falls away from the human being when the human being is taken up into the spiritual world. For of the earthly members of human nature, essentially only the ego and the astral body remain. The physical body has fallen away. What remains is what I have called “the void.” The etheric body becomes subject to the general world ether. The human being continues on his path. For what he now gives up to the cosmic ether as his etheric body, for that he envelops himself in what we have called the spirit self. This is, so to speak, now an outer member. Indefinite ether approaches him; this envelops him with a kind of spirit self.

It is good if we now pause for a moment to consider what remains behind, I would say, in the immediate future: the concept of the human being. We need not speak of this emptiness, because it is of the greatest importance above all for the person himself who has died, who has the experiences I have described. But with the etheric body it is something else. The etheric body itself is objectively woven into what is the general world ether. It is then in this, this etheric body of man.

Now you will find it understandable that, to a certain extent, the etheric body of a person who dies at a young age is somewhat different in the world outside than the etheric body of a person who, so to speak, reaches the normal age limit. Every etheric body naturally has its task, and it cannot arise from what I am about to say that any wish to die early or late can arise from it; that would be a very distorted and false, the most false conception of the matter. But nevertheless, what is to be said now is valid.

When a person dies at a young age, they have an etheric body that could perhaps have still cared for the physical body for decades, could have worked in the physical body. Now, just as little energy is lost in the spiritual world as in the physical world. This means that in the etheric body, which the human being leaves after death, the power is present that could perhaps have supplied the physical body of the human being for decades if the person were in their twenties or thirties. It is no longer in a physical human body; it is out in the world. This can perhaps be most vividly brought home to our souls by an example.

We had a little boy at the building site in Dornach – I have already spoken to some of our friends about this matter – who died in the seventh year of his life due to a tragic circumstance. The boy had fetched food supplies from our canteen that evening, which is located near the Dornach building site, and a strange chain of circumstances resulted in the boy walking out of the canteen and through a reed bed that was next to a path that a fully loaded furniture van was just driving along. And the fully loaded furniture van was knocked over and crushed the boy. It was a very painful thing. Just after the lecture evening, after ten o'clock, we received the news that the boy was not there. There was nothing to be done but to see what had happened to the furniture van. The circumstances were also quite strange. The boy wanted to leave a quarter of an hour earlier and was held back by someone who wanted to go with him. He wanted to go out through a different door; then he would have passed the furniture truck on the right, whereas he was crushed on the left. He had been told to go out through this door, so he was literally sent out. Besides, it is a road where a furniture truck may not have gone for years, and perhaps none will go for years. It was a furniture truck that was exceptionally delivering furniture to one of our members. So they looked for the boy. The furniture van was so heavily loaded and unfortunately tilted that it could not be lifted immediately, because the people who were driving the furniture van had not brought anything with them and simply walked away. They did not want to lift the furniture van until the next day. But now, of course, it had to be lifted during the night, and they found the dead baby underneath.

This little boy had been in the atmosphere of the building for some time. It is true that since that time, soon after that death, the etheric body of that little boy has been woven into the aura of the building. And the person who – and it is certainly not immodest to say this – is involved in the artistic side of the building, as I am, notices how the fertilization comes from the unspent etheric power of the etheric body, which is needed to artistically integrate this or that into the building.

Of course, human selfishness would perhaps prefer to attribute all this only to one's own genius. But it is absolutely the case that even what comes to us from within comes from external spiritual influences. And we can prove these spiritual influences in detail. We are dealing here with the etheric body of a boy who has turned seven years old, who could therefore have still supplied the physical body for another six to seven decades, who, with the tremendously wise building power that is necessary to form the physical human body in an appropriate way, is in the etheric aura of the Dornach building.

And I dare say, with complete certainty, even to artists: the art needed to form the physical body out of the etheric body is much greater than any art that man practices on earth. Man is already the greatest work of art. And all the impulses for forming the physical human body are contained in the etheric body. The artist also brings them out of his etheric body when he creates artistically.

This is just one example; others could be cited in which the capacity of the unspent etheric bodies can be seen. Just this year, dear friends of ours, some of them quite young, have also passed through the gateway of death. And so we see how, especially now, in this time, countless people are passing through the gate of death, in the vigorous age, leaving behind their etheric bodies, which could all have worked on the physical body for decades to come. These etheric bodies, which are still strengthened and invigorated by the fact that they have gone through sacrificial deaths, are present and will be present. And those people who will be in a position in the future, when different things are happening on the European continent than in the present events, who will then live on the European continent, they will live in a spiritual, in an etheric atmosphere in which these unused etheric bodies can be found. And when souls are found here on earth that will have understanding for that which will live spiritually not just as an abstract memory but as real etheric powers – this understanding can only be gained from spiritual science – they will well sense the inspiring powers of these etheric bodies.

And that is one of the feelings that now weigh heavily on our hearts, heavily for the reason that on the one hand we have to look at the enormity that could happen if quite a lot of people could become aware of what is sown by the deaths that are now happening around us due to the great events of the time, while on the other hand the handful of people who can understand these things is still so small. And it could easily happen because of people's lack of understanding of spiritual science due to the materialism that fills all of humanity, that in the future people could continue to live without any trace of an inkling of what arises from death.

We should not allow such a sentence to live in our hearts in any other way than by allowing ourselves, as far as it depends on us, to be completely imbued with such an awareness, to fully absorb this awareness and to do what we can to understand such a thing. I would like to say that we should not just worry about how much materialism there is. We should indeed recognize how much materialism there is on earth, but we should not close ourselves off from the ever-increasing materialistic worldview, but rather do all the more what is incumbent upon us.

So much for what can be said about the etheric-physical. Then the human being progresses further. He has first enveloped himself in a kind of spiritual self that is formed in a slightly different way than everything that is formed when we live here on earth. One could say that the spiritual self is something that comes to us from all sides, and in the midst of which we feel ourselves. Then the human being continues to live in the other covers by simultaneously experiencing, as I have often described, a kind of spiritual regression, by experiencing - but now in a different way than through the mere tableau that has been described - that which acts as a kind of opposite to earthly life. One can realize how the following time passes, after the etheric body has been discarded and we live on with our astral body and with our I, wrapped in the spirit self. This spirit self is a kind of driving force. It leads us back, so that we relive, really go backwards, our last life on earth from death to birth. If, for example, we have said something to someone here on earth that has caused them suffering, we experience such an event from our point of view here on earth in our physical body. We cannot experience it from the point of view of the other person. We would not be able to live in the physical body at all if we wanted to live differently than to experience everything from our own point of view. But let us take the extreme case: we have hurt someone very much with a word that we said out of revenge. What he feels, what he experiences, we do not experience here. In the regression that I am now describing, we always experience what the other person feels as the effect of what we have done. So we live inside the world of effects. We experience what others have gone through with us during our physical life, until we get to the point where we have reached our birth. Then we envelop ourselves with what could be called the spiritual counter-image of what will develop on Venus: we envelop ourselves with the spirit of life.

And our further life is now determined by this spirit of life, which I have described several times. You will find it described from a wide variety of perspectives in the lecture cycle in Vienna on life between death and a new birth. I will describe it here again from a different perspective.

We are thus enveloped, as it were, by the spirit of life. This expresses itself in a certain way, and it is essential that we understand this. The spirit-self first guides us back; the spirit-self is mainly concerned with our being, with our individuality, and it then also leads us further. After it has brought us to our birth, it guides us further along the paths we have to take in the spiritual world.

It is different with what the next shell, the life spirit, now does to us. Here in the physical body we are permeated by the etheric body, which also contains the life ether and everything that gives us life. We are, so to speak, permeated by the etheric body, and we live through this etheric body. Those who have no etheric body cannot live on the physical plane.

When we have discarded our astral body, we know that we are enveloped by this spirit of life. Now we also realize that we were enveloped the whole time while our spirit self was guiding us back. But now we only realize it. We only realize it afterwards, when we have gone through the whole thing, which is called the Kamaloka time. And now we become aware of something very strange: it is only because we are enveloped by this spirit of life that our life between death and a new birth is possible. Because here in the physical body we have to live, I would say within our skin. We cannot do that between death and a new birth in the spiritual world. If we only wanted to live in the spiritual world within ourselves, so to speak, only in a single place in the spiritual world, then we would have to die continuously and would not be able to live. Rather, we have to live with the whole universe. We have to have the whole universe as one great living thing and have to live with it.

Now this could happen in two ways. We could flow out into the whole universe. But if we were to flow out all at once, the consciousness that we have, that I have described, this self-awareness, would also flow out into the nebulous. Rather, we must be moved around in the great, living cosmic organism. Here in our physical body, a limb of ours, let's say the hand, is in a certain place. In the spiritual world, we must always be led around. We must always be carried from one place to another. The spirit of life does that. In this way we leave one place and arrive at the other. This is done rhythmically, so that we always come back to the same place. But we have to be led around in the world. An eventful, a spiritually eventful life arises for us. Here, as physical human beings, we are confined to a single place, with certain exceptions. However, the spiritual is always carried into the physical, and this is how we can move around in the physical plan. This is essentially an Ahrimanic effect, since the spiritual is brought into the physical by Ahriman. But in the spiritual, it is right that we are guided by the entire associated world organism. And in this way we settle in, just as we settle in here on earth in one place, I would say in the whole environment of earthly life. And as we are led from spiritual place to spiritual place in it – you can find more details in my Vienna Cycle – at the same time, the forces we need to prepare our new life on earth are implanted in us, in order to be drawn to earthly life again. For the time between death and a new birth passes in the first half in such a way that we find our way out of earthly life; in the second half we find ourselves again preparing for a new earthly life.

You see, materialism today basically turns everything into its opposite. It will lead people into the most serious errors, and into ones that are not only credible but almost taken for granted. When a personality appears who is as ingenious as Goethe, for example, people take it quite materialistically. A very thick book has been written and published about Goethe, in which all his ancestors that can be found are examined in a materialistic sense, physically and spiritually - but the materialist only assumes bodies - and then it is shown how Goethe got one thing from one ancestor and another from another. Goethe himself said ironically: From my father I have the stature, from my mother the cheerful nature - and so on. Here in Kassel, in a lecture series, I once developed how people take this quite materially by showing how we have inherited everything through the physical inheritance current, especially genius. And I have often said: the matter is absurd, ridiculously foolish, and yet again so credible, because it makes immediate sense to the materialist that certain qualities are enhanced through many generations, so that they then appear to be inherited in the case of genius. The materialist even believes that he is expressing an experience. But he does not express any other experience than that of someone who falls into the water and is pulled out is wet. Of course, the soul passes through all its ancestors in a certain way, and as a result it inherits everything it has drawn out of its ancestors. Just as someone who has fallen into the water is wet, so the person also has the qualities of his ancestors as he passes through the generations. It would be different if the opposite were to be proven, if it were to be proven that the genius that is present is inherited by the descendants: But it is not. People should prove that! But they will probably leave it alone. You examine Goethe's ancestors; but you leave it pretty to go to your son or your grandchildren! Just see if the qualities of genius are inherited by the descendants! There may be cases where the matter is concealed, but there can be no question of an inheritance of qualities of genius to the descendants. If there were, it would be known. But there is no such inheritance of qualities of genius.

But something else is the case. If one tries to trace back a human individuality that enters a physical body at a certain point in time further back - it comes out of the spiritual world, after all - it is the same individuality that now brings together father and mother, that contributes to the fact that father and mother come together to produce it. Indeed, it is already involved further back. It works, so to speak, the whole succession of generations in such an order that in the end two people find each other through whom this one individuality can find its embodiment. The individuality is already involved in what takes place over centuries from ancestors to descendants. However strange it may sound, that is how it is. Goethe had a father and a mother, a grandfather and a grandmother and so on. If we go back centuries, we see that this individuality of Goethe's from the spiritual world already works in such a way that those who ultimately yielded the old Kaspar Goethe and Mrs. Aja always come together. Through the centuries, individuality is already working from the spiritual world; it works into the succession of generations.

It is just the opposite of what is assumed. Man does not inherit what he carries in his soul from his ancestors in the physical sense. Rather, he compiles his ancestors from the spiritual world, from world midnight, which lies in the middle between death and a new birth, so that he can then find those through whom he makes his way into earthly life. That is the mystery that emerges. This is something tremendously significant, and basically actually harrowing. And we see through this that there really is an intimate connection between what happens in the spiritual world and what happens further down in the physical world. And at the same time we see how strangely intertwined our spiritual and soul life is with what happens here, which is just not noticed.

One speaks of the spirit in modern philosophy in a very strange way. There was a professor in Halle who is now regarded as a very important light in the field of philosophy. He published a book, “The Philosophy of the As If,” in which he attempts to prove that such concepts as spirit and soul do not represent reality, but that they are nevertheless useful in man's contemplation of the world. One should not look at a person and say that he has a soul. But now, he moves his hands and speaks, so that one can say: one regards him as if he had a soul. Otherwise, one leaves the soul as a soul. One denies it; one does not care about it; but one regards it as if the person had a soul, as if the soul wanted to achieve all this.

It is a comfortable philosophy, but also a terribly thoughtless one. However, anyone who tries to apply this philosophy in concrete life sees that this “as-if philosophy” is of little use, even as a method. And a person like Fritz Mauthner, who has written a philosophy of language and who traces everything back to language, should actually be viewed from the point of view of this “as-if philosophy”: as if such a person could also have spirit. But if you make this attempt, then this method is not good. You cannot show that he can be viewed as if he had spirit; it cannot be applied. Where there is no mind, it cannot be applied. You know, of course, what I mean. But I only cite this Fritz Mauthner because he is one of those who deny the whole meaning of history altogether and who have most clearly stated, from the standpoint of present-day materialism, that history can never be a science. He says: When a raindrop falls on the earth, we can find the laws of the raindrop scientifically, because many raindrops fall according to the same laws. Then you can compare the individual cases with each other, and you can find the laws. That is what philosophers today believe: that observing many cases and always finding the same thing leads to the individual laws. But in history, things only happen once, the Thirty Years War only once and so on; and therefore the whole of history is only a succession of coincidences for Fritz Mauthner. People in the present day must come to such assertions if they deny the spirit in reality; for history would also be only a sequence of coincidences if that which we have now shown, which works out of the spiritual world and in which people work between death and a new birth, did not have the very effect of what we have now shown, which works out of the spiritual world and in which people work between death and a new birth. We are weaving, so to speak, on what happens here on earth between death and a new birth. We weave only according to those impulses that then come to us from the spiritual world.

It can truly be said: One should not believe that any serious objection to spiritual science can come from any scientific side; because if one compares what today's science can really achieve with spiritual science, then today's science is the best support for spiritual science. One must only approach the matter in the right way.

If we pick up any book today in which a materialistically minded person expresses himself half in terms of psychology, that is, the soul, and half in terms of the body, we find the following. These people seek, as man presents himself, to visualize himself by showing the thinking apparatus - nervous life, brain life. They examine the thinking apparatus and can then really show that when any idea takes hold in us, a brain process occurs. So they say: You see, we can prove to you that without a brain process a thought, an idea, could not be conceived at all; so what do you want with an independent soul? After all, only the thinking apparatus is present!

But they come to something else, these materialistically minded people. If you look through the textbooks in use, you will find that these people point out the thinking apparatus and link all thinking and imagining to the mechanical processes in the brain and nervous system; but they have to deny feeling and will. Feeling and will cannot be explained by physical processes. Therefore, this is simply eliminated. And today, if you open the books, you can find everywhere: People have indeed assumed a will and a feeling from their prejudices, but this is actually a nothing, it does not even exist.

So the natural scientist stops just before feeling and will. Now that we know that thoughts separate from us with our etheric body, it is explained to us that this separated part, which leaves us with our etheric body, also works on our exterior here on earth, the thinking apparatus first sets itself up, and when the thinking apparatus is formed, then thinking comes with the help of the thinking apparatus formed by thinking itself. Feeling and will remain with us in the astral body and in the ego. We carry these into the spiritual world. Not one science forces materialism, on the contrary, real science today justifies our spiritual science everywhere. Today's materialism is entirely dependent on the fact that people have no urge for spiritual life, that they want no sense for spiritual life. Understanding would not be lacking either. For truly, if one opens oneself to what the spiritual researcher is able to give from the spiritual world, even for such chapters as we have allowed to arise before our soul today for the life between death and a new birth: it can be understood, one needs only a finer, more subtle understanding than the rough understanding that today's man often wants to apply to the outer world. But we also live in a time when materialism has reached its peak. The spiritual researcher can even state exactly that the year in which materialism reached a peak was around 1840/41. Since then, it has even been declining somewhat; but the after-effects are, of course, great. But what does materialism mean for the conception of physical human life? The most astute minds of the present are leading people astray into a state that is to be deeply regretted under the influence of materialism.

There is a truly astute man, a criminal anthropologist by profession. He has examined the brains of many criminals. He was the first to find a famous, significant sentence about the brains of criminals, the sentence that in the criminal brain, in the vast majority of cases, the posterior lobe covering the cerebellum is underdeveloped, as is also the case in monkeys. The monkey is distinguished precisely by the fact that it also has a small occipital lobe. This was, of course, a godsend, because it meant that one could say: Aha, this is a throwback to the nature of the ape when a person is criminal; he is born with a too-small occipital lobe!

But just think what an enormous significance this has for the moral life if one is only willing to admit that the human being has a physical body. He must then say: What are you talking about when you speak of responsibility, what are you talking about when you say that you want to improve people morally through this or that education? That is all nonsense. Those who are born with a occipital lobe that is too small, which of course cannot be changed during this life, become criminals; they become criminals out of necessity. And if materialism were true, then this must also be true: we would then not hang people because they have murdered another, but because they have too small occipital lobes! One would only have to admit this: we cannot live in the world at all if we did not admit such things. One cannot be materialistic in this sense if one would not admit: people are hanged because they have too small occipital lobes. Anything else would only be a concealment of the truth.

But is it the truth? We have to speak of the etheric body in the sense that we have done today, that it is still present, that it even increases in size after death and is woven into the general cosmic ether. If we now have a young person who has a occipital lobe that is too small, we cannot make it grow; no physical science will ever achieve that. But we can organize the education in the appropriate way by saying to ourselves: There is also an etheric body present, and a part of the etheric body etheric body that corresponds to the occipital lobe, and through appropriate education we train the etheric body of the occipital lobe, and it is just as effective in life, perhaps even more effective in a certain sense than the physical occipital lobe, because it has to overcome a certain force. And then we derive comfort from our knowledge that the physical shape of our occipital lobe is not the determining factor, but that we can then develop the etheric lobe accordingly in the person whose occipital lobe is too small, by evoking these or those feelings in him when we notice that he has these or those tendencies towards wrongdoing. Then we will be able to save him.

You see, that is the truth. That is the moral side of spiritual science! It is also present. Desolation and bleakness, especially in the moral and ethical sphere, if one only wanted to be true, one would see emerging from the materialistic world view. A consoling possibility to actively intervene in what people become can be seen from what spiritual science can give us. If we only recognize certain tendencies in a person at the right moment, which could lead to criminal acts, then we can use a certain type of education to develop what has a particularly strong effect on this occipital lobe in the ether strongly, and thus weave into the person the power that will continue to live with him between death and a new birth and, especially in the physical, particularly well develops the occipital lobe in the next incarnation. Not only do we help him for this incarnation; we also set the stage for a particularly well-developed brain, which he can then carry through the life between death and a new birth for inclusion in his next physical incarnation.

So spiritual science now practically places us in life. Only it will have to do what goes beyond what is done today. Today, people still think that they have done enough with spiritual science if they have listened for a while and believe that it has had a favorable, uplifting effect on our soul. That is not enough! Spiritual science must enter into all branches of life in practical activity. The fruits of spiritual science must show themselves in all branches of life. Education, which is particularly bleak today because it only starts from what the human being has physically, must be particularly fertilized by spiritual science.

Today there may still be many people who say: You can tell us a lot about spiritual science, but why should we believe in what you are telling us? We can't see it for ourselves. At most, it could be seen by someone who finds their way into the spiritual worlds in a certain way, as described in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. If you say: Above all, I want to see something practically – and in doing so, you think that you can bring the spiritual into the physical world in this way, to see the spirit externally as you see the physical, because you are too lazy to seek the spirit in a spiritual way, then that is a very selfish point of view. And if materialism today is connected with selfishness – it is a world view, after all! – then materialistic spiritism is even more selfish. For materialism at least merely aims to accept only the physical world and then also to satisfy this physical world. But spiritualism wants, first of all, a sensual view of the spiritual world, and secondly, I might say, constant satisfaction, and that in a physical way. But in its lack of clarity it still imagines this physical way as spiritual. In short, it wants to remain in the physical world and yet have something spiritual! It is actually lamentable that our materialism has reached such a level of development as to give rise to the popular belief in spiritualism, which is particularly rife in America. This tendency is to reduce the spiritual to a material level and to view the spiritual and spiritual processes in material terms.

But there are many other ways to recognize that which is on the physical plane as an imprint of the spiritual world. And one of the ways – of course not all of them can be listed now – is to seek the spiritual where it is effective, for example in children, where it is to develop. And that is where education must be enriched. Education will only come to fruition when people develop a sense, a feeling for the spiritual, so that the teacher not only teaches according to all kinds of instructions, but above all starts from observing the developing individuality, seeing what wants to develop out of it. This must be achieved, or rather, must be achieved! And it is good if we remind ourselves, so that we can believe in this struggle, that people in the present are actually terribly short-sighted. They believe that we have come a long way in our time, that we have finally cast off all the childishness of earlier centuries. But it is not true that we have cast off prejudices. All that had to be discarded in order to see the physical plane clearly and to gain freedom was the old atavistic clairvoyance, and that was discarded in its last vestiges not so long ago. The day before yesterday I was able to speak to our dear friends in Hamburg about a special example of this clairvoyance. If you had the opportunity to walk around here, you might be able to find such an example. But I will tell you the Hamburg example; perhaps you can look for a similar one for Kassel yourself.

If the Fall of Man in Paradise, that powerful image that stands in the Bible for the Luciferic seduction of man, is depicted by the painter today, Adam and Eve and the snake are depicted realistically, with the usual snake head. Now we know from our spiritual science that this snake is Lucifer. The physical snake on earth can at most be a kind of symbol for Lucifer, but this physical snake is not Lucifer, nor is the great snake that is coiled around a tree and has an ordinary, common snake head at the top, is not Lucifer. Lucifer is a being that has remained on the moon, a being that naturally cannot be seen with the senses. On the moon, one did not see with the senses; only the earth has produced this sensuality. The earth snake can be seen with the senses. Lucifer, of course, cannot be seen with the senses, he must be seen inwardly. When one looks inwardly, it is an inner feeling. And one senses: Aha, that is the one that in its upper part resembles the human head; after all, it has driven out the eyes: “Your eyes will be opened, you will see,” it is inside the head and still fills the nervous system down into the spinal cord, -— a human head that continues in the snake's body, but all this only conceived ethereally. It would therefore have to be perceived from within. If one wanted to paint Lucifer according to the Bible, one would have to paint the etheric for the spinal cord, and at the top something that is also still etheric, which is not yet physical, the human head. That would be the teaching, if it were put into the picture, of what we have today.

In Hamburg, one can see biblical pictures by the master Bertram, and, as I have just described, the Fall of Man: not an ordinary snake, but a snake with the usual shape, but with a human head. In the 14th and 15th centuries, in the middle of the Middle Ages, the painter painted it that way, that is, they still knew it back then. So you have tangibly proven what the matter is! The painter did not go and paint an ordinary snake, but in those days they still could, because atavistic clairvoyance was still present. It is only in the last few centuries that this has completely disappeared, and it must be regained. There is no other way to regain it than by preparing ourselves to understand the spiritual world through spiritual science.

Those who are wholeheartedly devoted to our spiritual science take it in such a way that they see: It is the most important task of our time that people learn to understand what is in the spiritual world, in order to prepare themselves to be able to look into the spiritual world again, into that which is part of the world around us. How differently we as human beings will go through the world when we know that not only air surrounds us, but that this air is permeated by the weaving not only of the visible world - after all, light is not visible otherwise, but colors are visible - but in the light the dead etheric bodies weave. Natural science and spiritual science will combine in a beautiful way, only spiritual science will be there for all people, since it will bring something to all people.

I believe that in our time it is especially necessary that we urgently feel obliged to let such truths as those we have been able to experience today for the life between death and a new birth enter into our meditation quite often. This too is good material for meditation when we let the beginning of life between death and a new birth, this emptiness that assigns us our place in the world, this instruction of the etheric world, the interweaving of our own etheric body into the etheric world, come before our soul quite often in meditation. This stimulates what lives in us to grow more and more into the direct experience of the spiritual world. And this is already necessary for humanity in the present. One could feel, when one looks at the events of the time, how necessary this living in the spiritual world is for present-day humanity. The present time of trial will only be able to be gone through in the right way if a number of people can feel it faithfully and humanly, what lives in spiritual science and how this spiritual science must prepare the human future.

These are serious signs of the times, and the seriousness is revealed when we reflect on many things that are so close to us. Think, we speak of what should permeate our path with a serious principle: seeking the same in all human souls and through all nations and races. We are right to regard this as a lofty ideal of humanity, but we must not hide from ourselves the tremendous contrast between the life of present-day Europe and this ideal. Can we say that European humanity today is in any way remotely close to this ideal in what it expresses? How far removed it is! And may we – may, I say – regard this ideal as one that we can apply so directly today? Are we not obliged, as Germans, not to deceive ourselves, to be clear about the fact that we cannot even remotely think of realizing such an ideal due to European circumstances? We would do a poor job of fulfilling the mission specifically imposed on us as Germans if we were to simply become absorbed in general, vague ideals today. Time obliges us to develop the specific nature of our Central European character. And with that we may already look at the karma that has grown on us, I might say, in particular.

Just think, when you look at world events today, we have not been managed badly in the sense of these great world events. Karma has brought it about that our movement first belonged to the general theosophical movement. Long before this war showed what it can show to the Germans today, our German movement had completely separated itself from the theosophical one and emphasized how necessary it is that the spiritual movement arises out of the very substance of the German people, a spiritual movement that can carry us and that the other world will also have to carry. We can say that we, as the anthroposophical movement, have felt the English hatred in our particular field for many years before. It has now only increased, because one cannot remain silent there; what has been written about us in recent times by so-called English Theosophists exceeds anything that can somehow still be justified. We may say, therefore, that when we survey the course of our movement, we find our karma also running through our movement in such a way that it is in full agreement with what the great movement in the world indicates to us even today. That our karma led us early enough to emphasize German intellectual life, we may, in all modesty, present as a favorable karma for us, and that anthroposophy has found its center in German intellectual life, we may regard as a kind of shining morning star for our karmic currents. And since, I would like to say, the omens for what is happening in the world have already shown themselves much earlier with us, we can already deduce from this single fact the belief that there is something in our movement of a power for the great general human movement.

Let us learn, my dear friends, to trust the spiritual power that lies at the heart of our movement, trusting that it is one of the best to which our soul can possibly attach itself. Let us live through the full weight and the full significance of thought and feeling and will impulse, the full weight and the full significance of what it means: there must be individual souls who, in the face of the great demands of our time, understand how the spiritual impulses must interact with what must take place in future history here on earth. Let us learn to understand, not only in the abstract, but also in the concrete sense, what the countless deaths that are now flooding the earth mean. Let us learn to understand how faithfully our souls must remain loyal to our movement so that there may be people who can look up in the right way to the sphere where the etheric bodies and the individualities that have made the sacrifices for our time on the great historical field will continue to work and will work together with those who will later tread the earth in times of peace. Let us learn to understand what it means to find the right sense for the fact that a spirituality also permeates that which takes place on the physical plane today, that the confessors of spiritual science are there to turn their minds to that which arises spiritually from the courage and sacrifice of our time. Let us learn to understand in the right sense the words with which we want to conclude our reflections:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware,
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

My dear friends:

Let us, first of all, turn our thoughts to those who stand out there upon the battlefields, where historic events are being enacted, and who must be answerable with body, soul and spirit for these tremendous happenings of the present time.

Spirits ever watchful. Guardians of their souls,
May your vibrations waft,
to the Earth-men committed to your charge.
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who, in consequence of these events, have already passed through the gate of death:—

Spirits ever watchful. Guardians of their souls,
May your vibrations waft,
To the Men of the Spheres committed to your charge,
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And that Spirit whom we seek to know through our Spiritual Science, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha for the salvation of the earth, for the progress and freedom of mankind—may He be with you and your difficult duties.

It is our striving to penetrate, knowingly and at the same time livingly, in so far as this is possible, into those worlds which are closed to the usual everyday knowledge, the usual intellectual knowledge—bound to the physical plane.

For, in the life in which man is enclosed in his physical body, he stands in a world, as we have become accustomed to think during the course of years, which is only a part, a small part, of the entire actual world. As we come together so seldom, it is not possible, at these meetings, to explain everything from its foundations. How well founded these things are, that must be spoken of at such meetings, which take place only at less frequent intervals, and by what means they are established—this we must assume to be known from other meetings and through our books. For particularly at such a gathering it may, indeed, be our desire to learn something more important and more essential about what has just been referred to, about the greater, real world, which embraces both the physical and the spiritual world.

Since we last gathered here, many things have taken place within the circle which nurtures our spiritual science. A larger number of our dear friends have passed through the portal of death. Also, since the beginning of this hard war time, friends have passed through the portal of death who had to take part directly in these great events. In other words, within our circle, we are ourselves touched by the great spiritual world, because souls who were among us have entered this spiritual world after laying aside their bodies. It lies within the attitude which results from our Spiritual Science that, for us, the souls who have left the physical plane, who are received by another world, remain united with us, as they were united with us while they still looked at us with physical eyes and could speak to us by means of the instrument of the physical body.

Precisely when we approach the world which has received into itself our dead, in this moment, as we draw nearer to the souls of the so-called dead, we learn to know all those shattering experiences which must heap themselves upon our soul where it seeks to look across the threshold which separates us from the spiritual world, when it seeks to enter the world which can only be seen in the disembodied state of the soul. And you will perhaps understand that many of the words spoken here to-day resound out of the many feelings which have passed through my own soul in the course of the year, since we last saw one another.

Particularly during the last year, I have often had to say to our friends, that the right confidence can be gained only gradually, by one who sees into the fundamental conditions of existence, when he knows that those who have passed through the portal of death and who were faithful fellow-workers here on earth, will remain so also after death; so that in our work we quite certainly do not lose those souls who have won an understanding of our work, because they were already united with us here before they passed through the portal of death. And just among such souls there are such faithful fellow-worker that we may say: Even if the enemies and the lack of understanding here on the physical plane are sometimes so strong in opposition to our work, and become ever stronger, as we can well see, yet we may still have faith that Spiritual Science will penetrate into the evolution of mankind, because we can win this faith through our connection with the disembodied souls who have reached an understanding of the whole significance of our work for the course of man's development.

Of course, just when the human being, by means of his opened soul, approaches the world in which the so-called dead are—we can speak in this way, although it is, of course, the entire spiritual world in which the dead are to be found—precisely then, when the human being is able to approach this world as a visitor, as one who accompanies the dead into the spiritual world, he learns to know again and again that which has also been emphasised here: that, in reality, the concepts, the percepts and ideas which we form concerning the world, since we form them as we do because we are in a physical body, must be changed, must be made pliant, flexible, so that they can also encompass the secrets of the spiritual world. The man of to-day is adapted very strongly to the purely material perception of his surroundings, and thus he also forms concepts according to a purely material perception. For this reason, it becomes especially difficult for him to penetrate into the spiritual world even by means of concepts. In fact, many people believe that it is not possible to attain to an understanding of the spiritual world, if we are not able to see into it. They believe this, however, only because their ideas have become stiff and dead, through the fact that they have too strongly accustomed themselves to think only about the physical world.

Now that I have made these introductory remarks, I should like to speak to you to-day particularly about certain things in connection with the life of the so-called dead.

We know that, if we wish to consider the life between death and a new birth, we must consider and notice carefully how the human being forms himself of four parts, which are well known to us: physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego.

If we consider, to begin with, the most outward fact regarding the dead a fact visible even from the physical plane, we find it to be the fact that man lays aside his physical body. We do not need to go into the different ways by which this physical body becomes united with the earth, be it by means of fire or decay—these differ, after all, only in regard to the time which they require.

But, even when we consider this fact, that the physical body falls away from the whole being of man in the moment of death and unites itself with the earth, as we say,—if we consider even this fact only with regard to its meaning for the physical plane, we shall have considered it, in reality, in a very inadequate way. And, in fact, it is often considered in a most inadequate way by persons of all manner of spiritual-scientific tendencies, who allow themselves still to be led astray by all sorts of moral conceptions, which do indeed penetrate into spiritual realms, to a certain extent, but are unfitted, in many respects, to understand in the right way the penetration of the spiritual into the physical world.

All physical events have also their spiritual significance. There is no physical event which has not, at the same time, a spiritual significance. In this case, then, the physical event is that our physical body falls away from us and is at the same time separated into its parts, into its molecules, into its atoms, and given over to the earth.

Now, it is a great prejudice of the modern materialistic world-conception, which has, however, held mankind more or less in its grip already for a long time, that the human body, as we carry it about from birth until death, or let us say from conception until death, that this human body simply falls into the smallest possible parts, into atoms, and that these atoms are then incorporated in the earth, or the sphere of the earth, and thereafter remain atoms, and then pass over as such into other beings.

Through the modern materialistic mode of investigation one comes very easily to such a preconception. But this mode of conception is, after all, nothing but nonsense, in view of spiritual science. It is nonsense. For, in reality, there are no such things as atoms, in the sense in which the chemists assume them. What the smallest parts of our bodies finally become, under all circumstances, regardless of the way in which we, as bodies, are united with the earth, is warmth. Our whole physical organism finally transforms itself, in reality, in one way or another, in a short or a long time, into warmth.

For this reason, we often speak, as you know, in spiritual science of warmth as a fourth physical state of aggregation, whereas physics does not acknowledge it as such, but only as a kind of characteristic. But it is this warmth which is, in reality, given to the earth; this is given over to the earth. Thus, from our physical body, we give to our earth—Warmth.

The warmth which is to be found in the earth, is, in reality, intimately connected with what human beings leave behind. Man does not transform himself into air, water, etc. These are only transitional stages through which he passes. Those parts of him which become air and water become at last warmth. Yes, even though it may be after a long time, even though the last remnants of matter may pass over into warmth only after hundreds of years, indeed, even though what belongs to the bone-system may pass over into warmth only after thousands of years, it is transformed finally into warmth.

If you go into Museums to-day, you will find skeletons of ancient men who lived upon earth in bygone ages, yet the time will indeed come when what is present there to-day as skeletons, will exist only as warmth within the body of the earth.

In any case, however, the way in which we are united with the earth, through warmth, is the materialistic way. The fact that even our physical body remains connected with the earth, has a great, an essential, importance for the one who has passed through the gate of death. He passes into the spiritual world. He leaves his body to the earth. This is an experience, an event, for the so-called dead. He has the experience:—“Your body passes away from you”. We must realise that this is an experience.

What is an experience? Well, you can form a conception of what it is, if you consider the experiences on the physical plane. It is an experience, if you have some new sensation, or feeling which you have never had before, and you learn to understand this. You have added something to your soul which you did not possess before a new concept, a new perception.

But now imagine such a small experience increased into a very great one. It is something mighty, something unfathomably mighty, that the human being experiences, which gives him the possibility between death and birth to see, to realise, to grasp the fact that he lays this physical body aside, that he gives over to the planet which he is leaving. It is a very great experience, an experience which naturally cannot be compared with any experience on earth—a mighty experience. The value of an experience lies in the fact that something remains in our soul as a result, as a consequence, of this experience. We may, therefore, ask the question:—What then remains as a result, as a consequence of this experience of the falling away of the physical body from the entirety of our being?

Indeed, if we were not able to have this experience when we pass through the gate of death, of knowingly participating in the falling away of our physical body, we should never be able to develop an Ego-consciousness after death. The Ego consciousness is aroused after death through this experience of the falling away of the physical body. For the dead it is of the greatest significance that he is able to say:—“I see my physical body slipping away from me and disappearing.” And, on the other hand:—“I see growing within me, out of this event, the feeling—I am an Ego.”

We may express this with the paradox words:—“If we were unable to experience our death from the other side, we would not have an Ego-consciousness after death.”

Just as the human soul entering existence through birth or, let us say, through conception—gradually becomes accustomed to the use of the physical apparatus and thereby acquires the Ego-consciousness within the body, so does the human being acquire the Ego consciousness after death, from the other side of existence, through the fact that he experiences the falling away of the physical body from the whole human being.

Consider now, for a moment, what this means. When we contemplate Death from the physical side of existence, we may say that it appears to us as the end of existence—as that which has beyond it, as far as the physical outlook is concerned, “Nothing”. Viewed from the other side, Death as such is a most wonderful thing, which can ever anew stand before man's soul. For it signifies that man can always have the feeling of the victory of spiritual life over physical life. And just as long as we can always have before us the conception of our birth here, in physical life—for no one can have the conceptual nature of his birth through physical means alone, indeed, no one knows anything about his birth through his own physical experience—just so surely do we always have before us, when we become fully conscious after death, a direct experience of the event of our death.

At the same time, this event of our death contains nothing which is in any way depressing; on the contrary, this death event, viewed from the other side, is the greatest, most wonderful and beautiful event which can appear before our soul. For it always places before us, in its entirety, the greatness of the idea that in the spiritual world, consciousness, self-consciousness is the result of death—that death stimulates this self-consciousness, in the spiritual world.

Secondly, we must observe the second member of our human existence, the etheric body. We find, with the help of the elementary presentations which we have all shared in, in the interval since we last met together, that this ether-body remains with us for a brief—a relatively brief—period after death, but after this, it is also laid aside. We know, too, that a certain importance must be attributed to the fact that our etheric body—the same one we possessed on earth—remains still united with us after death, for several days.

So long as we still carry this etheric body, after having laid aside our physical body, we can still think everything that we were able to think during our physical existence. We can, therefore, survey all the thoughts which we carry in us, as in a mighty picture. We see those thoughts which we experienced during life, in the life-picture which has often been described to you. Our whole life lies before us like a panorama, during the days in which we still carry our etheric body with us; and we have it before us simultaneously, i.e. we see it all at one glance. For, what we call memory, here, in the physical world, arises, to be sure, in the etheric body, but it is bound, nevertheless, to the physical body. This physical body we have laid aside. We see our thoughts. We do not draw them out of the depths that are connected with the physical body, but we see them; and we survey, as if in a panorama, the life which we have just passed through.

We then lay aside this etheric body. But this etheric body which we lay aside, remains visible for us, throughout our entire remaining life after death. It is outside, but it remains visible to us. It unites itself with the whole universe; nevertheless, whatever happens to it there, remains visible to us—we see it.

And this is one of the mysteries of death: that, so long as we carry our etheric body, we see in a panorama what we had in us in the form of thoughts while we were alive—we survey, as it were, what is outside us as being united with, woven into, the world; we see that, after death, it forms part of our surrounding world, not of our Ego. In this experience, it actually is as if that which weaved and lived in us as our etheric body, during life, were now entering the life of the etheric world outside.

Then comes the time, as you know, when we carry with us—of that which we carried here on the physical plane—only the Ego and the astral body, and when we, of course, look back. upon what we were. We then experience ourselves in an entirely different way from the way we did in the physical body—we experience ourselves with an enhanced consciousness, with a consciousness which death has founded in us.

We must never think, for instance, as the fanatics so easily do, that this life between death and a new birth is an unconscious experience for the soul. Connected with this life, is a stronger, more intensive consciousness, than is the consciousness belonging to the physical body—only that it has an entirely different form. And, of course, we can approach the way in which we should imagine the dead, only by taking all that Spiritual Science can give us, to help us to transform those conceptions which are suited to purely physical objects and events here on the physical plane.

Thus we now live, as we see, within our Ego and our astral body. We have cast off our etheric body. It is united with objective existence.

For one who is able to enter the spiritual world, it is a moving experience, indeed—and from this standpoint also, I may say—to visit and accompany the dead with whom one is able to find a contact; it is a moving experience to follow, not only the individual life of the dead between death and a new birth, but also, for instance, to follow what the dead beholds: that part of himself which is now contained, as his etheric body, in the woof of the world, which is now for him an exterior world, an objective world. It is deeply moving to observe what, the dead has just given over to the etheric world. Thus we may experience the dead in a twofold way, as it were. We can experience that part of him which he has passed on to the etheric world; and we can experience also that part which contains his consciousness after death.

I repeat, that this first contact with what the dead leave behind in the etheric world, is deeply moving. It would move us even if we were unable to come into contact with the Being itself, which continues to live between death and a new birth, and which carries both the consciousness and the self-consciousness of the deceased, but could come into contact only with what he had left behind. Even then this kind of experience would move our souls most deeply—it would have that moving quality peculiar to all contacts with the spiritual world.

And a part of what especially moves us is the actual, living experience that such spiritual substance as has here been indicated—indeed, that etheric spiritual thing which has been left behind by the dead—is, in reality, always round about us. Just so truly as we are living in the air which surrounds man everywhere, just so truly are we, at the same time, surrounded by what the dead have left behind them, as etheric spirituality. In this world, in which we stand, even with our physical bodies there is also that spiritual element which I have just mentioned. Just as we are surrounded by the air, so are we, in the same way, surrounded by what the dead leave behind. It is only states of consciousness that sever us from the spiritual world—we are not separated from them through spatial conditions, but only through conditions of consciousness.

Consider, for instance, the following fact:—Let us imagine a human being who is striving to carry out the following soul exercises. But I should like to emphasize that such soul-exercises must be carried out in perfect calmness of soul. If anyone becomes in any way excited through these exercises, he will damage himself. If soul-exercises are carried on in the way described here and in our literature, so that they are real soul-exercises, and our physical being does not take part in them, then they can never damage a human being in the very least—they cannot even damage his soul. Yet we should not on the other hand, be able to penetrate into spiritual knowledge, did we not call attention to such things, now and again.

Let us suppose that someone does the following exercise, and that he says to himself:—With my eyes I see red, blue, etc. And now he proceeds by experiencing something that is in a certain sense alive—when he sees red, blue green, etc.

Gradually, we begin to realise that, after all, we live in the physical world—especially our modern materialistic age—in a very coarse way—that we do not notice the finer experiences which come to us.

This finer element may be experienced if we take notice of the more purely soul-impression made upon us—let us say by colours—but also by other sense-impressions. Of course everybody knows, roughly speaking, that when he looks upon a blue surface, the impression it leaves will not be the same as that left by a red surface. A red surface—and I must emphasize this particularly—even when a person is not made nervous by looking at it, has something that attacks something which comes out of the surface, as it were, and thrusts itself at us. Whereas blue, for instance, awakens the opposite sensation—it remains quietly in its place; nothing comes toward us, out of the blue. On the contrary, we feel—if we are able to accompany colour-impressions with a fine feeling—that we can penetrate into this blue with our soul forces, that we can press through it.

Green is, as it were, in a rythmical state of balance. This is why it has so beneficent an effect upon us, as the plant's covering of the earth. Green works upon us in such a way that we are able, in part, to penetrate into it, while at the same time it comes back again toward us. When we look out upon the wide green field, we have this impression, that we enter into something; yet, at the same time, that it comes toward us. This is what constitutes the refreshing effect made upon us by a wide green field.

You will be able to convince yourselves of this fact: that human beings have noticed that it is possible to live with colour as it were, and if you read in Goethe's Theory of Colours—which, to be sure, is understood by very few persons of to-day—the chapter on the ethical effects of colours, you will find indicated the corresponding feeling to be experienced through each colour. Thus we find that we can experience colours ... we can also experience other sense-impressions; but, for the moment, we are speaking about colours, in order to have an example.

We can live with colours in such a way that blue, for example, calls to life in our souls a force that resembles the longing which goes forth from us and which is taken up kindly by blue.

In the case of red, something always arises which seems to come toward us and will not leave us alone—something that wishes to overpower us, as it were.

When we thus feel colours, we may have a soul-experience—a moral soul-experience, as it were. Of course, not every human being can carry on such experiences in any one incarnation; but I am describing them to you, in order that you may see how the different worlds are interrelated.

If, accordingly, a man were to carry on these exercises, he would live far more purely in the world of colours. And if he did them in connection with other sense-impressions, he would likewise live more purely in the other sense-impressions. In that case, however, something else would very soon have to arise—something different would take place.

Suppose that such a person were to experience the blue sky in this living way; he would in this case, not simply have the blue above him, (this is, moreover, a very subjective blue; for, in reality, there is no vault above us) but he would feel it above him as the inner surface of a beneficent, inner hemisphere, everywhere receiving his soul-life—a hemisphere, behind the apparent surface of which the soul's experience could penetrate.

It is because of this that human beings who experience the world in a deeper sense, speak as did Jacob Böhme, for instance, who did not say:—“When we see the blue vault of heaven ...”, but, rather:—“When we see the depths”. In these words, “When we see the depths”, we find contained the whole experience of “blue”.

But there is another parallel phenomenon which arises, if we so completely penetrate into the life of colour, that soul-experiences begin to light up when we see colours. There is then awakened in us the ability to make use of a very brief space of time, which we should otherwise not use at all.

When you face an exterior object in ordinary physical life, you see it—you see a certain colour. And, indeed, this is the starting-point of your impression. Then you are able to think about it. You can form a conceptual idea of the colour. But it is with the act of vision that you begin to live with the object. Yet, nevertheless, this is not the actual beginning of what takes place. Even the modern physiologist, working in the laboratories, knows that a certain time elapses between the effect upon our eye, and the arising of the idea connected with the colour blue. Thus, we see that, first of all, the blue colour works upon our eye. We do not immediately perceive it, but a certain time elapses, and only then do we become conscious of it.

You may read, even in ordinary books, how experiments connected with these things are carried on nowadays in the laboratories. Certain kinds of apparatus are constructed; and then the attempt is made to cause a certain impression—the student is the experimental rabbit. He must register, by means of another apparatus, when he receives the impression, so that one can establish the small fraction of time which elapses between the moment an impression strikes our sense-organs, and the moment we grow conscious of this. A certain space of time elapses. In this short interval, we do not as yet, for instance, experience the blue colour, (in the case of an impression of blue), but we do experience the moral effect of the colour. This works in us. Thus, the whole process of how the soul pours itself into the blue colour, how it is accepted with a kindly pleasure—all this lives in us already—the soul-element of the colour is active in us before anything else. Only, this activity remains unconscious; man does not perceive it. Man does not begin to develop his consciousness of the colour, until the colour arises. He does not notice what precedes the colour-sensation.

Now, let us think for a moment: when one is impelled to notice more particularly this moral impression of colours, this soul-experience of colours, then something special appears. We notice this when we should colour some sort of a surface—i.e. when we paint, or transmit colours in any way at all, which ought first to arise out of thoughts. In any real painting, the artist works out of the soul-impression of the colours. In this case, it is not as it is with the artist who simply uses a model—who simply imitates the model; but, rather the real artist knows that, because he has called forth a particular soul-impression, he must therefore use red; whereas, on some other surface, he uses blue, because he has called forth this or that soul-impression.

This is the way, you see, in which all of the painting has been worked out in our Dornach Building. The application of the colours has here arisen entirely out of the soul-element—which indeed must then shine through the colours. Yet, in order to achieve this, it was necessary, in the deepest sense of the word, first of all to have the Building in ourselves—as a Soul Being. The way in which the Building faces the world will be identical with the way in which it has grown out of “the Building”, as a Soul-Being.

People would perceive the thing out of which this Dornach Building has grown, were they able to make use of that short interval of time elapsing between the moment in which the Building strikes their sense-organs, and the moment in which the impression reaches their consciousness.

Any one, moreover, who has a share in the erection of the Building, must himself create all that is in it—its forms and colours—out of that short interval of time.

I have led you in a more scientific way, I might say, to something which may appear difficult to you. But we must also overcome difficulties such as these. Moreover, the possibility may arise, even in this modern Age, as if through an act of grace—and, in a certain sense, we are constantly being favoured by an act of grace, through the simple fact that we are in the world—for man to hold fast, in some way, to this moment. He will see something, and will at times be able to feel that something reciprocal has taken place between himself and the object which he sees outside—if he succeeds in bringing it to his consciousness. He will say to himself, when he sees something:—When I am looking at it, it seems almost as if I had already seen it before this moment.

Perhaps you have all become familiar with the experience of facing a being or an object, and then feeling, as it were, as if, after all, it is not there before you for the first time, when it makes an impression on your consciousness, but that it had already come nearer—indeed, it had come quite close. This creeping nearer—as one might call it—can indeed at times be observed. But, in ordinary life, what here takes place within this brief space of time, lies beyond our consciousness—beyond the threshold.

The moment we are able to bring into our consciousness what thus lies just beyond the threshold, we make an important spiritual discovery. I shall again bring it to your minds by citing a special case. Many of you have already heard about this. Perhaps I have also mentioned it here, in this place. Last year, a little boy died in close proximity to the Goetheanum Building; he was crushed by a furniture-van. The etheric body of this little boy is now united with the Dornach Building—forms the aura of the Dornach Building and lives in this aura. And when some artistic work must be carried out, in connection with this Building, forces come out of this etheric body, which then, of course, appears enlarged. We can feel these forces in us, in the same way that we feel the Building within our souls.

Why is this so? Because the world of which I have just spoken—that world which is always round about us, but which we do not perceive because it remains unnoticed until its impressions reach us—contains the etheric bodies of the dead, and the dead are looking on these bodies. What the dead see of our world—what the dead look upon—is contained in the etheric world which surrounds us. And we should always see it, if we could, so to speak, look into it before we look out into the physical world—if we were able to take even a little step across the threshold.

This does not, however, prevent the dead from being active in this world, through what they have left behind. We are surrounded by a world in which the etheric bodies of the dead are living. In some way or other, they are connected with that world. And only because what lives in the etheric must first come into contact with our physical body, and must set the physical apparatus into movement, do we fail to perceive this powerful weaving around us, of what the dead leave behind them, in etheric form, in our world. But we must acquire the feeling that it is our duty to enrich our world, in our conceptual ideas, by including in it, in the first place, what is contained in the whole etheric world, through the etheric bodies of the dead.

The dead themselves are not in this world—but only the etheric bodies which they have left behind. We cannot find the dead themselves in so easy a way—although even this “easy way” is difficult.

The dead, after they have laid aside their etheric bodies, continue to live in their astral bodies and their Egos. You can gauge to what extent we must transform our conceptions, if you bear in mind that everything pertaining to thought, is stripped off with our etheric bodies, which pass over into the exterior etheric world. After death, we do not keep the thoughts which we have collected here, in our physical body. All that pertains to thought becomes an exterior world. The one who has died, does not look upon his thoughts after death in the same way in which he looked upon thoughts which he formed during his life, and which he then remembered and drew up out of his sub-consciousness. After death he looks upon his thoughts as if they were an etheric painting; he sees his thoughts in the world outside. Thoughts are something exterior for one who has passed through the portal of death—they are outside. What reveals itself here through feeling and will, remains connected with our individuality. It continues to live in our astral body and in our Ego.

Our Ego lights up in self-consciousness through the contemplation of the moment of death. Our astral body is kindled because the thoughts contained in the picture before us, penetrate into the astral body. Thus we experience them in our astral body.

In the physical body, on the other hand, we experience thoughts by drawing them up from within us. After death, we experience thoughts by looking at them as we look at the stars, or as we look out at the world and the mountains, and they make an impression upon us; we take up this impression and experience it in our astral body and our Ego. Thus we see that just the opposite thing takes place: Whereas here on Earth we look upon thoughts as something within us, we must consider them as being something external, after death. Our life then dissolves in the world, flows out in the world.

It is important for us to bear this in mind and not to adopt the idea that the world after death is like a fine, thin repetition of the physical world here—an idea which is often accepted in spiritist circles. It is in fact something entirely different. And it is different, for the reason that our thoughts are Beings outside of us. Now, at the moment we begin to call up before our souls, conceptual ideas like these, we notice not only that we need a certain freedom from prejudice, as I might say, in order to accept Spiritual Science, but also that we must have a certain kind of ability to render our concepts more fluid, to transform our concepts—and that we cannot claim to be able to picture what is in the spiritual world with the same concepts and ideas which we have here, in the physical world.

Consequently, one who is in a position to visit—let us say—a so-called dead person, must first learn how to carry on this intercourse with the dead. Whereas, here, when we meet a person, we come into contact with his inner life through the fact that he expresses this inner life in words or gestures, we find instead, in the case of the dead, that if we wish to come into contact with him, he shows us what he wishes to tell us in the objective world. We see, as it were, in the form of imaginations, which he shows us, what it is that he experiences, and what he wishes to say to us. I might say that the dead person, when we ask him something, says to us: Look over there—it is there that you will find what I am now experiencing.

But all of this is a rapid process. The dead, accordingly, as you see from what I have said, have the capacity to see supersensibly the thoughts which we, here on earth, can experience only in an inward, invisible way. Only if we acquire the capacity to behold thoughts in union with him, are we able to share in his experience, for this reason, he has the special capacity, as a dead person—as a so-called dead person—to share with us the experience of our thoughts.

We are particularly struck by this in the case of a certain phenomenon which I should like to touch upon. When someone whom we have loved has departed from us, we continue, as we all know, to cherish our thoughts of him within our souls. We think about the experiences we have had in common, about the feelings we have shared with him, and so forth. The dead person, as I have said, beholds thoughts. He can also see our thoughts, and he can even distinguish very soon the thoughts which he himself has, in the form of impressions of the spiritual world—these are Imaginations of what is contained in the spiritual world, and thoughts living in the soul of a human being who is still dwelling in a physical body. He can distinguish these thoughts. His own inner experience enables him to make this distinction. For, you see, the difference is really very great. When a deceased person (and exactly the same thing applies to an initiate) has to experience a thought about something which exists only in the spiritual world, he must himself experience this thought, actively. He must himself first follow the thought—every position of it, as it were. It is difficult to make this process clear; but I might explain it as follows:—Suppose a painting were hanging before us, here. But supposing you were to see this painting only when you yourself had traced its lines and painted its colours—followed all the details. This is what the dead can do. He paints every thought he sees; he himself creates the thoughts anew, as it were, and experiences his own activity. A large portion of the life between death and a new birth consists in this—in a creative copying of what exists in the spiritual world as thought-formations. We must learn to create these anew, with the dead—then we know that these are forms of thought which pertain only to the spiritual world.

The experience is different when we look down from the spiritual world upon the thoughts living in the human beings who have been left behind in the physical world. In this case, it is not necessary to re-create them; but these thoughts actually come to meet us, so that the dead person can remain passive. Just as a flower does not need first to be drawn or painted by us, but immediately makes an impression upon us, so it is with the thoughts coming from those who are still alive. These thoughts actually arise in a way similar to the way in which impressions arise, here in the physical world.

And this is just what uplifts, gladdens and warms the dead, in the thoughts of the living whom they have loved. For it is a very special sphere of activity for the dead—this being able to look into the thoughts of those whom they have left behind and who loved them. This is a special world for them.

It would be possible—would it not—for us to experience the physical world, as if it contained only what arises in the mineral, animal and vegetable kingdom and in the kingdom of man. In this case, for example, the physical world would contain no Art. Art would have to be added to all this—it would have to be created in addition to what we actually need. Yet Art is the very element which, from a soul-aspect of human evolution, must not be absent in the world, in spite of the fact that Nature would be just as perfect as it is, even if there were no Art. Thus, the dead could go on living, if necessary—although it would be like the human being living in a barren, lifeless, naked world of Nature, a world devoid of Art—were the peculiar circumstance to arise that everyone who had died were to be immediately forgotten, after death, by those who had loved him. Whatever can be seen as thoughts, remaining in the souls of those who love the dead, is something which is, to be sure, an additional element, going beyond the immediate requirements of the world of the dead; yet, at the same time, it uplifts and beautifies the life of the dead. It cannot be compared with Art in the physical world—that is to say, it can be compared, but the comparison is a lame one—for it means for the dead, as I have said, an uplifting, a beautifying element, yet in a far higher sense than the beautifying influence of Art is for us, here, in the physical world.

Thus it is deeply significant for the whole existence of the world, if we unite our thoughts with the thoughts of the dead, and especially if we do this in the form which we have often spoken about, here. Above all, we should approach the dead with thoughts clothed in that language, in that language of concepts which is common both to the living and to the dead—in the language which we speak here, in Spiritual Science. For the dead understand what constitutes the contents of Spiritual Science, just as well as do the living. And, moreover, it never becomes alien to the dead.

It is precisely through the bringing together of conceptual ideas such as these, I believe, that we shall be able gradually to form a plastic picture of the spiritual world. We can thus find our way into what lies beyond the threshold—whence, in reality, there flows forth all that exists for us on this side of the threshold.

In the face of these phenomena, we must bear in mind that present-day humanity is shortsighted in its vision of the world—and this is justified, to be sure, because it forms part of the universal plan—at the same time, it really is more shortsighted than it needs to be. For, you see, when a materialistic person of the present day forms his ideas, his conceptions of the world, he thinks that these are the universally-accepted human ideas and conceptions. You know how difficult it is to convince a materialistically-minded person that there are also other ways of thinking than his own. The standpoint taken by the materialist causes him to say that anyone who does not think as he does is a fool. There is no greater inward intolerance than that of a materialist.

Hence, a materialistic person actually thinks, generally speaking:—“Oh, of course, in the past, men thought all manner of things as to the existence of the spiritual; they could hardly move a step, in their daily life, without suspecting the presence of spirits everywhere, or indeed without seeing them. But all this was sheer fancy—now, at last, we have progressed so far that we have discarded this childish play of the human race.”

And yet it would seem as if human beings ought to be able to see at each step how nonsensical such a conception really is.

I shall try to make this clear to you, by citing an example, which may appear to be far-fetched, and from an entirely different side than the one we have discussed to-day in essence.

Let us think, for a moment, about that picture, which we have often discussed from various aspects, relating to the first stage of human evolution on earth—of man's life in Paradise, as we find it described in the Bible. Let us think about this picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the first human beings—Eve biting into the apple and giving the apple to Adam. Let us think of the picture of the Serpent on the Tree, tempting Eve.

When the painter of our day paints this picture—and even to-day, the modern painters still occasionally do paint it—he paints it, to be sure, in such a way that the picture will show a woman as true to Nature as possible, and a still more naturalistic man, because this is modern ... Impressionism, Expressionism, and I do not know what else; in any case, a very naturalistic woman and a still more naturalistic man, then a naturalistic landscape, and a naturalistic serpent showing, of course, greedy naturalistic teeth, etc. This is actually the way it is painted.

Painters have not always painted in this way, however; for such a picture would not render the true facts, as we know them. We know that in the Serpent, we may recognize a symbol of the real Tempter, Lucifer. Moreover, Lucifer is a Being who, as we know, remained behind during the Moon Period, and who—in the way in which he appears during the Earth Period—may be symbolized by the Serpent. Nevertheless, the Serpent is not Lucifer, and this must somehow become evident, spiritually. In other words, this Lucifer must also be seen with the forces of the soul—he must be seen from within, through the effort of inner forces.

How is it possible to see him, my dear friends? Indeed, we bear within us all the impressions of Lucifer. We actually carry them about within us. Just as we carry about the impressions of Ahriman, so we carry these in us, also.

Now I shall explain to you as briefly as possible, without any proofs or detailed explanations—these you must find for yourselves, in our already existing literature on this subject—how it is possible to form a conception of Lucifer.

Man carries about within him the impulses of Lucifer. They live in him in such a way that they are centred in his head, and from there they permeate the astral body where the Luciferic principle has remained within him; that is to say they force their way into his head—whereas otherwise it is the Spirits of Form which have moulded his head—and they also force their way into what is formed by the astral force into the spinal cord.

Thus, if we were to draw the head of a man and prolongation, the spine, the result would be a Serpent, a serpent like form, with a human head. Of course, the whole thing should be imagined as an astral form—the head to some extent still resembling a human head, and the spinal cord appended to it and turning around like a serpent. Imagine this projected objectively—and you will have a serpent with a human head. That is, Lucifer viewed externally, in the form of an image, assumes the aspect of a serpent with a human head. Not a serpent with a serpent's head, for that would no longer be a Lucifer—that would be an earthly serpent, which has already, as an earthly creature, been subjected to the influence of the Spirits of Form.

Hence, if a painter wished to paint Lucifer on the Tree, he would have to imagine the Serpent coiled around the Tree with a human head looking out above. He would then be painting out of the knowledge gained through our Spiritual Science.

Thus, we should have to picture Adam and Eve by the side of the Tree, and—coiled into the Tree—the astral shape of the spinal cord, resembling, as I have said, a serpent body, together with the image of the human head. If the woman Eve, sees it first, it will, of course, take on the form of a woman's face.

If you go into the Museum here, and look at the painting of Master Bertram, you will see there, that in the Middle Ages this kind of serpent was still portrayed coiled on the Tree, as I have explained. It is most striking and sublime; for it proves to us that a painter living in the very heart of the Middle Ages could paint from out of the true and real concepts of the spiritual world. This is an undeniable proof for the fact that we need not go back so very many centuries; and there are many documents, still existing to-day, to show us that in those days people still knew something of what our present materialistic humanity has already forgotten.

Of course, in an exterior history of Art, this fact which I have just mentioned is never touched upon. Nevertheless, anyone—by adopting not only the modern materialistic attitude, but also the materialistic standpoint or conception—can convince himself that both the vision of the spiritual, and the disappearance of this vision, are events of only a few centuries ago. Anyone here in Hamburg can convince himself of this, by going to the Museum and looking at this Paradise-picture of Master Bertram, he will find, there, the irrefutable proof, furnished on the physical plane, that it was not at all so long ago that men were able, by means of atavistic clairvoyance—as we may call it—to look into the spiritual world, and to have knowledge of its mysteries in a way that was entirely different from the way of to-day.

We need only think how blindly people go through the world to-day; how, if they only wished to do so, they could convince themselves, even externally, on the physical plane that evolution takes place, in the human race.

The significant fact is that during the course of the last three to four centuries, the formerly extant, more atavistic and unconscious clairvoyance has been disappearing. For, naturally, Master Bertram would not have been able to develop Spiritual Science. He merely saw, still saw in the etheric world, what Lucifer was really like, and then painted him accordingly. It was an unconscious, instinctive clairvoyance.

In order that man should acquire the external form of vision, the old way of looking at the spiritual world had to disappear. But it must be acquired anew by man. And the time must gradually come, only of course, this must be in the sphere of consciousness—when what has been lost, must be striven after anew. For this reason, the way must be prepared by Spiritual Science. People can approach the spiritual world again only if they study Spiritual Science. But this Spiritual Science must really bring an insight into the spiritual world.

To-day it is possible to prove scientifically, as it were how far natural science can bring the world forward. When a scientifically-trained person to-day speaks about such matters, he really speaks about the soul-apparatus, about the bodily instrument of soul-life. Now, if you try to investigate in the descriptions available to-day—they are generally called psycho-physiology—even those written by the most significant modern scientists, you will find there, what they have to say about the soul-instrument. You will find that these people express themselves, everywhere, in a most peculiar way. They say, for instance:—Let us consider the life of impressions and reactions, and the life of conceptual ideas; to this life of impressions and conceptual ideas belongs, in every case, the soul-apparatus. And then they describe what happens in the brain and in the nervous system when a man has impressions or forms conceptions. The parallel bodily process can always be found. But when these scientists approach feeling and the will, they cannot find a parallel bodily process. They cannot find anything.

That a thing like this does not come to light, but remains unnoticed, is due only to the fact that natural science and its rear-guard—we cannot really say rear-guard, because a rearguard is useful, and the monistic rear-guard of natural science is entirely superfluous—because natural science and its rearguard, the Monists, simply crow about the fact that for every process of thought and sensation, a certain physical parallel process is to be found, and that thought and sensation are bound to the brain. But they do not speak of shades of feeling or will. At the most, they speak of shades of feeling—in other words, a certain nuance of conceptual thought. But they do not go as far as feeling and will.

And the honest scientists say:—Our science does not extend as far as feeling and will. You can read for yourselves what I have just said, in the natural-scientific literature. It is possible to corroborate it in all spheres of science. For instance, in the case of Dr. Th. Ziehen, the well known modern psychiatrist and psycho-physiologist—in his book, you can find most easily of all a confirmation of what I have just said. He points out the single processes which correspond to thought and to sensation. He goes as far as certain shades of feeling; but he does not reach to actual feeling and will. Thus he disavows feeling and will. They do not exist at all, he says.

Now could we really find any clearer scientific proof than this, for the fact that natural-scientific thought extends only over the sphere of the temporal—only over that which we lay aside with death; whereas, at the same time, there is something that extends beyond this, living, precisely, as I have indicated, in feeling and will, and yet so far removed from the body that the scientist simply does not find it, indeed he rejects it and disavows it!

This is, accordingly, the reason why the scientists boast that feeling and will do not exist: because they cannot be found by the ordinary science. Indeed, it is natural science itself, as we see, that proves to us today that feeling and will are not bound to the body as such, like thought and sensation.

This is connected with the fact that our thoughts separate themselves from us; after death they appear spread out, outside of us. Feeling and will remain ours. And out of feeling and will springs forth the power to create the thought-tableau. He who wishes to do so to-day, can show by means of what is strictly scientific, that feeling and will are not connected with what we call “Nature”, but that, on the contrary, they pass out after death, as astral body and Ego, and remain united with the human individuality—kindling themselves to a new consciousness, in the way that I have described, through the fact that what spreads itself out is all etheric, that is, mirrors itself first in the astral body and then in the Ego when the astral body has been laid aside.

This is all as it should be. Modern science does not refute Spiritual Science, but confirms it. It really does confirm it. If it were possible to arouse even a little understanding, it would be seen that, for a right understanding, it is precisely an honest natural science that points to a justification of Spiritual Science, even in all its separate details.

Spiritual Science is, as you see—in view of all that has been said—something which must in our day begin to enter into the development of humanity, which must begin to have a grip on humanity, because otherwise the human race will reach the point where it will understand only the temporal, and when it will know nothing of the eternal, which lives in us. The time will come, when people will first recognise this, and when they will also concern themselves more with the development of their feeling-life. For only through feeling and will do we unite ourselves with the world which is not devoid of thought.

The objection might be made:—Very well, then, you feel the spiritual world, but you do not will it. But no, it is precisely through feeling and will that we are united with the objective thought-world—with the thoughts that live, and which we do not merely think. And just as truly as in the past mankind possessed a power of seeing into the spiritual world, just so truly will it have to win this power again in the future. Man will be able to win it again, however, only if he determines first to enter a little way into the thought-world which is no longer recognised by our generation, as coming from the spiritual world.

In order to attain this, a very great deal of what is rumoured about to-day as concept and percept will have to be corrected. Indeed, it would be hard to believe how thoughtlessly, as a matter of fact, human beings of to-day—allow me to use a paradox—how thoughtlessly human beings think. This really would be hard to believe. They make definitions which they are unshakably convinced are right, and cannot be refuted in any way. It belongs to the task of the spiritual scientist, however, to test all the more carefully what it is that convinces people so unshakably—just because it appears to them to be entirely logical and thus they are convinced of it. What, for instance—they think—could be a better definition than this, when someone is asked, in this modern materialistic Age of ours “What is a true concept?”—that he answers by saying:—“It is a true concept, when I form an inner picture of an object which is actually present, outside in the world. This is then a true picture of an object which exists outside.” In other words, everyone, in our day, would give this definition: “Truth consists in the conformity of a picture which we form in thought, to something actually existing outside.” We can now very easily show, however, if we examine concepts, that true concept has nothing to do with what we usually call by this name—has nothing whatever to do with it, in so far as it is supposed to be a picture of something having actual existence. It can easily be shown that actual existence goes along quite another path than does the picture which we fancy to be concept. You see, if this were true: that a concept is only true when it conforms with something having actual existence, naturally, then, it would also be true only so long as that which has actual existence verifies it.

Thus a concept might be compared with a portrait which someone has made of a human being. The portrait is good, if it resembles the person in question. Yet it has nothing to do with his being. The fact that the picture corresponds to the person, does not lead to an inner truth in the picture. Imagine to yourself that you have painted the picture of some man who then dies, soon afterwards. At first, the picture corresponded to what was there, but afterwards to what no longer exists. There is no connection between actual existence or life, and the portrait; as far as life is concerned, it is an entirely indifferent matter whether the picture is a true one or not. Such a connection is quite imaginary, when we look at things really logically. The essential thing is to experience things inwardly. It is this inner experience which humanity must again acquire.

In order to acquire this, however—and it is just during these hard, sorrowful days that we can be brought to realise in a special measure how necessary this is—in order to acquire this, it is necessary above all that humanity should acquire again a feeling for Truth, for real Truth.

Materialism gradually estranges us completely from Truth. We have gone astray through materialism—and especially where the idea of Truth is concerned. Compare for yourselves, for instance, the journalistic descriptions of today—and how many people read nothing but the newspapers, nowadays—compare these with the real events, which you may happen to have seen yourself! When you read this again, in the newspapers, you will find that the reporter has written it up in the way that he believes will make an impression on his readers. All feeling that such descriptions should correspond to the Truth grows weaker and weaker. And so long as this feeling for Truth does not permeate humanity, the impulse that leads from the sense-world into the spiritual world cannot be awakened to activity in human souls. For, with this want of any concepts of Truth in our thoughts, our concepts become falsified. How often, for instance, do we come across the following case:

Someone writes about Spiritual Science—let us suppose about what I have published in connection with Spiritual Science. He writes about this, and he cannot help saying—owing to his materialistic mentality—that everything is invented, and that it is not permissible to invent such things. And then he continues by investigating the question of how it can be possible for a man to be so fantastic.

As a matter of fact, this article actually appeared not so very long ago. The writer tries to find out how it is possible that a man can be so fantastic! And then he relates where this man comes from—in this case, it was I—where he used to live (not his recent abode, but where the writer reports him to have lived) and how it is because of his peculiar race-mixture that he can invent such fantastic things. And then this reporter himself invents the most incredible things, impelled by his materialistic mentality. And here you have an example of what I mean: People simply take hold of lies, and allow truth to become inwardly distorted.

Of course, no direct proof can be supplied for this. Yet what could be more false than to accuse someone of inventing fantastic things, and then to invent the most incredibly fantastic things about him, oneself! If you will study our modern life carefully, you will find that there is a very widespread lack of any feeling of responsibility, which would see to it that everything one says should correspond to the Reality. Unless we possess this feeling for Truth most intensively, we cannot gain access to the spiritual world. Nor can we understand why we must believe to be true, what Spiritual Science brings down for us as Truth, from the spiritual world.

But our thinking is far too inadequate for a true contemplation of this sort—and we cling too much to our own personal interests, to be able to see how untruthfulness glitters in everything and how its fragments can be found in all the happenings of life.

A true feeling, a true conception of this is what should occupy our thoughts, and should constitute the first preparatory steps in Spiritual Science. Thoughts like these should be, I might say, a kind of conscious preparation for what Man's future really should be. For, the welfare of the human race can become a reality only if our souls become united again with the spirit. Spiritual Science is not something that we seek in the form of a new kind of sensation, but something whereof we know that it must arise, because humanity needs it. And we ought to feel indebted, as it were, to Spiritual Science, if we observe, in a clear and lucid way the course of human evolution.

How much richer we grow, through what Spiritual Science can give us, because the world widens out for us more and more, through the fact that spiritual reality is added to physical reality, in human evolution! Human beings have been more and more cut off, in this materialistic age, from the world in which man lives between death and a new birth. Spiritual Science must give back to them, again, that life which comprises the whole human being—including that part which remains when man no longer possesses a physical body. In this respect, the physical world has nothing to give us.

It can weigh heavily, very heavily, upon our souls—especially just at the present difficult time—to see a volume like the one by Ernst Haeckel, which has just appeared. He calls it “Thoughts of Eternity”. Now, Ernst Haeckel is one of the most distinguished men of our day. This book, “Thoughts of Eternity”, starts out with the present Great War. What is the chief content of this book? The chief content of this newest book by Haeckel, “Thoughts of Eternity”, is expressed in these words: What can this particular war teach us? Thousands and thousands of people die a death of external violence, without any necessity whatsoever. “Must we not see”—asks Haeckel—“in this very war, the proof for the fact that all thoughts on eternity and infinity are absurd? Does not this same war, which ruins men's lives through outer chance, such as a bullet, for example—does it not show us that there is nothing beyond ordinary physical life?”

Of course, there will be other people of our day, who will be led to a different kind of thinking about eternity, through these events—to quite the opposite kind of thoughts of eternity, to thoughts which, in any case, call up in us the feeling that those who pass through the portal of death in times such as these continue their tasks for humanity in other worlds, and that the very sacrifice which they make, partly constitutes, in their new life, the starting point for what they have to fulfil when they no longer carry a physical body.

It is possible to prove all sorts of things, through ordinary science: it is possible to prove, for instance, that ordinary science enables man to construct all sorts of excellent kinds of apparatus, which raise the standard of human life and advance human civilisation—in a peaceful sense. Yet this same science can also construct the most terrible things—for the destruction of human life. External science enables man to construct both good and destructive things, and to prove all sorts of facts.

In order really to penetrate into the world where the eternal lives, there is need for Spiritual Science. And this Spiritual Science—I have already spoken to you about this, at least to some of you—shows us, among other things, and makes it quite clear to us, that those who leave their physical body at an early age, before the ordinary span of life on the physical plane has elapsed, give over their etheric body to the etheric world, and continue to live as individualities. Then, the spirit and the sense of Spiritual Science show us that such an etheric body, which would still have been able to support a physical body for a long time, still contains vital forces, when it is handed over to the etheric world—forces which would have been able to keep the physical body alive for decades. It exists in the etheric world, as illustrated by the example I have already cited to you.

What a human being acquires, through his sacrificial death continues to live in his individuality. It continues to live in him, especially at a time like the present; and we are able to gain an insight into the significance of what is taking place only when we look at things with our spiritual eyes, through Spiritual Science. Then our attention will be drawn to the fact that the spiritual counterpart of what is now happening on European soil, as the spiritual correlation, the spiritual parallel process of the mighty and sorrowful events taking place on the physical plane, here in Europe—since all physical events are under the guidance of the spiritual world—must flow through physical events, into the future of human evolution.

But this will bear fruit only if human souls, living in physical bodies on the earth, acquire a consciousness of the fact that an active and helping influence is going out to them—from those forces which live in the spiritual world as the result of thousands and thousands of sacrificial deaths: and that they can submit themselves to this influence, in a sense, in order to be able to continue in the future their activity on this earth—united with the dead through that consciousness of the reality of a spiritual world, which can be acquired by the human soul.

This is what Spiritual Science must give to men—also in connection with these events now taking place. And human beings will then be able to render fruitful for the future, in the right way, the spiritual counterpart of this mightiest of all world-events, and they will be able also to think and to feel, in the right way.

From the courage of fighters,
from the blood of battles,
from the sorrow of those who are left behind,
from a nation's sacrifice,
will ripen spiritual fruit—
if, toward the spirit-kingdom,
souls will spirit-conscious turn.

From Buddha to Christ

Budapest, May 31, 1909

I do not wish to offer you here an observation about the philosophy of religion or a treatise on literary history, nor do I wish to give you a scientific lecture about the subject matter. I simply want to tell you what Spiritual Science or occultism have to say about such great individualities as Buddha and Christ, more precisely what knowledge they can offer from the vantage point of Rosicrucian occultism.

In a lecture intended for more advanced theosophists, I presume you will permit me to speak more intimately of such truths. I shall present to you broad outlines, and I will incorporate certain details into them. Rosicrucian occultism presents one of the great principles of occult theosophical investigation from which spiritual life should flow into our hearts. Even though the goals and ideals of theosophy can also be found outside the Theosophical Society, there is nevertheless a difference in the means employed by anyone seriously trying to struggle for the attainment and right application of knowledge and truth, for occult investigation can and must flow directly into life.

Allow me to illustrate this point with a trivial example. The human soul is like a stove that does not need to be persuaded to heat a room because heating is its function. The stove does this on its own, provided we put wood into it and light it. It could be objected that the appearance of the wood does not suggest to us that it can generate heat, and yet it does precisely that. By putting some firewood, the appearance of which is so different from the stove, into it and lighting it, we bring warmth into our house. Similarly, by getting used to spiritual scientific concepts, we also become accustomed to our ability to make judgments and to orient ourselves freely in this world. It is not our task to preach ideals but rather to provide human souls with the fuel that can generate spiritual wisdom, genuine brotherliness, and true humanity. To realize this is our goal.

What we designate as the Rosicrucian stream arose in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the spiritual stream of Christianity was already obscured since it had taken on an external form. At a time when Christianity in the outer world increasingly was taking on an external form and when its true original meaning had faded, Rosicrucianism, received the task to cultivate ancient wisdom and to preserve the treasures of primordial wisdom. In the outside world, wherever people deemed only external forms and hardened dogmas to be important, they abjured and cursed anything that was venerated in the mysteries as the highest and holiest truths. One frequently heard the words: “I curse Skythianos; I curse Boddha; I curse Zarathas.” These are the three names that were venerated in greatest secrecy in the mysteries and in the Rosicrucian mystery schools as sacred names of the masters.

Zarathas is the same individual as Zarathustra—not the Zarathustra known to history, but the exalted individual who founded ancient Persian culture and who was the teacher in the occult schools of that time. Skythianos was a highly developed individual of ancient times. In one of his subsequent incarnations he led the occult schools of Central Asia, and later he also became the teacher of esoteric schools in Europe. Boddha and Buddha are one and the same person.

In order to understand what an initiate felt when he heard these three names and in order to gain some idea of what they could give him, we have to go back in human evolution and examine the character of Rosicrucian occultism more closely. Let us gain an understanding through listening and through looking back into the past. There have always been highly advanced personalities who stood out from the masses and to whom average people looked up in reverence as one would to high ideals. To look up to the individuals who had reached such a lofty stage of wisdom and intellectual power had the effect of animating the average person's moral sense and vital energies. Even today the forces of these lofty spirits flow into our finer bodies.

Let us look back into the past to all the spiritual individualities of whom I want to speak to you, all the way back to the ancient Indian culture. If we went further back in human evolution to the remote age of Atlantis and its end, this would lead us to the event that separates us from an even more ancient epoch of humanity where our souls led lives greatly different from the ones they lead in our present physical bodies. However, rather than dealing in detail with a description of life and culture in those ancient times, let us today be content to illuminate the answer to the question: How was humanity guided in ancient times, and where did the forces that influenced it come from?

When a seer whose spiritual eye is opened so that he knows how to read the fine script of the Akasha Chronicle looks back into the spiritual worlds, he discovers the sites from which the culture and all spiritual life of those times emanated. Our souls can discover the sites where the masters and their disciples assembled in the mystery schools of that time. There were many such Mystery Centers on the ancient Atlantean continent, and they differed from those of today and were given a different name. They were not just churches and not just schools, but rather a combination of both. Those who searched for truth could find both religion and wisdom in the mystery schools; here, religion and wisdom were one. Using a modern word, we can characterize the concept of those cultic centers, the mystery schools, by the term “Atlantean Oracles.” This is the name given to them by the European mystery schools, but originally they were called something entirely different.

In the Atlantean Oracles and their centers of wisdom, spiritual life was differentiated in the same way that external knowledge and the areas of trade and professions are subdivided in external life today. There were various branches of spiritual investigation and occult wisdom in ancient Atlantis, but everything in those times depended on different conditions. Wisdom varied from one oracle to another according to the capacities of the human beings and their external environment. A connection existed between certain human capacities and certain planets, that is, certain mystical occult capacities were connected with special planets. Therefore, on the Atlantean continent we should distinguish between oracles of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Our present capacities, too, developed out of the cosmos, as did our earth, and they are in each case tied to different planets and their influences. On Atlantis, people who were suited to develop this or that cognitive capacity were chosen from the population and assigned to one of the seven oracles. Of the seven oracles, which were named after the seven planets in ancient Atlantis, the Sun Oracle stood out from all the others, but next to it the Vulcan Oracle prepared itself in secrecy for its future task.

Each of these oracles had emanated from the cosmos according to its capacity, but there was one center in which the capacities of all seven oracles flowed together, and it was here that the wisdom of the seven oracles in Atlantis coalesced. The adepts of this center, of the Holy Sun Oracle, had been initiated into the mystery and service of what we today know as the Sun. We should not forget that the physical sun is only the external expression or physiognomy—the body and garment—of the spiritual life of the exalted Sun-Being.

All of you have heard of the time when the sun separated from the earth, and along with the physical sun those beings abandoned the earthly arena who had advanced through the human state and, therefore, could no longer use the earth for their development. After the moon too had left, the earth was able to realize its destination of becoming the abode of humanity. If the sun alone had influenced the earth, the latter would have gone through such a rapid development that human beings would have become old soon after birth. By contrast, if our earth had been only under the influence of the moon, human beings would have been stiffened and become mummies Development would have been too slow, and their bodies would have reached a state of rigidity and lignification. However, through a wise guiding force, sun and moon maintained a balance in the external influence they exert on the earth; and this enabled earth and human beings to develop at a speed suitable to them. The beings of Mars, Mercury, Venus, and so on, who did not need the forces that had left with the moon and earth for their development, departed with the sun to take up their own abode. Yet they continued to be connected with the earth and sent their beneficial forces down to it in the sunlight.

During the ancient Atlantean epoch, the adepts of the Sun Oracle had been initiated into the deeds of this lofty Sun-Being. The Great Initiate who was the leader of this highest oracle had been initiated in the most comprehensive ways into these mysteries. The entire ancient Atlantean and, as we shall see, also the post-Atlantean culture proceeded from him. The “Manu,” as this leader of the Sun Oracle was called—although the name doesn't really matter all that much—did not choose the main representatives of the post-Atlantean culture from among the so-called scholars and scientists, nor from the clairvoyants and Magi of that time. The people who were endowed with spiritual and psychic knowledge and who in those days were approximately comparable to the scientists and scholars of our time were not considered suitable by him; rather plain people who had begun gradually to lose the clairvoyant faculty were chosen. Our present state of consciousness began to develop only at the end of the Atlantean epoch. That was the time when the old clairvoyant consciousness was waning, gradually giving way to a full consciousness of self, to the ability to address the “I” in oneself. The great Manu gathered about him those who were able to function intellectually, not the clairvoyants and Magi but those who absorbed and developed the rudiments of arithmetic. They were the despised who knew nothing in the opinion of the leading people, and in this they were not unlike the theosophists today. Yet it was they with whom the great Manu journeyed to the sanctuary in Asia from which the postAtlantean culture was to emanate.

Disregarding America for this purpose, let us say that Europe, Asia, and Africa have all been populated by the descendants of the ancient Atlanteans who had moved to these continents under Manu's leadership. This initiate of the Sun Oracle now had to take care that the founding of this post-Atlantean culture and the evolution of its human beings would proceed under the proper influence. From the very beginning he had to take care that everything that was valuable for a future development should be carried forward. This preservation of values from the past is a law of occultism, of spiritual economy, but it is also a law that can only be known through spiritual wisdom.

Now the Great Initiate took something very valuable with him when he journeyed from ancient Atlantis to Europe. To accomplish this, he had—let me put it this way—traveled to and inspected the other oracles. You all know that in the case of ordinary people the etheric body separates from the astral body and the ego soon after death and gradually dissolves in the universal ether. The same happens with the astral body after a certain time, but this law is sometimes broken in the interest of spiritual economy. This is what happened in the case of the etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates who were the leaders of the ancient Atlantean oracles.

What does it mean when we say we work on ourselves? It means that we purify the etheric body and the astral body. Now, once purified, the spiritualized etheric and astral bodies do not dissolve after death but are preserved in accordance with the law of spiritual economy. In short, it was known in the mysteries how to preserve the valuable etheric and astral bodies developed by the great initiates, but it would lead me too far afield to speak about this in detail. Suffice it to say that these bodies were kept by the preservers of the mystery schools.

It is for this reason that the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle journeyed to the other Atlantean oracles to collect and take with him the seven etheric bodies of the greatest Atlantean initiates. And then he attracted through his wisdom a number of human beings who were to become fit for their coming culture. He taught these humans who were gathered around him so that they became increasingly more capable and pure. What followed may be called an art. After some time had elapsed, it became possible to incorporate the seven more important etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates of the ancient Atlantean oracles into seven human beings. In regard to their egos, their power of judgment, and so on, they were simple people whose existence had no significance from an external point of view. However, they carried within them the seven most highly developed etheric bodies of the seven most significant initiates. These etheric bodies had streamed into these people, thereby enabling them to exude the great, powerful visions and truths of evolution through inspiration from above. Thus, they were able to speak of all this exalted wisdom.

The Great Initiate sent these seven bearers of wisdom to India where people still had a sense and an understanding of the spiritual and of spiritual worlds. In India human beings still had the feeling and the consciousness of having at one time emanated from a primordial spiritual world and of having been born from the womb of the Godhead. Therefore, the whole physical world appeared to them as maya, as illusion, and they longed to return to this world of the gods, to those divine-spiritual beings with whom they had once lived. To such people the seven bearers of wisdom could speak. They were called the Holy Rishis, and it was they who inaugurated the dawn of our post-Atlantean culture. The people who had preserved for themselves the consciousness of and the longing for the spiritual world with its divine-spiritual beings were thus given the opportunity to learn more about this world and to find the way back to it.

Subsequent ages gave birth to not only peoples who were destined to look into the spiritual worlds, but also to those who wanted to contribute to the founding of a new culture. They were meant to become fond of the physical world and to see it not only as maya or illusion. Rather, they began to understand that this physical world is but the expression or physiognomy of the spiritual world that lies behind it. This was the second epoch, the ancient Persian or Zarathustran culture. Ordinary history records only a relatively late Zarathustra because historians are unaware that it was customary in ancient times for a successor to receive the name of a great leader from the past. I am here referring to the greatest of all Zarathustras, who was one of the most intimate disciples of the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. His task was to find the connection between the physical and the spiritual world. He had to teach his disciples that the physical sphere of the sun is the body of spiritual beings who have their abode on the sun and that this whole physical world should be viewed as the members and limbs of the physical body of divine-spiritual beings. Just as the sun is surrounded by a great aura, so the human being is surrounded by his or her own small aura, which is a microcosmic expression of the sun's great aura. The sun is the body of the Sun Spirit who revealed himself in the Sun Oracle of the ancient Atlantean epoch. Zarathustra beheld this spirit in clairvoyant vision. He also designated the aura of the sun as Sun Spirit, and this is the same being whom he also called Ahura Mazdao. Occultists of later ages called it Ormuzd.

Zarathustra taught his disciples to see Ahura Mazdao in the physical sun and not to be led astray by Ahriman. Ahriman has lived in the physical world since the last third of the Atlantean epoch and attacks the human soul through sense perception, that is to say from the outside. By contrast, Lucifer attacks the soul from within. Zarathustra had to kindle in the hearts of humans the love for the great Sun Spirit, and he did this in powerful words that cannot be adequately rendered in our modern languages. All the magnificent words that you find in the Vedas and Gathas, no matter how beautiful, are but a feeble superficial expression of the great and lofty words originally uttered by Zarathustra. In our language, they can be approximated by the following:

“I wish to speak, now hearken and listen to me, you from near and from afar, who are filled with longing for these words. I want to speak about that which is the highest truth to me in this world and what was revealed to me by the great and mighty Ahura Mazdao. Hearken and listen to me now and mark my words carefully: No longer shall the teacher of falsehoods, the evil one whose lips bore witness to an evil faith, lead you astray for He—the mighty Ahura Mazdao—has manifested himself! Those who do not want to listen to the words as I say them and to the meaning that I give to them will experience evil things when the course of time reaches its end.”

And at other times Zarathustra said this: “So great and mighty is He who revealed Himself to me in the sun that I surrender everything for him. I rejoice in sacrificing to Him the life of my body, the etheric existence of my senses, and the expression of my deeds”—the astral body. Such was the vow that Zarathustra made a long time ago.

Zarathustra had two disciples. To one of them he revealed through spiritual means everything that one can perceive with clairvoyant astral organs. This disciple was reincarnated under the name Hermes, the Egyptian Hermes. To the second disciple he imparted truths that one can know through the clairvoyant etheric body: the wisdom of the Akasha Chronicle. This second disciple was Moses, and you can find the wisdom imparted to him in the Book of Moses of the Old Testament.

When the first disciple was reincarnated as Hermes, he bore within him the astral body of Zarathustra, who had revealed to him not only his teachings, but also his own nature. Such a transfer is possible for what Hermes had received was nothing else but the astral body Zarathustra had sacrificed for him. Hence it was Zarathustra's wisdom that Hermes, the founder of the third post-Atlantean epoch, proclaimed.

The other disciple, to whom Zarathustra had given wisdom through the etheric body, was also born again. When he reincarnated, the etheric body that Zarathustra had sacrificed was woven into him. This disciple was Moses. You can find such facts recorded in religious documents, but in a veiled manner only. Read the story of the birth of Moses. What happened then? The child was placed into an ark of bulrushes which was then put into the water. What does that mean? It means that he was completely cut off from the world. His ego and astral body were not to become manifest until they were permeated by the principle of the etheric body. How can this take place? During the time when Moses lay isolated in the ark on the water, the etheric body that had been woven into him became illuminated. Only then could the astral body and the ego begin to work in him. Are not the powerful images of Genesis, which will occupy humanity for a long time to come, images taken from the Akasha Chronicle? These things cannot be understood without the aid of occultism.

We now come to the fourth epoch of the post-Atlantean culture, to the Graeco-Roman epoch. Up to this point, human beings were developed in such a way that they should learn to love the earth. Yet there were also those who had been the companions of the gods in the Atlantean age, and it is therefore justified to ask what had become of the egos of the great initiates of that time. Atlantean egos had dwelled in a softer and finer body, and for them existence on earth was such that individualities had to go through an incarnation only for the time necessary to maintain the connection between the world's primordial spiritual wisdom and humanity.

The great Buddha is one of the individualities who was actually able to imbue the oriental writings with that deep wisdom and spiritual force that we find in them now. As occultists, we are able to understand the communications relating to him, and we may even take them literally. For example, it is true when we read about him: “At his birth he shone like the bright light of the sun.” We can also take it literally when Buddha says: “I have entered my last incarnation and need not return to earth unless I do it on my own free will.” During the post-Atlantean epoch he also toiled to pass through stages of intellectual insights, and we can understand him when he says that the lines of incarnations and different stages of initiations through which he had passed flashed up before him:

Before me stood the splendor of the forms,
But my intuition was not yet pure!

I saw the Spirits of Insight,
But my intuition was not yet pure!

I saw the site of initiation,
But my intuition was not yet pure!

I was the companion among them:
Now my intuition was pure!

This is Buddha's illumination. He was one of those with whom we live in Rosicrucian theosophy.

We have already named three of the Masters: Zarathas, Skythianos, and Boddha or Buddha, and we can see how the lives of these leading personalities extend into our present time. An occultist can test these findings. In the realm of spiritual economy we not only find what these exalted men left behind; everything else that is of value to humanity is preserved. Take, for example, an individual such as Galileo, who in the sixteenth century achieved such significant results in physics. Galileo had an etheric body that was not allowed to die with him. Far away from the place where Galileo had worked, there lived a man in the middle of the eighteenth century who prepared himself for a great task after two decades of a devotional childhood. Deep in Russia, at the White Sea, lived a man in the plainest circumstances. His name was Michael Lomonosov. Unknown and without means, he hiked to Moscow and subsequently laid the foundations for Russian grammar. Lomonosov bore within him the etheric body of Galileo. And now it happened that a personality, who knew that the etheric body of Galileo had been preserved and who, in fact, had been present when this connection was being investigated occultly, knew nothing about Michael Lomonosov. This is no disgrace since on the physical plane one cannot know everything. But here we see that valuable elements are preserved and the past is connected with the future through the law of spiritual economy. In the Rosicrucian mysteries, too, we encounter the individuality who lived in the body of Buddha on the physical plane. During the Atlantean age, he had lived only as a bodhisattva, but later on he descended into the physical body of Buddha.

Let us now look at the times of Buddha and Zarathustra and observe what souls had to do in the ages between these two spiritual leaders. On the one hand, we have the teachings of Ahura Mazdao, on the other, that side of humanity that increasingly became fond of the earth. Let us envision once again the Indian, Persian, and Chaldean-AssyrianBabylonian times during which the soul gradually lost its connection with the spiritual world. Then, in ancient Greece the soul came to love the earth so deeply that the statement of a famous Greek, “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the world of shadows,” was accepted as truth. During this fourth post-Atlantean, the Graeco-Roman epoch, everything in the external world appeared to be beautiful and charming. The seer may, for example, observe the ruins of the Temple of Paestrum with his physical eye and revel admiringly in the beauty of the temple's form and in the intriguing charm of its lines. However, when he takes his eyes off the temple and looks for a similar substance in the spiritual world, he finds nothing. Everything seems to be blotted out. This is what these souls experienced between death and rebirth. They were isolated within the cold circumference of their individuality, cut off from all spiritual things and longing only for the physical world and all its beauty.

Ahura Mazdao himself, the Leader of the Sun, had to descend to earth to bring light into this icy separateness. He had to become a human being in the physical world in order to help both the living and the dead. He had to be a human among humans! The high and the magnificent that lives in the sun descended to earth and revealed itself in and to humanity. Previously, it had revealed itself in the elements, for example to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and in the lightning on Sinai. The Israelites were to make no graven image of their God. Why? Because no external name can be given to “Me,” the Divine Being; only an entirely different name can express the “I am the I am!” The only possibility of discovering the spirit of the sun's name is to seek it in the human being. That which lives as “I” in human beings is the Christ-Being.

The Jehova revelation precedes the Christ. That was at the time when the Christ-Being could gradually descend to the earth. What had Zarathustra once vowed to the high Sun-Being? What sacrifice did he want to make to him? His body, senses, life, and speech. Zarathustra was reincarnated as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He could then build up the etheric and astral bodies that he had sacrificed. He was reborn as Zarathas or Nazarathos, and he became the teacher of Pythagoras, who himself was reincarnated as one of the three Wise Men of the East and became one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. Zarathustra, who had once sacrificed his etheric and astral bodies, was also able to give up his external sheath to Him whose coming he had once announced. As the Jesus of Nazareth of Western occultism, he could place his physical body at the disposal of the Sun Spirit and was then able to say, “I am the Light of the World!”

The Christ-Being was known in all the mysteries. In ancient India, at the time of the Seven Rishis, the being who represented Christ was called Vishva Karman. Zarathustra named him Ahura Mazdao, and in Egypt he was known as Osiris. The Jewish people called him Jahve or Jehova, and then in the fourth cultural epoch this very same being lived for three years on our physical earth. This is the being who will in the future reunite the sun with the earth. Mystically, the Christ united Himself with the earth when the blood streamed from His wounds at Golgotha. At that time He appears in the aura of the earth, and He has been in it ever since.

Who was the first man to see Christ in the aura of the earth? It was St. Paul, who did more than anyone else for the dissemination of Christianity. What caused Saul to become Paul? Neither the teachings nor the events that took place in Palestine, but the event at Damascus, which was of a super-sensible nature. Before that experience, Paul could not believe that the one who had died so disgracefully on the cross had been the Christ, but as an initiate of the cabala he knew that the Christ would be visible in the aura of the earth once He had appeared on earth. That was the experience of Paul, which transformed him from Saul to Paul. Paul said of himself that he was born prematurely, and the same is also said of the Buddha. This means that such an individuality does not descend too deeply into the physical realm. When Paul became clairvoyant before he came to Damascus, he saw and knew who Christ was.

The Christ was working in Buddha as a bodhisattva, and it was He who was now the planetary spirit of the earth since the event of Golgotha and who could since be found in the physical aura of the earth. Through the Christ-Principle a new light has been kindled in this world and beyond. The body of Jesus of Nazareth—the etheric and astral bodies and the ego of Jesus of Nazareth—exist in many copies in the spiritual world. Such a statement expresses something of great significance, and for a better understanding of it we can draw on nature for a number of enlightening examples. Just think of a grain seed that grows into a stalk and multiplies itself many times in the process. This apparently simple natural process is a parable of the events in the super-sensible world that are governed by certain laws. Many copies of the etheric and astral bodies and of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth exist in order to be incorporated in the preliminary bearers of the Christ-Principle. Everything connected with the Christ-Principle is so momentous that humanity can grasp it only little by little.

St. Augustine, for example, bore within him a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth; and once you know that, you will be able to appreciate his life, his errors, and his accomplishments. His ego and his astral body were left to their own resources, and only in his etheric body did his great mystical gift come to life. St. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas had copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their souls, and it is this fact that allowed them to be such dynamic teachers. They worked from a sphere in which Christ had once lived.

In some cases external events such as natural catastrophes or similar things enhance this weaving of spiritual bodies into the soul of the recipient. It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that lightning struck and killed his little sister in the room where he happened to be standing, but spared him. He interpreted this lightning bolt next to him to the effect that elemental forces were necessary to help him take up the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Elisabeth of Thüringen also had an imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in her soul.

Zarathustra, or Jesus of Nazareth, is one of the three Masters of the Rosicrucians. Many copies of his ego, that is of the ego in which the Christ Spirit Himself had dwelled, can be found in the spiritual world. The copies of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth are waiting for us in the spiritual world to be utilized for the future evolution of humankind. People who endeavor to strive upward to the heights of spiritual wisdom and love are candidates for these copies of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth. They become bearers of Christ, true Christophori. On this earth they shall be heralds of His Second Coming.

We derive strength for our future work from the knowledge of which individualities are behind the missions of important human beings. It is possible to test these facts. Not everyone is able to investigate what goes on behind the curtains of the physical world, but everyone can examine the results of such investigations by looking at the Holy Scriptures written before and after Christ. These facts can illuminate the way to understanding; and if they do, they change within us and become spiritual life blood.

Wishing to bear in mind the importance for the present time of penetrating into the world in accordance with Spiritual Science, we should not fail to notice that this penetration, as we may have gathered from the various studies made here, will bring with it an essential increase in man's understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And it may be said: whoever in his whole soul, his whole heart and not just by ordinary intelligent reflection, unites himself with the knowledge gained by anthroposophical research, when in any other way he is connected with modern culture, will have repeatedly to ask himself what attitude to the Mystery of Golgotha is taken by anyone to a certain degree changed through knowledge derived from this anthroposophical research? From very various points of view we have surveyed this most important of all events for mankind. Today we will try to look at it in such a way that we shall be striving to follow the stream flowing from this mystery down into the most recent times. The fruitfulness of anthroposophical knowledge can be shown in a certain sense by its success, or at any rate its ability to succeed, in rightly understanding in a similar way what has happened both in the world and in mankind up to the present. Whereas human observation otherwise generally recoils in fear from having recent history permeated by what is spiritual.

In contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha we shall have our attention drawn above all to the impossibility of this Mystery of Golgotha being grasped, being understood, if we wish to start out from a material study of world events. It is only when we try to grasp a spiritual event spiritually that we arrive at area understanding of the eatery of Golgotha. It is true that you may say the Mystery of Golgotha is for all that like other historical events a physical event of the physical world. But only recently I have pointed out to you that knowledge at the present time, when sincere, cannot say this. It cannot recognise the Gospels as historical records in the same sense as other historical records, neither can it accept in the same sense as historical records the few highly contestable historical notes which, in addition to the Gospels, we have about the Mystery of Golgotha. These cannot indeed be taken like the historical accounts about Socrates or Alexander the Great, about Julius Caesar, the Emperor Augustus and people of this kind. And I have often emphasised that just what creates the special relation of Spiritual Science to the Mystery of Golgotha is that Spiritual Science will establish the Mystery of Golgotha as a reality at the very time when every other method of mankind, all other paths of mankind, will be found to lead to nothing when trying to draw near to the Mystery of Golgotha as a reality. For the Mystery of Golgotha must be understood spiritually as a spiritual event. And it is only through spiritual understanding of the Mystery at Golgotha that the external reality of this Mystery of Golgotha can be grasped. (see The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind)

Now what is of most significance in the Mystery of Golgotha? In spite of all the so-called liberal theology of Protestantism the most significant part of the Mystery of Golgotha is the thought of Resurrection. The saying of Paul is still undoubtedly true: “And if Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain”. In other words, it is necessary for Christianity, true, real Christianity, to have the possibility of understanding that Christ Jesus went through death and overcame this death after a certain time by livingly re-uniting Himself with earthly development. It goes without saying that in relation to its inner law this belongs only to the spiritual worlds.

Now I have also pointed out to you something that, when looked at purely from the point of view of reason, might break our hearts because it represents one of these contradictions there must always be in life, which logic would always like to clear away—the Christ was put to death. The most guiltless One who ever trod the earth was put to death through the guilt of man. We can gaze upon this human guilt and regard it in the way human guilt, such great human guilt, is regarded. This is the one side of the matter. But next we have to look at the other side and say to ourselves: And had Christ not been crucified, had He not passed through death, it would not have been possible for Christianity to arise. This means, the greatest human guilt was necessary for the greatest blessing to enter the evolution of the earth, for the evolution of the earth to acquire its meaning. We could speak of this point in paradox—had men not taken upon themselves the burden of that guilt, that greatest of all guilt, the significance of the earth would not have been fulfilled. And in this way we characterise one of those great, fundamental contradictions life provides, which the logic of the world would do away with. For what is logic meant for? Logic is meant to do away with contradictions wherever they are found. Logic today however does not yet know what it is doing by this. With the removal of the contradiction, logic kills the life in human understanding. This is why people do not arrive at any living understanding when they want to give merely abstract, logical form to this understanding. And because of this a man comes to a living understanding only when he is willing to rise above logic to Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition.

Looked at superficially, the Mystery of Golgotha gives this picture—that at a certain point of time, in a little mentioned province of the world-wide Roman Empire, the man Jesus was born, lived thirty years in the way we have often described and was then permeated by the spirit of the Christ; as Christ-Jesus he lived on another three years, during the last year going through death and rising again. This event at first remained unnoticed anywhere in the whole Roman Empire. Throughout the centuries this event worked in such a way that the culture of the civilised world not only was absolutely transformed but entirely renewed. This is to begin with the external side. We penetrate to the inner side by trying to become clear how this Mystery of Golgotha arose out of Judaism and within the midst of the heathen world. In its religious conception Judaism has something radically different from any heathen religious conception. It may be said at once that Judaism and paganism exclude each other as the two poles of all religious conception.

Let us therefore first consider paganism. All paganism—whether or no what I want to say is, in paganism, more or less hidden—all paganism starts out with the idea that for human perception the divine-spiritual is in some way to be found in nature. Pagan religion is at the same time essentially the perception of nature. In the heathen the contemplation of nature is always there as a more or less unconscious basis: he feels that even man arises out of the becoming and the weaving of the phenomena of nature, that as man he feels himself related in his whole existence in his whole evolving, with what is there in nature and what is coming into existence through nature. Then, to crown what he is able to gain by his perception of nature, the heathen seeks to grasp as it were with his soul what is living in this nature as divine and spiritual. We see this in those ancient times by the way which man out of his own bodily nature becomes able to grasp the divine spiritual, in visions, in atavistic clairvoyance. In the lofty Culture of Greece we see how man tried in pure thought to grasp the divine spiritual. But everywhere we see man as a heathen tries to prepare a path for himself leading straight from the observation, the contemplation, of nature to the crowning point of her edifice—the perception of the divine spiritual within nature.

Now if one goes deeply into the essential being of all paganism—today I can only give an outline of these things—it will be noticed that a perception such as this cannot bring us to a full understanding of the moral impulses in the human race. For however hard it is sought to recognise from nature the divine spiritual impulse, this divine spiritual impulse remains without morality as a content. In the culturally advanced pagan religion of the Greeks we see that the Gods cannot be said to have had much moral impulse.

Naturally everything is expressed in a more or less masked way, the reality clothing itself in some kind of metamorphosis: but to all intents and purposes it is quite possible to say that in Judaism the matter, the very basis of the matter, shows itself as the polar ic opposite of the pagan religion. If we would put it tritely, Judaism might be called the actual discovery of the moral impulse in the evolution of man. The characteristic feature of all ancient Jewish religion lies in the essential pulsing and weaving of the Jahve Impulse into mankind in such a way that its weaving and coming into being bring the moral too into the development of mankind. But this caused a difficulty to enter into this Jewish religious conception which the pagan religious conception did not have. This difficulty lay in the inability for Judaism to arrive at an intelligent relation to Nature. The God Jahve, Jehovah, waves and weaves through the life of man. But when man then turns his gaze to the Jahve God who brings about human birth, then punishes bad and rewards good actions in the course of life, and when he next turns his gaze away from the Jahve God to the events of nature into which man also is interwoven on earth, then there is no doubt it becomes impossible to bring the events of nature into harmony with the working of the Jahve God. The whole tragedy of this impossibility of reconciling what happens in nature with the impulse of the Jahve God is expressed in the great and powerful tragedy of the Book of Job. In this Book of Job we are particularly shown how, purely in the course of nature, the just can suffer, can be brought to misery, and how in contradiction with what nature brings, the just man has to believe in the justice of his Jahve impulse. The whole underlying tone, however, the deeply tragic underlying tone, which might be said to ring in the human soul of the Book of Job with a feeling of isolation, from nature, from the cosmos, shows us what difficulty exists between the simple conception of what the Jahve-Being actually is, and an unprejudiced contemplation of what presents itself to the human gaze, to everything in human life, as the course of natural events in which won is interwoven. And yet this Jahve-God, this Jahve-impulse, what is it for those who really grasp the Old Testament but the essential innermost being weaving in the human soul itself? Whither is the ancient Hebrew conception driven by being so polarically opposed to the outlook on nature prominent in paganism?

The old Hebrew conception is with necessity driven by all this to the idea of a being in addition to the Jahve impulse, a being having a part in human nature as this human nature is in the present time of world existence, namely, the serpent of Paradise, Lucifer. Satan, a being who, opposed to the God, the Jahve God, is obliged to play a part in what man has become in earthly existence. A believer in the Old Testament must look upon the Jahve-God as the innermost impulse to which he directs his veneration and devotion. But it is not possible for him to ascribe to this Jahve impulse the only share in bringing about man; he has to ascribe a substantial share in man to the devil, as he was called in the Middle Ages. But it is mere dilettantism to believe that it is very scholarly to establish the contrast between the Jahve-God and the devil, the old serpent, as though it were the same as, for instance, the contrast between Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Persian religion. The basis of the Persian religion is indeed of pagan nature and Ormuzd and Ahriman confront each other in such a guise that we can rise by way of the perception of nature to their essential being in the world-outlook. And the whole process of the world struggle, represented by the Persian religion in the battle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, is a process such as has been taken up by the other pagan religions into their religious conceptions. What in the Old Testament is thought of as the contrast between the Jahve-Impulse and and the satanic impulse, on it meets us in the Book of Job, is a moral contrast; and in this book of Job the whole picture of this contrast is permeated through and through by a moral tone. There a spiritual kingdom is in fact indicated, in which are the good and the evil and this is rather different from the Kingdom of Nature. It may be said that at the time the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching human evolution, mankind had not come to the point of having done with these two main streams—the pagan way to the divine and the Jewish way to the divine. Both of these, however, had reached their highest point of development. For it must not be forgotten, again and again we must remind ourselves, that such a refinement of spirituality, such a height in the conceptual life of man, as had developed in the paganism of the Greeks is unique in human evolution. Neither has it since been reached again nor was it there before. On the contrary, a firm, clear hold on the moral Jahve-impulse through natural events, such as is found in the Book of Job, is also unique and not to be discovered anywhere else. In this particular direction the Book of Job is indeed one of the miracles of human evolution.

When the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was coming near, mankind had arrived as it were at a dead end. They could go no further. They had conceived, or had tried to conceive, Nature in the old sense, on the one hand, on the other hand the moral world in the old sense. It was impossible for them to advance. In their outer form both had in man's view reached the highest point and there was no higher point to be gained. And now world-evolution actually resulted in contrasts. It does not move forward so simply, so easily, in such a straight-forward ascending development as the modern theory of evolution would have it. This modern theory of evolution imagines, first, what is simple then rising in a straight line—and so on and so forth. But this evolution is not like that; another evolution lies at the basis of this one, in that certain evolutionary impulses reach their highest point, but at the same time as these impulses are approaching the highest point, others are descending to the lowest depths. There are always these two streams flowing—the one to the highest outer development and at the very time one is coming to this highest outer development the other is coming to its greatest inner development. And at the same time men have arrived on the one hand at a certain height, where the pagan conception is concerned, and on the other hand at a certain height in regard to the Jewish conception, what developed inwardly in mankind on earth was only to be reached through such an event that indeed happened historically, although outwardly it took the form, as it were, of a world symbol.

Thus, it could only be the death of the spirit that was to give the earth its meaning. Highest life, as this life developed in the course of ages, highest life brought to its zenith, at the same time inwardly, spiritually, implied the necessity of death. Only out of death could new life then proceed. This death on Golgotha is therefore the necessary contrast, and the greatest contrast to the abundant life acquired at this time in the world-outlooks of the areas and the Jews.

It is true that the matter can be represented from the most varied standpoints. We have already done this. But the following, for example, can also be said: the old world-outlooks all more or less based on atavistic clairvoyance, outlooks which were first advanced to pure thought by the Greeks—all these ancient world-outlooks were finally aimed at discovering man here on the earth. And particularly in Greece, and in another way in Judaism, this is exactly what happened at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Going farther back in former times it is found that to a certain extent man in that he was thinking about himself was nearer the divine not having yet come to a conception of himself. At the time the Mystery of Golgotha took place man had arrived at his own conception of himself. For when such a thing comes about there arises one of those events when in a certain measure through its on force the event changes into its opposite.

Now if you watch a pendulum swinging from left to right you will find the following. I have often used this illustration. Whereas the pendulum swings here it falls back again here through gravity; and having sunk to here through gravity, at this point because the pendulum cord is in exact opposition to the direction of gravity the latter cannot work; but the pendulum does not remain still. And why? It is because by falling down, as the physicist expresses it (and we can apply the same expression though it is not correct spiritually) the pendulum has gathered so much inertia that through its own inertia it swings to the other side.

This inertia is exhausted, reduced to nil, the moment the pendulum has swung out as far to the left as it did to the right. The agent towards the left comes about through the pendulum's own inertia but is then exhausted. This is a universal law in any process in the world at all, namely that something happens and in happening nullifies the impulse to happen. And so the moment pagan and Jewish culture had reached their zenith the force that had brought them there was exhausted and brought to naught. And the entrance of a new impulse into the world was needed to lead evolution onward.

This impulse was the Christ, for Whom in the way we know, the vessel of Jesus was prepared. So we can put it thus, that had a man been able, at the point in our reckoning of time which might be called zero, to see right into what was actually taking place inwardly in mankind, he would have had to says mankind at this moment meet the tragic destiny that the forces given them at the outset of earthly evolution had been brought by the time at which we have arrived to their highest development where the inner constitution of soul was concerned, but that at the same time these forces had been exhausted. Men were faced with the death of the culture that at the beginning of earth evolution took the course of the impulse which the men of old had received as mankind's heritage. Then anyone thus experiencing mankind's fate could look to the hill of Golgotha and see the external historical symbol, the dying body of Jesus, the dying representative at mankind, and from the Resurrection could take hope that a new impulse would not abandon mankind on the earth but would lead them onward. This impulse, however, could not arise out of what it was possible up to then for earth to give mankind. In other words looking to Golgotha and on Golgotha experiencing the possibility of mankind's further development, men had to aspire to something the world was not able to give. To look up to something coming as a new impact into the evolution of the earth—this is what had to be done, or would have had to be done at that point of time by anyone with an intimate vision into the affairs of mankind's evolution. This is what happened and this was the significance of it. It is a matter of external history whether certain events have been more or less grasped. The essential for Christianity is that this happened, and took place as an objective fact. Christianity is not a doctrine. Christianity is the perception of this objective event being played out in earthly evolution.

And now let us look at the remarkable way in which this perception of Christianity was spread abroad. Recently I have expatiated on this fact from another point of view. Today we will observe only how the conception of the Christ impulse, that has come into earthly evolution, spread out over the lands of Judaism, of Greek paganism, of Roman paganism, If without prejudice we observe the historical development we cannot help saying—Christianity most certainly did not take such thoroughly deep root in Judaism, but in spite of the Gospels having been written out of the Greek spirit, neither did Christianity take deep root in Greece, and when we come to the Roman Empire it quite decidedly did not do so there. You need only take what is left of the Christianity out of the Roman Empire, namely Catholicism, and out of this Roman Catholicism merely take the Mass, in its way great and powerful, it is true, and you will see what a peculiar significance underlies this very spreading of the Christian conception throughout the old Roman Empire.

For what strictly speaking is the Mass? The Mass, as well as other ceremonies of the Catholic Church, are indeed in their magnificence, in their incomparable greatness, taken from the pagan mysteries. You have only to look at the Catholic ritual and to understand it correctly, and you have in this ritual a reproduction of the way of initiation in the old pagen mysteries. The chief parts of the Mass—Gospel, Offertory, Transubstantiation, Communion—represent the path of those seeking initiation in the Ancient pagan mysteries. The Christ impulse had to be clothed in the form of the old pagan mysteries to be spread abroad throughout the regions of the Roman Empire. You can reed in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact how what has been experienced in the conception of Christ-Jesus was represented to those entrusted with the results of Initiation in the old pagan mysteries. There we are shown how on Golgotha, on the scene of world-history, there took place what otherwise was always presented as individual human experience on another plane, in the secret depths of Mystery Initiation, Thus we see that the secret of Christianity in its diffusion over the civilised countries of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, known to us as the Greco-Latin epoch, is steeped in pagan ritual. What was received in the Christ-impulse as idea, lived on in the sacrifice of the Mass. To all intents and purposes it still lives on today in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass. For he is an orthodox Catholic who experiences Christ-Jesus in all His mystery when at the altar they elevate the Host, the Bread transformed into the body of Christ. In this ritualistic action the true Catholic who experiences the pagan form of Christianity feels what he is intended to feel. This is not an immediate relation to Christ-Jesus; here we have a relation in which through the form of the pagan ritual it is sought to come on, to press on to man.

It is only when having passed through the civilised lands of the south which imbued it with paganism or Judaism it arrives among the barbarians of the north, that Christianity first arises in a quite different form, a form that is intimate and human. For this reason the prevalent attitude of these northern barbarians to Christianity was such that they accepted it in a much more primitive form. And for a long time these barbarian Arians (cf. R. XLVII.) of the north, kept aloof from the complicated conceptions simply embodied in the pagan ritual, and represented Christ-Jesus to themselves more or less as an idealised man, as an idealised man raised to the level of the divine, as the foremost brother of mankind, though still a brother. The relation of the Christ to some kind of unknown God did not much interest them; on the contrary, what interested them extraordinarily was how human nature stood in relation to the Christ nature, what immediate connection the human heart, the human mind, is able to have with the ideal man Christ-Jesus, And this was bound up with the outlook concerning the external social structure for mankind. Christ became a special King, a special Leader of the people. How in their imagination they would follow a leader in whom they had trust so they wished to follow Christ-Jesus as the outstandingly illustrious Leader. Something here arose that might be described as seeking a personal relation to Christ Jesus in contrast to the complicated relation of the south, which could only be expressed by the imaginative picture realised in the ritual.

Now what brought this about? Indeed, my dear friends, these barbarian peoples to whom Christianity penetrated in the north are the germ of what later was to arise in human evolution as the fifth post-Atlantean period. They were not completely men by the time the people of the fourth post-Atlantean period had already come to a comparatively high point. They absorbed into their still primitive human nature what can only enter a highly developed mankind in the form of the realised imaginations of the ritual. The barbarians' hearts and minds absorbed intimately, personally, what in a changed human nature was received in lofty spirituality, nevertheless in the south received only in a pagan form.

Thus we see the germ of Christianity falling into southern hearts and into hearts of the barbarians of the north quite differently. These northern barbarian hearts are far less mature than the hearts of the southern peoples, and the Christ impulse sinks into this immaturity. And we are faced by the remarkable fact that in the whole south, throughout Christianised Judaism, throughout the Christianised paganism of the Greeks, the Christianised paganism of Rome, Christianity so permeated the spirit that before the coming of the Christ impulse that was approaching man, the Christ conception was determined and was given form in the way it was possible to form it according to the old experiences of the soul. For these ancient people had a significant life of soul, a life of soul, in a certain sense, of grandiose development. The northern barbarians had a primitive, simple soul-life, accustomed only to what was nearest the soul, to the closest relations of a personal kind between man and man. And into these close relations there streamed the Christ impulse. These men had no conception at all of scientific knowledge as it was developed among the Greeks, nor had they any political views concerning the structure of the State, as formed by the Romans. There was nothing of this kind among the northern barbarians. Their conceptual life of soul could be said to have been so far disengaged. They could not think much. They could hunt, they could fight, they could do a little tilling of the ground, they could do something else too—well, you have only to read about the old barbarians of the north; but they could not develop any kind of organised science. They had no conceptual life before the coming of the Christ impulse, conceptions could only come to the people with the Christ impulse. Therefore it may be said that to men in the south Christ came in such a way that He to come to had to standstill in face of the Conceptual life which they brought to meet Him. These men of the south erected a gateway. “You must first pass through this”, they said to the Christ. This gateway was still what had been built out of the old traditional conceptions. The barbarians of the north had no such gateway, there was no barrier to admission, the Christ impulse could enter freely. Between the people or peoples who lived their lives there in the north as barbarians, these peoples to whom the Christ came, and Jesus himself as the individual man to whom Christ came, there is only a difference of degree. In Palestine Christ came to the individual man Jesus. Then the impulse spread itself out over the southern lands; everywhere in these southern countries was the gateway of the conceptual life, where the impulse could not enter as it entered into the man Jesus. In the way the Christ impulse came to the northern barbarians it could not, it is true, enter every individual man—they were no Jesuses—but it was able to enter the folk souls; these in a certain relation accepted it as the Christ. And between the folk souls and the Christ a process took place similar to the one between Jesus and the Christ. (cf. R XLVII.)

This is the inner secret of the journey of Christianity up through the southern lands to the barbarians of the north. But they had not progressed very far, these northern barbarians. And even when the Christ had been able to make a direct entry there was nothing very grand in the dwellings He could set foot in. Primitive, the most primitive conceptions, were there. I might say: what in the south was already highly developed had been unfolded as if beneath the aegis of world evolution, but the evolution of a previous stage—what was highly developed in the

south during the fourth post-Atlantean, the Greco-Latin culture stage, in the north was still quite embryonic, waiting on till later. Thus it may be said: we have the fourth post-Atlantean culture stage, the fifth post-Atlantean culture stage; (cf. R XLVII.) we know that the fourth post-Atlantean culture stage runs from 747 years before the event of Golgotha to the year 1413 of our era after which it still goes on; we live now in the fifth post-Atlantean culture epoch. Take any point of the fourth post-Atlantean culture stage, let us say a point during the fifth century before the event of Golgotha, when evolution was already advanced in the Greco-Latin countries; it was, however, very backward among the northern barbarians. It was awaiting the later development; the same point only arrived for them much later. In other words, in the north, even though they finally came to a higher stage, men were much later in arriving at the same point as was reached earlier by men in the south. It is important to bear this in mind. For only by remembering this do we see how the inner evolution, the inner development, of human life takes form throughout the earth.

Only consider to what a height this Graeco-Latin culture has come by the time the great—one cannot call him merely a philosopher but the great man Plato arose in this Greco-Latin culture, Plato with his raising of the human myth into the kingdom of ideas. When he spoke of ideas, it was not to the abstract ideas spun by modern men Plato looked up. Plato's ideas are the very being of the spirit itself. Whoever really knows in Plato on whet heights this old Greco-Latin culture of the fourth post-Atlantean culture period stood. During the time the great Plato was towering above all that was Greece, the northern barbaric culture still had much to pass through until, for its part, it had brought forth out of its own flesh and blood, if only for the fifth post-Atlantean period, the same as had been produced out of Greece in the lifetime of Plato.

We may ask when it was that the barbarian natures of the north, out of their own flesh and blood, first worked themselves up to the heights on which Plato had already stood at an earlier epoch? An the answer to the question is, at the time of Goethe! What in the Greek civilisation was Platonism, is Goetheanism for the fifth post-Atlantean period. For how many years go by, my dear friends, in one culture period? You know that if you take 1413 years after the Mystery of Golgotha and 747 years before, that gives us one culture period, 2160 years, a little over 2000 years. This is about the time that passed between Plato and Goethe, a rather long culture period lies between these two.

And while we consider Plato, one thing stands out concerning him that lights forth from the rest of ancient culture in a grandiose way. There meets us what lies in Plato's words when his philosophy ascends to religious inspiration and he says: “God is the Good”, where he has the feeling that the perception of nature in accordance with ideas must be bound up with the moral ordering of the world—the divine is the good. With these words the promise of Christianity enters Greek civilisation.

But with these words there would also be an indication of a promise with Goethe in the north—an expectation of a renewal of Christianity. Who could look inwardly upon Goethe either in any way but as having within him the promise of a renewed understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha? The boy Goethe, the seven-year-old boy, still stood like a pagan before nature, and lived again all that once lay in Greece. He takes a reading desk, places on it all kinds of stones and bits of rock representing nature's processes, lights a pastille from the direct light of the sun through a burning-glass and thus offers his sacrifice to the great God of nature. Purely pagan worship of nature, nothing lives in this of Christ-Jesus, in this lives the God who can be contemplated in nature. And Goethe is sincere to the innermost fibre of his being. Outwardly he does not acknowledge any God, any divine Being, with whom he cannot inwardly unite himself in all sincerity. To agree with the conception of God given him by a priest is for him an impossibility; to learn outwardly what does not surge up from his inmost soul is an impossibility. Thus, still in the year 1780, there springs forth from his inner being his Hymn to Nature. that wonderful Hymn in prose to nature which begins:

“Nature! We are surrounded and enveloped by her, unable
to step out of her, unable to get into her more deeply.
She takes us up unasked and unwarned into the circle of
her dance and carries us among till we are wearied and
fall from her arms . . . (see George Adams translation: A. Q.)

Everything is nature. We belong to her, she drives us along with her. Even what is unnatural is nature, The greatest philistinism has something of her genius. It is she who places me here and she will not hate her work. The profit is hers, the debt is hers.

This outlook itself springs forth from his intimate inmost being because Goethe is so honestly seeking it in the way it has to be sought by him as representative of his stage of humanity in which there is nothing Christian. You find a wonderful leaning towards God in the whole prose-hymn to Nature, almost as though he were still the seven-year-old boy erecting his pagan altar with its products of nature; but you do not find anything Christian. For Goethe stands as the honest representative of mankind in the fifth post-Atlantean period which for him stood as the period of waiting. But Goethe clearly expresses that it is not possible to remain at the stage of paganism, when on the one hand, in his morphology and his colour theory he comes to his grandiose outlook on nature, an outlook that is at the same time scientific. But this is also expressed from another aspect when he has to go beyond this perception of nature, beyond this paganism. From this point of view take the inner impulse of Faust, take from this point of view particularly all that Goethe has secretly introduced into his fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, take everything about the re-birth of man expressed in this fairy tale—and then try not just to remain on the surface but to press on to what was living in Goethe's mind, then, my dear friends, the idea will come to you: here in the soul of a man is living a new Christ impulse, a new impulse for transforming mankind, brought about by the Mystery of Golgotha, a striving after a new understanding of this Mystery of Golgotha. For the whole fairy tale of the Green Snake end the Beautiful Lily breathes forth this mood of expectation.

Where Plato stands in the culture of the Greeks, Goethe stands in the fifth post-Atlantean period. The question “Where does Goethe stand” leads us on to say: As Plato with the definition of the Divine as the Good pointed to the Mystery of Golgotha as a key to understanding the fourth post-Atlantean period, in all that rings forth from his fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Goethe was pointing to the fresh understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha that had perforce to come. This is the answer to the question of where Goethe stands. What is there that up to most recent times one can picture as spiritualising all that happens to mankind? The outer historical understanding that just counts up men and events one after the other, says actually nothing at all that can touch upon the real inner being of man. But if we look at the inner side of what happens, if we see that at the same point as Plato stood for the fourth post-Atlantean period, Goethe now stands for the fifth period, then there is revealed to us the spiritual wave that up to the present day has been creatively surging into the world. During very recent times history for modern man has in general became thoroughly unspiritual in the way it is grasped. Goetheaism is at the same time a mood of expectancy in which one is waiting for a new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We come to an understanding of what happened as the eighteenth century passed into the nineteenth, only by trying to penetrate to the depths of the events affecting mankind. (cf. Karma of Vocation.) My dear friends, as ennobling conceptions can be called up in the human heart if anyone tries today to renew certain experiences that were aroused in paganism—for example if we look up to the conception of the great Isis of the Egyptians. Certainly even up to the time of Plato the conceptions about the Egyptian Isis as the impulse holding sway throughout nature still resounded towards men. If today we hear about Isis, if we hear about Isis without powerfully experiencing anew what people felt in those times, we are left with the mere words. If we are honest it is all mere words. If we are not intoxicated by the sound of words simply words are there—the matter does not grip the heart. what can modern man do if he wishes to awaking the same conceptions within him that in ancient days were aroused in human hearts when Isis was spoken of?

Modern men can let work upon him Goethe's Hymn in prose to Nature. There man is spoken to in the same way as when Isis was spoken of to those men of old. And what sounded to those men of old when Isis was spoken of rings still directly from the hidden depths of the cosmos.

Let us for once think what wrong we do, wrong to world evolution as well as to our own hearts, when we do not wish to hear in this way, when we prefer to take up a purely external attitude, because the way in which the men of old spoke about Isis has round it a glory of the past. When Isis was spoken of by those ancient people there sounded forth from the words a primeval holy secret. And language in our time ought to speak of this secret, truly, actually speak of this secret deeply in the same way as it came from the lips of the Egyptian Priests when they sang about Isis. We should not fail to recognise when deep things hold sway in the new life of spirit. In this way, too, we shall once again feel ourselves true men when we are not prosaic in our feeling, when what is holy sounds towards us in the way it will sound forth out of the newer impulse of historical evolution. Then when we prepare ourselves by paganism, as one might say, through something of the nature of the hymn in prose, with all the widening of soul we can get from this, with all the deepening of soul that makes itself felt within us, with all the ennobling of soul we can experience, we shall sink deeply into what there is in many of the scenes in Faust or in the fairy tale of The Green snake and the Beautiful Lily, where we shall find expressed the mood of waiting for a new understanding among the most modern people of the Mystery of Golgotha.

This is an indication of something about the finding of Goethe and Goetheanism that I wanted to give you, not in the form this discovery often takes but a discovery that really finds the Goethe spirit in the whole course of human evolution, for the understanding of the immediate present, for the strengthening of the impulse we need if we would take our right place today and in the near future, in which we must take our place not sleeping—as I have so often emphasised—but awake, if we do not want to sin against the progress of man's evolution.

More of this tomorrow.

If we are to continue in the right way today, we must consider something of the nature of the human being and how human beings are part of historical evolution. First of all we consider the fact that human beings have the power, or the gift, of the intellect. What does this mean? It means that we are able to form ideas. For the moment we need not reflect on where these ideas come from. The life of thought is with us wherever we are in waking consciousness. And we also feel, for instance, that when we walk, stand or do anything else, we are guided by our thoughts, by something which exists first of all in the mind. Later on we shall discuss if this really is the case. For the moment I merely want to establish what fills the conscious mind in everyday life. It is our thoughts. But when it comes to the world of thought as such, the matter is really quite different. And we shall not understand how human beings really relate to their thoughts unless we first consider the true nature of the world of thought.

In reality we are always, wherever we are—whether sitting, standing or lying down—not only in the world of air and light and so on, but also in a world of surging thoughts. You will find it easiest to get an idea of this if you look at it like this: When you walk on earth as an ordinary physical human being you are also a breathing human being, walking in a space filled with air. And in more or less the same way you move in a space filled with thoughts. Thought-substance fills the space around you. It is not a vague ocean of thoughts, nor the kind of nebulous ether people sometimes like to imagine. No, this thought-substance is actually what we call the elemental world. When we speak of entities which are part of the elemental world in the widest sense of the word, they consist of thought-substance, actual thought-substance. There is, however, a difference between the thoughts flitting around out there, which really are living entities, and the thoughts we have in our minds. I have spoken of this difference on a number of occasions. In my book due to be published shortly, and which I mentioned yesterday,¹ you will find further references to this difference.

You may well ask yourself: If there is such an elemental principle out there in thought-space and if I, too, have thoughts in my head—what is the relationship between the two? To get the right idea of how your own thoughts relate to the thought-entities out there you have to visualize the difference between a human corpse which has been left behind when someone has died and a living person who is walking about. The kind of thoughts you have to consider in this respect are the kind you gain from the world you perceive with the senses when in waking consciousness. Our own thoughts are actually thought-corpses. This is the essential point. The thoughts coming from the world we perceive with the senses and drag around with us when in waking consciousness are thought-corpses—thoughts that have been killed. Outside us they are alive, which is the difference.

We are part of the elemental world of thought in so far as we kill its living thoughts when we develop ideas on the basis of what our senses have perceived in the world around us. Our thinking consists in having those corpses of thoughts inside us, and this makes our thoughts abstract. We have abstract thoughts because we kill living thoughts. It is really true that in our state of consciousness we walk around bearing thought corpses which we call our thoughts and ideas. This is the reality.

The living thoughts in the outside world are certainly not unrelated to us; there is a living relationship. I can demonstrate this to you, but do not be frightened by the grotesque nature of this unaccustomed idea. Imagine you are lying in bed and it is morning. You can get up in two different ways. Ordinarily, you are not aware of the difference between them because you are not in the habit of making the distinction, and anyway you do not pay attention to this particular moment of getting up. Nevertheless, you can get up out of habit, without thinking about it, or you can actually produce the thought: I am now going to get up. There are people, however, who get themselves up out of sheer habit, and yet there is just a touch of the idea: I am going to get up now. To repeat, many people do not make the distinction, but it can be made in the abstract, and the difference is enormous. If you get up without giving it a thought, out of sheer habit and training, you are following impulses given by the Spirits of Form, the Elohim, when they created human beings as dwellers on earth at the beginning of earth evolution. So you see, if you switch off your own thinking and always get up like a machine, you are not getting up without thought having gone into it, but it is not your own thought. The form of movement involved in getting up involves thoughts—objective, not subjective, inner thoughts; these are not your thoughts but those of the Spirits of Form.

If you were a terribly lazy person who really did not want to get up at all, if it really was not in your nature to get up and you would only get up on reflection, against your nature, out of purely subjective thought, you'd be following ahrimanic tendencies; you would be following only your head, and therefore Ahriman. As I said, the distinction is not made in ordinary life. And everything else we do is really done in the same way as our getting up. Human beings truly are made up of two entities which can be outwardly distinguished as the head and the rest of the body. The human head is an extraordinarily significant instrument and much older than the rest of the body. The construction of the human head is such—I spoke about this last year²—that the basic shape arose during Moon evolution, though the head has, in fact, come down through Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. Humans would look quite different if they still had the shape they had during Moon evolution.

In very general terms we might say people would look like spectres, with only the form of the head emerging somewhat more clearly, which was the original intent. The rest of the body was not meant to be as visible as it is now. These things have to be considered, otherwise we cannot really understand human evolution on earth. The rest of the body was meant to be purely elemental by nature. In the head, everything would come into effect which has come down as Moon existence transformed by earth; let us call it ‘a’. But this inherited Moon existence transformed by earth is the actual human being, for the human being is really a head with only a very insignificant attachment.

The rest of the human being—let us call it ‘b’ and to begin with let us simply consider it to be this elemental, airy principle—is a manifestation of the higher hierarchies, from the Spirits of Form downwards. The right and only way of seeing the human being is to realize that everything shown here as ‘b’ has been created by the cosmic hierarchies. The human being which has evolved from the time of Saturn emerged against the background of the cosmic hierarchies. If you visualize the essential nature of the parts of the human being which are not head—you must think of it as all spirit, or at least all air—then you have the body of cosmic hierarchies (drawing on the board).

However, luciferic seduction entered into the whole process of evolution. The outcome was that this whole, more elemental, body condensed to become the rest of the human body, which of course also had an effect on the head. This will give you an idea of the true nature of the human being. Apart from the head, which is their own, having come from earlier evolution, human beings would be an outward manifestation of the Elohim if their bodies had not become sensuous flesh. It is entirely due to the temptations of Lucifer that this outward manifestation of the Elohim has condensed to become flesh.

Something very strange has arisen as a result, an important secret to which I have referred a number of times. What has happened is that the human being has become the image of the gods in the very organs which are normally called the organs of his lower nature. This image of the gods has been debased in human beings as they are on earth. The highest principle in human beings, the spiritual principle coming from the cosmos, has become their lower nature. Please, do not forget that this is an important secret of human nature. Our lower nature, which is due to Lucifer's influence, was actually destined to be our higher nature. This is the contradictory element in human nature. Rightly understood, it will solve countless riddles in the world and in life.

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We are thus able to say: In the course of human evolution man has, thanks to the luciferic element, made the part of him that should be constantly emerging from the cosmos into his lower nature. Many historical phenomena will find their explanation if you consider that this was known to the leaders of the ancient Mysteries, people who were not as facetious, cynical and narrow-minded as people are today. Certain symbols taken from the lower nature and used in the past, symbols that today are merely seen as sexual symbols, are explained by the fact that the priests who used them in the ancient Mysteries did so in order to give expression to the higher reality of the lower nature of man.

You can see how sensitive we have to be in dealing with these things if we are not to be facetious. Modern people slip easily into facetiousness, because they cannot even imagine that there is more to human beings than mere sensuality—which, in fact, is the luciferic element in our higher nature. Thus historical symbols are easily given entirely the wrong interpretation. It takes some nobility of spirit not to interpret the old symbols in a lower sense, even though they often can be interpreted in that way.

With this, you will also begin to realize that if thoughts from the elemental world come to us—they are living thoughts, not abstract, dead ones that come from the head—they must be coming out of the whole human being. Mere reflection will not achieve this. Today the idea is that we only arrive at our thoughts by reflection. Today the idea is: If human beings will just reflect, they can think about anything, providing the things they want to think about are accessible. This is nonsense, however. The truth is that the human race is in a process of evolution, and the thoughts developed by Copernicus, for example, or Galileo, at a particular time could not be reached by mere reflection before that time. You see, people fabricate the thoughts they have in their heads. But when a thought which marks a real change arises in world history, this thought is given by the gods and through the whole human being. It flows through the human being, overcoming the luciferic element, and only reaches the head out of the whole human being. I think this is something you can understand. In certain ages, particular thoughts just have to be waited for and expected; then human beings are not merely reflecting, nor is something conveyed through their eyes or ears, but inspiration comes from the world of the hierarchies and it comes through the whole essential human being, which is the image of the hierarchies.

If you consider this, some of the things I said yesterday can also tell you great deal. In the present age, from the fifth post-Atlantean age, we are living much more inwardly than before—in ancient Greek times, for example, when the outer environment provided much more that was spiritual. This inwardness of life relates to the process in which thoughts come up through the whole human being. In earlier times, in the fourth post-Atlantean age, the relationship between human beings and the gods was much more of an exterior thing; today it has become much more intimate. Human beings are always associating with the gods; their heads do not normally know anything about this, however, because they only hold human thoughts, or rather the corpses of thoughts.

Human beings always associate with the gods as whole human beings, and this association is more intimate today than it was in the past. Even the nature of clairvoyance is such that the relationship to the gods and to disembodied spirits is altogether different from what it was before. When a human soul associates with spirits or with the dead, the association is a very subtle one. It is more or less similar to the way in which our own thoughts associate with our own will in the soul. It is very intimate, and this intimacy belongs to the present age. It corresponds to the essential nature of human beings here on earth and also to that of the dead, of those who are going through the gate of death to enter the world of the spirit at this time. This intimate association has become possible because in some ways the relationship between man and cosmos has changed. If the relationship which some human beings have to the world of the spirit comes to conscious awareness, it shows itself to be a much more intimate one, even today, than it was before.

Certain abilities had to be lost, so that this intimate association with the gods could develop. During the times of ancient Greece and Rome and after, right into the Middle Ages, people still had direct perception of spiritual elements in the world around them; as I said, they did not merely see physical colours in the way we do today, or hear physical sounds, but perceived spiritual elements in colours and sounds. They were also able to use the element which for us has turned into chaotic dreams as a means of entering into the world of the spirit and they did so in a way that was much less subtle than is possible today. It was relatively easy to approach the Spirits and the dead in the past. Today our ordinary dreams no longer have the same quality, though this did continue well into the Middle Ages. Some people still had it for a long time afterwards. Those earlier people also perceived as in a dream all that happened around them in the elemental thought-world of which I have spoken. They were not yet cut off from that surrounding world, and their own essential nature still extended into it. People were aware of this and acted and behaved accordingly.

Today these things are, of course, considered to be an old superstition. Yet when something significant occurs in connection with this ‘old superstition’, modern science does not know what to do with it. Let me give you just one example: Cimon, a well-known historical figure, had a friend called Astyphilos who knew how to interpret dreams. Astyphilos was able to interpret dreams intellectually. When Cimon had dreamed of a vicious, yapping dog before the Egyptian campaign, Astyphilos forecast his death, saying: ‘You have dreamt of a vicious, yapping dog; you will die in this campaign.’ The story was told by Horace.³

A modern sage who has written about dreams, though in materialistic terms, does of course believe that Cimon had an ordinary dream and Astyphilos was a mountebank who interpreted dreams. Yet he also makes a strange comment: ‘Chance willed it, however, that his prophesy came true.’ I could show you books which give irrefutable evidence of prophesies which have come true,⁴ but people will say: ‘Chance willed it.’ This is one of many examples. People imagine that the inner life has always been the same as it is today and that there has been no development in the inner life of man.

Thus the outer senses perceived more of the spiritual, and at the same time the relationship with the surrounding elemental thought-world was, in a way, based more on images. Dreams still had the quality of images which pointed to the future. Just as memory relates to the past, so the images pointed to the future, though not in the same way, of course. The constitution of the human soul was therefore entirely different in the past. Blurred dream images came into everyday sensory perception, images which nevertheless related to real happenings in the elemental world. We might put it like this: The physical world of sensory perception had not yet condensed and become solid and mineral in quality. Everywhere colour and sound still sparkled with spiritual qualities. At the same time people still had the ability to live in waking dreams, and these were reality in the elemental, objective world of thought. Then humanity was deprived of this relationship with the outside world in order to establish and strengthen human freedom; the inner life became more intimate in the way I have described.

There is something we must consider which is most important. We can use the powers of the normal intellect to reflect on the phenomena belonging to the world of nature, but we cannot use this intellect to reflect on social phenomena. People believe that the way of thinking which enables them to reflect on the events of the physical world can also be used to establish social laws and political impulses. They are actually doing so now, but the laws and impulses are of correspondingly poor quality. The kind of thing you find in Roman history, and you would also find it in later history if it had not all been turned into romance—for instance, that Numa Pompilius took his inspiration from a nymph called Egeria in certain matters of state⁵—indicates that in those days people appealed to the gods when matters of state had to be dealt with. They would not have thought it possible to create political structures merely by thinking about them. Today the idea is that individuals are not able to do this, but if you multiply the individual by so and so many times, then it can be done. So if you have a modern democracy and an enlightened parliament, three hundred heads are able to achieve by reflection what a single head cannot do, of course. This goes against one of Rosegger's statements which I have quoted a number of times: ‘One's a human being; if there are several, you've people; if you have lots of them, they're beasts!’⁶—but surely it is not what you would do in practice! And just imagine what the whole enlightened modern world would say if news were to get around—not in the old form but in a new one—that Woodrow Wilson had taken his inspiration for some decree or other from a nymph.

These things have changed, even if they are not exactly more intelligent. It will, of course, be difficult to grasp, but it is something we have to realize, that real and appropriate ideas concerning social structures will only come when people appeal again to the spirit. They are not forced to do so, and the form will be different, but this appeal to the spirit must be made again. Otherwise, everything people produce by way of political principles, social structures and ideas will be mere nothingness. There has to be living awareness of the fact that we live in the world of elemental thought and have to take our inspiration from it.

People are still able to laugh about such things today. But humanity will have to struggle through pain and suffering to gain awareness of inspiration in the creative sphere of the social order. Here we have an even more subtle indication of something that will become more and more necessary for humanity.

People will have to realize that they must now prepare themselves to make a connection again with the world of the spirit, so that they may bring into the kingdom of this world a kingdom which is not of this world but is present everywhere in the kingdom of this world. Only then will salvation come for a social sphere where chaos now reigns.

It will, however, be necessary for people to overcome the unease and reluctance they feel about concerning themselves with the intimate relationship between man and world. In the more important fields of human activity, people will have to go more deeply into the nature of this relationship as it was in the fourth post-Atlantean age. This will give them the necessary orientation so that they can really see how human beings related differently to the world around them than they do now. It is possible to study this, but we must overcome this mythology—mythology in the bad sense—we call the study of history today. We need to consider historical reality, going back at least as far as the Mystery of Golgotha, and this will be possible if the study of external history is enriched by the study of spiritual science. People will simply have to make the effort to enter into a study of spiritual science. The whole way of thinking, of course, is such nowadays that people often feel everything to be utterly grotesque when they begin to enter into the world of the spirit; people instinctively think that things will look just the same there as they do in the physical world. All they are prepared to accept is that they will find a more refined, subtle form of this world, and they fail to understand that they will find it completely different, so much so that even the smallest detail will come as a surprise.

Let us assume a modern philosopher, your normal kind of university professor, were to have some kind of Inspiration⁷—it would be a small miracle, but let us assume such a miracle were to happen—so that for five minutes he were in a position to ask the world of the spirit if he was a true philosopher with a true inner vocation. What do you think the answer would be? He would be given an image; this would be the right answer, only it would need to be correctly interpreted. This is really true; I am telling you something which has happened innumerable times. The answer would be that the philosopher is given ass's ears. And the interpretation of this would be: ‘I am indeed a real philosopher.’ This is not a joke. The point is that some ideas mean one thing in the physical world and exactly the opposite in the spiritual world. In the physical world it is not a distinction to have ass's ears; in the spiritual world, having ass's ears as an image is worth much, much more than the highest distinction ever awarded to a professor of philosophy. But imagine someone who is only used to the physical world and who suddenly—as I said, by a miracle—becomes clairvoyant and sees himself wearing ass's ears. He would think he was being made a fool of, that he was being taken in. And he would immediately call this an illusion. Things are different in the world of the spirit, down to the last detail, and it is necessary to translate everything we meet there, in order to find the right correspondence and interpretation in the physical world. I was not simply telling a joke when I spoke of those ass's ears. If you read the writings of ancient times you will find the dreams dreamt by philosophers to convince them of their inner vocation. The dream I have described is quite typical of that kind of thing. Philosophers had to see themselves with ass's ears to be convinced of their vocation.

People will inevitably be surprised and taken aback when they want to get acquainted again with the specific nature of the spiritual world. Reading The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz Anno 1459,⁸ you will sometimes feel that the grotesque things said in it are enough to make you laugh. Yet they are deeply significant, for the path to which the work refers should not be considered in a sentimental way, but with a certain superior humour.

As I have said, later times also have events analogous to Numa Pompilius receiving instruction from Egeria. These things are no longer made known, which is, of course, the reason why history has become mere conventional fiction. Consider, it was as late as the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century when Jacob Boehme⁹ had his profound Intuitions; truly great, tremendous grand visions which contained Intuitions from an earlier time. His followers included many people who lived in later times. One of the last to be consciously a follower of Jacob Boehme was Saint-Martin.¹⁰ He based himself entirely on Jacob Boehme, especially in his book Des erreurs et de la vrit, though it is a somewhat dematerialized Boehme. Still, he had enough of what had come through from older times to realize: If one wants to have ideas concerning social structures, if one wants to have real, effective political ideas, these must not merely be thought up, they must have come from the spiritual world. In his book, Saint-Martin presents not merely ideas concerning the world of nature and its progress, and of history and its progress, but also quite specific political ideas. Today, when states are the only kind of political structure, one would call them ideas on the political state. His discussions do, however, include one idea of special significance, and it is characteristic that this is in the forefront of his political ideas. Saint-Martin refers to ‘original human adultery’, which he says took place at a time when sexual relations did not yet exist between male and female on earth. He is therefore not referring to adultery in the usual sense. He means something quite different, something he keeps deeply veiled, and to which The Bible refers with the words: ‘The sons of the gods saw how beautiful these daughters were and they took for themselves such women as they chose.’¹¹ This event brought chaos to the world of Atlantis; there is also a mysterious connection between this and the way in which human beings had made their elemental spiritual nature sensual. All one can do is hint at the event which Saint-Martin calls ‘original adultery’; he, too, was merely hinting at it.

It is evident that Saint-Martin realized that to consider politics, one must not merely take account of outer human situations, as people do today, but find a way of going back to earlier times when one had to go beyond the world of the senses and into the world of the spirit if one wanted to know anything about the human being. The principles of political thinking must be evolved out of the world of the spirit. Saint-Martin still knew this at the end of the eighteenth century—he only died in 1804, and what he said in Des erreurs et de la vrit has also been translated into German. It is not without interest to say this, because a certain cleric who is against we who want to serve the life of the spirit here in Dornach—he lives quite near to here¹²—has said that in the face of all this folly people should remember plain, simple Matthias Claudius, and he quoted a verse by Claudius in his support.¹³ It was Matthias Claudius, however, who translated Saint-Martin's Des erreurs et de la vrit in order to make the spiritual science of that time accessible to his people. The gentleman in question therefore demonstrated his colossal ignorance where Matthias Claudius is concerned, quite apart from the fact that he quoted only one verse; if he had quoted the preceding verse he would have contradicted himself. Still, he was satisfied with the one verse which he thought suited his purpose, which was to quote something against anthroposophy.

As late as the eighteenth century, Saint-Martin knew that if we are to have fruitful political ideas there has to be a bridge between human thoughts and the spiritual influences which come from higher worlds. No previous century has been as godforsaken, really, as the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is important to realize this. Nor was any earlier century so vain and so proud of being godforsaken. Still, if people were to read about the statesmanship advocated by Saint-Martin—I think all those clever people who now get together and want to guide the destinies of the world would feel their stomachs turn. For it is the tendency today to get to know as little as possible about the real world around us. It is, of course, possible to erase from our minds the thoughts which come from the living spirit, and we can decide to work only with thought-corpses. People's actions do not relate to this, however, but become part of a web of living thought. And when people with thought-corpses refuse to enter into those living thoughts, the outcome will be chaos. This chaos has to be overcome, which calls for the clear insights of which I have spoken before, as well as in these lectures. It does, however, require a complete change of direction from what is considered to be right today and the absolute ideal.

Above all, this change of direction will have to come soon. And it would be best if it were to come right now and be as widespread as possible in the field where educators are appointed for both young and old. There is no other field where humanity has entered as deeply into materialism as it has in education.

Let me conclude by presenting a thought which will be occupying us in the days ahead, for it is very interesting and very important for all humanity. I would like to present it in such a way, however, that you will be able to turn it over in your own inner mind for a few days. You will then be better prepared to consider this thought.

The children who are born today—we must consider them in the knowledge that the outer form is withering and splitting up, as I have shown in these days. But deep inside is the true human being. This no longer comes to outward expression in the way it did until the fifteenth century. We will have to get more and more used to the thought that, especially in the case of children, the inward human being cannot be fully revealed by the way people present themselves, nor by the way they think and the gestures they make. In many respects these children are something quite different from what comes to outward expression. We even know extreme cases. Children may appear to be the worst of rascals and yet there is so much good in them that they will later be the most valuable of human beings. But you will also find many children who are very good and not the least bit bad, never putting a finger in their mouths nor thumbing their noses at people. They will study well, perhaps be good bank managers one day, or good schoolteachers according to present-day ideas, and indeed good lawyers. But—forgive these harsh words—they will not be good people, because they cannot achieve inner harmony between themselves and the true world around them. It is specifically in the field of education and training where the principle must be established that people are very different inside today from what they appear to be. It will therefore be necessary in future to appoint teachers on entirely different principles. To be able to see into something which is inside and does not come to expression on the outside requires something of a prophetic gift. Examinations for prospective teachers must therefore be organized in such a way that candidates with intuitive and prophetic gifts do particularly well. Candidates who do not have such gifts must be made to fail their exams, however great their knowledge.

The last thing we do today is to consider the prophetic gifts of people who are to become teachers. We still have a long way to go with regard to many things that will have to be done. Yet the course of human evolution will eventually force people to accept such principles. Many of the materialists of our age would, of course, consider it a crazy notion to say that teachers should be prophets. But it will not be for ever. Humanity will be forced to recognize these things.

• 1. Riddles of the Soul. See Note 1 of lecture 5.
• 2. In a lecture given in Dornach on 21 October 1916, for example. (GA 171. Not available in English.)
• 3. Plutarch also teils the story in his Life of Cimon.
• 4. For example, Rudolf Steiner's library in Dornach includes a book by Max Kernmerich called Prophezeiungen, alter Aberglaube oder neue Wahrheit (translates as: “Prophesies, an old superstition or a new truth”), Munich 1911; it includes prophesies which have since come true.
• 5. Numa Pompilius (probably 715–673 BC) succeeded Romulus as King of Rome. See Livy's History of Rome, Book 1, Chapter 19.
• 6. Peter Rosegger (1843–1918), Austrian poet and novelist. Some of his works were in the Styrian dialect, which also applies to the quoted sentences.
• 7. Rudolf Steiner generally made careful distinction between ‘imagination’ in the ordinary sense, using the ordinary German terms for this, and ‘Imagination’ as the ability to see images of spiritual realities, which is generally achieved in the course of initiation. The same applies to the terms ‘Intuition’ and ‘Inspiration’. The three should be treated as technical terms in the field of anthroposophy. The convention in English versions of his works has become to use capitals for the higher faculties described by these words.
  
  In this text, capital first letters are put where Steiner is using them as technical terms.
• 8. See Note 3, lecture 3.
• 9. See Note 2, lecture 3.
• 10. Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803) took up German at the age of 49 so that he might translate Jacob Boehme's writings into French. His Des erreurs et de la vrit ou les hommes rappels au principe universel de la science par un Ph(ilosophe) inc(onnu) of 1775 was translated into German by Matthias Claudius in 1782. A new edition of the translation was published by Der Kommende Tag in Stuttgart in 1925.
• 11. Genesis 6:2. Revised English Bible.
• 12. This was the parish priest at Arlesheim, which is next to Dornach. For further details see Necessity and Freedom (GA 166), translated by P. Wehrte, the lecture given in Berlin on 25 January 1916, Anthroposophic Press N.Y.; and ‘Things of the Present and of the Past in the Spirit of Man’ (GA 167), MS translation C42, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London.
• 13. Matthias Claudius (1740–1815), German poet and writer. The ‘verses’ in question are the third and fourth verses of his evening hymn Der Mond ist aufgegangen.

In spiritual science we consider all matter or substance to be a manifestation of the spiritual. But the essential question is always how a particular material phenomenon manifests the spiritual. The generalization that all matter is a manifestation of the spiritual really says nothing at all; at most it is an easy philosophy for lazy people. All those who seriously strive for knowledge have to study how the world's specific material phenomena manifest the spiritual.

There is a very ancient, yet ever new, saying to the effect that the human being is a microcosm. Human beings in the physical world are, in the first place, material phenomena. If we seriously believe that the human being is a microcosm, that our physical being contains the secrets of the whole cosmos, then we will think it worthwhile to examine how our physical being reveals the spiritual. If you study the physical aspect of the human being and think about it and you'll have to think if you strive for knowledge—you will see there are two totally different kinds of substance in our physical being. It only takes ordinary thinking and observation to see that there are two fundamentally different kinds of substance in us: the blood substance, or blood material, and the nerve substance.

Of course, you may say that at first glance there are all sorts of other substances too, muscle tissue, bone matter, and so on. But all these substances are actually built up from blood, as you will see when you study them more closely. Thus, their existence does not contradict that we have primarily two substances in us, blood substance, or blood material, and nerve substance.

One of the differences between these two substances can easily be observed; you need only consider that everything connected with the blood is involved from the inside, so to speak, in our metabolic processes. Though generated as a result of external influences, our blood is produced within us, and it in turn generates what is necessary for physical existence.

On the other hand, the most important nerves show themselves to be continuations of our sense organs. For instance, in the eyes you find the optic nerve continuing behind the eye and merging with the nerve substance of the brain. Similarly, all nerves are really continuations of our sense organs. The processes taking place in them are more or less the result of outside influences, of everything working upon us from the outside. We can say that just as magnets have two poles and just as we have positive and negative electricity, so the blood and the nerve substances are the two poles of our physical being. And these two kinds of substance are inwardly very different from each other.

If we perform an autopsy on a human being according to the methods and teachings of modern anatomy and physiology, we can put everything originating directly out of the blood next to everything built up from the outside, namely the nerve substance. Then the substances would appear to be the same. In fact, they are fundamentally different. The great and significant difference between them becomes clear if we trace the gradual development of life. We could quote a great deal from the most modern anatomy and physiology to provide further proof of this difference; however, we will not go into that right now but look at the question from the point of view of spiritual science instead.

Our blood has entered our organism as a result of processes belonging specifically to the earth. Blood is essentially of an earthly nature. You know that the development of the human being had been prepared long before the earth existed during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of evolution.¹ What was prepared there did not yet have any blood. Human blood, as it flows through our veins today, was added during our earth evolution. In contrast to that, the structure and development of the nervous system contains what had long ago been prepared in the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of evolution through processes that preceded our earth organization.

If you investigate both the blood substance and the nerve substance in the light of spiritual science, you will readily see the tremendous difference between the two. Our nerve substance is not of the earth, but the blood substance is of the earth. Nerve substance originated in processes that took place before the formation of the earth. Our blood substance, and everything that streams and flows in it, has its origin completely in earthly processes. Our nerve substance is absolutely extraterrestrial, so to speak, and woven into us as something cosmic; it is related to the cosmos.

Our nerve substance has been transferred into the earthly realm; it exists here on the earth where we live as physical beings. Thus, we all bear something of extraterrestrial origin in us that has been transplanted onto the earth. This is a very important fact, for the nerve substance, as it rests in us, is actually dead. You need only open any current anatomy or physiology textbook to see that in terms of substance, nerve substance is the most durable in our body. It is the one most resistant to change and, like the blood substance, least subject to direct, mechanical interference from the outside. Our nerve substance is affected by influences of our sense perceptions, but it cannot be influenced directly and mechanically because it was originally a living substance and is now dead because we as earth beings carry it in us. We might say if it were not paradoxical—though it is true in a spiritual sense regardless of any paradox—that if we could take our nerve substance and raise it to a sphere beyond the influence of earth forces, it would become a marvelous, living, vibrant being.

This nerve substance is, so to speak, designed for life in the heavens, in the extraterrestrial realm, but because it is in our organism and has thus entered the earthly sphere, it dies. This is very strange, isn't it? We have this nerve substance in us that is alive in the realm of the cosmos but dead in the realm of the earth. If we were to take some of this nerve substance up beyond the reach of earthly influences, we would have a wonderful, living, luminous substance. Of course, as soon as we returned it to our earthly sphere, it would revert again to the still, lifeless condition in which it now rests within us. Our nerve substance, then, is alive in the cosmos and dead on earth.

In fact, as far as its material composition is concerned, the nerve substance we have in us is an extraterrestrial element. All this can be very clearly expressed in a symbol. As you remember, I once lectured here on anthroposophy in a more specific sense and listed the human senses. Usually people distinguish only five senses, but we counted twelve then. Human beings have twelve senses if everything that can really be called a sense is taken into account. Ultimately, our senses are nothing but points of departure from which our nerves extend into us.

So, we really have twelve senses. And from these twelve senses nerves extend into us like little trees. This is because the nervous system that belongs to our outer senses is the expression of the passage of the sun through the twelve constellations of the zodiac, which is symbolized in the relation of our entire nervous system to each of the twelve senses. This shows that we carry in us, in the spatial relationship of our total nervous system to the twelve senses, what really exists out there in the cosmos in the sun's passage through the constellations of the zodiac.

When you look at that part of our nervous system located deeper inside us in the spinal cord, you will find the nerve fibers extending through the ring-like vertebrae of the spine. These rings in fact correspond to the months, to the orbit of the moon around the earth. Thus, the passage of each nerve fiber through the opening of the vertebrae in the spine corresponds to each day of the month—another cosmic relationship! The orbit of the moon around the earth is really symbolized in the relationship of our inner nerves to the spinal cord. Our nerve substance is entirely built up out of the heavens, out of the cosmos. We can understand this marvelous organization of the nerve substance within us only when we see in its tree-like arrangement an image of the whole starry firmament. And the forces that flow outside from star to star and express themselves in the movements of the heavenly bodies, those same forces actually flow in our nervous system, which is, however, dead in us. This connection between the organization of the cosmos and the structure of our nervous system, like many other things, reveals that the whole universe is manifest in us. Insofar as our nervous system is built for the heavens, it is alive in the heavens, in the cosmos, but it is dead in us because it has entered the earthly sphere.

Our blood substance is quite different because it belongs entirely to the earth. Due to the inner composition of the blood, the processes taking place in it would really have to be completely earthly processes. The peculiar thing about them, however, is that they are not living processes. As you know, the mineral realm, the lifeless kingdom, developed during evolution on the earth. And the nature of our blood corresponds fully to this lifeless kingdom. Although our blood lives as long as it is in us, it is not destined for life by its inner, earthly nature. Strangely enough, our blood is alive only because it is connected to the cosmic element in us. Our nervous system is actually destined for life in the cosmos beyond the earth but is dead inside us; our blood, on the other hand, is meant to be dead in us and receives its life from outside. In a sense, the nervous system yields its life to the blood. Thus, the nervous system is dead while the blood is alive, comparatively speaking. Our blood is by its very nature dead on earth and has only a borrowed life, a cosmic life forced upon it. Life itself is not at all of our earth. That is why the nervous system must take death upon itself in order to become earthly, and why the blood has to become living to enable us as beings of earthly substance to turn to the world beyond the earth.

This is the point where all we have learned through spiritual science takes on a deeply serious character. For we have to realize that the nerve substance we have in us is by its very nature destined for life, and yet it is dead. Why is that? It is dead because it has been transplanted onto the earth. Death—as you can read in the cycle of lectures I gave in Munich—is actually the kingdom of Ahriman.² Thus, be cause our nervous system lost its life in its descent into the earthly sphere, we carry an ahrimanic element in us. And because our blood is alive—though by its very nature destined for death, that is, for mere chemical and physical processes—we have a luciferic element in us. Ahriman can exist in us because our nervous system is dead, and because our blood is alive, Lucifer can live in us. Now you can see the significant differences between these two substances; they are polar opposites, just as the North Pole is to the South Pole.

Let us now consider the realm beyond the earth, not condensing spiritual science into an abstract theory but keeping it alive so it can speak to our feelings. We look out into the universe and realize that out there is the spirit that could live in our nervous system if the latter had not descended to the earth. We can sense the spirit out there, filling the universe, the spirit belonging to our nervous system. When we then turn our thoughts to our blood, we understand that by its very nature it is actually destined only for physical and chemical processes, only for the assimilation of oxygen as it is described by anatomy and physiology. However, because it lives in us, it participates in the life of the cosmos. It has, however, a primarily luciferic life.

And now think deeply and with great sensitivity of a recurrent common theme of our talks and remember all we have said about the descent of Christ from the cosmos into our earthly sphere. Then we can link what we remember with the thoughts we have just discussed. We ourselves originated in this universe, in the cosmos. Long ago, in the Lemurian epoch, or in the course of earthly evolution in general, we descended and have connected our evolution with the earth. But by entrusting the development of our nervous system to the earth, we have consigned it to death and left its life behind in the cosmos. That life we left behind later followed us and descended in the Christ Being. In other words, the life of our nerves, which we have not been able to bear in us ever since the beginning of our earthly existence, followed us later in the Christ Being. And what did that life have to lay hold of in earthly existence?

It had to lay hold of the blood! That is why we talk so much about the mystery of blood.

Our nervous system lost its cosmic life and our blood received a cosmic life, that is, life became death and death became life. They live separately in us. Yet, a new connection between them was achieved when the life of our nervous system, which had been left behind, descended to us from the cosmos, became human and entered the blood, which in turn united itself with the earth, as I have explained before.³ And now we as human beings can reconcile the contrast between blood system and nervous system through our participation in the Christ Mystery.

The polarity we carry in us manifests in various ways. For instance, there is the material science of the outer world. It has found its culmination, its goal, in present-day natural science, which sees the world as built up out of atoms. These atoms, however, are pure fantasy; they are simply not to be found out there. Why then do we talk about atoms? Because we have in us our nervous system built up out of little globules, and we project this structure on the world outside. The world of atoms out there is nothing but a projection of our nervous system! We project ourselves into the world and thus think of it as consisting of atoms, and of our nervous system as composed of many individual ganglion-globules. Science will always tend to atomism for it originates in nerve substance. By contrast, mysticism, religion, and so forth come from the blood and do not look for atoms but always for unity. These two opposites are in conflict with each other in the world. We do not understand their conflict unless we know it is really the struggle in us between nerve substance and blood substance. There would be no conflict between science and religion if there were none in us between nerve and blood substance.

Reconciliation is found if we unite ourselves in the right way with the Christ Being that pulsates through the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. Every feeling and experience we can have in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha contributes to this reconciliation. We have not yet advanced much in bringing about this reconciliation, but we must continue to strive for it. Even in our circles we see very often that the contrast I described manifests in one way or another. There are many among us who listen to the teachings of anthroposophy and accept them as they would accept conventional science. As a result, many people see no difference between anthroposophy and ordinary science. But we understand anthroposophy rightly only when we grasp it not just with the head, but allow every one of its utterances to kindle our enthusiasm and to live in us so that it finds its way from the nerve system to the blood system. Only when we take warmly to the truths contained in anthroposophy do we really understand it. As long as we approach it abstractly and study it as we study the multiplication tables, an arithmetic book, instruction manuals, or a cookbook, we do not understand it at all! We cannot understand anthroposophy if we study it in the same way as chemistry or botany. Only when it generates warmth in us, replenishes us with its own vibrant life, do we begin to really understand it.

Christ said: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” And He is with us not as one who is dead, but as a living Being among us, revealing Himself continuously. And only people so shortsighted as to fear these revelations can want us to stay with what has always held good in the past. Those who are not cowards know Christ is always revealing Himself; therefore, we may accept what He has revealed in the form of anthroposophy as a true Christ-revelation. Members have often asked me how they can establish a relationship with Christ. This is a naive question; for everything we strive for, every line we read of our anthroposophical science, is an entering into a relationship with Christ. In a certain sense, we really do nothing else. And those who seek an additional, special way of entering into a relationship with Christ are only naively expressing that they would prefer to avoid the more troublesome way of reading and studying.

My talk began like a conventional scientific talk, maybe one about anatomy or physiology, by looking at the substances in the human being, but now we find the transition to the loftiest knowledge we can have on earth: to Christology. You cannot find this transition in any other science. Spiritual science shows you that our nerve substance lost something in becoming earthly substance. But where is what our nerve substance lost? When Jesus of Nazareth was thirty years old, Christ entered his body and went through the Mystery of Golgotha. Try to warm yourselves through and through with this thought. What is lacking in our nervous system because we are living on earth, what has been replaced with an ahrimanic element, is what we find in the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is our task as human beings to take this Mystery into our blood to fill the luciferic element there with Christ, to kindle our enthusiasm so that it can live in us. Our abstract thinking is connected to the nerve substance, while our feelings, our heart and soul, enthusiasm, or mood, are connected to the blood. The relationship between nerve substance and blood substance in our organism is the same as that in our soul between abstract, cold thinking and the enthusiasm we can feel when things do not remain merely cold thoughts for us, but warm us through the spirit. This warming through the spirit does not come naturally; we have to train ourselves to attain it.

Now you can see in spiritual and physiological terms as it were, what the Mystery of Golgotha accomplished. What we had left behind in the cosmos followed us. It can now once again permeate our soul, because it did not permeate our body at the beginning of our earth existence, or we would have become automatons of the spirit. As it was, we went through a period of evolution on the earth before we were to be ensouled by what did not permeate our body right from the very beginning. This great and wonderful connection reveals the activity of the spiritual in matter.

We are not speaking here of the general, vague spiritual element woolly-headed pantheists speak of so glibly, but of the specific and definite spirit we see undergoing the Mystery of Golgotha. That is what I meant when I said that the general truism that all matter is a manifestation of the spiritual really does not say very much. We know something only when we know in detail how a specific, physical being manifests the spiritual. The findings of conventional science are an abundance of facts and material just waiting to be permeated with spiritual understanding. Spiritual understanding can penetrate them so deeply that even the most material science of all can be connected with Christology.

In our age people have difficulties finding the path connecting the nerve system with the blood system. And that is why I have shown you in several lectures how far our age is from such a spiritual understanding of the world. Last time I mentioned Hermann Bahr as an example of a man who had always been striving for the spiritual but was not able to make even the most elementary approach to the spiritual until he was already over fifty years old. I also told you that grotesque phenomena virtually dominate our cultural life, as in the case of the professor of philosophy in Czernowitz whose pronouncement I read to you.

Lest we forget his pronouncement, let me read it again: “We have no more philosophy than animals, and only our frantic attempts to attain a philosophy and the final resignation to our ignorance distinguish us from the animals.” This is the quintessence of his philosophy—well, one cannot really call it philosophy; after all, according to this professor of philosophy, human beings have no more philosophy than the animals! What it amounts to is that we have reached the point where duly appointed professors of philosophy have set themselves the task of representing philosophy as ridiculous nonsense. In this case, we can see clearly how far this fellow goes. Most other philosophers do the same, only not as openly. And this truth applies not only to philosophers ut also to other people who understand their task in life a out as much as this philosopher does his philosophy. Therefore, they ruin every task they are appointed to fulfill as much as this philosopher ruins philosophy. However, with most of them this is not so noticeable except when they rub our noses in it as cynically as Richard Wahle does, this philosopher appointed as professor of philosophy for the destruction of philosophy.

Clearly, it is necessary—to be convinced of this necessity you need only remember my lecture a few weeks ago—to connect our striving with the era in European spiritual life when people tried to approach the spirit, although not yet with the methods of modern spiritual science. For this reason, I have given the lectures of the past winters in these difficult times and have now collected them in a book entitled Vom Menschenrätsel The Riddle of Man”), which will be published shortly.⁴ This book summarizes the thinking, reflections, and contemplations of several great minds of the nineteenth century, who were striving for knowledge of the spirit though not yet with the methods of modern spiritual science. I tried to show how these great minds reached out toward the spirit even though they could not yet get there. Time will tell whether this collection of the lectures of the past winters will prove too difficult for people, even though it was written as simply as possible, and whether they will, after all, be content with merely buying it. But the important thing is to read it! Time will tell whether this book, which was written only to serve the times, will have any effect, whether it will enter into people's souls. It is a book everyone can use to prove to those outside our movement that spiritual science represents a demand of the best minds of our recent past. It did not develop arbitrarily, but is truly what the best minds have called for.

Thus, I would like to suggest that you read some of the great, spiritual works our great writers created in the nineteenth century; they are magnificent and important works. However, such good intentions often turn out strangely. As I indicated elsewhere and therefore did not repeat in this book, among the greatest of these works are the philosophical writings of Schiller, for instance, his Letters the Aesthetic Education of Man.⁵ Indeed, those who have read these letters with deep sympathy have done a great deal for the life of their soul. Several people have made efforts to draw the public's attention to the philosophical writings of Schiller. One of them was Heinrich Deinhardt from Vienna.⁶ In the 1860s, he wrote a splendid, extraordinarily profound little book on Schiller's world view. I don't think you can still get it in bookstores, except possibly an old, used copy in a second-hand store. It is out of print and was probably remaindered a long time ago, for nobody read what Deinhardt had to say about Schiller even though his book is one of the best things written about Schiller. Deinhardt was a teacher in Vienna whom the world has forgotten. He once had the misfortune to break his leg. Although his broken leg was set carefully, he could not get well again because he was undernourished. This man wrote one of the best books on Schiller, doubtlessly better than all the nonsense written since then, and yet he had to starve. That's the way of the world.

With my book I tried to show the relevance of great minds such as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Troxler, Planck, Preuss, Immanuel Hermann Fichte and a few others for our age.⁷ Their works provide a completely different kind of nourishment for the soul than the writings people so often turn to in their sincere but misguided quest for the spirit. With an aching heart I have seen again and again sincerely seeking people reach for this or that book in order to find nourishment for their soul and to find a way into the spiritual world. If they had only turned to works such as Schelling's Klara or Bruno, they would have received infinite nourishment for their soul. Granted, it would have required some effort, but that would have been good for them. A certain naive searching of souls has become more and more lively and urgent in recent times. Yet, most people only reach for the soul-gunk produced by Ralph Waldo Trine or for the stuff you get when you lace some formulation or other of Buddhism, Brahminism, or something like that with a sticky sauce.⁸ One can have the strangest experiences with such things. For example, I used to know a very dear man—he died recently here in Berlin—who was very enthusiastic about my writings interpreting Goethe when I first published them. Then as he grew older, he began translating a number of such soul-gunk writings, not Ralph Waldo Trine but others, from American English into German—his earlier enthusiasm evidently having been only a flash in the pan. For a long time there, people here in Europe thought they needed American-English nourishment for their souls.

Let us get a sense for what needs to be done to nourish people's souls. In the book I mentioned and also in the booklet Mission of Spiritual Science, which has just been published, I tried to show what can be given even to those who are not members of our circle.⁹ We can certainly hand this booklet to people who are not part of our circle. Then time will tell whether there is any understanding for the task devolving on anyone who has some idea of how necessary it is that spiritual truths stream into our present age.

I can assure you I have not merely made this or that disparaging statement in what I have said to you during these difficult times, but I have substantiated everything with details and verified it. I have not merely said philosophers are only homunculi but have quoted a particularly characteristic statement and a number of other things to give you an idea of how matters really stand and to show you that in this first third of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch everything tends to develop into homunculism, into spiritual emptiness.

People will have to penetrate more and more deeply into the difference between a merely logically correct concept and one that is true to reality. A logically correct concept is not necessarily true to reality. In my new book I have tried to elaborate what it means to think true to reality. So much that is deplorable in our cultural life comes from the belief that anything thought out logically is also necessarily true to reality. However, thinking that is true to reality is very different from merely logical and correct thinking.

For example, when you see a tree trunk lying on the ground, you see an external reality. But if you think about this tree trunk, you will find it is not a reality at all because it cannot exist as such. It necessarily has to contain the shoots that develop into branches, leaves, and blossoms. Thus, it is really a lie, this tree trunk, a “true unreality,” because what it appears to be cannot exist in the nature of things. Only if you are aware that you think of something unreal when you think about a tree trunk, then your thinking is true to reality.

Thus, you see most modern sciences consist of thoughts about unrealities. Geology thinks of the earth as consisting purely of minerals. But there is no such purely mineral earth, just as the tree trunk as such does not exist. For the mineral kingdom of the earth already contains in itself plants, animals, and human beings, and only when we think of these latter kingdoms as connected with the mineral are we thinking about a reality. Geology, then, is a completely unreal science.

The outstanding feature of my new book is that I have tried to elaborate the concept of reality. Another important feature is my attempt to give at least a preliminary sketch of the imaginative thinking we will all have to develop. You will also find all kinds of comparisons and analogies in this book because I did not work with abstract, logically developed concepts. Instead, I said, for example, thinking in terms of the atomistic world view means insisting what the natural sciences think is real. It means believing when we paint a portrait, the subject of the painting can then walk around. In my book I have worked with images like this. It remains to be seen whether this unique style will be appreciated. It is the beginning of a special mode of presentation not readily found elsewhere these days.

We have to realize, however, how far people are from unbiased acceptance of these things. These days people have an incredible faith in authority. They do not look at what stands behind the authorities, but measure authority by title, rank, and official position. However, what matters is what stands behind an authority. I would like to give you a nice example to show the extent to which homunculism and thinking in mere appearances have already advanced. A man told this story as an interesting example of what homunculism in our time considers great and important—he told it with the best of intentions for he is opposed to homunculism though he is not sure what to replace it with.

There are many today who worship technology as their god, and I gave you examples of this a few weeks ago. To show the extent of this adoration of technology let me quote the following monstrosity. This is an outrageous utterance of a serious man of mature years, a doctor and a family man. He is said to be not especially outstanding or profound in any way, that is, he is considered to meet all requirements for pronouncing judgments held to be good common sense. Before the war, when the newspaper world was thoroughly amazed by the daring flight of the French aviator Pegoud, this man—a doctor and family man and in no way outstanding—this man judged the cultural value of the airplane in the style of the period, saying with great seriousness and pathos, “A screw of Pegoud's flying machine is more important than all the philosophy of Kant and Schiller, than all philosophy of all times, if you like.”¹⁰ Now, don't think this is a very unusual and rare statement. It is the sort of attitude prevailing with many people today, and it is growing stronger and stronger.

It is now more than twenty years ago, that a lady invited me to speak in her salon on Goethe after I had just given a series of public lectures. I did so, and from her circle of friends she was able to bring together quite a large audience. So I spoke to them about Goethe's Faust and some of his other plays.¹¹ The ladies took it quite well, but most of the men said that Faust was not a drama but science. What they meant was that in a theater one ought to see Blumenthal and not Goethe's Faust.¹² It is indeed true that people now are moving in a direction culminating in judgments such as the one I just read to you.

You see, today things happen quickly. Not long ago someone published the memoirs of a well-known natural scientist who died recently—at least it was something like memoirs, not really an autobiography but a book written down later by somebody else. Strictly speaking, one cannot call this memoirs. It is indeed interesting to contemplate one of the opinions expressed by this world-famous man; I don't even want to tell you his name, you would be surprised how famous he is. Indeed, he was one of the most renowned people of his day, famous and an expert in his profession, and we certainly don't want to deny his greatness. One of the things he said was, “Philosophy does not concern me at all. It is all the same to me whether the sun moves around the earth or the earth around the sun. I would only be interested in this if I were studying astronomy.”¹³ This man has given the world a new medical preparation; his name is on everyone's lips; yet he has never gone outside his very narrow circle and serenely admits being not particularly interested whether the earth moves around the sun or the sun around the earth. He would concern himself with that only if he were an astronomer!

I don't want to denounce or criticize anyone; this man has doubtlessly earned his fame in his own field. He liked to have his wife play the piano for him in the evening; yet he considered music merely a means to improve his concentration and was not really listening to it at all. So she played the piano for him, but he understood nothing of it and merely enjoyed his enhanced concentration. Only on Saturdays he did not want any music because then he was waiting for something still more important to him. He was fervently expecting the arrival of a detective novel, a blood-curdling detective story in a lurid cover. He used to read such novels with special pleasure and preferred them to piano music. He loved these detective novels, the kind of trashy literature peddled on the backstairs!

Now, as I said, I am not telling you this to denounce anyone but simply to show what our times are like. We must remember that these are the authorities behind laboratory tables, behind dissecting tables. This is the spirit permeating what can indeed be very useful in the outer world and what will inevitably lead our whole culture step by step into technologization, that is, into homunculism. We must realize this danger, and, based on this insight, we have to find ways to allow the spirit to approach people. What I said here this winter was not said out of a subjective bias in favor of spiritual science, but out of insight into its inevitable significance for the present age. I believe it will be good if you will take into your souls what has been said.

We can probably meet again for another talk next Tuesday because it will surely take still another week before my book is finished.

• 1. These names do not refer to present-day planets but to ancient evolutionary stages and are therefore capitalized.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Secrets of the Threshold, (Hudson, NY: Anthro- posophic Press, 1987).
• 3. Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Luke, 3rd ed, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988).
• 4. Rudolf Steiner, Vom Menschenrätsel (“The Riddle of Man”), vol. 20 in the Collected Works, (Domach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1984).
• 5. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, 1759–1805, German poet, playwright, and critic. Wrote Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795).
• 6. Heinrich Deinhardt, often mentioned by Steiner. No biographical information available. His Beiträge zur Würdigung Schillers (“Contributions to the Appreciation of Schiller”) were reissued in 1922 in Stuttgart.
• 7. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German philosopher.
  
  Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, 1775–1854, German philosopher. Leading figure of German idealism. Clashed with Fichte and later also with Hegel. Wrote on Transcendental Idealism.
  
  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770–1831, German philosopher. Last of the great German Idealist system-building philosophers. Created monistic system reconciling opposites by means of dialectic process. Viewed history as similar process, dialectic of thesis an its implied antithesis leading to synthesis. Exerted influence on Existentialists, Positivists, and Marx.
  
  Immanuel Hermann von Fichte, 1796–1879, son of Johann Got- t ie . Philosopher, exponent of an ethical or speculative theism.
• 8. Ralph Waldo Trine, American spiritualistic writer.
• 9. Rudolf Steiner, Die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaft und deren Bau in Dornach (“The Mission of Spiritual Science and its Building in Dornach”), Berlin, 1916.
• 10. Adolphe Pegoud, 1889–1915, French aviator. Known for acrobatic ying feats; credited with first “looping the loop” in an aircraft. Killed in aerial combat.
• 11. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, German poet and playwright. Faust (1808–32), a drama in verse, is his masterpiece.
• 12. Oskar Blumenthal, 1852–1917, German playwright and critic.
• 13. It was not possible to ascertain the identity of the person Steiner refers to here.

Anthroposophical comprehension of spirit is not intended to be a merely theoretical world-philosophy, but rather to be the full content and energizing power of life.

And it fulfills its mission only if we so strengthen our anthroposophical apprehension of the world that it becomes fully alive within us.

For in thus uniting our souls with the anthroposophical conception of spirit we have become, in a certain sense, guardians who watch over definite and significant processes in human evolution.

Apart from Anthroposophy, whether men are followers of one system or of another they are as a rule convinced that thoughts and ideas, besides what they are in their own minds, are not also something else in their connection with the outer world. They expect thoughts and ideas, as ideals, to become operative in the world only in proportion as titan, by his deeds in the realm of the senses, succeeds in establishing their value.

The whole anthroposophical attitude presupposes our clear understanding that our thoughts and ideas must find still other means of realization besides the results of our deeds in the outer sense-world.

In the very recognition of this vital necessity lies the demand that the anthroposophist bear his part in watching over the signs of the times. Much is happening in earthly evolution; and upon malt, and particularly upon man in our own time, lies the obligation to gain a genuine under-standing of what occurs in the evolution of the world in which he has been placed.

With regard to a single individual everyone knows that his development must be taken into account, and not the mere outer facts that are about him. Just consider, roughly speaking, the present external facts surrounding human beings who are five years, ten years, twenty, thirty, fifty, or seventy years of age. Vet no one who is reasonable will demand the same attitude towards these things from the five-year-olds, the ten-year-olds, the twenty-year-olds as from men of fifty or seventy. What a man’s reaction to his environment should be can be determined only by taking into consideration his personal development. This is universally admitted in regard to individuals.

But as the individual man is subject to a definite development, having a different kind of powers in childhood, middle life, and old age, just so has general humanity different powers at different periods of its evolution. One is, as it were, sleeping in the midst of the world evolution if one fails to note that humanity, in its essence, is different in the twentieth from what it was in the fifteenth century, or even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and earlier. Ignoring of this fact—the idea that one may speak of a mail or of general humanity abstractly, without consideration of their continuous evolving—belongs to the greatest errors, defi-ciencies, and aberrations of our time.

Now it may be asked: How is man to arrive at a more exact insight into these things? You know that we have often discussed one important point in regard to this evolution. The Greco-Latin period, from the 8th century B. C. to about the 15th century of our own era, we have to count as the so-called culture period of the Intellectual or Mind Soul; and the time since the 15th century as the culture period of the Consciousness Soul. This is an essential factor in the evolution of humanity precisely as regards our own time. Thus we know that the principal force in human development from the 15th century until the third millennium is the Consciousness Soul.

But in Spiritual Science, in real Spiritual Science one may never stop at generalities and abstract statements; one must seek at all times to grasp concrete facts. Abstractions are useful only when one is curious in a very ordinary sense. If it is intended to make Spiritual Science into life’s content, into a life-force, you must be more serious than curious, and you must not stop at such abstractions as I have just described. That we are living in the period of the Consciousness-Soul, that the development of the Consciousness-Soul is counted upon, is quite correct and extraordinarily important too, but we must not stop at that.

If we wish to attain to a definite view of these things we must first of all consider somewhat more exactly the essential constitution of man. As men we are divided, in the sense of Spiritual Science and counting from above downward, into the ego or 1, the astral body, the etheric body (which I have latterly called also the body of formative forces,) and the physical body. Among these different members of our human nature we live, for the time being, psychically and spiritually, only in the ego or I. The ego is given to us through our earthly evolution and the Spirits of Form who direct it. Everything, really, that enters our consciousness enters it through our ego. If the ego does not so unfold that it can maintain its connection—even though by means of the bodies—with the outer world, then we have as little consciousness as during sleep. The ego connects us with our environment. The astral body was given to us during the Moon-evolution that preceded the present Earth-evolution: our etheric body during the still earlier Sun-evolution; the physical body, in its inception, during the Saturn-evolution.

But when you go through the description of these bodies in Occult Science you will see in what a complicated way the adjustment of these four members was brought about in order to make man what lie is today. Do we not learn from the facts described in Occult Science that in the formation of the three sheaths of the human being spirits from all possible hierarchies took part? Do we not see that what enfolds its as physical body. etheric body, astral body is of a very very complicated nature? But not only did these hierarchies work together in bringing our vehicles into existence—they are still working within them. And no one understands man who believes him to be only a conjunction of flesh, blood, bones. etc., which natural science, physiology, biology, and anatomy describe.

Approaching the truth of this human sheath-being, seeing him in his reality, we perceive that beings from the higher hierarchies are working together wisely, as predetermined, in all that takes place unconsciously in his bodies. You may gather from the rather sketchy outlines which I have given in my Occult Science that this co-operation of individual spirits from the higher hierarchies in fashioning man must be very intricate in its details. But, nevertheless, if you wish to understand man you must come at these things ever more concretely, more in detail.

Now in this field of research it is extremely difficult even to focus the attention upon a concrete question; they are tremendously complicated, these concrete questions. Just suppose someone were to ask: What is the hierarchy of the Seraphim or of the Dynamis doing in the etheric body of man in the year 1918 of the present cycle of human evolution? For one can as easily ask this question as to ask, for instance, whether it is raining at the moment in Lugano. Of course, one can answer neither of these questions by mere thinking or by mere theories, but only by ascertaining the facts. Just as one must find out by a letter or telegram whether or not it is raining in Lugano, so we must inform ourselves through a real penetration of the facts regarding the present task, let us say, of the Spirits of Wisdom or the Thrones in the human etheric body. Such a question is of extraordinary complexity, and we can only persevere in our gradual approach to the spheres where such questions properly arise. And in this field of inquiry care is taken that man’s wings shall not grow up into the sky, and he become arrogant and proud, in his striving for real knowledge!

The nearest vistas, so to speak, which concern us most directly, are those upon which we can form a definite opinion. But these we ought to see clearly if we do not wish to remain asleep in regard to our own place in human evolution.

So I shall speak to you of a question which is not as vague and indefinite as the question: What are the Dynamis or the Thrones doing in our etheric body?—although this also is very concrete. Instead I shall put before you a question which really concerns men of the present day. This is: What are the angels (those active beings closest to man) doing in this present age within the astral body?

When we look into our inner being we see that the astral body lies nearest to our ego, so it is to be hoped that the reply to this question may vitally concern us. The angels are the hierarchy directly above the human hierarchy itself. So we are asking a moderate question, and later we shall see how we can answer the inquiry: What is being done by the angels in the human astral body, right now in the present age of mankind, which is passing through the 20th century, the period which began in the 15th century and will last into the beginning of the 3rd millennium?

Now what can be said as to the means of answering such a question? One can only say that spiritual research, if earnestly pursued, is not a trifling with concepts or words, but really works into the sphere where the spiritual world becomes perceptible. And anything so close to us may certainly be observed, but this question may be answered profitably only in the age of the consciousness-soul itself.

You might easily think that if this question could have come up in earlier ages and an answer been demanded, that this answer would now be at hand. But neither in the age of atavistic clairvoyance, nor in the Greco-Latin period could this question be answered, for the reason that the soul-pictures obtained by atavistic clairvoyance obscured the observation of the angelic activity in our astral body. There was nothing to be seen, just because of these atavistic pictures; and in the Greco-Latin period, thinking was not yet as forceful as it now is ... thinking has been strengthened, particularly through the era of natural science. So the age of the consciousness-soul is the one in which such questions may be consciously and effectively considered.

The productive quality of our Spiritual Science must be shown in that we do not put people off with theories, but are able to offer knowledge that is definitely applicable to life.

What are the angels doing in our astral body? We can convince ourselves of what they are doing only by rising to a certain degree of clairvoyant observation, so that we see what takes place in our astral body. We must attain at least to a certain degree of imaginative cognition if the formulated question is to be answered.

Then it becomes evident that these beings from the hierarchy of the angels—each angelic individual having its responsibility towards one 1w-man being, but also all working together—form pictures in the human astral body. They produce pictures tinder the guidance of the Spirits of Form

Unless we rise to imaginative cognition we do not realize that images are induced continuously in our astral body. They arise, these pictures, and then fade away. Were they not so created there would he in the future no development for man that would express the intention of the Spirits of Form. What the Spirits of Form propose to accomplish with us during and beyond the Earth evolution they must first model, as it were in images, and later their objective reality will appear in a transformed humanity.

Today the Spirits of Form are already creating these images in the astral body through the angels. The angels form pictures in the astral body upon a plane which man may reach by raising his thinking to clairvoyance. And if we can follow up these pictures, then we see that they are constructed according to definite impulses and principles, and in such a way that in the manner of their inception lie certain forces for the future development of mankind. If we watch the angels at their work (however strange this may sound, we can only express it in that way), if we watch, we shall notice that the angels have in their work a very definite intention in regard to future social conditions on earth. They aim to implant in the astral bodies such images as will bring about in the future certain determined social conditions in the united life of humanity.

Men may resist the admission that angels are releasing within them ideals for the future, but it is nevertheless true. And there is a fundamental principle in this picture-forming by the angels: the fundamental rule that in the future no one is to find peace in the enjoyment of good fortune while others beside him are unhappy. There reigns an impulse of the most perfect fraternity—of brotherhood rightly understood—of the most absolute unification of the human race with relation to social conditions in physical life. That is one standpoint, according to which the im-ages are formed by the angels in the human astral body.

But there is a second impulse with reference to which the angels form these images. They have certain objectives, not only in relation to the outer, social life, but also in relation to the soul itself, and to the soul-life of men. Through pictures imprinted upon the astral body they aim to so affect the soul-life that in the future every man shall see in his neighbor a hidden divinity.

Mark well, my dear friends: the angels intend through their work to bring about changes. These will be such that we shall no longer consider man, either in theory or practice, as a highly developed animal—according to his physical qualities alone. Instead we shall approach everyone with the fully developed realization that in every man something appears that takes its rise in fundamental divine sources, revealing itself through flesh and blood. To conceive of man as a manifestation, a revelation from the spiritual world, as earnestly as possible, as strongly as possible, as intelligently as possible—all this is being put into their pictures by the angels.

When this comes true it will have quite definite results. All the free religious instinct that will unfold in humanity will be founded upon the fact that in every man the image of God will he acknowledged in immediate life practice rather than in mere theory. Then there will be no religious coercion; none will be needed, for then every meeting between men will be as a matter of course a religious act, a sacrament, and no one will need any particular church organization upon the physical plane to support his religious life. The church, if it rightly understands itself, can have but one object: to render itself unnecessary upon the physical plane in that all life is being made into an expression of the supersensible.

To pour out upon mankind complete freedom of the religious life underlies the impulses of the angels’ work.

There is also a third intention: to give to humanity the possibility of attaining to the spirit through thought, through thinking to leap across the chasm, and arrive at direct spiritual experience.

Spiritual Science for the spirit, religious freedom for the soul, fraternity for the body—that resounds like cosmic music through the work of the angels in human astral bodies. Man needs only to lift his consciousness to a different level to feel himself removed to this wonderful workshop of angelic activity.

Now the fact is that we are living in the age of the consciousness-soul, and in this age the angels work within the astral body as I have just described. Man is to come gradually to conscious comprehension of these things. This belongs to human development. 1-low then, does one come to say anything like that which I have just told you? Where, so to say, is this activity to be found?

Well, it is still found today in the sleeping man. It is found in the conditions of normal sleep, and it is also found in waking sleep conditions. I have often explained how men, though supposedly awake, sleep their life away in the midst of most important matters. And I can give you the not very cheering assurance that anyone who goes through life consciously finds today many many sleepers. What is happening in the world they permit to happen, without interesting themselves in it, or troubling themselves about it, or taking any part in it. Great world-events often pass by men, as that which takes place in the city passes by sleepers—although the people are apparently awake. Then, however, if such men, though waking, are wholly unaware of something important, we can see in their astral bodies—quite independently of what they do or do not wish to know—how this important work of the angels goes on, of which I have spoken.

Such things often proceed in a manner which must seem to humanity very puzzling, very paradoxical. Many a man is regarded as quite unworthy to enter upon this or that connection with the spiritual world. But in truth such an one is in this incarnation just a fearful sleepyhead, who dozes through everything that goes on around him. Yet in his astral body one of the company of angels is working for the future of mankind. The astral body is nevertheless made use of, and all this may be observed within it.

But the point is that such a thing as this must force its way into the human consciousness. The consciousness-soul must be lifted to recognition of that which may be found only in this way.

Having accepted these assumptions, you will understand when I now call to your attention that this epoch of the consciousness-soul presses forward to a definite event, and that since it is with the consciousness-soul that we have to do, it will depend upon men how this event takes place in human evolution.

You see, it may come a hundred years earlier or later, but it really would have to enter the sphere of human development. And this happening may be thus described: men must come, purely through their consciousness-soul, through their own conscious thinking, to actual sight of the way in which the angels prepare the future of mankind. What spiritual science teaches on this subject must become the practical worldly wisdom of humanity, so practical that men may be firmly convinced, and of their own knowledge, that the angels intend what I have indicated.

Now the human race is so far advanced in its approach to freedom that it depends upon man himself to face this event in full consciousness, or to sleep it away. What would it mean to meet it in full consciousness? This means the following: It is possible today to study spiritual science; it is there; and it is only necessary to study it. It will be an aid if, in addition, various meditations are used, and such practical directions as are given in Knowledge of she Higher Worlds and its Attainment. But all that is really necessary is to study spiritual science, and consciously and rightly understand it. Without the development of clairvoyance any man may study it understandingly who does not himself set up the obstacle of prejudice. And if men study it ever more and more, assimilating its concepts and ideas, then their consciousness will so awaken that, instead of dozing through important events, they will become aware of them.

These events may be more exactly characterized, for just to know what the angel is doing is only a preparation. The main thing is to realize the threefold truth which mankind is to receive through the angelic activity, and which will make its entrance earlier or later, according to man’s receptivity, or at worst—not at all.

First: It will be shown how man, by means of his most immediate interest can comprehend the deeper side of human nature.

Yes, my dear friends, a moment will come, which men should not lose by sleeping, when they will receive from the spiritual world through their angels a stimulating impulse, which will lead them to feel a much deeper interest in every man than we are inclined to feel today. This heightened interest in our fellow man is not to develop subjectively in man’s usual indolent fashion, but suddenly, as with a leap, through the spiritual infusion of a certain secret—what the other man really is. I mean by this something concrete, not a theoretical abstraction: men will learn something that will arouse their continuous interest in each other. This is the first point in this threefold truth, and it will profoundly affect our social life.

The second point in it will be that the Christ-impulse requires, besides all else, complete religious freedom, and that no Christianity is genuine which does not make this freedom possible. This will be shown to each man spiritually, irrefutably by his angel.

And the third is the indisputable insight into the spiritual nature of the world.

This event, as already stated, is to take place in such a way that the consciousness-soul may acquire a definite relation to it. This is imminent in human evolution, for to this end the angel is working through its images in the astral body.

But I now point out to you that this approaching event is dependent upon the human will. Men may leave many things undone, and many are failing today in much that should lead to a conscious experience of this great moment.

There exist, however, as you know, other beings in universal evolution that have an interest in turning man from his course: the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings. The divine evolution of mankind includes the development I have described. If man were left to his own nature he would arrive in time at the perception of what the angel is unfolding in his astral body, but the Luciferic influence tends to force man away from this insight into the work of the angels. The Luciferic beings do this by curbing his will. They try to darken man’s understanding of the exercise of his own free will while making him into a good, even a spiritual being—indeed from the point of view which I am considering. Lucifer desires for man goodness, spirituality—but wishes to make it automatic, without free will. Man is to be raised to clairvoyance, in accordance with good principles, but automatically: he is to act as a spiritual reflection, an image of the divine, but without free will and the possibility of evil.

This is connected with definite evolutionary secrets. The Luciferic beings, as you know, have stood still at different stages of development, and they introduce elements foreign to normal evolution. They are interested in taking such a hold upon man that he may not attain to free will because they have never won this for themselves. Free will can be gained only upon earth, and they want to have nothing to do with the earth. They wish only Saturn, Sun. and Moon development—and to stop at that. These Luciferic beings hate in a sense the free will of man. They act in a highly spiritual way, but automatically—this is most significant—arid they want to lift man to their own spiritual height. They want to make him automatic—spiritual, but automatic. From this arises the danger that if man should become an automatic spiritual being before his consciousness-soul functions fully he might miss in the drowsiness of insensibility the revelation that is to come.

But the Ahrimanic Icings also work against this revelation. They do not strive to render man especially spiritual, but rather to kill in him the consciousness of his own spirituality. They try to induce in hint the belief that he is really only a completely developed animal. Ahriman is in reality the great teacher of materialistic Darwinism. He is also the teacher of all that technical and practical activity which admits the value of nothing beyond the external life of the senses, which desires an extensive technology only in order that man may satisfy, with greater finesse, hunger, thirst, and other animal needs. Working upon the consciousness-soul by all sorts of subtle scientific methods; the Ahrimanic beings strive to obscure, to kill in man the realization that he is an image of Deity.

In earlier ages it would have been useless for the Ahrimanic spirits to try in this way through theories to becloud the truth. Why? In the Greco-Latin period, and even more truly in earlier times, when man still possessed atavistic clairvoyance, the manner of his thinking was unim-portant, for he still had the pictures through which he looked into the spiritual world. Whatever Ahriman might have suggested about his relation to the animals would have had no effect upon his conduct. Thinking became powerful—powerful in its weakness, one might say—only in our own fifth post-Atlantean period. Only since the 15th century has thinking been competent to lead the consciousness-soul into spiritual realms—or, on the other hand, to hinder it from entering the spiritual world. Only now are we living in an age when a theory, a science, by a conscious method may rob man of his divinity, or his experiences of divinity. This is possible only in the period of the consciousness-soul. Therefore the Ahrimanic spirits are striving to spread a teaching that will obscure the divine origin of man.

From the description of these influences, adverse to man’s normal divine evolution, it may be gathered how he must order his life, so that he may not permit to pass unobserved the revelation that is to come. For otherwise a great danger will arise. And against this man must be on the alert. or else instead of this momentous event, which is intended to affect powerfully the future form of Earth-evolution, something may take place which would seriously impair it.

You see, certain spiritual beings, attain their own development through maps, concomitantly with man’s unfolding. The angels who produce their images in the human astral body do not 4o this as a game, but in order that thereby something may be achieved. Vet, since results must be sought within humanity, the whole thing would be rendered futile if man, having acquired the consciousness-soul, should deliberately disregard it. The whole thing would become play! The angels would be only playing a game in the development of man’s astral body! Only by coming to realization within humanity does it become, not a game but a matter of serious import.

From this you may learn that the work of the angels must remain earnest under all circumstances. Consider what might be behind the scenes of existence if men could reduce the angelic activity to play, simply through their drowsy insensibility.

And what if that should nevertheless happen! What if humanity should persist in remaining stolidly unaware of the important spiritual revelation of the future! If, for example, men permit to pass unnoticed the middle part—that relating to religious freedom—and so miss the repe-tition of the Mystery of Golgotha upon the etheric plane, of which I have often spoken, the reappearance of the etheric Christ, and other important things; if men should lose all this, then what should be accomplished through pictures in the astral body would have to be brought about by the angels in another way.

If man, by failing to become alert, should prevent what ought to be done in his astral body, then an effort would be made to reach the same results through sleeping human bodies. That which man would remain densely unaware of in his waking condition would be carried out-by the angels with the help of the physical and etheric bodies during sleep. There, forces would be sought in order to produce effects unattainable when the waking soul is within these bodies, but which may be induced while man, who ought to have been awake to these things, is outside his physical and etheric bodies, with his I and astral body.

That is the great danger for the period of the consciousness-soul. That is what might occur if men should not turn to the spiritual life before the beginning of the third millennium! We are separated from it, as you know, by only a brief time, since the third millennium begins with the year 2000. It might come to pass that what the angels are to gain as the result of their labor they would have to seek in the sleeping bodies of men instead of in waking humanity. They might be forced to withdraw all their work from the astral body and submerge it in the etheric body in order to bring it to realization. But man would have no part in this. It would have to be accomplished during his absence from the etheric body, for if he were present in his waking state he would prevent it.

Now I have given you a general idea of the matter. But what would be the result if the angels should be obliged to carry out such work through man’s physical and etheric bodies during sleep without his conscious cooperation?

Its effect upon human evolution would be undoubtedly threefold. First of all there would be engendered in man’s sleeping bodies, in the absence of his Ego and astral body, something not aroused through his free choice, but which he would find present when he awoke in the morning. It would always be present, and it would be instinct instead of conscious freedom, and therefore detrimental. And certain instinctive knowledge, which is to enter human nature, regarding the mysteries of birth, conception, and the entire sexual life, truly threatens to become harmful tinder the dangerous conditions which I have described: that is, the danger that certain angels would themselves then undergo a change, of which I cannot now speak further, since this change belongs to the deeper mysteries of the science of initiation, of which nothing may be given out at present. It may be said, however, that the effect upon human evolution would be such that certain instincts relating to sexual life would arise, not wholesomely in clear waking consciousness, but in a pernicious, destructive way. These instincts would not be mere personal errors, but would pass over into social life, bringing about conditions—through the effects of this sexual life upon the blood—which would prevent men from developing any sort of brotherhood on earth, but instead would cause them to oppose it. This would all be a matter of instinct.

Thus there is coming a decisive point where one may turn to the right, remaining watchful and alert; or to the left—and sleep! But in this latter case instincts will appear that will be horrible!

What will the natural scientists says if such instincts appear? They will say that they are a normal development, an inevitable stage in human evolution. Man cannot be warned of such dangers by natural science for. from the scientific standpoint, it is equally explicable whether men become angels or devils. In regard to either, science says the same thing: the later is derived from the earlier—the great wisdom of the causal explanation! Natural science will he quite unaware of the event of which I have spoken: for if human beings become half-devils through their sexual instincts, science will look upon it as a necessity of nature. In short, the matter cannot he explained scientifically, although whatever may happen, science will regard it as susceptible of explanation.

Such things are to be comprehended only through spiritual insight, by supersensible cognition.

Such would be the first result of the changes evoked within the angelic activity. The second would bring to mankind an instinctive knowledge of certain remedies—but a destructive knowledge!

In a materialistic sense everything connected with medicine would make an enormous advance. Men would have instinctive insight into the curative power of certain substances and combinations, and by this knowledge would do fearful harm. But the harm would be called useful. That which is unhealthy would be called healthy, for it would be discovered that certain processes would have enjoyable results. Certain methods leading in unwholesome directions would simply be found agreeable.

The knowledge of the healing power of various processes would be increased, but would take a harmful direction, for through certain instincts it would also be discovered what kind of diseases could be brought forth by different substances and agencies. And a man could decide, according to his selfishness and egotism, whether to bring about illness or to refrain from doing so.

The third result would be mail’s acquaintance with definite powers by which, with the slightest stimulus—through the harmonizing of certain vibrations—great mechanical forces could be unleashed in the world. A sort of mental guidance of mechanism, of everything of a mechanical nature, would be developed in this way, and the whole technique be led into a vicious channel, which would, however, inordinately please and serve man’s egoism.

That, my dear friends, is a concrete statement of possible developments, and a conception of life and being which can be rightly appreciated only by those who realize that an unspiritual conception of life cannot clarify the situation. If a pernicious medicine were produced, if a terrible aberration of the sex instincts should develop, or an evil motive power in world-mechanics through the application of spiritual powers to natural forces, all unspiritual world-philosophy would not see through it, nor realize its deviation from the true path … just as little as a sleeper, so long as he sleeps, could see the approach of a thief who is coming to rob him. He sees what has happened only when he awakes in the morning—and what a terrible awakening would await mankind! Yet without this awakening man would continue to pride himself upon the broadening of his medical knowledge, and find such satisfaction in certain sex aberrations that lie would praise these errors as superhuman, as freedom from prejudice, as open-mindedness! Ugliness would be beautiful, and beauty ugly in some connections, and it would not be noticed because all this would be looked upon as a natural development. But it would be a wandering from the path which, within humanity itself, is prescribed for man’s essential nature.

I believe, my dear friends, if any feeling has been gained of the way in which spiritual science presses into our whole attitude of mind and soul, that one may also be possessed of the earnestness necessary for the reception of such truths as have been presented today. We may derive from them—as from all aspects of spiritual science—the recognition of a certain responsibility, a life-obligation. Whatever our circumstances, whatever we may have to do in the world, the important point is to be able to preserve this thought: that our actions must be saturated and irradiated by our anthroposophical consciousness. Then we shall contribute something towards the true progress of mankind.

A man is entirely mistaken if he ever believes that true spiritual science, seriously and rightly understood, could ever divert him from the practical, intensive work of life. True spiritual science brings awakening—awakening to the kind of things that I have pointed out today. My dear friends, if we may use the comparison that seeing into the spiritual world is a further awakening, just as ordinary awakening is an awakening from sleep, we can then, in order to understand the comparison, ask this other question: Can the waking state be harmful to our sleep?

Certainly, if it is not what it should be! If a man’s waking life is wholesome he will have healthy sleep, but if his waking hours are stupid, lazy, comfort-loving, without exertion, then his sleep will be unhealthy. And it is just the same with the waking life to which we are attuning ourselves through spiritual science. If through spiritual science we establish in ourselves a proper relation to the spiritual world, this will guide the interests of the ordinary sense-world in right directions, in the same way that a healthy waking life regulates our sleep.

Anyone who considers the life of our own times must indeed be asleep if he remain unaware of several things. How men have boasted, especially in recent years. of their efficiency! They have brought it about that those who most despise the realm of ideas, the mental, and spiritual, now occupy all the responsible positions. And one could go on declaiming about efficiency in this life so long as mankind has not been actually dragged into the abyss. Just now a few are beginning—in most cases only instinctively—to croak that a new time must conic, that all sorts of new ideals must arise! But it is only croaking. And should these things appear as instincts only, without conscious adaptation to the life of spiritual science, they would lead to the degeneracy of that which ought to be experienced in the waking state, rather than to any advantageous evolutionary transition.

He who appeals to people in familiar phrases may still meet with sonic success, but men will have to endure other words, unaccustomed expressions, in order that out of chaos a social cosmos may again emerge.

If in any age the men who should wake fail to do so, and do not recognize what ought to be done, then nothing authentic happens, but the ghost of the preceding epoch wanders around. In many religious organizations ghosts of the past move about, and our legal systems are still haunted by the ghost of ancient Rome. In the age of the consciousness-soul spiritual science is to free men from this bondage, and lead them to actual observation of a spiritual fact: What does the angel do in our astral body? To theorize about the angels, etc., is at best but a beginning. Progress requires us to speak factually, both in regard to our own period, and in an-swering the question which most immediately concerns us. It does concern us because the images that the angel is evoking in our astral body are to determine our future conditions, which must he brought to actuality through the consciousness-soul.

If we had no consciousness-soul we should not need to trouble ourselves, for other spirits, other hierarchies, would enter and work out what the angel is weaving; but since we are to develop the consciousness-soul no other spirits will step in to bring the angel’s work to realization.

Of course in the Egyptian age different angels performed this work of weaving. But soon other spirits entered, and to man this was darkened by his atavistic-clairvoyant consciousness. Thus men wove—these men, because of what they saw clairvoyantly—a (lark veil over the angels’ pictures. But now man himself is to unveil them. Therefore, he must not miss by sleeping that which will be brought into his conscious life during the period which is to close even before the third millennium. Let us extract from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not merely all sorts of doctrines, but also resolutions; and these will give us strength to be wakeful. We can accustom ourselves to being wakeful human beings. We can he mindful of many things.

We can begin at once with watchfulness, discovering that not a (lay passes in which some miracle does not take place in our lives. We may also reverse this statement. We may say: If on any given day we call find nothing wonderful in our experience, we have simply overlooked it. Try at night to look over your life. You will find in it some circumstance great or small, of which you may say to yourself: It entered my life most strangely, and was accomplished quite unusually. You will succeed in this if you think comprehensively enough, if you fix your soul’s eye upon the association of events. In ordinary life this is not done because people seldom ask themselves: What, for instance, was prevented by this or that?

We seldom trouble ourselves to consider the things which have been prevented and which, had they occurred, would have entirely altered our lives. Back of these things, which were removed in one way or another, there exists a great deal that may well educate us in wakefulness. How many things might have happened to me today? If I ask myself this question every evening, and then think over single circumstances that might have brought about this or that result, there will attach to such questions reflections that will lead to watchfulness and self-discipline. This is something which, once begun, will take us further and further, until at last we do not try to find out only what was meant by the fact that we, for example, wanted to go out some morning at half-past ten, and that just at the very last moment some man or other came who detained us…

We are annoyed by the delay, but we do not ask what might have happened if we had really gone at the time planned. What was altered thereby?

I have already spoken to you more explicitly of these practices. From observation of the negative in our lives (which, however, bears eloquent witness to the wisdom guiding us), up to observation of the angel weaving and working in our astral body, there is a direct path, a very direct path, and one which we may safely follow.

It is to be taken into account that the notes are in part very deficient and may not be regarded as being verbatim reports.

The Allegory of the Lost Word and its Quest in connection with the Whitsuntide Festival

Among the allegories and symbols we wished to discuss in these lectures, there is also the symbol of the so-called Lost Word, which is to be found again. We have spoken about the Temple which was lost and is to be restored; we can all the more appropriately add to that a brief account of the Lost Word and its quest, since this theme has some connection with the symbolic meaning of the Whitsuntide Festival. I did speak about some of the things to be mentioned today, a year ago.¹ But there are some amongst us who may not have heard last year's lecture; so it may not be superfluous to refer to these things again. Moreover, we are in a position to consider such matters annually, and treat them fundamentally and exhaustively; we have added somewhat to our knowledge, so that several things can now perhaps be discussed which could not yet be mentioned last year.

Pentecost is connected with just that symbol which is known both in the Church and in Freemasonry as the symbol of the Lost Word which is to be found again. But with it we touch on Christian mysteries of a real and extraordinary profundity. With it we touch again—and more thoroughly than could be the case last week—upon the purpose and mission of Solomon the Wise, and upon the whole future meaning of Christian truths.

Pentecost is connected with that perception of man's inmost being which was present in early Christianity, but which has been gradually lost in Christianity as it has survived in the various western Churches. Pentecost is the festival which should freshly remind man of his liberation, every year—of what we call the freedom of the human soul.

How has man really come to what we call his freedom—that is to say, to his ability to distinguish between good and evil, and in freedom to do either good or evil? You know that man has passed through a long sequence of evolution before arriving at the stage where he stands today, and that we have passed the mid-point of this evolution. The midpoint of the whole of human evolution lies roughly in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, which preceded our own epoch. Now we have already gone past this mid-point. Because of that we are the first missionaries of the second half [of evolution], the first apostles of an ascending arc: whereas man was in a descending arc until the time of Atlantis, was involved in a kind of descending evolution until he had submerged himself in the uttermost depths of material life. Now he is climbing back again towards spiritual development.

What we human beings did not possess before the midpoint of our earth evolution was freedom of choice between good and evil. Now we cannot talk about good and evil in the subordinate kingdoms of nature. It would be ridiculous to discuss whether a mineral wanted to crystallise or not; it crystallises if the appropriate conditions are present. It would be equally ridiculous to ask whether the lily wants to blossom or not; or to ask the lion to abstain voluntarily from killing and devouring other animals. Only with man, only in our phase of evolution, do we speak about what we call freedom of choice. Only to human beings do we ascribe the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. How man got this capacity is described in the Bible, in the great symbol of the Fall, in the scene of the temptation, where the Devil or Lucifer appears to Eve and persuades her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Through that, man obtained free will; with it he began the second part of his evolutionary path. We can no more inquire into freedom, good and evil for man prior to that evolutionary mid-point, than we can for minerals, plants and animals. Something else is connected with that.

In all esoteric [teaching] our contemporary world and everything connected with it signifies the Cosmos of Love. And the Cosmos or Universe of Wisdom preceded this Universe of Love. We want to look at this in a rather deeper meaning.

You know that our earth evolution was cosmologically preceded by the Moon evolution.² A still more distant precursor of our earth was the Sun; earlier still was Saturn. Man has passed through these three evolutionary stages: Saturn, Sun and Moon. Our earth has passed through three cycles already, in which the Saturn development was repeated in the first Round, the Sun development in the second Round, and the Moon development in the third Round. Each of these Rounds commences thus: the planet forms itself as an exceptionally fine substance, as mind-substance. The earth was present as such a substance when it began its fourth Round, that is, the contemporary Cycle. Then it began to reiterate the three previous Rounds: the Saturn Cycle in Arupa, the Sun Cycle in Rupa and the Moon Cycle or Round in the astral. [See diagram at the end of the notes for lecture 10.]

Thus our earth passed once more through earlier material conditions before arriving at its present physical density. Before our present condition, it was astral. We denote the astral Globe as a kind of Cosmos of Wisdom. Each Cosmos or Globe is again divided into seven epochs. Thus we have seven Race-cycles [or Great Epochs] in our present Globe: the Polarian, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian, the Atlantean and now the Aryan Race [or Epoch] in which we live. The sixth and seventh Races are still to come. After that the earth will return to the astral condition. These Race-cycles constitute seven successive periods of our physical evolution on earth. The astral predecessor presents itself to us in like manner, in seven consecutive Periods, corresponding to seven Races. However, it is not quite correct to speak of Races here; the forms which then lived cannot properly be called Races. It stretches the analogy too far, to keep speaking of Races. There were other forms that manifested themselves. In esoteric language these previous astral periods are called the Kingdom of Wisdom, and their forms are called the seven Periods of Wisdom, in which the seven Kings of Wisdom, the seven Kings of the Dynasty of Solomon, were ruling. For in each of these periods lived a being of similar kind to the soul of Solomon, to the soul which incarnated in Solomon. This Cosmos of Wisdom was superseded by the earthly Cosmos proper, the Cosmos of Love.

Now let us be clear about what took place during, the formation of the earth, from our standpoint. As the earth began to form itself, it was still united with the sun and with that which we now call the moon. Together with these two bodies the earth formed a single whole. First of all the sun separated itself from the earth. The whole of earth life thereby became different. At this point death made its entry, somewhat in the form in which we know it in the cell-bearing plants; whereas before there could be no question of death, because there was continuous material life. So long as the plant consists of a single Cell, no decay sets in when the next cell is born. It is different when a whole organism is built up [out of many cells]; this [organism] decays into its parts, and the individual part is no longer the whole living [process]. This kind of death came in for the first time when the sun separated from the earth. The schism between the sexes began in the middle of the Lemurian Race, as a result of the splitting-off of the moon. The separation of the moon brought about the partition of the [being that is both] male and female into [beings that are either] only male or only female. Thus humanity took the shape that it now has in the world.

What then happened during these weighty cosmic events as first the sun and then the moon separated from the earth? If we want to become clear about that, it would be well to point out that at that time the earth was changing from a very thin but already physical matter into something continually getting thicker. The first physical substance was etheric substance, which was present in all human beings on earth, and which was a very fine substance, finer than our gas.

At present we distinguish three forms of matter on our earth—solid, liquid and gaseous bodies, the latter formerly known as air. Moreover we esoterically distinguish four forms of ether: firstly fire [or warmth] ether which makes all bodies capable of being permeated by warmth; secondly, light ether; thirdly, chemical ether, in which atoms are made to mingle according to certain laws of number (the ‘elective affinity’ of atoms); and fourthly the physical or life ether; in all, four kinds of ether bringing life to the earth. Next, the earth, essentially speaking, developed itself in these four types of ether. Then it condensed itself-put of these ethers. This densification took place for the first time during the Lemurian epoch. Before that, one has to think of an etheric earth, which was accessible to quite different forces than is our present physical earth. I wanted to clarify this to you.

When I say that this etheric earth was accessible to quite different forces, then be clear that all living beings, whether plant, animal or man, were indeed accessible to these forces, in their inmost being. The ether is accessible to what is called in esoteric language the ‘Word,’ the ‘Cosmic Word.’ I can also make clear to you how the etheric relates to what we call the ‘Word,’ in a preparation for initiation. As you know, man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies, and then of the ‘I’ proper. The etheric body becomes visible if one [can bring oneself out of] the physical body. But man as he is today can in no way act upon his physical body; he is unable to move the tiniest blood corpuscle. The physical body is controlled by high cosmic forces; it is higher beings who can exercise power here today—later on man will have this ability. When he is able to control the forces of his own physical body—which the materialist speaks of as nature forces—then man will have become a God. To ascribe these powers to him today would be idolatry, for in truth we have to do with high beings who can influence the physical body.

When man is able to control the substance of fire ether, he will be able to control all that is physical. When he is able to control the physical in man, then he will also be able to control the rest of what is physical as well. This force is designated the Father Force, or simply the ‘Father’—everything through which a being joins with our earth, everything by which that being can control physical matter. When a person can penetrate into the physical body with such Father Forces, that is called Atma; this is how Atma can be assigned to the physical.

The second member of [man's] being is the etheric body, which corresponds to the Son principle, or the Logos, the ‘Word.’ The etheric body can be moved and inwardly shaped by Buddhi, set in vibration by the Son principle, just as the physical [body can be] by Atma.

The third member is the astral body. This we cannot at first control; only very few people at present have any significant control over their astral bodies. We say a man is endowed with Manas, to the extent that man can control his astral body from within.

Man began to work on his astral body during the middle of Lemurian times. If you could have observed a man at the stage he had attained when the Lemurian Race began, that is, when he was bisexual, you would have found that his body was built from elsewhere; but in the middle of Lemurian times, man then began to work on his astral body himself. Everything which man weaves into himself out of his ego, which he does out of duty or by command, to overcome the unwrought appetites and passions, helps to refine the astral body; when it has become completely permeated by the work of man's own ego, then we can no longer call it astral body, it has become Manas. When the whole astral body has been transformed into Manas, man can then begin to work upon his etheric body to transform it into Buddhi. What he weaves in there is nothing else than the individualised Word; Christian esotericism calls this the ‘Son’ or ‘Logos,’ and calls the astral body, when it has become Manas, the ‘Holy Spirit,’ and the physical body that has become Atma, ‘Father.’

What happens here on a small scale within man happens also on a large scale in the world at large. These world secrets were carried out in the mysteries, in initiation; thereby something was done which for most human beings would ordy happen in a distant future. Already, in the Egyptian mysteries one could only be initiated if one hac worked one's way through one's entire astral body, so that the astral body could be completely managed by the ego. Now such a person would stand before the initiating priest: he had no influence on his physical body, nor yet on his etheric body; but his astral body was of his own making. Now it was indicated to him how he could act on his etheric body and on his physical body. The physical body was brought into a lethargic condition—it had to remain in this state for three nights an three days—and during this time the etheric body was raised out of it. And since the initiate had become powerful in respect of the astral body, he could therefore now gain the power to act on the etheric body. He could learn to let what he had in the astral work on the etheric body. Those were the three days of the Entombment and the Resurrection in an etheric body that was completely permeated by what one calls the Holy Spirit. Such an initiate was called a man endowed with the Logos, with the ‘Word’. This ‘Word’ is nothing else than the Wisdom, Manas, which has been worked into the astral body. This wisdom can never enter the etheric body unless the astral body has first been permeated by it.

It was just the same for the earth. Not until the whole earth had been brought this far into the astral, could such an event occur. The condition which the neophyte in the Egyptian mysteries had to be in, corresponds to this time of the Astral Globe which I have spoken of as the immediate precursor of our earth; that is the Globe of Wisdom. All wisdom was worked into it by the cosmic powers. And this transfer of wisdom into the Earth Globe itself made it possible that after the separation of sun and moon from the earth, something could again be incorporated from above, from higher spheres [into the earth] just as this happened on a small scale in the initiation.

Seven times the Astral Globe [stage] of earth [see the chart at the end of the notes to lecture 10] came under the rule of the Wise, after the manner of Solomon. Then the earth clothed itself with an etheric body, and earthly matter was crystallised or formed. The ‘Word’ was laid into that; this Word is thus, as it were, entombed in earthly matter, but it must be resurrected. This is also the beautiful meaning of the myth of the God Dionysus. The Holy Wisdom of our earth's precursor is laid into all the earth beings of our earthly world. Take this as deeply as you are able. Take the human etheric body as every human has it. If you look at it clairvoyantly it has nearly the same form as the physical body. At death man's physical body dissolves, and the etheric body too; the physical body dissolves in the physical world, and the etheric body in the general cosmic ether. But this etheric body has been very elaborately created for man by the wisdom which first implanted it from out of the Astral Globe. This etheric body disperses after death. Only that etheric body which has been built up from within is a living body, that stays eternally. This is the etheric body of the Chela [the candidate for initiation]—and that does not dissolve after death. If you see a modern civilised man die, you may see the etheric body for a while, but then it dissolves. With the Chela it remains. The renunciation of Devachan by the Chela consists in the fact that the Chela stays on the astral plane and there makes use of his etheric body. With ordinary human beings a new etheric body has to be formed at each rebirth; the ability to create a new one is attained in Devachan. The etheric body which the Chela has built up from within will never be lost again; whereas that which is made by cosmic wisdom from elsewhere indeed dissolves itself again. It is the same with the etheric bodies of plants and animals. What is now etheric body still, came to be built up out of cosmic forces which flowed into it out of the Astral Globe [state] of our earth. This wisdom which you find in the astral earth is expressed in the legend of Dionysus.

Now in the Lemurian epoch the denser [state] had to form itself. Then the Father principle had to be worked in. That is the last [principle] to take possession of our earthly matter. What has been worked in, in this way, is deeply hidden in the physical world. First the Holy Spirit worked itself into the astral material. Then the Spirit allied to the astral matter—that is the Son—worked itself into the etheric substance; and then came the Father, who controls physical density. Thus the macrocosm was built up in a threefold progression—Spirit, Son and Father; and man, as he progresses further upwards, goes from the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. All of this takes place under guidance in the evolution of the earth.

Up to Lemurian times the only evolution was outward. Then this Trinity was drawn into our physical evolution. In the Aryan epoch, what had taken place in an earlier epoch was introduced into man's thinking as religion, making a stage by stage recapitulation.

We are in the fifth Sub-Race of the Aryan Root-Race (the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch]. Four other Sub-Races have gone before. The first Sub-Race is that of ancient India. This venerable ancient race was led by the ancient Rishis. We can only form a hazy conception of them. We are acquainted with their religion from the accounts which have come down to us in the Vedas. The teaching of the Rishis was far greater and mightier than our present traditions about it. Only during the third Sub-Race were records made, that are preserved for us in the Vedas. The original religion of the Rishis had great traditions from the divine predecessors of men, the astral initiates of the Dynasty of Solomon. Living in the spirit of the ancient Indian Rishis were archetypal forms; the great intuitions derive intelligence and knowledge not only from the laws of earth, but also from the archetypal forms, who themselves created the said wisdoms. This was the first religion, that of the Holy Spirit.

The second religion was fostered in the Near East; in it the Second Principle [of the Trinity] was revered as a recapitulation of the first time that the Son made His influence felt on earth. The thrusting down of certain beings accompanied the [coming in of] the Son Principle; there is no higher development without other [development] being thrust down into the depths. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were thrust down in this way. Whoever develops himself upwards, takes upon himself a tremendous responsibility, that is the great tragedy; the corollary of every saint is that a great number of beings are thrust down. There would be no development if this kind of thrusting down did not take place. A man must continually thrust others down, as he develops himself upwards. That is why all development which takes place out of self-interest is evil and reprehensible; it is only justifiable if done for the development of other beings. Only he who would raise up those who have been thrust down is fit for development. Thus, the evolution which manifested itself on earth and which had already been prepared on other cosmic bodies, the evolution aiming at endowing the etheric body with the Logos, with the Word, has been accompanied by the thrusting down of other beings connected with the earth's development. These [beings] were conceived as adversaries, as Luciferic principle. Thus we have precisely this duality—the principle of Evil accompanying the principle of Good—in the Persian religion. It is good if a man or indeed any being works Manasically into himself; but he is always confronted by evil. Ormuzd and Ahriman are the names for Good and Evil in the Persian religion.

We encounter the third stage with the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Egyptians; through [all of] these a recapitulation of the third stage of the Godhead takes place. Thus, from that time onwards, with all peoples, we encounter-the Trinity, the Three-in-Oneness of the Godhead. The second Sub-Race had no Triune Godhead, still less the first. [But] now, in this three-foldness, the ascent is gradually prepared for the whole of humanity. The initiates tread the path in advance ... [Gap ]³

In the first three Sub-Races there was a mirroring in the religious [sphere] of what had been active in macrocosmic processes. Now a new structure is formed: first Wisdom, then Son, then Father. The first gleam of wisdom came during the fourth Sub-Race, through the Semitic people, who arose during the third Sub-Race and continued into the fourth. From them Christianity derives. In the initiates of the Jewish people we find the whole course of past events on earth—all the events that had taken place in the heavenly sphere being repeated in the element of the intellect. Kama-Manas, which we call lower spirit, developed itself there; which has to be endowed with other forces. This endowment, this weft, is Christ Himself, the Word made Flesh, who points to the future Word, by which all human beings will be in a position to control their etheric bodies with their astral bodies, if they so work the Word into the etheric body that it wakens to life therein. The possibility of this development in the future is foreshadowed in the appearance of the Word made Flesh in the fourth Sub-Race. The whole of mankind must have attained control over the etheric, before the Logos can be incarnated in the etheric body. This, as an originating impulse, has proceeded from the Christ incarnated in the Flesh. When man, through the power of the Son, has gone through [this], he will then come to the Father.

Now the ascent must be re-enacted of the stages through which the whole of mankind gradually attains to what was achieved by Christ's appearance in the flesh. In the spirit which developed itself in Judaism, the higher Manas had to be kindled. Therefore, the new era begins with the descent of the Holy Spirit which will lead mankind through to the point in the sixth epoch when the Christ Principle, which is only hinted at in Christianity today, finds its fulfilment. ‘No man cometh to the Father save through Me,’ says the Son. He sent the Spirit to mankind so that it should be prepared for the time in the sixth epoch when Good and Evil will be separated. Man would never have developed this impulse without that other weft, which we have named as the so-called Evil Principle. Man had to receive free will so that his understanding could be called into play in deciding between Good and Evil. This weft of the Spirit's descent is consummated at Pentecost.

Spirit, Son and Father are as though entombed in the earth: the Father in the physical body, the Son in the etheric body and the Spirit in the astral body. However, man has developed his ego and has become self-aware. Now he must learn to work right down into the physical. That will be in the future. At present man is working into his astral body.. The symbol for that is the descent of the Holy Spirit into those who are to become the leaders of humanity. It is something in man which is akin to this Spirit which has taken it up.

Before the Son could become effective—which was in Hyperborean times—a part of the universal Principle of Spirit had to break away, be thrust down, and wander other paths. This is expressed in the Serpent, the symbol of knowledge, the Luciferic principle. It was this spark from the Spirit which made man into a free being and enabled him to desire the Good out of his own impulse. This Spirit which has come down to man through the great Whitsuntide Festival is akin to that Spirit which was thrust down, which is indeed embodied in Prometheus, which has blown the spark into a flame, so that our ego can make up its mind to follow the Spirit, just as it will later follow the Son and still later the Father. Man was certainly able to become evil, but on the other hand this potentiality for evil was the price of being guided back to the World of Gods from which he originated. That is the connection between Pentecost and the Luciferic principle. Thus the Whitsuntide Festival is also the festival of Prometheus and of freedom.

Now you will understand the connection between the Sons of Cain and the seven Salomonic Kings of pre-earthly times—of whom the King Solomon of the Bible appears as a descendant. Wisdom was first transmitted to man from outside. Later it had to spring up from within. Solomon built the Temple but only with the help of Hiram-Abiff; in association with this Son of Cain he appropriated the arts needed for erecting the Temple. Thus the streams run together again, that were flowing apart [from each other] in the world.

When the sun separated itself from the earth, the Word became entombed in the earth. It will be resurrected again when the earth has advanced as far as the sixth Root Race. Man will raise this Word from the dead, out of the earth; but first the spirit must live in him that will enable the Word to strike a chord in him. This was attained by the apostles at Pentecost. In Light on the Path⁴ we find the words: ‘Acquire knowledge and you will have speech.’ Speech comes with true knowledge, which descends like the tongues of fire on the apostles at holy Pentecost. When the inner Word comes, that is akin to the holy divine Word, and that sinks down into everything etheric, so as to make it come alive, then man will no longer speak out of himself but out of the divine Spirit. He is then the messenger of the Godhead and proclaims the inner Word of Godhead of his own free will.

Thus did the inner Word become alive in the apostles; thus did it spread its influence outwards from them. They proclaimed the fiery Word and were aware of their role as the messengers of the Godhead. Therefore the Holy Spirit hovered over them in the form of fiery tongues. They prepare humanity to receive the Logos. The great initiate, Christ Jesus, went on in advance. The Holy Spirit followed, fertilising the astral bodies so that they would become ripe for making their etheric bodies immortal. Once this has happened, then the Christ Principle will be drawn into humanity. This is what the initiates too had in mind when they said, somewhat as Heraclitus did: If, in escaping from the earthly,⁵ you ascend to free ether, with faith in immortality, you become an immortal spirit, free of death and of the physical.

Every single person will reach this point in the middle of the sixth Root Race. Now, however, man is still vulnerable to death, in that his etheric body has still not attained immortality. Christianity contains the secret of how man can gradually develop himself towards the resurrection of the etheric body. This is where the third great festival is connected with the other two Christian festivals.

I wanted to come to the conclusion here, that the Whitsuntide festival has infinite depths, and to show how man gradually develops a living awareness of the world around him, and that he is related to all the things around him, to everything which happens around him. In the names of the days of the week you will find what has transpired around us set forth.

Man celebrates Pentecost best by making it clear to himself what deep truths have been implanted in this festival by the wise. And to celebrate a festival really means to unite oneself in spirit with the Cosmic Spirit.

• 1 . In his lecture of 23rd May 1904 (lecture 1).
• 2 . In connection with the following descriptions see the fundamental works of Rudolf Steiner: Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New York, 1971, and Occult Science, An Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1969.
• 3 . [Gap] A few very inadequately recorded sentences follow this in all texts. In Vegelahn's text it is as follows: ‘Then the astral body was permeated by Manas, Buddhi appeared in the etheric body and the Father-Principle in the physical body. This working went so far that a brain could be formed, up to the point where the being learned to say “I”. That was the case with the Ur-Semites.’
• 4 . Light on the Path, by Mabel Collins (1851–1927) a theosophical writer acknowledged by Rudolf Steiner by an exegesis to the work in question. (Printed in his: Guidance in Esoteric Training, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972).
• 5 . Rudolf Steiner here draws his Heraclitus quotation from a work on philosophy by Vincent Knauer.