The Rudolf Steiner Archive

One of the concepts which must occur to us when we speak of the relation of Christ to the human soul is undoubtedly that of sin and guilt. We know what an incisive significance it had in the Christianity of St. Paul. Our present age, however, is not well adapted for gaining a really deep inner understanding of the wider connections between the concepts “death and sin” and “death and immortality” which are to be found in Paul's writings. That cannot be expected in our materialistic times. Let us recall what I said in the first lecture of this course, that there can be no true immortality of the human soul without a continuation of consciousness after death. An ending of consciousness with death would be equivalent to the fact, which would then have to be accepted, that man is not immortal. An unconscious continuance of man's being after death would mean that the most important part of him, that which makes him a man, would not exist after death. An unconscious human soul surviving after death would not mean much more than the sum of atoms which, as materialism recognizes, remain even when the human body is destroyed.

For Paul, it was an unshakable conviction that it is possible to speak of immortality only if individual consciousness is maintained. And since he had to regard the individual consciousness as subject to sin and guilt, he would naturally think: If a man's consciousness is obscured or disturbed after death by sin and guilt, or by their results, this signifies that sin and guilt really kill man—they kill him as soul, as spirit. The materialistic consciousness of our time of course is remote from that. Many modern philosophical thinkers are content to speak of a continuance of the life of the human soul, whereas the immortality of man can be identified only with a continuing conscious existence of the human soul after death.

Here, certainly, a difficulty may easily arise, especially for the anthroposophical world-view. To approach this difficulty we need only look at the opposition between the concept of guilt and sin and the concept of Karma. Many anthroposophists get over this simply by saying: “We believe in Karma, meaning a debt which a man contracts in any one of his incarnations; he bears this debt with him, as part of his Karma, and discharges it later; so, in the course of incarnations, a compensation is brought about.” Here the difficulty begins. These people then easily say: “How can this be reconciled with the Christian acceptance of the forgiveness of sins through Christ?” and yet the idea of the forgiveness of sins is intimately bound up with true Christianity. We need think of one example: Christ on the Cross between the two malefactors. The malefactor on the left hand mocks at Christ: “If thou wilt be God, help thyself and us!” The malefactor on the right says that the other ought not to speak thus, for both had merited their fate of crucifixion, the just award of their deeds; whereas He was innocent and yet had to experience the same fate. And the malefactor on the right went on to say: “Think of me when thou art in thy kingdom.” And Christ answered him: “Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

It is not permissible merely to gainsay these words or to omit them from the Gospel, for they are very significant. The difficulty for anthroposophists arises from the question: If this malefactor on the right has to wash away the Karma he has incurred, what does it mean when Christ, as though pardoning and forgiving him, says: “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise”? An objector may say that the malefactor on the right will have to wash away his Karmic debt, even as the one on the left. Why is a difference made by Christ between the malefactor on the right and the one on the left? There is no doubt at all that here the anthroposophical conception of Karma meets a difficulty that is not easy to solve. It can be solved, however, when we try to probe more deeply into Christianity by means of spiritual science. And now I shall approach the subject from quite another side, a side already known to you, but it can bring certain remarkable circumstances to light.

You know how often we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman, and how Lucifer and Ahriman are represented in my Mystery Plays. If one begins to consider the matter in a human-anthropomorphic sense and simply makes of Lucifer a kind of inner and Ahriman a kind of outer criminal, there will be difficulty in getting on; for we must not forget that Lucifer, besides being the bringer of evil into the world, the inner evil that arises through the passions, is also the bringer of freedom. Lucifer plays an important role in the universe, and so does Ahriman.

When we began to speak more of Lucifer and Ahriman, our experience was that many of those associated with us became uneasy; they still had a feeling of what people have always thought of Lucifer—that he is a fearful criminal to the world, against whom one must defend oneself. Naturally, an anthroposophist cannot go all the way with this feeling, for he has to assign to Lucifer an important role in the universe; and yet again, Lucifer must be regarded as an opponent of the progressive gods, as an enemy who crosses the creative plan of those gods to whom reverence is rightly due. Thus, when we speak of Lucifer in this way, we are ascribing an important role in the universe to an enemy of the gods. And we must do the same for Ahriman.

From this point of view it is easy to understand the human feeling that leads a person to ask: “What is the right attitude to adopt towards Lucifer and Ahriman; am I to love them or to hate them? I really don't know what to do about them.” How does all this come about? It should be quite clear from the way in which one speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman that they are Beings who by their whole nature do not belong to the physical plane but have their mission and task in the Cosmos outside the physical plane, in the spiritual worlds. In the lectures given in Munich in the summer of 1913 [Eight lectures with the title The Secrets of the Threshold], I laid particular emphasis on the fact that the progressive gods have assigned to Lucifer and Ahriman roles in the spiritual world; and that discrepancy and disharmony appear only when they bring down their activities into the physical plane and arrogate to themselves rights which are not allotted to them. But we must submit to one fact which the human soul does not readily accept when these matters are under consideration, and it is this: Our human judgment holds good only for the physical plane, and—right as it may be for the physical plane—it cannot be simply transferred to the higher worlds. We must therefore gradually accustom ourselves in Anthroposophy to widen our judgments and our world of concepts and ideas. It is because materialistically minded men of the present day do not want to widen their judgment, but instead prefer to keep to judgments which hold good for the physical plane, that they have such difficulty in understanding Anthroposophy, although it is all perfectly intelligible.

If we say, “one power is hostile to another”, then on the physical plane it is quite right to say, “enmity is improper, it ought not to exist”. But the same thing does not hold good for the higher planes. There, judgment must be widened. Just as in the realm of electricity positive and negative electricity are necessary, so is spiritual hostility necessary in order that the universe may exist in its entirety; it is necessary that the spirits should oppose one another. Here is the truth in the saying of Heracleitos, that strife as well as love constitutes the universe. It is only when Lucifer works upon the human soul, and when through the human soul strife is brought into the physical world, that strife is wrong. But this does not hold good for the higher worlds; there, the hostility of the spirits is an element that belongs to the whole structure, the whole evolution, of the universe. This implies that as soon as we come into the higher worlds we must adopt other standards, other colorings for our judgments. That is why there is often a feeling of shock when we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman on the one hand as the opponents of the gods, and on the other hand as being necessary for the whole course of the cosmic order. Hence we must, above all things, hold firmly in our minds that a man comes into collision with the cosmic order if he allows a judgment which holds good for the physical plane to hold good for the higher worlds also.

Now the root of the whole matter, which must again and again be emphasized, is that the Christ, as Christ, does not belong with the other beings of the physical plane. From the moment of the Baptism in the Jordan, a Being who had not previously existed on Earth, a Being who does not belong to the order of Earth-beings, entered into the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus in Christ we are concerned with a Being who could truly say to the disciples: “I am from above, but ye are from below”, which means: “I am a Being of the kingdom of Heaven, ye are of the kingdom of Earth.”

And now let us consider the consequences of this. Must an earthly judgment that is entirely justifiable as such, and that everyone on Earth must maintain, be also the judgment of that Cosmic Being who, as Christ, entered the Jesus body? That Being who passed into the body of Jesus at the Baptism in the Jordan applies not an earthly but a heavenly judgment. He must judge differently from men.

And now let us consider the whole import of the words spoken on Golgotha. The malefactor on the left believes that in the Christ merely an earthly being is present, not a Being whose realm is beyond the earthly kingdom. But just before death there comes to the consciousness of the malefactor on the right: “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is another; think of me when thou art in Thy kingdom.” At this moment the malefactor on the right shows that he has a dim idea of the fact that Christ belongs to another kingdom, where a power of judgment quite different from that obtaining on the Earth holds sway. Then, out of the consciousness that He stands in His kingdom, Christ can answer: “Verily, because thou hast some dim foreboding of my kingdom, this day (that is, with death) thou shalt be with me in my kingdom.” This indicates the super-earthly Christ power that draws up the human individuality into a spiritual kingdom. Earthly judgment, human judgment, must of course say: “As regards the Karma, the right-hand malefactor will have to make compensation for his guilt, even as the one on the left.” For heavenly judgment, however, something else holds good. But that is only the beginning of the matter, for of course it might now be said: “Yes, then the judgment of Heaven contradicts that of the Earth. How can Christ forgive where earthly judgment demands karmic justice?”

This is indeed a difficult question, but we will try to approach it more closely in the course of this lecture. I lay special emphasis on the fact that we are touching here on one of the most difficult questions of occult science. We must make a distinction which the human soul does not willingly make, because it does not like following out the matter to its ultimate consequences, and there are indeed some difficulties in so doing. We shall find it, as I have said, a difficult subject, and you will perhaps have to turn the question over in your minds many times in order to get at its real essence.

To start with, we must make a distinction. We must first consider how, through Karma, objective justice is fulfilled. Here we must clearly understand that a man is certainly subject to his Karma; he has to make karmic compensation for unjust deeds, and if we think more deeply about it, we can see that he will not really wish it otherwise. For suppose a man has done another person wrong; in the moment of doing so he is further from fulfillment than he was before, and he can recover the lost ground only by making compensation for his unjust act. He must wish to make compensation, for only by so doing can he bring himself back to the stage he had reached before committing the act. Thus for the sake of our own progress we are bound to wish that Karma should be there as objective justice. When we grasp the true meaning of human freedom, we can have no wish that a sin should be so forgiven us that we would no longer need to pay it off in our Karma. For example, a man who puts out the eyes of another is more imperfect that one who does not, and in his later Karma it must come to pass that he does a correspondingly good deed, for only then will he be inwardly again the man he was before he committed the sin. So if we rightly consider the nature of man, we cannot suppose that when a man has put out the eyes of another it will be forgiven him, and that Karma will be in some way adjusted. Hence there is rightness in the fact that we are not excused a farthing of our Karma, but must pay our debts in full.

But something else comes in. The guilt, the sins, with which we are laden are not merely our own affair; they are an objective cosmic fact which means something for the universe also. That is where the distinction must be made. The crimes we have committed are compensated through our Karma, but the act of putting out another person's eyes is an accomplished fact. If we have, let us say, put out someone's eyes in a present incarnation, and then in the next incarnation we do something that makes compensation for this act, yet for the objective course of the universe the fact will remain that so many hundred years ago we put out someone's eyes. That is an objective fact in the universe. As far as we are concerned, we make compensation for it later. The stain that we have personally contracted is adjusted in our Karma, but the objective fact remains—we cannot efface that by removing our own imperfection. We must discriminate between the consequences of a sin for ourselves, and the consequences of a sin for the objective course of the world. It is highly important that we should make this distinction. And I may now perhaps introduce an occult observation that will make the matter clearer.

If one surveys the course of human evolution since the Mystery of Golgotha and approaches the Akashic Record without being permeated with the Christ Being, it is easy, very easy indeed, to be led into error, for one will find records which very often do not coincide with the karmic evolution of the individuals concerned. For example, let us suppose that in, say, the year 733 some man lived and incurred heavy guilt. The person now examining the Akashic Record may at first have no connection with the Christ Being. And behold—the man's guilt cannot be found in the Akashic Record. Examination of the Karma of this man in a later incarnation reveals that there is something still in his Karma which he has to wipe out. That must have existed in the Akashic Record at a certain point of time, but it is no longer there. A strange contradiction! This is an objective fact which may occur in many cases. I may meet a man today, and if through grace I am permitted to know something about his Karma, I may perhaps find that some misfortune or stroke of fate that has fallen on him stands in his Karma, that it is an adjustment of earlier guilt. If I turn to his earlier incarnations and examine what he did then, I do not find his guilty deed registered in the Akashic Record. How does this come about?

The reason is that Christ has taken upon Himself the objective debt. In the moment that I permeate myself with Christ, I discover the deed when I examine the Akashic Record. Christ has taken it into His kingdom and He bears it further, so that when I look away from Christ I cannot find it in the Akashic Record. This distinction must be kept clearly in mind: karmic justice remains, but Christ intervenes in the effects of the guilt in the spiritual world. He takes over the debt into His kingdom and bears it further. Christ is that Being who, because He is of another kingdom, is able to blot out in the world our debts and our sins, taking them upon Himself.

What is it that Christ on the Cross of Golgotha really conveys to the malefactor on the left? He does not utter it, but in the fact that He does not utter it, lies its essence. He conveys to the malefactor on the left: What thou has done will continue to work in the spiritual world, and not merely in the physical world. To the malefactor on the right He says: “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” This means: “I am beside thine act; through thy Karma thou wilt have later on to do for thyself all that the act signifies for thee, but what the act signifies for the universe, that”—if I may use a trivial expression—“is my concern.” That is what Christ says. The distinction made here is certainly an important one, and significant not only for the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, but also for the time before the Mystery of Golgotha.

Some of our friends will remember that in earlier lectures I have called attention to the fact that Christ really did descend to the dead after His death; this is not a mere legend. He thereby accomplished something also for the souls who in previous ages had laden themselves with guilt and sins. Error now comes in if a man, without being permeated with Christ, investigates in the Akashic Record the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. He will continually make errors in his reading of the Akashic Record. Hence, for example, I was not at all surprised that Leadbeater, who in reality knows nothing about Christ, should have made the most abstruse statements concerning the evolution of the Earth in his book, Man: How, Whence and Whither. For only through permeation with the Christ Impulse is the soul capable of really seeing things as they are, and how they have been regulated in the evolution of the Earth on the basis of the Mystery of Golgotha, though they occurred before it.

Karma is an affair of the successive incarnations of man. The significance of karmic justice must be looked at with our earthly judgment. That which Christ does for humanity must be measured by a judgment that belongs to worlds other than this Earth-world. And suppose that were not so? Let us think of the end of the Earth, of the time when men will have passed through their earthly incarnations. Most certainly it will come to pass that all debts will have to be paid to the last farthing. Human souls will have had to balance their Karma in a certain way. But let us imagine that all guilt had continued to exist in the Earth-world, that all guilt would go on working there. Then at the end of the Earth period human beings would be there with their Karma balanced, but the Earth would not be ready to develop into the Jupiter condition; the whole of Earth humanity would be there without a dwelling place, without the possibility of developing onwards to Jupiter. The fact that the whole Earth develops along with man is a result of the Deed of Christ. All the guilt and debt that would otherwise have piled up would cast the Earth into darkness, and we should have no planet for our further evolution. In our Karma we can take care of ourselves, but not of humanity as a whole, and not of that which in Earth-evolution is connected with the whole evolution of humanity.

So let us realize that Karma will not be taken from us, but that our debts and sins will be wiped out from the Earth-evolution through what has come in with the Mystery of Golgotha. Now we must, of course, realize clearly that all this cannot be bestowed on man without his cooperation—i.e., cannot be his unless he does something. And that is clearly brought before us in the utterance from the Cross of Golgotha which I have quoted. It is very definitely shown to us how the soul of the malefactor on the right received a dim idea of a super-sensible kingdom wherein things proceed otherwise than in the mere earthly kingdom. Man must fill his soul with the substance of the Christ Being; he must, as it were, have taken something of the Christ into his soul, so that Christ is active in him and bears him into a kingdom where man has, indeed, no power to make his Karma ineffective, but where it comes to pass through Christ that our debts and sins are blotted out from our external world.

This has been wonderfully represented in painting. There is no one upon whom a picture such as “Christ as Judge at the Last Judgment”, by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, can fail to make a deep impression. What really underlies such a picture? Let us take, not the deep esoteric fact, but the picture that is here presented to our souls. We see the righteous and the sinners. It would have been possible to present this picture differently from the way in which Michelangelo, as a Christian, has painted it. There was the possibility that at the end of the Earth, men, seeing their Karma, might have said to themselves: “Yes, I have indeed wiped off my Karma, but everywhere in the spiritual, written on tablets of brass, are my guilt and my sins, and they weigh heavily on the Earth; they will destroy the Earth. As far as I am concerned I have made compensation, but there the guilt stands, everywhere.” That would not, however, be the truth. For through the fact of Christ's death upon Golgotha, men will not see the tablets of their guilt and sin, but they will see Him who has taken them upon himself; they will see, united with the Being of Christ, all that would otherwise be spread out in the Akashic Record. In place of the Akashic Record, the Christ stands before them, having taken all upon Himself.

We are looking into deep secrets of the Earth's existence. But what is necessary in order to fathom the true state of things in this domain? It is this: that men, no matter whether they are righteous or sinful, should have the possibility of looking upon Christ, that they should not look upon an empty place where the Christ should stand. The connection with Christ is necessary, and the malefactor on the right shows us his connection with Christ by what he says. And although the Christ has given to those who work in His spirit the behest to forgive sins, this never means encroaching upon Karma. What it does mean is that the earthly kingdom will be rescued for those who stand in relationship to Christ, rescued from the spiritual consequences of guilt and sin, which are objective facts even when a later Karma has made compensation for them.

What does it signify for the human soul when one who may so speak says in the name of Christ: “Thy sins are forgiven thee?” It means that he is able to assert: “Thou hast indeed to await thy karmic settlement; but Christ has transformed thy guilt and sin so that later thou mayest not have the terrible sorrow of looking back upon thy guilt and seeing that through it thou hast destroyed a part of the Earth's existence.” Christ blots it out. But a certain consciousness is necessary, and those who would forgive sins may rightly demand it—a consciousness of the guilt, and consciousness that Christ has the power to take it upon Himself. For the saying: “Thy sins are forgiven thee” denotes a cosmic fact and not a karmic fact.

Christ shows His relation to this so wonderfully in a certain passage—so wonderfully that it penetrates deep, deep into our hearts. Let us call up in our souls the scene where the woman taken in adultery comes before Him, with those who were condemning her. They bring the woman before Him and in two different ways Christ meets them. He writes in the Earth; and He forgives, He does not judge; He does not condemn. Why does He write in the Earth? Because Karma works, because Karma is objective justice. For the adulteress, her act cannot be obliterated. Christ writes it in the Earth.

But with the spiritual, the not-earthly consequence, it is otherwise. Christ takes upon Himself the spiritual consequence. “He forgives” does not mean that He blots out in the absolute sense, but that He takes upon Himself the consequences of the objective act.

Now let us think of all that it signifies when the human soul is able to say to itself: “Yes, I have done this or that in the world. It does not impair my evolution, for I do not remain as imperfect as I was when I committed the deed; I am permitted to overcome that imperfection in the further course of my Karma by making compensation for the deed. But I cannot undo it for the Earth-evolution.” Man would have to bear unspeakable suffering if a Being had not united Himself with the Earth, a Being who undoes for the Earth that which we cannot change. This Being is the Christ. He takes away from us, not subjective Karma, but the objective spiritual effects of the acts, the guilt. That is what we must follow up in our hearts, and then for the first time we shall understand that Christ is in truth that Being who is bound up with the whole of Earth-humanity. For the Earth is there for the sake of mankind, and so Christ is connected also with the whole Earth. It is a weakness of man, as a consequence of the Luciferic temptation, that although he is indeed able to redeem himself subjectively through Karma, he cannot redeem the Earth at the same time. That is accomplished by the Cosmic Being, the Christ.

And now we understand why many anthroposophists cannot realize that Christianity is in full accord with the idea of Karma. They are people who bring into Anthroposophy the most intense egoism, a super-egoism; certainly they do not put it into words, but still they really think and feel: “If I can only redeem myself through my Karma, what does the world matter to me? Let it do what it will!” These anthroposophists are quite satisfied if they can speak of karmic adjustment. But there is a great deal more to be done. Man would be a purely Luciferic being if he were to think only of himself. Man is a member of the whole world, and he must think about it in the sense that he can indeed be egotistically redeemed through his Karma, but is not able to redeem the whole Earth-existence. Here the Christ enters. At the moment when we decide not to think only of our ego, we must think about something other than our ego. Of what must we think? Of the “Christ in me”, as Paul says; then indeed we are united with Him in the whole Earth-existence. We do not then think of our self-redemption, but we say: “Not I and my own redemption—not I, but the Christ in me and the redemption of the Earth.”

Many believe they may call themselves true Christians, and yet they speak of others—anthroposophical Christians, for instance—as heretics. There is very little true Christian feeling here. The question may perhaps be permitted: “Is it really Christian to think that I may do whatever I like and that Christ came into the world in order to take it all away from me and to forgive my sins, so that I need have nothing more to do with my Karma, with my sins?” I think there is another word more applicable to such a way of thinking than the word “Christian”; perhaps the word “convenient” would be better. “Convenient” it would certainly be if a man had only to repent, and then all the sins he had committed in the world were obliterated from the whole of his later Karma. The sin is not blotted out from Karma; but it can be blotted out from the Earth-evolution, and this it is that man cannot do because of the human weakness that results from the Luciferic temptation. Christ accomplishes this. With the remission of sins we are saved from the pain of having added an objective debt to the Earth-evolution for all eternity. Only, of course, we must have a serious interest in this. When we have this true understanding of Christ, a greater earnestness will manifest itself in many other ways as well. Many elements will fall away from those conceptions of Christ which may well seem full of triviality and cynicism to the man whose soul has absorbed the Christ-conception in all seriousness. For all that has been said today, and it can be proved point by point from the most significant passages of the New Testament, tells us that everything Christ is for us derives from the fact that He is not a Being like other men, but a Being who, from above—that is, from out of the Cosmos—entered into Earth-evolution at the baptism by John in Jordan. Everything speaks for the cosmic nature of Christ. And he who deeply grasps Christ's attitude towards sin and debt may speak thus: “Because man in the course of the Earth's existence could not blot out his guilt for the whole Earth, a Cosmic Being had to descend in order that the Earth's debt might be discharged.”

True Christianity must needs regard Christ as a Cosmic Being. It cannot do otherwise. Then, however, our soul will be deeply permeated by what is meant in the words, “Not I, but Christ in me.” For then from this knowledge there radiates into our soul something that I can express only in these words: “When I am able to say, ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, in that moment I acknowledge that I shall be raised from the Earth-sphere, that in me there lives something that has significance to the Cosmos, and that I am counted worthy, as man, to bear a super-earthly element in my soul, just as I bear within me a super-earthly being in all that has entered into me from Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions.”

The consciousness of being permeated with Christ will become of immense importance. And with St. Paul's saying, “Not I, but Christ in me”, a man will connect the feeling that his inner responsibility to Christ must be taken in deep, deep earnestness. Anthroposophy will bring into the Christ-consciousness this feeling of responsibility in such a way that we shall not presume on every occasion to say: “I thought so, and because I thought so, I had a right to say it.” Our materialistic age is carrying this further and further. “I was convinced of this, and therefore I had a right to say it.” But is it not a profanation of the Christ in us, a fresh crucifixion of the Christ in us, that at any moment when we believe something or other, we cry it out to the world, or send it out into the world in writing, without having investigated it?

When the full significance of Christ comes home to mankind, the individual will feel that he must be more and more conscientious, must prove himself worthy of Christ, this Cosmic Principle, within him.

It may be readily believed that those who do not want to receive Christ as a Cosmic Principle, but are ready at every opportunity to repent an offence, will first tell all kinds of lies about their fellow men and will then want to wipe out the lies. Anyone who wishes to give worthy proof of the Christ in his soul will first ask himself whether he ought to say a certain thing, even though he may for the moment be convinced of it.

Many things will be changed when a true conception of Christ comes into the world. All those countless people today who write, or disfigure paper with printer's ink, because they briskly write down things of which they have no knowledge, will come to realize that by so doing they are putting the Christ in the human soul to shame. And then the excuse will cease: “Well, I thought it was so, I said it in good faith.” Christ wants more than “good faith”; Christ would fain lead men to the truth. He Himself has said, “The truth will make you free.” But where has Christ ever said that it is possible for anyone who is thinking in His sense to shout out or put forth in writing something or other of which he really knows nothing? Much indeed will be changed! A great deal of modern writing will be ruled out when people proceed from the principle of proving themselves worthy of the saying: “Not I, but Christ in me.” The cancer of our decadent civilization will be rooted out when silence falls on those voices which, without real conviction, cry everything out into the world, or cover paper with printer's ink irresponsibly, without being first convinced that they are speaking the truth.

The “Christian conscience”, as we may call it in a certain sense, will arise in increasing measure as human souls become more and more conscious of the presence of Christ, and the saying of Paul becomes true: “Not I, but Christ in me!”

More and more will souls be imbued with the consciousness that a man ought not to say merely what he “thinks”, but must prove the objective truth of what he says.

Christ will be for the soul a teacher of truth, a teacher of the highest sense of responsibility. In these ways He will permeate souls when they come to experience the whole import of the saying: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

If we are to enter more deeply into the matters which cannot fail to interest us at the present time, it is necessary to keep clearly in mind a certain aspect of human consciousness as it is today. Let us think of certain characteristics of this consciousness of which we have been speaking during the past weeks. This consciousness holds us within a domain shut off on the one side by the veil placed before us by the phenomena of nature through which, to begin with, our consciousness cannot penetrate, and on the other side, by the veil of our own life of soul, of our thinking, feeling and willing. The nature of our consciousness is such that when we look inwards, we are able to a certain extent to experience our thinking, feeling and willing in their human form, to experience them consciously. But again, we cannot penetrate behind the veil. Hence we can say: As regards the veil of the phenomena of nature on the one side, with the objective reality behind, our consciousness is directed towards a veil which, to begin with, may not be pierced. On the other side, there are the manifestations of the life of soul, behind which lies the subjective reality. We contemplate it but we cannot immediately break through the veil. Within these frontiers, within these two parallel lines, as it were, is our present consciousness, to which, when we look out through the sense-organs, the world of nature presents itself; when we look inwards, there is the world of soul. This is how the consciousness we have as human beings today, is organised.

We know that this consciousness differs from man's earlier consciousness with its heritage of ancient clairvoyance; but we know too that this inherited clairvoyance faded away and that our present consciousness, when functioning normally on the physical plane, is as described above.

The question may be asked: Why is it that our consciousness today is constituted as it is? The reason is that during the present cycle of evolution, as well as everything else that has been described, we have to develop the true relationship that should prevail between one human soul and another. Our present form of consciousness, therefore, has a very definite task.

During the earlier periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon we lived in different states of consciousness, and in the future periods of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, our consciousness will again be different. We are gradually preparing for these different forms of consciousness. In our present cycle of evolution we have to develop in ourselves, through the way we relate ourselves to the world, the form of consciousness belonging to this cycle; and besides all that must be developed in connection with the moral life, there is also the fact that through this form of consciousness there can unfold the right relationship of one human soul to another, a relationship we had not acquired before the beginning of the Earth-period and without which, if we do not acquire it during the Earth-period, we shall not be able to maintain our existence during the periods of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan.

In the periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon preceding the Earth-period, man had not, in this sense, acquired the right relationship to other men; in a certain sense he was too close to them. During the Old Moon period, conditions were still such that the will of one had a direct effect upon the other; the other felt, was affected by, the will of his fellow-being. Moreover, this process was regulated and guided by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies.

Had this guidance by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies continued, man would never have reached complete freedom in cosmic existence. The guidance had at some point to cease. Hence the necessity of a form of consciousness which as it were makes a frontier possible between one man and another. The fact is that on the one side our vision does not penetrate through nature, and on the other side the world of soul causes the relation of one soul to another to be such that a certain frontier is created between them. That this frontier exists is due to our present form of consciousness, a special characteristic of which is that what we actually experience are reflections, mirror-images. This, of course, applies also to relationships between man and man. Because, when we meet another human being we have in our present form of consciousness a mere reflection, we cannot approach him in so arbitrary a way that we pour the content of our consciousness into his soul. If, therefore, our consciousness is normally developed, this prevents us from coming unduly close to the consciousness of another. I might also put it like this: the forces of our consciousness and intelligence are so organised that we can neither exercise too great an influence upon the other man, nor can he exercise too great an influence upon us—because the fact that our own consciousness is mirrored, separates us from him.

This is a matter of very great importance for the understanding of human evolution. Whenever there is a defect in the normal consciousness, what happens is at once evident. Think of a person whose consciousness is not quite normal, who has a touch of what we have recently encountered in the form of “mystical eccentricity”—to use a rather harsh expression, but one that is often very apt. Suppose such a person is inclined to all sorts of fanciful delusions, based upon certain experiences which are abnormal in our day. You will always find that a person with abnormal consciousness of this kind has a far greater influence upon other souls than one with normal consciousness. To put it rather crudely, a person who is a little mad in one direction or another can have a far stronger influence upon his fellowmen than one who is normal; and by strengthening his consciousness, a normal man must protect himself from the influence of one who is abnormal. An abnormal man, as long as he is not recognised, is always a certain danger to his fellow-men, because they allow themselves to be too strongly influenced by him and because they are too ready to regard him as a rare, out-of-the-common phenomenon. Precisely where there are perforations in the mirror of consciousness, too strong an influence passes over through these perforations to the other person.

Thus in the present epoch of evolution we acquire our particular form of consciousness in order that the right relationship of one human soul to another in the world may be established.

Now, from all that has been said in these lectures, the following is clear: on yonder side of the veil of nature lies the Ahrimanic world with all the beings I have described; on yonder side of the veil of the life of soul lies the Luciferic world with all the characteristic features I have described. Man is, as it were, shut in between the Ahrimanic world and the Luciferic world. If he pierces only a little behind the veil of nature, he cannot help becoming acquainted with the Ahrimanic world. If he pierces a little behind the veil of the life of soul, he will inevitably become acquainted with the Luciferic world.

We have behind us a certain epoch during which man was safeguarded against making too great an advance towards the one side or the other. But we are now living in a time of transition, when human souls needs must advance towards the one side or the other. This must inevitably happen, for again it is demanded by the present phase of man's evolution.

As you know, we are now living in the age of the development of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul and moving towards that of the development of the Spirit-Self. Such development has a long preparation behind it. When, in the Sixth post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the Spirit-Self is fully developed, man's life of soul will be different in very many respects from what it is today. The human intellect will have a much more objective power than is the case now. Mankind is already approaching this more objective intellectual life. Evidences may be seen on every hand and I have spoken of the matter in many lectures. A life of soul is approaching of which it may be said that the intellect will be outspread as a power to which men must submit—as a power working objectively in a realm outside the souls of men.

We are still living in times when many human beings are safeguarded against this objective power by a strong, assertive individuality. But this protection will be less and less possible the nearer we come to the Sixth post-Atlantean epoch. A time will actually come when phenomena now only in the initial stages will be far, far more strongly in evidence. Even now, one who knows how to assess happenings in the world can form a true judgment in regard to this phenomenon. It is well known, for example, that writers in certain newspapers and periodicals are very far from saying only what springs from their own souls. They represent the intelligence of certain circles, an objective intelligence which rides rough-shod and of which they are only the speaking trumpets. It is extremely important to keep this in mind, for it is a phenomenon which will become more and more prevalent.

Now there is a very definite prospect ahead. When the intelligence of certain people is objectivised—and it has been so objectivised ever since public literature has existed—it becomes more and more possible for Ahriman to take possession of the intelligence of men. That is a prospect which Spiritual Science must place before us, for it is Ahriman's constant and fiercest endeavour to strangle men's individual intelligence and appropriate it for himself, so that it may pass into his power and be used to serve his own purposes. I have told you that there is a mysterious connection between the higher forces of intelligence in the beings who serve Ahriman and the forces of man's lower nature. Ahriman's perpetual endeavour is to appropriate the intelligence of human beings and not allow them to realise what they can achieve through their own intelligence. Think of the last conversation between Benedictus and Ahriman in the Mystery Play The Soul's Awakening. Before Ahriman disappears, he says:

“It is now time for me to haste away
From his environment, for whensoe'er
His sight can think me as I truly am,
He will begin to fashion in his thought
Part of the power which slowly killeth me.”

A profound secret is contained here, a secret of which every student of Spiritual Science should be aware. Men must strive as time goes on to keep their intelligence under their own individual control, to keep unceasing watch over it. This is essential, and it is well that man should know with what enticing and powerful words Ahriman approaches him, trying to wring his intelligence from him.

More and more it will behove men to be alert to such moments. For Ahriman takes full advantage of moments when, in full waking life, a man falls into a state of vertigo or dizziness, into a kind of twilight consciousness, when he feels not quite securely anchored in the physical world and begins to yield himself to the whirl of the universe, when he does not stand firmly and steadily on his own feet as an individuality. These are the moments when it behoves him to be on his guard, for it is then that Ahriman easily gets the upper hand. The best way in which we can protect ourselves is to develop clear, exact thinking, not simply skimming over things in thought as is the general custom today. We should go even farther and try to avoid colloquialisms and current catchwords, for directly we use such words which come, not from thought but from habits of speech, we are not exercising thinking—even if only for a very short time. These are particularly dangerous moments because they are not heeded. We should really be careful to avoid using words behind which there is not sufficient reflection. Such self-training, precisely in these intimate details, should be undertaken by those who are in earnest about the tasks of the age. After all that has been said in these lectures it will not be difficult for you to realise what is necessary.

But Lucifer, too, endeavours by way of the will to bring man into a condition where he does not act out of well-considered impulses, but out of impulses springing merely from temperament and inclination. Here again, Lucifer takes hold and makes us his prey. And it is easiest for him to find his prey when a large number of people give way to such impulses which surge in the dark foundations of the life of soul without rising into the sphere of the individual will. If impulses springing from temperament and vague inclinations bring us into connection with groups of human beings in such a way that we feel ourselves part and parcel of a group, we are at once caught into a whirl in which the judgment of the individual will is wrested from us; and it must not be wrested from us, for if it is, Lucifer gains too great a power over us. We must strive for objectivity in this respect.

Again, when there is some deviation from the sphere of normal consciousness, these are moments favourable for Lucifer. Very radical symptoms may appear, but there are also more intimate phenomena, when, for instance, we allow our actions to be determined by obscure feelings of affiliation and the like. The more flagrant, more radical, deviations of consciousness are those where the will becomes defective or so weak that a man can do no other than surrender himself entirely to his life of soul with what amounts to the exclusion of his will.

Modern psychiatrists have adopted certain technical terms for these particularly radical phenomena. For example, they speak of “imperative” or “insistent” ideas (Zwangsvorstellungen)¹. These ideas arise in people whose consciousness is not adjusted in the way that is right and proper for the physical plane. If due strength of will is lacking, ideas arise which a man cannot expel from his consciousness—imperative or insistent ideas, as they are called.

I will give an example that has actually been observed in clinics.—A man once saw another who had a cancerous tumour in the face; he saw the tumour and as he was a man of very weak will, he has believed ever since that cancer germs are everywhere; he is convinced that these germs are present wherever he goes. In other words, his will is not strong enough to drive down into the subconsciousness the idea once aroused in him. That is a particular instance of an imperative or insistent idea. But the same kind of thing makes its appearance in very diverse forms among people whose will is not sufficiently developed, and then it is easy for Lucifer to get power over them. Another aberration of consciousness has been called by modern psychiatrists “a morbid fear of touch” (Berührungsfurcht). The sign of this condition is that people in whom the will is insufficiently developed shrink from every contact with other human beings or objects; they are frightened of being touched by others or by objects. The “morbid fear of touch” is another technical term used in modern psychiatry.

Many other such aberrations of consciousness could be mentioned. These very aberrations show what the normal state of our consciousness should be on the physical plane. But we are now living at a time when certain beings must inevitably become known to us, on the one side beings who are behind the veil of nature, and on the other, behind the veil of the world of soul. If these beings are not made known, the further evolution of mankind will be endangered. If the connection of Ahriman and Lucifer with human evolution is not perceived, danger lies ahead. For it is just when they are not perceived that they can operate most effectively. As an example of the way in which Ahriman works, I will relate an anecdote which presents the unqualified truth.—

To a village there once came a stranger who was an acquaintance of the burgomaster. He arrived on horseback and rode into the village. This was an interesting event for the villagers and they ran out into the street to watch him. He put his horse in the burgomaster's stable and stayed in his house from the Saturday evening over the Sunday. On the Monday he wanted to take his departure, and asked for his horse. The burgomaster said: “You came here on foot; you had no horse.”—To every protest the burgomaster replied: “You had no horse.” Finally he said: “Very well, then, we will ask the people in the village; they must have seen you when you arrived.” Thereupon he called the people together and asked them whether they had not seen the man arrive on foot, and they all said, “Yes”. When everyone had affirmed this, the burgomaster said: “Now swear to me, all of you, that this man came on foot.” And everyone swore that it was so. The man was therefore obliged to leave the village on foot, without his horse. After a short time the burgomaster rode after him, bringing his horse. At this, the man exclaimed: “What was the purpose of this comedy?” To which the burgomaster replied: “I only wanted to present my community to you!”

Naturally, Ahriman was at the bottom of this and he acted effectively as an objective power. The anecdote is “truer than true”, for the same thing is happening among us continually. The whole of human life tends to increase the number of people who swear to the non-existence of the horse.

We must therefore see to it that we have the greatest possible exactitude of consciousness, for that alone is fitting for our present earthly life. If you take all that can be found in my books, Occult Science, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, A Road to Self-Knowledge, in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? as well as in many Lecture-Courses, you will find that the paths have been indicated whereby men may penetrate behind nature and behind the world of soul in the proper way and with the requisite preparation. The paths are described by which men can penetrate behind the scenes of existence in the right way. But the subjective strivings of very many persons do not, in reality, aim at reaching the goal to be desired. In those books it is clearly indicated that one who wishes to penetrate into the other world must transcend the normal form of consciousness. If the indications given are faithfully followed, it will be clear that one must emerge from the normal consciousness into a different form of consciousness.

It is important to know this, for there is a tendency among most people, indeed among many of our friends too, not to leave the normal form of consciousness at any price but to remain in it and to bring the spiritual world into the ordinary consciousness: that is to say, not to let the Ego emerge but to bring the spiritual world into the Ego. It is knowledge of the spiritual world that should be brought into the ordinary consciousness, not the spiritual world itself. If you faithfully practise what is contained in the books mentioned, you will bring yourself into conditions through which you will experience the spiritual world, conditions through which experiences deriving from that world can be brought into the sphere of the normal consciousness. But there are many who do not want this; they want the experience to be actually in the normal consciousness; whereas it ought to originate from consciousness that is different from the normal and passes into the normal. Many of our friends, however, try to have visions in the normal consciousness, not something that is a reminiscence of a different kind of consciousness. If, however, you have visions in the normal consciousness, that is to say, if you do not really wish to develop a different kind of consciousness, but to keep consciousness in its ordinary form and yet look into the spiritual world, this means that you do not seriously wish to go beyond but to remain in the ordinary consciousness, expecting to see forms and figures there which look like those of the physical world. Many people try hard to see spirits or the activities of spirits, but they want to see them just as they see physical things. They want to see a spirit, but this spirit is expected to have the form of a man or a woman or perhaps a poodle, as these are seen in the physical world. In the other world, however, it is not like this. The process itself lies outside the ordinary consciousness and what enters into the consciousness is at most a picture, an image which appears afterwards. In short, we must not expect the spiritual world to be merely a kind of finer sense-world, nor that it will speak in human words, the only difference being that the words come from the spiritual world. Our friends are often only willing to listen in this way to voices which seem to speak to them; these voices are expected to be similar to those of the physical world, merely giving a different, subtler version of things of the physical world. These people would like to enter the spiritual world with the ordinary consciousness which belongs to the physical world only.

Actually, most of the visions or voices of which one is told are of the character just described. At all events, this much is certain: when we have such visions or hear such voices it is always easy for Lucifer and Ahriman to have an easy game with us; they lay hold of these experiences for themselves, for men are always prone to interpret them incorrectly. If such experiences are rightly interpreted, Lucifer and Ahriman gain nothing from them.

As you see, there are distinctions here which must be kept strictly in mind. We must be fully alive to the possibility that as soon as we bring something else into the ordinary consciousness which is in truth suitable only for the physical world, we come to Scylla and Charybdis—to Lucifer and Ahriman. We must learn to recognise Lucifer and Ahriman as real Powers in this connection. It is for this reason that such emphasis has been laid on the relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer, and the statue in the Goetheanum will be a true representation of this.

Now you might ask: If this is how things are, might it not after all be more sensible to act like the scientists who, although Ahriman is within what they say, are nevertheless unwilling to acknowledge his reality? Or might it perhaps be better to act like the Pastors of various religious communities?—for they present things in such a way that Lucifer is everywhere, but they will not admit it. They would regard it as sinful were anyone to realise that the door there is open for Lucifer. But a person who speaks to this effect today is not being very clever. To say that it is more sensible to act like the scientists and the Pastors of various religious communities would be the same as deliberately refraining from warning someone who has to cross a chasm for some distance on a narrow plank, that he is facing danger. It is obvious that he should be warned. Otherwise it would amount to saying: certainly the man may be in danger, but it is more sensible to say nothing to him about it.—Through knowing how things are—and they will have to be known—the danger becomes no greater and no less.

A time is coming when Ahriman will try to take possession of the intelligence and Lucifer of the will of men. This can be thwarted only if these things are recognised; and recognition can be brought about only by a spiritual-scientific Movement. It is remarkable to see what Ahriman and Lucifer do and yet are not observed. From this point of view it is interesting to study modern psychiatry. Modern psychiatry has actually recognised many things that are facts, but that it cannot interpret correctly because it takes no account of the approach of these spiritual Powers behind the veil. Modern psychiatry regards anything that is not absolutely normal in man, anything that deviates in the slightest degree from a certain average norm, as tending towards insanity. In numerous treatises the Maid of Orleans is held to have been merely an hysteric. Indeed, writings are accumulating in which Christ Jesus Himself is regarded as a not quite normal man. There are also writings which ascribe craziness to Goethe, and so on.

Here we have an unmistakable, but false, Ahrimanic science, a science which is at pains to show that although Goethe was in certain respects a moral genius, this was entirely due to the fact that he had an element of madness in his nature. Socrates, however, knew better; he spoke of his “daimon”, being well aware that his soul bordered on objective spiritual Powers. This was quite clear to him. But the modern psychiatrist sees fit to make out that there was an element of madness or something of the kind in Socrates too. Ahriman must be hidden at all costs—which is exactly what suits him! And the same applies to Lucifer.

The fact of the matter is that if one were simply to cultivate today what purports in certain occult Orders to be secret knowledge, with its accompanying symbolism, it would be very easy to deliver into the hands of Ahriman everything that has been pursued hitherto as occultism. And if the mysticism hitherto pursued were to be encouraged and cultivated in human beings, it would easily be delivered into the hands of Lucifer. The ship of Spiritual Science must be steered between these two dangers. This is extremely important. Spiritual Science must therefore be so constituted that neither mystical nor occult aberrations can take root.

I said yesterday that when man breaks through the veil of nature, he comes into a region where he encounters beings who have a will for destruction, and that this will for destruction is related to the human intellect. I have described what may become of a man who falls prey to these beings. This must not happen. I have also spoken of the fevered, ecstatic condition into which a person may fall in his spiritual life if he indulges in false mystical experiences. This too must be avoided.

I said in an earlier lecture that the esotericists among the occultists tried hard to compel men to apply their intellect to the deciphering of symbols, in order that they should not break through the veil in a wrongful way and become the victim of the Powers encountered in so terrible a form in these border regions. These beings can be held at bay if the intellect is employed in the way it is employed, for example, in deciphering the symbols. This was formerly the practice but it no longer meets the needs of the present time, nor is it a practicable method.

You will find that by the very manner in which Spiritual Science is presented, the aberration leading into the region of Ahriman is avoided in a different way. You must think here about something that is apt to crop up in the life of our own society. When one person or another is beginning to study Spiritual Science, the remark is very frequently to be heard: “I cannot grasp these things until I have seen them myself clairvoyantly, so I take them on trust.” I have emphasised over and over again that, rightly understood, this is not the case. At the present time human beings have sufficient intellectual capacity to understand everything that has been given out. The whole of Spiritual Science in the form it has been presented is within the grasp of the intellectual capacities existing in men at the present time. Spiritual Science cannot, it is true, be discovered by these capacities, but it can be understood. The intellectual capacities are there and can be roused into activity, and those who refuse to admit that it is so are in error. When what has been given in Spiritual Science is really worked upon by the intellect, the intellect is being employed in the right way and it is then impossible to enter into the Ahrimanic realm by an unlawful path. There are two eventualities only.—Either men make strenuous efforts to understand, in which case they are employing the intellect—which could well be misused by the Ahrimanic beings—in order to understand Spiritual Science, and then this intellect cannot be wrung from them. Whatever Ahriman may elect to do, he will never get hold of the intellect which men apply, either in the present age or in the future, to the study of Spiritual Science. Of that you may rest assured. If men make no attempt to understand Spiritual Science, they are not applying their intellect to it—but Spiritual Science cannot be blamed for that! Laziness alone is responsible.

The region of destructive spirits into which a man may come, is disclosed most clearly of all if a soul is observed at the moment of passing through the gate of death. Then these spiritual beings swirl forward in their hosts; nor is this surprising, for they are the spirits of destruction. To work at the destruction of the physical organism is their regular function. It is part of their handiwork—only they must not remain too long.

Men who have attained spiritual understanding keep these beings at bay. But these beings have a great deal of power over souls whose thinking is materialistic, who acquire no understanding of the spiritual world. Souls who disdain any attempt to acquire knowledge of the spiritual world have a great deal to suffer from Ahriman. The Greek myth has depicted this very graphically in the figure of Tantalus. The Gods placed food in front of him but out of his reach and then watched the torments he had to endure.

Many such figures can be seen in the world today. All of them are materialistic souls who have no desire to understand the spiritual world. They are like Tantalus, in the sense that after death, during the period of Kamaloka when they live through their life—for a third of its duration—in backward order, everything is snatched away from them. Again and again they have the feeling: to what purpose did I do this or that? For they see one of the spirits of destruction snatching it away, and then they realise that they really did it to no purpose! That, of course, is an illusion; but such souls suffer the torments of Tantalus because the spirits of destruction are all around them. They do not realise that the whole of earthly life from birth until death would be without purpose or meaning if it were not pervaded by the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. But these souls cannot see the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies and so everything must seem to them to have been purposeless.

Spiritual Science avoids false occultism in that it applies the ever-increasing intellectual capacity now developing in humanity to the establishment of a science for which more intellect is required than hitherto. The nature of Spiritual Science inevitably demands greater intellectual effort than people have been accustomed to apply. Men like to delude themselves in this respect. Were they really to apply the intellectual capacity at their command today, they would understand Spiritual Science. Through the strong intellectual efforts that are necessary in Spiritual Science, Scylla is avoided and mastered on the one side. The spiritual scientist is well aware why people are disinclined to embark on the study of Spiritual Science. It is because they are too lazy to apply enough intellectual effort. That is why I spoke just now of laziness.

On the other side, the pitfall of false mysticism must be avoided by ceasing to grovel within the purely inner life. This tendency to live and brood continually within one's own soul must be eliminated. The soul must come out of itself and look with eyes of love at the deeper connections manifesting in life outside.

The Mystery Plays were written in order to help people to perceive such connections—which can also be observed externally. Inner processes of the life of soul are portrayed in the Plays. If you learn to understand and perceive what is happening, for example to Capesius, how he passes on from one event to another, the weaving, creative activity there in evidence will help you to release your own inner life, to free it. This is also the essential function of our art. The purpose of our whole Building is that souls shall be set free from themselves and shall not lapse into false mysticism. It is necessary to keep this in mind for we shall thus also avoid the Charybdis of false mysticism.

Every effort we make to explain to ourselves the mysterious connections in the lives of human beings in the world outside protects us from false mysticism. If in this way we follow what happens to Capesius, we live in a weaving life of soul—but we are not huddled up within our own. We attain everything that the mystic attains, but in a different way. So you see, the ship of Spiritual Science must be steered with clear-sighted purpose between the two pitfalls. The teachings given must be of a nature whereby false occultism and false mysticism are both avoided.

It may truly be said that our Spiritual Science is in keeping with the needs and demands of the age. For this reason I have often been obliged to oppose any false simplification or popularisation of Spiritual Science which would do away with the need for strenuous thinking. Equally I have been obliged to oppose everything that tends towards ecstatic, egoistic mysticism, which is always an element of such precepts as: “in your own inmost being you find the reality, the Divine”—and so forth. For in this there is no desire to seek the Divine in outer life by following its phenomena with love and understanding.

I recently said to someone that Spiritual Science may be regarded as of eminently practical usefulness. I did not say this in order to boast about the merits of our Movement but merely in order to show that in it the positive can always be found. I said: even if people accept only what they can recognise, leaving aside what does not interest them, Spiritual Science can nevertheless be of the greatest usefulness. If you think of the way in which we have been working for fifteen years, you will realise that a host of truths belonging to the domains of natural science, art, the history of art and so forth, have been included in the purely spiritual-scientific teachings. Indeed, assuming for a moment that nothing at all of pure Spiritual Science had been given but only truths relating to natural science and art—even this by itself could be of practical use. But whatever is given in this way is given with purpose and deliberation, for thereby the human mind is induced to abandon fanciful speculation. And so in every way we have endeavoured so to form our Movement that it may go forward in the right and healthy way. From the very beginning it was conceived as a kind of organism. And thinking of it as such we may also say that it must grow and develop like an organism, like a human organism which about the seventh year gets its second teeth—and the organism must make use of these second teeth, of the individual teeth it then has at its disposal.

In earlier lectures I have shown why we had to link up with the Theosophical Movement, as we did in the year 1902 by founding the German Section. At the beginning, progress was possible because we developed entirely independently, as I have told you. But then, in the year 1909 (1902 + 7 = 19o9) it was also necessary to get second teeth. You will remember that those were the years when the Leadbeater affair threw everything into the melting-pot. The year 1916 is not far off. We shall then have the second seven years behind us. If with this second period of seven years behind us we think of our Movement as an organism, this organism will then have reached maturity; it must steer its own course and be able to achieve something by itself. After all that has been given, it ought to be possible for the work to go on effectively even without the teacher.

I have spoken to this effect on many occasions. Some time ago in Berlin I said that the “Gesellschaft für Theosophische Art and Kunst”² ought to be an organisation that leads a life of its own, apart from me. This trend will become more and more necessary. The danger that things go well only as long as something comes from me week after week, must be surmounted. We have now reached the years when the Society ought to be able to show that it can quietly continue to cultivate what has been given, to cultivate it as if I were no longer there.

This is an absolutely necessary thought. The teachings which have been given are of such a nature that if they now work in souls, a great deal can be done for which I am no longer needed. I am not saying that I will not remain, but the test will consist in my becoming more and more superfluous. It is absolutely essential to obviate the possibility—which actually exists—of our members not appreciating one another! For you can realise what ill service would be done to our cause if it were always being said: “He is the Director, and he must be followed”, or “He is the Director and he will see that such-and-such is done”.—That simply will not do. What would happen if one day I were no longer there? The Society would at once fall to pieces! We shall only attain what we ought to attain if, after fourteen years, we have really come to the point of having a life of our own which can in turn bring forth new life. This is not an impossibility if only we are mindful of our real aims. Certainly, there are some difficult years now, but we must surmount such difficulties. And a different value can be placed upon much that I myself have to contribute, if what I have now indicated is fulfilled. Difficulties of many kinds exist at the present time. There are certain things which cannot be said indiscriminately and during the last four days I should have liked to call together a small, restricted group of people in order to speak of matters of which I cannot speak before a whole audience. But I was obliged to abandon the idea because we are living in days when such an arrangement is not feasible. In order to see clearly, what I have been trying to present in these lectures must be kept well in mind. We must also try to understand the inner character of Spiritual Science and then it will be clear to us why on the one side we shall inevitably have opponents in the learned scientists who would like to base a view of the world upon their erudition and, on the other side, in those pastors who desire that what lies behind the everyday life of soul shall remain completely hidden.

We must hold faithfully to our teaching and also steep ourselves deeply in its contents. Let us remember, for example, how the Mystery of Golgotha has constituted the very core of our strivings, how it has been stressed that Christ entered into Jesus of Nazareth in the way so often described, coming from other spheres of consciousness into the sphere of consciousness proper for man's physical life on Earth. Christ-Jesus is a Power on Earth, living on in the earthly consciousness of men and in earthly happenings. For this reason the New Testament can be no natural science, for natural science—the science of what lies behind nature—must, if it makes for reality, go beyond our normal consciousness. Neither can the New Testament be Spiritual Science, for there, too, normal consciousness must have been transcended in the other direction. The marvellous greatness and significance of the New Testament lies precisely in the fact that it aspires neither to be Natural Science nor yet Spiritual Science—but for all that it must not be used to support polemics against Spiritual Science.

Here, however, we perceive the reasons why the representatives of one or another religious body will always rise up in arms against Spiritual Science! It is because they will never be willing to allow man to enter the world they so greatly fear. They are afraid that one day human beings will discover the eternal nature of the soul within them. They want people to realise that only what they already know lives eternally within them. I said yesterday that if a materialistic view of the world were to take root, if such a view alone prevailed and no Spiritual Science were to come into being, things would reach the point where men would be engulfed in scepticism and doubt, for something like an ocean would be created in which souls would inevitably drown. But if it is desired to hold men back lest they penetrate behind the veil of the world of soul, then the only thing to do is to keep them in a state of ignorance. Ignorance which would eventually suffocate men must inevitably spread if those who are often the representatives of religious communities today were to gain their ends. If the scientists were to win the day, human souls would be engulfed in an ocean of doubt; if the pastors of religion who think in the way described were to win the day, human souls would suffocate in an atmosphere of ignorance. The task devolving upon Spiritual Science is serious and grave and we must realise its gravity. We must regard ourselves as individuals who through their karma can be led to Spiritual Science in order that what they possess in the way of intellect and intuitive discernment may be placed at the disposal not actually of Spiritual Science, but of the general progress of humanity. And such progress is a dire necessity for the world.

We see, on the one side, how a materialistic view of the world is trying to get a firm foothold, and how nothing that offers resistance is of any avail! And on the other side we see how efforts are made to spread ignorance, how more and more is done to efface the truths relating to the spiritual world! Just think how every communication from the spiritual world is regarded with downright hatred by the representatives of certain religious communities!

I have given these lectures in order to indicate the direction of the path which must be taken by Spiritual Science, and to help you to realise the following. We must oppose the materialistic scientists, although they really cannot help acting as they do, for Ahriman has them in his power and wishes to hide from them the real motives underlying their activity. And we must oppose the othcrs too—although they again cannot act differently, because they are in the hands of Lucifer. The right way to work is to come to grips with what Spiritual Science can give us. Oh, if only there were a number of people who realised the uniqueness of Spiritual Science, that it must not be confused with other things! That in itself would be a great step forward.

One can also learn a great deal from mistakes, and pay attention to them from this point of view. That is more important than merely to criticise them, although criticism is also sometimes necessary. I said that—to put it in plain words—Ahriman is out to destroy man's intellect in the future; but he combines this with something else as well—because the beings who serve him are related, with their higher forces, to the lower forces in man and because he wants to establish an alliance between the higher and the lower forces. In the normal course, Ahriman has under his direction those things in the world which give rise to illnesses; we know that they too are unavoidable for they bring about death in the physical world. All destruction in the physical world is allotted to him. But the connection must be known and understood. If what is in the lower sphere is taken up into the higher, it is united with these beings of destruction and then man himself gives many opportunities to Ahriman and his hosts. And when he does so he will not fail to notice that certain lower parts of his organism begin to function as higher parts of the organism otherwise function.

If a man has a dread of really exact thinking and yet wishes to enter the spiritual world, well, he may succeed in doing so—he crosses the Threshold and lives in the realm of the powers of destruction. When he comes back again into his body, he has entered into an alliance with these destructive beings and knows nothing about it because he has not developed his own intellect in the right way. He will then feel these beings within him—and instead of thinking, instead of his ears hearing and his eyes seeing, all kinds of hidden powers in the lower organism begin to hear and to see. The body is no longer his own in the sense it was before. On coming back again into the body he finds it filled with all sorts of ingredients. It is something new to him.

This entry into one's own body as into something unfamiliar and containing unknown elements is an experience that may befall those who do not keep faithfully to the right path. For Ahriman strives to establish himself in the human body and to transform certain organs into organs of knowledge. Lucifer, however, incites his fiery spirits of will to take certain forces out of us in order to make these forces independent. And so if we cross the Threshold in the direction of Lucifer's realm and then come back into the body, we feel as if certain parts are hollow, as if something has been taken out of us. Ahriman adds something, because as he enters into us he fills the organs. Lucifer takes away organs, makes what was otherwise part of our own organism, independent of us.

This is one of the aims of Lucifer—to make independent what belongs to us. And that is why in the pursuit of unjustifiable mystical experiences it may so easily happen that mystics, by consolidating and brooding over their own inner life, prepare it for Lucifer who can then draw it out of them. It is really so: Lucifer approaches the human being and draws out something from his brain, namely, the intellect. The intellect is drawn out as part of the etheric brain or of the etheric heart, made independent, and then a man feels that part of him has become hollow and empty. This is actually an experience associated with intensely egotistic individuals who have reached a certain high level of development. It can be seen that certain parts of their forces have been detached and are then, as it were, outside them. Lucifer robs man of certain forces with which he then proceeds to work. This state of things must naturally be prevented and it is prevented by faithful adherence to the right path. It is, however, a Luciferic conception to imagine that something can be taken away from man and then utilised as though he has no longer any part in it—for example, if a man's teaching is stolen from him and then utilised in the world. There you have a hint of the domain where such things actually happen. A great deal can be learnt from an error—above all from the error that teaching can be separated from the teacher. By observing these facts one can learn more than by merely criticising them—justifiable though this may well be. It is not difficult to realise what danger there would be were this kind of thing to become more general in the future. And the danger actually exists!

On the other side man is approaching the danger that in the process of the independent development of the Spirit-Self, Ahriman may take possession of it. Already ncw, those who have an eye for such things perceive how men lose their independence and how Ahriman is actually guiding their hand when they write. That is the one side, and the other is that things are taken and utilised, and it is believed possible to separate them from their originator. But the legitimate and only right way will be for men to accept the guiding principles of Spiritual Science, whereby on the one side the illumination that is shed upon nature safeguards them when they break through its veil. A zoology, a botany, a science of agriculture based on the principles of Spiritual Science must be brought into being; everything, medicine too, must be enriched by these principles. But medicine can be rightly enriched only by those who are not afraid to pierce the veil of nature, to enter right into the Ahrimanic world where they must battle against the spirits of destruction. To discover what is health-bringing for man, one must enter the region of those spirits who destroy all human life, who bring about illness and death; for only in the realm where lie the deeper causes of illness and death can the remedies be found.

Similarly, one who wishes to learn what will be fruitful for the human soul, must not be afraid to battle with the Luciferic beings; he must preserve unshakable moral courage if he wishes to cross the Threshold, he must realise that he is entering a region of spiritual beings where his every thought will tend to produce in him a slight touch of vertigo because it is on the point of being wrested from him, because it is about to flit away and he must swiftly take hold of it lest it escape him. Nobody can penetrate into this region without calmly battling against everything which, when it is out of balance, leads the human being to unhealthy, subjective mysticism.

But Spiritual Science steers us in such a way that, if we understand it, we actually find the strength to combat the Ahrimanic forces of destruction wherever they may be at work. And when, as in the Mystery plays, we apply Spiritual Science to the onflowing development of human life, and to the unfolding life of nature when we portray the forces of nature in the forms of our pillars and architraves, and when we portray the higher secrets of existence by placing Christ over against Lucifer and Ahriman as in our statue, when we approach these things in such a way that the spiritual powers become objective realities to us, then, my dear friends, we find the strength which the mystic does not, as a rule, possess—the strength to battle against the Luciferic powers.

From this you will realise that Spiritual Science was from the outset obliged to take the form in which it has actually been presented, and that what it creates, in addition to its theoretical teachings, is also essentially part of it. Let us try more and more to make our thinking conform with the thinking proper to Spiritual Science, for not until we free ourselves from the prejudices current in the outside world can we have a rightful place in Spiritual Science.

• 1. Note by translator: According to Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, the more commonly-known term “fixed idea” would not be the correct translation here. The expression “imperative” or “insistent” idea approximates more closely to the example given by Dr. Steiner.
• 2. This was the name of a project which did not continue.

Notes A from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

When we are in our sacred space, we have to practice self-reflection. And we have to feel very strongly the karma that has brought us to the gates of this temple.

The human soul passes through the different ages and takes something with it from each one. From epoch to epoch, the soul's life changes, even if people do not notice it.

If we did not experience our own body, we could not immediately know whether we were walking or standing still; we would then have to perceive from the trees or telegraph poles whether we were walking or not. On a train, it may occasionally happen that you really don't know.

Today's astronomy is based on this point of view; it has to perceive from the movements of the stars and so on that the earth moves and that the whole solar system moves. In ancient times, it was quite different. In the time of the ancient Persians, for example, people still lived with their soul the life of the earth; through this they knew how the earth moves through space, and if they had recorded it, they would have drawn it like this - which later became the staff of Mercury.

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This ability faded in later times. It was a freeing of the human being from the macrocosm, so that he can no longer feel this movement.

Only among the farmers did one still find this connection to the macrocosm some time ago. They went to bed when the sun went down and got up when the sun rose. If we were still like the ancients, we would not be able to have evening meetings; everyone would feel an insurmountable need for sleep.

It was the good gods who detached man from the macrocosm because, as a result of the temptation of paradise, man was connected to the creation of Lucifer and Ahriman. Therefore, after the Fall, Yahweh said to Lucifer: You wanted to give people the freedom within themselves so that they would become like the gods, distinguishing good from evil, but now they should also be freed from my creation so that they will follow it later in freedom and accept it.

As a result, man has become lonely in his soul on earth. And when we feel completely at home in our occult movement and in our meditation we are overcome by a great sense of loneliness, then that is a good sign of progress. Only through this feeling of loneliness can the higher worlds reach us.

At present, man is so far advanced that he has absolutely no eye for what is immediately around him. For example, Nietzsche once had a conversation with his friend from high school, Deussen, who was a Schopenhauerian, while Nietzsche wanted to go beyond Schopenhauer. Deussen defended the “negation of the will to live,” and when Nietzsche wanted to object to it, Deussen said that this could only happen if one had not yet understood what this negation really means.

But where is this negation of life really present? In the drunkards and gluttons; they are the ones who deny the divine creative powers; in all those who live in sensual passions or affects.

Everywhere a “bark culture” develops, which we must admire, but which we must immediately recognize as such. We have to cultivate the “marrow culture” alongside the “bark culture”. This outer culture is particularly flourishing in America. For example, the “scientific operating system” has developed there. This is of the same kind as, for example, “scientific pedagogy”, which also originated in America and is beginning to spread here as the “last word in wisdom”. Large numbers of children are observed to find out how long they can focus their attention on something and so on; then “fatigue coefficients” are established and the like. In this way, the work of laborers was also studied, for example, in laying stone; they examined how people could be used in such a way that, without having to think about it, the stones could be transported and laid in the fastest possible way. Man is made into a machine. This will get worse and worse in the future.

Everything will be mechanized; there will be no more handwriting, but children will immediately learn to type. Mechanization of life will dominate the future. It began with the discovery of the steam engine, and in the future people will look back on this discovery - or invention - as on a victory of Ahriman, just as we look back on the Fall of Man as on a victory of Lucifer. For when the steam engine was discovered at the end of the eighteenth century, the gods handed over the material development of the earth to Ahriman. The rest of the development of the earth, with its machines and the mechanization of life, belongs to Ahriman. The gods left it to him. This is what should hit our souls like a bomb.

But we should not try to remove the weight from the bowl that is being pressed down, but through our development we should put the weight of spiritual life on the other bowl. The Mystery of Golgotha was precisely that, the center of gravity of earthly development, and we have to take care of establishing balance.

Soon the terrible consequences of things like the “scientific operating system” (Taylor system) will arise. As a result, human souls will no longer be able to find their way on earth after living in the body for thirty or thirty-three years; they will experience themselves as dead and barren in soul. Then it will be up to those of us who have prepared ourselves for it and who will then live between death and a new birth in the spiritual world, to warm and sun the souls from there, so that they will feel: At first I was dead inside, but now something is beginning to live in me like an inspiration from higher worlds, something that makes me fully alive and warm again; now spiritual life is beginning to come into me again!

That is what must be said as a result of a conversation with the leading spirit of our development. And if one should ask: How can I know that what has been said here is really the result of such a conversation? - then the only answer that can be given is: What has been said today must be said, and it will have fulfilled its task when it strikes like a bomb in your hearts.

(This last part was first given in Kristiania, October 1913, during the cycle “The Fifth Gospel”)

Notes B by Unknown

The hours we spend between the three altars and our three lights are to be used for self-reflection. We are to learn to understand the world correctly. People today rely on external documents and, compared to earlier periods, say: How we have come so gloriously far! — Thus they stand under Ahriman and Lucifer.

Let us assume that man is so organized that he does not know whether he is walking or standing. In this situation, man finds himself in relation to the earth. Only by observing the stars does science calculate and recognize that the earth moves and how. It was not always so.

We go from incarnation to incarnation. The soul life is always different: when our souls were incarnated in Persian culture, people felt much more connected to the earth. They felt the movements of the earth in the cosmos. When this consciousness was lost, people deduced from the stars that the earth moves. Copernicus' theory is not correct. The Earth moves approximately in the lines of a Mercury staff. Man has thus lost a great ability. (Only the ability to perceive the Earth's movement inwardly also makes possible an understanding of the teaching and figure of Zarathustra.) But because of this he has become freer. Man has been set aside from the spiritual world on to the Earth, and he does not even know whether it moves. When Lucifer once approached man temptingly and said, 'I will make you free; you will see for yourselves what is good and what is bad,' the stern voice of Jahve was heard behind him saying, 'You lead man on to the earth, you must also lead him on it to his own independence.

Our whole culture would not be possible if man had not achieved this independence. Because man would also be bound to the great macrocosmic conditions: tiredness in the evening; the life of the farmer with nature. Progress must be recognized, for example, the ingenuity that has been used to build a (machine), even if that machine has no good purpose. Machine culture.

The Earth is handed over to the rule of Ahriman in order to mechanize it. This is what the archangeloi teach. As a counterweight, they teach people to develop spirituality, wisdom, virtue and moral strength (wisdom, beauty, strength). - From America, the land of bark culture, a management science is now coming over. Man becomes completely a machine (Taylor system). Experiments on children because of fatigue. Work should be done entirely mechanically to save time. Children will learn to write with a machine, not by hand. Free time should be used to enjoy beauty. Blindest of the blind. The beauties will not be there. Things belong together...

From the age of thirty, souls will no longer be able to cope with themselves. Our work and our task is to help them. This is the right aspiration if we strive not for ourselves but for the service of humanity. These proclamations should hit our spiritual life like bombs.

Through occult study, undertaken in the appropriate way, it is possible in our time to learn, as it were, what might be called the Fifth Gospel. If you turn your souls to some of what has been said over the years in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, you will also have encountered, among some of what has been said to explain the four Gospels, something that is not in the Gospels as a message about the life of Christ Jesus. From the series of facts mentioned in this regard, I will mention only the story of the two Jesus boys. But there are many other things that can be found today in the purely spiritual records and that are important for our time. It is so important for our time that it seems desirable for the prepared souls to get to know it little by little. For the time being, however, what is told from these sources must remain within our circle. But it may nevertheless be understood as if it were destined to pour into the souls of our present time in such a way that one receives a much more vivid picture of the work of Christ Jesus than has been possible until now.

If you take what I said in the introduction to the first lecture, you will have gathered from it the impression that in our time a much more conscious grasp of the figure of Christ Jesus is necessary than was the case for earlier times. If it should be objected that it would be contrary to the Christian development to bring forward something new about the life of Christ Jesus, then it is only necessary to recall the end of the Gospel of John, where it expressly says that in the Gospels the things that have happened are only partially recorded, and that the world could not bear the books that would be necessary if everything that has happened were to be recorded. From such things one can receive the courage and strength to actually do what is necessary in an age to present new facts about the life of Christ Jesus. And one can know from such things that it is only narrow-mindedness when something is said against such a presentation.

Now I would like to recall what I have often stated here in this place: that at the beginning of our era two Jesus children were born. We already know this, and we also know that the one of the two Jesus boys was born in such a way that the I, the spirit-being of Zarathustra, was embodied in him, and that this Jesus boy then lived with this spirit-being of Zarathustra until about the age of twelve, until that the point in time that the Gospel of Luke describes in such a way that the parents led Jesus to Jerusalem, then lost him, and that he was found among the scribes, to whom he interpreted the teachings in a way that amazed them and the parents, and which they themselves were called to interpret. I have drawn attention to the fact that this scene, as described in the Gospel of Luke, in reality indicates that the ego of Zarathustra, which had lived for about twelve years in the one Jesus child, moved over into the other Jesus child, now also twelve years old, , who until then had been of a completely different nature; so that we now have that Jesus-child who comes from the Nathanic line of the house of David, and who did not have the Zarathustra-ego within him until the twelfth year, but from now on has it within him.

It is now possible, by means of what I have often spoken of and which can be described as reading in the Akashic Records, to gain further insights into the life of the Jesus child, now endowed with the Zarathustra ego. In doing so, one can distinguish three periods in the life of this Jesus. The first period extends roughly from the age of twelve to eighteen, the second from eighteen to twenty-four, and the third from about the age of twenty-four to the moment marked by the baptism of John in the Jordan, that is, to around the age of thirty.

Let us imagine that this Jesus, who was now twelve years old and had the Zarathustra ego within him, presents himself before the scribes of the Israelite people as an individual who has an elementary knowledge of the essence of Jewish doctrine and the essence of ancient Hebrew law, and that he is able to speak about it in an appropriate way. So this ancient Hebrew world lived in the soul of that Jesus-child. All that had come down in the way of knowledge about the relation of the Hebrew people to their God, which is usually understood as the proclamation of the God of the Hebrew people to Moses, lived in him. If we speak in sketchy terms, we can therefore say: A rich treasure from the holy teaching of what was in the Hebrew people lived in Jesus; and with this treasure, with this knowledge, he lived, doing his father's trade, in Nazareth, devoted to what he knew so well, processing it in his soul.

Now the Akasha Chronicle research shows us how, for him, what he knew in this way became a source of various mental doubts and mental pains, how he felt, especially in the deepest sense, more and more thoroughly and with severe inner struggles of the soul , how once, in quite different times of human evolution, a grandiose proclamation, a grandiose revelation flowed down from the spiritual worlds into the souls of those who, endowed with quite different soul powers, could receive such a teaching. It was especially brought home to the soul of Jesus that there had once been people with quite different soul powers who could look up to the revealing spiritual powers and understand in a completely different way what was revealed there than the later generation to which he himself belonged, the derived one, which had less soul powers to lead up in order to process what had once been led down. Often the moment came when he said to himself: All this was once proclaimed, one can still know it today; but one can no longer grasp it as fully as those who received it at the time grasped it. And the more of this was revealed to him inwardly, the more of it he was able to grasp in his soul, as he now received it when he stood before the Jewish scribes and interpreted their own law to them, the more he felt the inability of the souls of his time to find their way into what was ancient Hebrew revelation. Therefore, the people, the souls of his time, the peculiarities of these souls of his time seemed to him like the descendants of people who had once received great revelations, but who could no longer reach up to this revelation. What had once been brightly and warmly drawn into these souls, he could often tell himself, now faded, and in many ways seemed dull, while the souls had felt it in the deepest sense before. This is how he felt about much of what now emerged more and more in his soul through inspiration.

This was the life of his soul from the age of twelve to eighteen, that she penetrated deeper and deeper into Jewish teaching, and could be less and less satisfied by it, yes, that it caused him more and more pain and suffering. It fills the soul with the deepest tragic feeling when one considers how Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer because of what had become of an ancient sacred teaching in a later generation. And often, as he sat there quietly dreaming and pondering, he said to himself: “The teaching once descended, the revelation once given to men; but now men are no longer here to comprehend it! This sketchily characterizes the spiritual mood of Jesus of Nazareth. This was at work in the contemplation of his soul in those moments that remained to him during the time he spent as a craftsman, as a carpenter or joiner in Nazareth.

Then came the time from the age of eighteen to twenty-four, when he traveled around in nearby and somewhat more distant areas. He not only touched places in Palestine, but also outside Palestine, while working in his trade in a wide variety of places. During these years, in which the human soul, so freshly surrendered, absorbs much from its surroundings, he got to know many people and many human attitudes, and learned how human souls lived with what remained for them as an ancient and sacred teaching, that is, with what they could understand of it. And it is understandable from the outset that on a mind that had been through six years of what I just told, all the inner joys, sufferings, and disappointments weighing on the soul, had to make a very different impression than on the minds of other people. Every soul was a mystery for him that he had to solve; but every soul was also something that told him that it was waiting for something that had to come.

Among the various regions he touched, there were also some that belonged to the paganism of that time. One scene in particular made a deep impression on us, gleaming out of the spiritual painting of his wanderings inside and outside Palestine during the period from his eighteenth to his twenty-fourth year. There we see him arriving at a pagan place of worship, a pagan place of worship such as was built to the pagan gods under this or that name in Asia, Africa and Europe. It was one of those places of worship whose ceremonies were reminiscent of the way in which they were also practiced in the mysteries, but there they were practiced with understanding, whereas in these pagan places of worship they had often degenerated into a kind of external ceremony. But there was one such place of worship that Jesus of Nazareth came to that was abandoned by its priests, where the cult was no longer practiced. It was in a region where people lived in need and misery, in sickness and toil; their place of worship was abandoned by the priests. But when Jesus of Nazareth came to this place of worship, the people gathered around him, the people who were often plagued by illness, misery and need, but who were especially plagued by the thought: This is the place where we once gathered, where the priests sacrificed with us and showed us the effect of the gods; now we stand before the abandoned place of worship.

A peculiar trait in the soul of Jesus comes to the spiritual observer. On other walks, it could be seen that Jesus was received everywhere in a very special way. The basic mood of his soul spread something that had a mild and beneficial effect on the people in whose circles he was able to stay. He traveled from place to place, worked here and there in this or that carpenter's workshop, and then sat with the people with whom he talked. Every word he spoke was understood in a special way, because it was spoken in a very special way; it was imbued with the mildness and benevolence of the heart. Not so much the what, but the how, cast something like a magic spell over the souls of men. Everywhere warm relations were formed with the wanderer. They did not take him like any other person; they saw something special shining from his eyes, and they felt something special speaking from his heart.

And so it was as if in the people who stood around their altar in hardship and misery and need and saw a stranger had come, as if in every soul the thought had come to life: a priest has come to us who now wants to perform the sacrifice at the altar again! That was the mood that surrounded him, caused by the impression his arrival made. It was as if he had appeared to the heathens as a priest who would perform their sacrifice again.

And behold, as he stood there before the assembled crowd, he felt, at a certain moment, as if he had been transported, as if he had been brought into a special state of mind – and he saw something terrible! He saw, at the altar and among the crowd that was gathering around him in ever greater numbers, what can be called demons, and he recognized what these demons meant. He recognized how the pagan sacrifices had gradually developed into something that magically attracted such demons. And so, when Jesus came to the altar, not only the people had come, but also the demons that had gathered at the altar during the earlier sacrifices. For this he recognized: that although such pagan sacrifices originated from what could be done in the old pagan times and at good places of worship to the true gods, insofar as they were recognizable for the pagan times, but that these sacrifices had gradually fallen into decline. The secrets had degenerated, and instead of the sacrifices flowing to the gods, these sacrifices and the thoughts of the priests attracted demons, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, which he now saw around him again, after he had been transported to a different state of consciousness. And when those gathered around him had seen how he had been transported into this other state of consciousness and had therefore fallen, they fled. But the demons remained.

In a more urgent way than the decline of the old Hebrew teaching, the decline of the pagan mysteries had thus come before the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. From the age of twelve to eighteen, he had experienced within himself how that which was once given to humanity so that it warmed and enlightened the soul could no longer work and thus led to a certain desolation of the soul. Now he saw how the old beneficent workings of the gods had been replaced by demonic workings of a Luciferian and Ahrimanian kind. He saw the decay of paganism in what he had spiritually perceived around him. Imagine these experiences of the soul, this way of learning what had become of the influence of the old gods and of people's intercourse with the old gods; imagine the feeling that is produced in this way: humanity must thirst for the new, for it becomes wretched in its soul if nothing new comes!

And Jesus of Nazareth had, after the demons had, so to speak, beheld him and then followed the fleeing man, a kind of vision, a vision of which we shall speak again, in which the process of human development resounded to him from the spiritual heights in a special way. He had the vision of what I will share in a future lecture, which is like a kind of macrocosmic Lord's Prayer. He felt what had once been proclaimed to humanity in the pure Word, as pure Logos.

When Jesus of Nazareth returned home from this journey, it was around the time – as spiritual research suggests – that the father of Jesus of Nazareth had died. In the following years, from the age of twenty-four until the time marked as that of John the Baptist in the Jordan, Jesus of Nazareth became acquainted with what can be called the Essene doctrine and the Essene community. The Essenes were a community that had set up their headquarters in a valley in Palestine. The central headquarters was in a remote location. But the Essenes had branches everywhere; there was also something of a branch in Nazareth. The Essenes had set themselves the task of developing a particular way of life, a particular spiritual life, which was to be in harmony with the external life, whereby the soul could develop to a higher point of view of experience, whereby it could come into a kind of community with the spiritual world. In certain degrees one ascended to that which the Essene community wanted to give its members, its co-confessors, as the highest: a kind of union with the higher world.

The Essenes had thus developed something that was intended to cultivate the human soul in such a way that it could grasp what could no longer be grasped through the natural course of human development: the ancient connection with the divine spiritual world. The Essenes sought to achieve this through strict rules that also applied to their external way of life. They sought to achieve this by strictly withdrawing, as it were, from contact with the external world. Such an Essene had no personal property. The Essenes had come together from all possible parts of the world at that time. But anyone who wanted to become an Essene had to give up what possessions he had to the Essene community; only the Essene community had possessions, property. So if someone in a particular place owned property and wanted to become an Essene, he handed over the house and whatever land it included to the Essene community. This meant that the community had property in a wide variety of places. There was a peculiar principle in the Essene community that would certainly cause offence today, given our views, but which was necessary for the Essenes to achieve what they wanted. They cultivated the life of the soul by devoting themselves to a pure life, a life of devotion to wisdom, but also a charitable life of love. Thus, wherever they went - and they wandered around the world to fulfill their task - they performed good deeds. Part of their teaching was healing the sick. They practiced healing everywhere in the manner of that time. But they also did a lot of material charity. And there that principle was in force, which cannot be imitated in our present social order, and probably should not be imitated: an Essene could support anyone he considered in need, but not a family member.

The goal of the Essenes was to perfect the soul in order to reconnect it to the spiritual world. This goal was designed to keep the temptations of Ahriman and Lucifer from approaching the soul of the Essenes. We could also characterize the Essene ideal by saying that the Essene tried to keep away from himself everything that can be called Luciferic and Ahrimanic temptations. He tried to live in such a way that what is Ahrimanic drawing down into sensuality, into the outer world, into materialistic life, could not approach him at all. But he also tried to live a life of bodily purity so that the temptations and temptations arising from the soul could not affect this soul. So he tried to lead such a life that Lucifer and Ahriman could not reach the Essene soul.

The way Jesus of Nazareth developed led to a relationship with the Essenes that would not have been possible with any other person, and would not have been possible at all in the years I am talking about here, if he had not become an Essene himself. Jesus of Nazareth was even allowed to enter the most sacred and lonely rooms at the central place of the Essenes, as far as that was at all possible within the strict rules of the Essene order, and was allowed to hold conversations with the Essenes that they otherwise only held among themselves. In the process, he was able to familiarize himself with the deepest rules of the Essenes. Thus he came to know how the individual Essene felt and strove and lived, and above all, he learned to feel – and this is something of what it comes down to – what existed as the furthest possibility for a soul of his time, to penetrate again through perfection to the ancient sacred revelation. He came to know all of this.

One day, when he left the Essene assembly, he had a momentous experience. As he went out of the gate of the secluded Essene dwelling, he saw two figures fleeing from either side of the gate, and he sensed that they were Lucifer and Ahriman. And more often this was repeated to him like a similar vision. The Essenes were, after all, a very numerous order of people. They had their settlements everywhere in the way I have described. Therefore, they were also respected as such in a certain way, although they led their social life in a very different way than the other people of that time. The cities they visited made special gates for them; because the Essene was not allowed to go through a gate where there was a picture on it. If he wanted to enter a city and came to a gate where there was an image, he had to turn back and enter the city at a different place where there was no image. This played a certain role in the entire system of the Essene doctrine of perfection, because it was the case that nothing of a legendary, mythical or religious nature was allowed to be depicted in the image. The Essene wanted to flee from the Luciferian aspect of pictorial impulses. So it was that on his wanderings, Jesus of Nazareth came to know the imageless Essene communities. And again and again, at these imageless Essene communities, he saw how Lucifer and Ahriman had placed themselves there as invisible images where visible images were frowned upon. These were significant experiences in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

What did these significant experiences lead to for him in connection with the numerous conversations he was able to have with the Essenes, who had attained a high level of perfection? It led to something that was again extremely depressing, deeply, deeply depressing for his soul, which caused him endless torment and pain. It occurred to him that he had to say to himself: Yes, there is a strictly closed community; there are people who strive to get in touch with the spiritual powers, with the divine spiritual world, in the present. So there is still something among people in the present that seeks to regain this connection. But at what cost? The fact that this community of the Essenes led a life that other people could not lead. For if all men had led the life of the Essenes, the life of the Essenes would not have been possible. And now a connection occurred to him that had an extremely depressing effect on his soul: Where do Lucifer and Ahriman flee to, he said to himself, when they flee from the gates of the Essenes? They flee to where the souls of other people are! So that is what humanity had come to: a community that had to separate itself if it wanted to find a connection to the divine spiritual world. And because they set themselves apart, because they set themselves apart in such a way that they can only develop in their entire social cohesion by excluding other people from themselves, they condemn other people, only to sink all the deeper into what they, this Essene community, fled. The fact that the Essene community rose meant that the others had to fall all the more! Because the Essene led a life in which Lucifer and Ahriman could not come into contact with him, Ahriman and Lucifer were able to come to the other people precisely by tempting and enticing them.

That was Jesus of Nazareth's experience with an esoteric order. What could be experienced in his time with Jewish law had already been experienced in his soul in earlier years. What the pagan cults of his time had come to, he had also experienced in his soul in earlier years, when the world of demons had come before his soul at a significant moment. Now he had to experience at what cost humanity of his time had to seek its approach to the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Thus we live in a time – that came bitterly before his soul – in which those who seek the connection with the Divine-Spiritual must do so in close community and at the expense of other people. Thus we live in a time in which the cry of longing for such a connection with the Divine-Spiritual World can become all people's. That had weighed heavily on his soul.

And as this lay so heavily on his soul, he once had a spiritual conversation with the soul of the Buddha within the Essene community. The whole way of life of the Essene community was very similar to the way of life that Buddha had brought into the world. And Jesus saw himself face to face with Buddha and heard himself saying of Buddha: 'The path that I have given to mankind cannot bring the connection with the divine spiritual world to all people; for I have founded a teaching that, if it is to be understood and experienced in its higher aspects, makes necessary such a separation as is contained in this teaching. With the utmost clarity and force, Jesus of Nazareth realized that Buddha had founded a teaching that presupposes that, in addition to those who profess the innermost part of this teaching, there must be other people who cannot profess this innermost part. For how could Buddha and his disciples have gone with an offering bowl in hand and collected alms if there had not been people who could have given them alms? He now heard from Buddha that his teaching was not one that every person in every situation in life could develop.

The possibilities for development that existed in his time were experienced by Jesus of Nazareth in the three periods of his life before his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. He did not experience them in the way that one learns something, but in the way that one experiences something when one comes into direct, very close contact with these things. He had come into very close contact with the ancient Jewish law when it had flashed up in him in an inspirational way, and he had been able to experience within himself something like an echo of the revelations that had been made to Moses and the prophets. But he had also been able to experience how it was no longer possible for a soul of his time, with the physical organization of that time, to fully grasp these things. Different times had come than those in which one could fully absorb the ancient Jewish law. And how the decline of the pagan mysteries had brought about the demonic world, he had also experienced through the closest contact, through an experience in the supersensible world, in which he had summoned not only the people who had been plunged into need and misery by the ruined place of worship, but also the demons who had gathered around the sacrificial site instead of the good old pagan powers. And how it was impossible for man, in spite of the demands of the coming time, to learn anything of the deepest secret knowledge of the Essene order, he had experienced during the six years before the baptism of St. John.

What one gains in this area from the contemplation of the Akasha Chronicle is the realization that here, through inner spiritual experience, something has been suffered that could never have been suffered by any other soul on earth. Perhaps there is not full understanding in our time for this very word that I have just spoken. Therefore, I would like to interject something here. In the further course of the messages from the Fifth Gospel, I will have to explain how these sufferings increased tremendously in the time between John the Baptist's baptism in the Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha. Our time could easily object: But why should such a high soul suffer at all? Because our time has strange ideas about these things. And when I come to discuss the full depth of Jesus' suffering and, later, of Christ's, I must draw your attention to many misunderstandings that arise.

I have already mentioned several times, including here, that a book by Maurice Maeterlinck has recently been published, “On Death”, which should be read for the sake of seeing how absurdities such a person, who has otherwise also written good things in the field of spiritual life, can write. Among many absurdities, Maeterlinck's book also asserts that a spirit that has no body cannot suffer because only a physical body can suffer. From this Maeterlinck draws the conclusion that a person who has left his body cannot suffer in the spiritual world. Anyone who thinks like this could easily come to the conclusion that the Christ-being, after it had entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, could not suffer. Nevertheless, I will have to describe next time the deepest suffering of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is certainly strange how a person with sound reason can believe that a physical body can suffer. After all, only the soul in the physical body can suffer, because the physical body cannot have pain and suffering. What pain and suffering is, is located in the soul-spiritual part of a body, and physical pain is precisely that which is caused by irregularities of the physical organism. Insofar as the physical organism is an organism, they are irregularities. You can have a strained muscle in it and so on; but the physical body, the physical organization, does not suffer, even if matter is dragged from one place to another. Just as a straw bag cannot suffer when the straw is thrown around, so a physical body cannot suffer. But because a spiritual-soul being is in the body, the spiritual-soul part suffers from the fact that something is not as it should be. So it is the spiritual-soul part that suffers; and it is always the spiritual-soul part. And the higher the spiritual-soul stands, the more it can suffer, and the higher it stands, the more it can suffer from spiritual-soul impressions.

I say this so that you can try to form an impression, a feeling, of how the Zarathustra essence suffered during these years from the experience that the old revelations have become impossible for what the human soul needs in modern times. First of all, there was the infinite suffering that confronts us, which cannot be compared to any suffering on earth, when we look at the part of the life of Jesus of Nazareth that we are considering today in the manner of the Akasha Chronicle.

At the end of the period that I last characterized, Jesus of Nazareth had a conversation with his mother. This conversation with the mother was decisive for what he now undertook: the path to the one with whom he had already entered into a kind of relationship through his relationship with the Essene order, which he undertook as a walk to John the Baptist. I will talk about this conversation with the mother, which is then decisive for what follows in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, next time.

Let me say in conclusion today: consider the messages of this Fifth Gospel as something that is given as well as it can be given, because the spiritual forces of our time require that a number of souls know about these things from now on. But also consider what is given with a certain reverence. For I have already mentioned here how wild the external spiritual life in Germany became, even among the most honest thinkers, at the moment when a publication was first made only about the two Jesus children. Such things, which are taken from the spiritual world, which come directly from spiritual research, the public outside our movement cannot yet tolerate them at all. And the things come to meet one in the most varied ways, which are perceptible like a wild passion, and which want to ward off something that comes out of the spiritual world like a new proclamation. It is not necessary that through careless chatter these things be also belittled and ridiculed, as has happened to the story of the two Jesus children, for these things should be sacred to us.

It is actually not at all easy to talk about these things in the present, precisely in view of the fact that these things are most strongly resisted. And basically it is, after all, what I have often characterized: the infinite laziness of the human soul in our time, which does not want to go into the details of spiritual research and therefore does not want to gain any insight into the possibility of coming to such things. It is already the case in the present that, on the one hand, the longing for revelations from the spiritual world lies hidden in the depths of the human soul, and that, on the other hand, the conscious part of the human soul in our time becomes most passionately negative when such revelations from the spiritual world are spoken of.

Consider the words I said at the end of today's reflection and take them as a guide to how we want the things we speak about in the Fifth Gospel to be taken.

Before proceeding to draw conclusions from our recent considerations, I am going to bring forward something which links them up—there is really a close connection, though it may not seen so—with the character of our building at Dornach.

Through its special character this building has a part to play in what we have come to recognise as the Spiritual evolution of humanity, leading on from the present into the future. This period in human development has a characteristic feature, until now existing only in germ, which we have tried to illuminate from many different points of view. To-day let us consider how particular aims of Spiritual Science can come to expression through the building devoted to it.

The developments of the present day can be surveyed, to some extent from outside, as is done by those who base all their knowledge, all their view of the world, on purely outward considerations; yet there are cogent reasons to-day for regarding current events from an inner, Spiritual point of view. We can get a correct picture of these events which have been maturing through long ages, and in another form will have a sequel in the future, if we observe them Spiritually. I will start from something apparently quite material, and try to make it a living example of how such impulses as are always with us, working in the present, can also be viewed spiritually.

Among those who in the last few decades have occasionally—not very often—taken a comprehensive view of events, some technicians can be found. One such was Reuleaux who from his own materialistic point of view threw out in 1884 some thoughts regarding certain characteristic features of contemporary culture. He divided present-day mankind into two groups. In one group he placed those who are entirely restricted to a “natural” way of life; in the other, those who pursued, as he said, a “manganistic” way. Manganistic he derived from “magic”,—that which endeavours to bring the forces of the universe into connection with human living. I will briefly go into the basis of this grouping of mankind, is a present-day standpoint.

In earlier times all mankind was “natural”; in a certain sense, and the greater part still is so. The rest, in Europe—especially in the Middle and West—and in America, are “manganistic” mankind. Keep in mind that this “naturalistic” civilisation is still predominant in the world. It is significant that the so-called “manganistic” civilisation has fully developed only during the last century. The most paradoxical result of this new civilisation one might say, is that it has hurried on to the earth many more “hands” than there are men on the globe. This is due to the prodigious expansion during the last few decades of mechanism, machines among the minority of mankind. It is obvious that a large portion of the work of to-day is-done by machinery; but it is rather astonishing to calculate, as can be done, how great this machine-work, replacing human toil, really is. One can reckon how many million tons of coal are turned annually into machine power. Then, translating this coal- output into terms of man-power, one can calculate how many men would be necessary to carry out the work. We find that to accomplish what the machines do would take no less than 540 million men working twelve hours a day. It is therefore not quite correct to say that there are only 1500 million inhabitants on the earth, for machines have added 540 millions to the population. Thus there are present many more “hands” than those of flesh and blood, because for a minority of mankind all this “manganistic” ,work is done by machines. Indeed, during the last century, the human race has not merely increased to the extent shown by statistics, for the working-power of 540 million more men must be taken into account. Truly we European and American peoples—leaving out Eastern Europe are surrounded by a form of labour which continually extends its influence over our daily life more than we think, and takes the place of human strength.

The people of the West are extremely proud of this accomplishment, especially the following aspect of it. By simply comparing the output of machinery with that of the numerous peoples who live more on a natural level and make little use of machines, we find that Europe and America produce significantly more than all the rest of mankind. Here we can say that to do the work accomplished by the machines, 540 million men would have to work twelve hours a day. That means a great deal. There we have the proud achievement of the new world-civilisation, and it has a variety of consequences.

To get an insight into the underlying meaning of this, we need only look at a case where “natural” civilisation projects deeply into the “magical”—for instance, with matches.

The oldest among us may still remember the time when matches were scarce, and flint and steel were used to produce a spark and so to ignite tinder, when fire was wanted. That leads us back to a much older way of producing: fire—where a great deal of human energy was used in twisting a burning stick in another piece of wood, to produce the equivalent of the fire now engendered by a box of matches. If we compare this “natural” method with that of to-day, another aspect of it comes into view, and we can say: The entire “magical” civilisation has another special peculiarity: it puts out of sight, banishes to a distance, the laws with which man was formerly in touch. To take the example of the primitive way of producing fire—see how this labour was inwardly connected with the man himself and his personal achievement. The fire which resulted directly from his work was intimately bound up with the personal deed. All this is pushed into the background. Because to-day a physical, mechanical or chemical process takes its place, nature's own process, in which the Spiritual plays its part, has become remote from the direct human action.

We constantly hear the statement: “Through this new application of science, man has compelled the forces of Nature to serve him”—a statement which is quite justified from one point of view, but is extremely one-sided and incomplete. For in everything done by machine-power (taking this in a wider sense, to include its use in the form of chemical energy) not only is natural energy pressed into the service of man, but the natural event in its deep connections with the essential impulses of the world is thrust out. In machinery it is gradually withdrawn from man's ken—and this means a robbery from man himself. Through technology, something deathly spreads over nature's living face; the living thrill which formerly passed directly from nature into man's labour is banished. When we consider how man extracts death out of nature, to incorporate is into his “magical” civilisation, it will not seem very surprising if I now bring Spiritual Science into connection with what the purely natural scientist says.

Reuleaux from his point of view rightly asserts that man's latest advance consists in harnessing nature's forces to his service; but we must, above all, keep in view the fact that machines literally replace human strength. It is not simply a question of a process provoking visible results; that is very important from a spiritual point of view in the creation of 540,000,000 imaginary people. Human energy is crystallised in all this; human intellect has been poured into it and works in it, but only the intellect. We are surrounded by intellect detached from man. Directly we set free what should be bound up with man, the forces known to us in Spiritual Science as Ahrimanic take possession of it. The 540,000,000 imaginary people on the earth are just so many receptacles for Ahrimanic forces; and this must not be overlooked. Linked up with the purely external advance of our civilisation are the Ahrimanic forces—the sane which are found in the Mephistopheles-nature, for this is closely allied to the Ahrimanic. Moreover, nothing exists in the universe without its opposite; never one pole without the other. The Ahrimanic in the mechanical forms of industry, etc., on the earth, is exactly balanced in the spiritual realm by a Luciferic element. The purely Ahrimanic is never found alone; but to the same degree as it takes visible form on earth, as just described, appears the Luciferic element, woven through this entire civilisation, already saturated with the Ahrimanic. To the same extent as the imaginary “hands” are brought into existence, and the Ahrimanic civilisation hardens on earth, spiritual correlations work into the human will, human intentions, impulses, passions and dispositions. Here on earth the Ahrimanic machines—in the spiritual stream enfolding us, for each machine a Luciferic spiritual being! As we produce our machines, we descend into the realm of death, which in this Ahrimanic civilisation has for the first tine become outwardly visible. Invisible to this Ahriman-civilisation arises a Luciferic one, like a reflection. This means that to the same degree as machines are made, man on earth is saturated in his morality, his ethics, his social impulses, with Lucifer's mode of thought. One cannot arise without the other. That is the pattern of the world.

We can see from this that the point is not to “flee from Ahriman” or to “avoid Lucifer”. A condition of which they are the opposite poles is necessarily bound up with the development of modern civilisation. Regarded spiritually, that is what is active in our culture, and this is the point of view from which things will need to be looked at increasingly from now onwards.

Now it is very remarkable that Reuleaux, the engineer, waxing enthusiastic over the “magical advance” of mankind, (from his standpoint a fully justified enthusiasm—for as always emphasise afresh; Spiritual Science has no reason for being reactionary—when he has brought it into bold relief, at the same time he refers to various other things. Especially he remarks on the fact that the man of to-day, especially in the European and American civilisations, placed as he is in a new world, urgently needs stronger forces for the cultivation of spiritual life than did the man of old, who with his “natural” culture, stood so much nearer in his personal workmanship to the intimacies of nature. (Of course Reuleaux does not say “Luciferic” and “Ahrimanic”; he describes only what I mentioned at the beginning-of this lecture. It is quite easy to discriminate between what I have added and what the scientist of the present-day materialistic world has to say.) For instance, Reuleaux points out how Art, for further Growth, needs stronger aesthetic impulses than were required in times of more instinctive development. A remarkable belief lies at the back of his mind—the naive belief, as he puts it, that in face of the assault of machinery, which destroys art (he readily admits that), the soul will need to attain to a more intensive experience of aesthetic laws. The naivety consists in his having no inkling that before this can happen, stronger artistic forces than those of the past will have to inspire the human soul. The misconception lies in supposing that although mechanical science battles against everything hitherto wrested by man out of the spiritual, this can be compensated for purely through an ‘intensive’ experience of the spiritual forces of the past. That is impossible, quite impossible. What is really necessary is that with the emergence of human civilisation on to the physical plane, other, stronger, and more spiritual forces should play into spiritual life; failing that, men will inevitably fall victim to materialism in practice, even though in theory they may strive against it.

Thus you can see that if one starts from the impulses of contemporary culture and reflects on the inner nature of present developments, one can reach this conclusion: Art must receive a new impetus; a new impulse must flow into it. If we are firmly convinced that our anthroposophical Spiritual Science, rightly directed, will bring a new impulse into the old spiritual culture of humanity, we are bound to conclude that art, too, will share in this stimulus.

This was the aim of the project, obviously very imperfect, for our Building at Dornach. As a matter of course its imperfections must be admitted; it is just a first effort. But perhaps we are justified in believing that it is a first step along a path which must continue. Others who follow us in the work, when we ourselves are no longer in the physical body, will perhaps do it better; but the impulse for the Dornach Bau had to be given at the present time. The Bau will be rightly understood only by someone who, instead of applying an absolute standard to it, familiarises himself a little with its history, and this I will relate to-day, because we are always being confronted with antiquated misconceptions.

You are aware that in Munich, since 1909, our work has included the presentation of certain Mystery Plays, the aim of which is to reveal through dramatic art the forces operative in our view of the world. Courses and Lectures, always strongly attended, were grouped about these artistic presentations in Munich, and so among our friends the idea arose of providing an appropriate home for our spiritual endeavours. This suggestion came from them—not from me, please remember. The Bau really started from the shortage of space observed by a number of our friends, and obviously, once such a building had been thought of, it was bound to be fashioned according to our view of the world. In Munich they had in view, properly speaking, only an interior structure, for it was to be surrounded by a number of houses, inhabited by friends able to, settle there. These houses would have so shut in the building that it would have been as plain as possible, for it would have been hidden from sight among the houses. The whole building was conceived of as a piece of inner architecture. “Inner architecture”, in such a case, has only a meaning when it provides an enclosure, a frame, for what goes on inside. But it was to be artistic, genuinely so—not a copying, but an artistic expression of the activities within. I have always compared, perhaps trivially but not inappropriately, the architectural idea of our building with that of a cake-mould. This is made for the sake of the cake inside, and the outer shape is correct only if it encloses and moulds the cake rightly. The “cake-mould” is in this case the free for the whole activity of our Spiritual Science, for the art which belongs to it, and for all that is spoken, heard, experienced within it. All that is the cake—everything else is the mould; and this must be expressed in the interior architecture. That was the first idea.—After much trouble to arrange the building on the site already acquired in Munich we discovered that we were opposed, not by the police or local authorities, but by the Munich Society of Arts, and indeed in such a way that we felt these worthies objected to our establishing ourselves in Munich, but would not tell us what they wanted. We were thus continually obliged to make changes in our plan, and this really night have gone on for a decade. At last the day came when we were driven to give up the idea of realising our hopes in Munich and to make use of a building-site in Solothurn, available through the kind offices of one of our friends. So it came to pass that in the Canton of Solothurn, on a hill in Dornach, near Basle, we set about building. The idea of the encircling houses was given up; the building had to be visible from all sides. The impulse arose; and the zeal was there to carry the matter through quickly. And without fundamentally re-casting the scheme already sketched out for the interior, all I could do was to try to combine the exterior with the already existing plans for the inside. From this arose many defects, of which no one is so conscious as I, but that is not the chief point. The great thing is that, as I have said, a beginning was made with such an enterprise.

I would like now to draw attention to a few thoughts which will make clear what constitutes the peculiar characteristic of this Building, so that you may see the connection between it and our entire movement—scientific as well as spiritual.

The first thing that will strike an unprejudiced observer is that the partition walls are quite evidently, conceived differently from those of ordinary public buildings. Walls enclosing a building, generally speaking, have hitherto always been considered, from an artistic point of view, as a “shutting off” of space. Walls, boundary walls, are always so considered and all architectural and ornamental work on walls has been in connection with this idea, that the function of the outer wall is to enclose. This canon is transgressed in the case of the Dornach building!—not physically, of course, but artistically. The conception of the outer wall, as it appears there, is not that it shuts off space, but that it opens the space to the universe, the macrocosm. Whoever stands within this space, should have the feeling, through the very walls themselves, that the building expands into the universe, the macrocosm. Everything should represent connections with the universe. What is the conception in the fashioning of the wall itself; the same with the pillars, accessory in their several ways to the walls—so also with the entire carved work, the bases of the pillars, the architraves, capitols. The conception is of a wall which is transparent for the soul—the very opposite of a space-enclosing wall. Anyone standing inside should feel that he has the freedom of the infinite universe. Naturally, if anything has to be done within this space, physically the enclosing is there; but the forms of the physical enclosure can be so taken that, abrogating themselves, they are annulled through their artistic fashioning.

Everything else is related to this. The laws of symmetrical proportion, usually followed in buildings, have to be disregarded under the influence of this main conception. The Dornach Building has, properly speaking, only one axis of symmetry, which goes straight from West to East; and everything is ordered upon this single axis. The pillars, at a certain distance from the walls, are not all furnished with the same capitols; only by twos, right and left, the capitols and mouldings are alike. Starting at the principal entrance, the first two pillars are the same, in capitol, base, and architrave. In the second pair, pillar, capitol, architrave design, are different, and so through the whole length of the building. Thus in the subjects of the capitols and bases it becomes possible to depict Evolution. The capitol of each pillar always evolves from the one before it, just as the organically complete form develops from the incomplete. The ordinary symmetrical equality is dissolved into a progressive development.

The whole Building consists of two principal parts; they have an essentially circular ground-plan, and are closed above with domes; but the domes are so cut as to link into one another, so that the bases form incomplete circles. One circle is short of a small segment in the front, and the other, the larger circle, is joined on just there.

The whole is so erected as to form two circular spaces, a larger and a smaller. The larger space is the auditorium, the lesser is for the presentation of the Mystery Plays, and kindred things. Where the two circles unite, are the rostrum and curtain. It was a very interesting piece of work, technically, to make the two domes intersect and cut into one another.

The Building, wholly of wood, rests on a concrete sub-structure which contains only the cloakrooms, with concrete steps leading up to the Building itself.

Along each wall of the greater space, under the large dome, there are seven pillars; in the smaller, six; so that in the latter, which forms a kind of platform, there are twelve, as against fourteen in the former. The sculptured designs of the pillars develop progressively, in a fashion which amazed me myself, as I worked at them. While I was making the model, shaping the pillars and their capitols, I was astonished at one thing in particular. There is no question here of something “symbolical”. People who have spoken and written about the Building, saying that all sorts of symbols are introduced, and that Anthroposophists work by means of symbols, are wrong. No symbol, such as they have in mind, is to be found in the whole Building; each part of the whole springs out of the conception in its entirety. Neither does the smallest part signify (I an using “signify” in its worst sense) anything unconnected with the artistic conception. This unbroken development of the designs on the capitols and architraves has been the outcome of artistic perception, one form out of its predecessor; and while, I developed one from the other, there arose, as of itself, a reflection of evolution, of the true evolution of nature, not as understood by Darwinism. That was not intended, but it arose spontaneously, in such a way that I could recognise, with amazement, how, for instance, certain human organs are simpler than those of certain species of lower animals. I have often pointed out that evolution does not consist in complication; the human eye is more perfect because it is simpler than the eye of an animal, reverting to simplicity.—I noticed that after the fourth of these designs a simplification was necessary. The more perfect one emerged precisely as the simpler.

This was not the only thing which struck me. Comparing the first pillar with the seventh, the second with the sixth, the third with the fifth, I was surprised to see that a remarkable correspondence came to light. In the carvings there are, of course, some raised surfaces and others hollowed out; these were elaborated purely from intuitive feeling and visual sense. Yet, taking the capitol and base of the seventh, and thinking of the whole and its separate parts, one could superimpose the high surfaces of the seventh on the hollow surfaces of the first, and vice versa. The raised surfaces of the first exactly fitted the hollow surfaces of the seventh. I mean this as a matter of convex and concave, of course. Symmetry, not merely external, but from within, was the result. Really, in this interchange and the working of it out in sculpture, something arose that was like bringing architecture into movement and sculpture into repose. It was all at the same time wood-carving and architecture.

The whole Building has a concrete foundation, with inner motives which will surprise visitors when they first come there. Of course they come with preconceived notions, compare it with what they have seen elsewhere, and are astonished. Many, not knowing what to make of it, have called it a “futurist Building”. The lines of the concrete part are designed in accordance with the capacities of concrete, the new material, to express artistic form; but within the concrete frame an attempt is made to construct pillar-like supports. These came of themselves to look like elementary beings, gnome-like, growing up out of the fissured earth, while at the same time they support the weight above—so that it can be seen that they are for support but bear the heavier part, push it, throw it back, and do this in a different way f or the lighter parts. Such is the substructure of the wooden part.

In Munich it would have been a case of inner architecture only; windows were necessary for the Dornach Building. To understand these, I would ask you first to make the effort to grasp the whole idea of the wooden building. As it stands, it has really no claim to be artistic; it is not a work of art. As regards pillars, walls, and windows, it is so. The entire Building, which is to have no decorative character, to be constructed with no decorative purpose, is meant to arouse, through every line and every surface-shape, certain experiences and thoughts in those who behold it. The eye, the sensitive eye, must trace the direction of the lines and the surface-shape. What is experienced in the soul, when one's gaze takes in works of art, this is first aroused by a “work of art” in the wood-carving. It arises first in human feeling. The concrete foundation and the wooden part are the preparation for it. Man himself must bring into being a work of art through his appreciation of the forms. What has been worked into the wood is so to speak, the more “Spiritual” part of the Building. A work of art really comes into existence only when the soul of the listener or speaker is inwardly receptive.

Then it was necessary to provide windows for the space between each pair of pillars. If the windows were to carry out the idea of the Building, a distinctive workmanship in glass was needed. Sheets of glass in plain colour were taken and the appropriate designs etched into them, so that here we have etchings in glass. With an enlarged form of dentist's drill, enough was ground out of the thick sheet of glass to give varying thicknesses to it—and this produced the design. Each sheet of glass is of one colour only; the colours are so placed as to yield a harmony in their sequence. Viewed from the entrance, the Building shows a window of the same colour on each side of the axis of symmetry, so that there is colour harmony in evolution. Still the window, as a “work of art”, is not complete. It becomes complete only when the sun shines through it so that in the scheme of the windows something is created which forms a work of art with the co-operation of living nature from outside. Etched on these sheets of glass you will find much of the content of our Spiritual Sciences imaginatively perceived—the dreaming man, the waking man in his real being, various mysteries of creation, and so on. All this in terms of perception, not in symbols; all artistically intended, but complete only with the sunlight. Hence, through yet another means, we have tried here also to surmount the feeling of an enclosed space. In the wood-carving, architecture and sculptures the pure forms are used to give the soul an impression of overcoming the enclosed space and going out beyond it. This effect is first conveyed directly to the senses through the windows. The union with the sunlight which shines through, streaming from the universe through the visible world, is something belonging to these windows. Between these two parts of the whole there is a certain correspondence. Through the conjunction of light and glass-etching there arises for the soul an external work of art; while the wood-carving provides a spiritual element which is experienced as a work of art within the human soul itself.

The third part consists of the paintings in the domes. The subjects of these too, are taken from our Spiritual Science. The paintings express the content of our conception of the world, with regard at least to a great macrocosmic stretch of time. Here we have, so to say, the physical “part” of the thing, because in painting, for certain inner reasons, (to go into them would take us too far) whatever one wants to present must be presented directly. Colour must itself express what it has to express, and so with the lines. Only through the content can the endeavour be made to go out beyond the borders of the dome into the macrocosm; that is how one arrives at it. All that is painted there really belongs to the macrocosm, its meaning presented directly to the eye—We tried, by using colours derived from pure vegetable substances which have their own light-force, to produce the light-force necessary for the painting, of these designs. Of course, we might have succeeded better, but for the war. However, it is only a beginning. Naturally the whole style of painting had to conform to our conception. To paint the spiritual content of the world means that we have to do, not with forms thought of as illuminated from an outside source, but with forms that are self-luminous. Quite a different approach to painting is necessary. For instance, the human aura cannot be painted in the same way as a physical shape, which is drawn with light and shade, according to the source of light. In the aura we have to do with a self-illumined object, and the character of the painting must therefore be quite different.

So now I have given you, with a few rough strokes, as far as it can be done without a model, some idea of what the Bau is meant to be. As a whole it is oriented from West to East, the axis of symmetry lying in that direction, between the and it cuts into the small circular space, containing the stage, at its eastern end. At this eastern end, between the sixth pillar on either hand, stands a group of figures carved in wood. Its intention is to present in ,artistic form something—I might say—which lies at the heart of the world-conception which we hold through Spiritual Science; something which must, by necessity enter into man's spiritual outlook now and in the future. Man must learn to grasp the fact that everything of importance for the shaping of world-destiny and for human life runs its course in these three streams: the normal spiritual stream in which his life is set, the Luciferic, and the Ahrimanic. In everything, as much in the foundation of the physical world as in the manifestations of spiritual events, divine evolution is interwoven with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic evolution. This is expressed in our carved group, again not symbolically, but artistically. A group carved in wood! The idea of it came to me, for I believe I have grasped as thought what is not yet clear to me so far as its occult basis is concerned: it may well be that future occult investigation will reveal this. Still, it seems to me certainly right that the ancient themes are better portrayed in stone or metal, and all Christian ones—ours being in the most eminent sense Christian—better in wood. I cannot help confessing that I have always been obliged to think of the group in St. Peter's at Rome, the “Pieta” of Michael Angelo, as being made of wood: only so, I believe can it represent what it ought to express, and the same applies to other Christian sculpture I have seen. There is doubtless something behind this feeling; but I have not yet arrived at the reason of it. Therefore our group has been conceived and carried out in wood.

The leading figure is a kind of representative of humanity, a Being expressing Man in his divine manifestation. I am glad when anyone, looking at this figure, has the feeling that it is a representation of Christ Jesus. It seemed to me inartistic to take as the underlying impulse: “I will carve a figure of Christ Jesus”. I wanted to produce just what I did. The result may be a feeling in the beholder that it is Christ Jesus. I should be most glad if that were so; but the artistic idea was not to produce a representation of Him. The idea rests purely in the artistic form, in its manner of expression; to set out to carve a figure of Christ Jesus—that would have been merely a descriptive, programmatic idea. The artistic thought must rest in the form, at any rate in sculpture.

The whole group is about eight and a half metres high, and the chief figure is raised, with rocks behind and below it. From the rocks below, which are a little hollowed, grows an Ahriman-figure. It half lies within a hole of the rock, its head above it. On the slightly hollowed rock stands the chief figure. Above the Ahriman-figure and to the left of the beholder, a second Ahriman-figure rears itself from the rocks, so that the Ahriman-figure is repeated. Above the one to the left is a Lucifer-figure. A sort of artistic connection exists between the Lucifer above and the Ahriman below. A short distance away, over the chief figure, and on the right of the onlooker, is another Lucifer-figure, so that Lucifer is also twice represented. This other Lucifer is marred, and falls headlong owing to his injury. The right hand of the central figure points downwards, the left upwards, and this upward pointing left hand indicates exactly the point of the fracture suffered by Lucifer, through which he is shattered and falls headlong. The right hand and arm point to the Ahriman below and bring him to despair. The whole group is so designed—I hope it will convey this experience—,that this central figure is in no way aggressive, but intended by its gesture t0 express only love. However, neither Lucifer nor Ahriman can endure this love. The Christ does not “fight against” Ahriman, but radiates love. Lucifer and Ahriman cannot endure this love near them. It comes near them; Ahriman feels despair, the destruction of his very being, and Lucifer falls headlong. Their inner nature is revealed in their gestures.

The figures were naturally not easy to create, for the reason that, in the case of the chief figure partly, and in that of Lucifer and Ahriman wholly, the Spiritual had to be depicted, and of all things it is most difficult to express the Spirit in carving. The endeavour was made, however, to achieve what is especially necessary for our purpose—to bring out the significance of the form (although it must remain an artistically conceived form), in gesture and in mien. Human beings are really able to make use of gesture and mien only in a very restricted sense. Lucifer and Ahriman are entirely gesture and mien. Spiritual figures have not got a limited form; there is no such thing as a complete spiritual figure. To try to model the Spirit is just like trying to model lightning. The form of a spiritual being chances from moment to moment. That must be taken into account. Try to hold a Spiritual shape fast even for a moment, as might be done in representing a form at rest, and you will not succeed; the result will be only a frozen figure. Hence, in such a case, gesture alone must be reproduced. This is so with Lucifer and Ahriman entirely, and it had to be partially attempted also in the central figure, which is of course a physical form—Christ-Jesus.

Now I want to show you a few pictures, to give you an idea of the principal group. [Here some lantern slides were shown. The description follows.]

The first is of Ahriman's head, exactly as the figure first came to me; as a man (remember the threefold division of man into head, breast, and limb-being) who is all head, and therefore an instrument for the most consummate cleverness, intellectuality and craft. The Ahriman figure is meant to express this: his head, as you see it here, is true “spirit”, to use a paradox; but you know how often a paradox results from a spiritual description. He is actually like the model, faithful in spirit, artistically true to nature: he had to sit for his portrait!

The next is Lucifer, as seen on the left. To understand him, we must picture what appears as his form in a very peculiar way. The most Ahrimanic characteristic in man must be eliminated: the head vanishes; but the ears and ear-muscles, the outer ear, substantially enlarged and of course spiritualised are depicted as wings and formed into an organ entwined round the body with wings at the some time spreading from the larynx, so that the head, wings and ears form one organ. These wings, this head-organ, present themselves as the figure of Lucifer. Lucifer is an extended larynx—the larynx becomes a whole figure out of which develops, through a sort of wine, a connection with the ear; so that we must imagine Lucifer as a being who receives the music of the spheres, takes it in through this organ of ear combined with wine. Without any help from the individuality, the cosmos, the music of the spheres itself, speaks through this same organ, of which the extension in front is the larynx; another metamorphosis of the human form, an organ composed of larynx-ear-wing. Therefore the head is only indicated. As to Ahriman, you will find, when you see the figure at Dornach, that it is developed out of what one imagines as form; but what appears as Lucifer's head (although you can hardly picture your own as being like his) is something in the highest decree “beautiful”. The Ahrimanic nature is intellectual, clever—but appears as ugly in the world; the Luciferic appears as beautiful in the world. Between them they comprise everything in the world. Youth and childhood are more Luciferic, old age is more Ahrimanic; the impulses of the past lean to the Luciferic, those of the future to the Ahrimanic; women are more inclined to Lucifer, men to Ahriman; the two streams embrace everything.

Above Lucifer an elemental being arises as it were out of the rock. The group was complete, but when it was released from its framework, the curious fact was noticed that the centre of gravity (naturally as viewed) seemed too far to the right, and something had to be added to redress the balance—evidently so brought about by karma. It was not a case of merely introducing a mass of rocks, but of following out the idea of the carving; therefore this elemental being sprang into existence, in a sense crowing out of the rocks. There is a noticeable thing about this being, although expressed only in slight indications; in it one can see how an asymmetry comes into play, directly spiritual forms are in question. It finds only limited expression in the physical, the left eye is not very different from the right; the same with the ear and the nostril; but directly we enter the spiritual realm, the etheric body is seen to work absolutely differently on the two sides. The left side of the etheric body is quite different from the right: a fact which immediately becomes evident in trying to portray spiritual forms. If you walk round this being, you will get a different view from every point. But in the asymmetry you will see a kind of necessity; it expresses the demeanour with which the being peeps over the rocks and looks down with a certain humour at the group below. This looking down over the rocks with a humorous air has a good reason. The right attitude for raising oneself into the higher world is never a sentimental one. Mere sentimentality is of no use for the man who wants to toil up the spiritual heights, in the right way, for it always smacks of egoism. You know how often, when the highest spiritual subjects are being discussed, I mix with our considerations something not designed to take you out of the mood, but simply to banish any egoistic sentimentality from it. A genuine ascent to the spiritual must be undertaken in purity of soul (which is never destitute of humour), not from a motive of egoistic sentimentality.

Then, as to the head of the central figure in profile, as of necessity it revealed itself. The head also had to be asymmetrical, because in this figure the intention was to show how not only the right hand, the left hand, the right arm and so on reflect the inner being of the soul, but how in a being living entirely in the soul, as Christ-Jesus did, this reflection is seen also in the very shape of the brow and in the whole figure, far more than can be the case in the mien of the ordinary man. We made a trial by reversing the lantern-slide, (although this was contrary to reality) to see whether the view thus obtained was quite different. It proved to be so. The impression made Was different. The artistic intention of the asymmetry will be apparent only when the head of the central figure is complete.

It may well be said that in working out such a subject all artistic questions have to be considered; the smallest has its connection with the far-reaching., whole. For instance, the handling of surface. Life has to be engendered specially through this. The surface curved once and the curve curved again—this particular handling of it, the doubling of the curve, thus drawing life out of the surface itself, is perceived only in fashioning these things. What we were aiming at, therefore, consisted not only in what was represented but in a certain artistic treatment of the subject. To achieve a representation of the Ahrimanic, the Luciferic, or of human nature by means of a copy, in a kind of narrative style, was not the intention; rather must it be seized through the fingertips, in the chiselling of the surface, in the entire artistic moulding. The expansion which man feels when he extends his view into the Spiritual, widens out again on the other side into the artistic.

This group is placed at the eastern end of the building, in the space provided for the stage. Above it is spread the vault of the smaller dome, decorated as I have described, in such a way as to continue in painting; the theme of the croup. The Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman are all there, and we have tried to make the colours artistically expressive in themselves. The variety of treatment shows how all these things can be brought out purely by artistic means.

All this could be achieved only because a number of our friends worked on the Building with the greatest devotion. Most curious things have been said about the Building, but some day, perhaps, due credit will be given to tag way in which the friends in our Movement, especially the artists, gave themselves with selfless devotion to it, and found their way wonderfully into this clothing of a cosmic conception in artistic form.

The Building is of course not complete; it might very probably have been so—except for the group—if these catastrophic world-events had not hindered it.

I wanted to bring before you, in these brief, disjointed sentences, an idea of what is intended, and I hope that you have at least acquired some small notion of the Building which, we may expect, will one day stand complete in Dornach. The aim of it all is this: to insert an artistic rendering of our cosmic conception into the spiritual life of the present and the future. People will see that this conception is no mere theory, but is made up of real, living forces. If we had produced something symbolical, people could have said: “That is a theory.” But as the conception is capable of giving birth to art, it is something different, something vital. It will give birth to yet other things; it must fructify other domains of life. There is widespread longing for a spiritual life suitable to the present day, but in this realm we encounter a good deal of visionary, irrational and barren stuff. My hope is that people will learn to distinguish between what is born out of the demands of the present spiritual age, and what arises from confusion and the like. We see spiritual movements, so-called, sprinting up everywhere like mushrooms. But one must learn to distinguish between what springs truly from the real forces of human spiritual development, and mistaken talk about spiritual things. There are many forms of this to-day. Naturally we notice it, for it shows that men are striving towards the spirit. If we keep our eyes open, we shall everywhere see this desire for Spiritual things. A metaphysical novel by a certain Herr Korf has just appeared—dreadful stuff; it is really more a mischievous piece of propagands for the “Star in the East”. I hope that such things, which express in their own way a perversion of man's metaphysical aspirations, will be distinguished from those created out of she fundamental strivings of his being, adapted precisely for our time.

I should like to add something to what I have said on the subject of memory as it exists in our age. As it manifests on Earth, memory is a metamorphosis of other forms of the life of soul which belonged to the Old Moon period of evolution. I said that during that period of dreamy, imaginative vision, man had no need of memory such as he now possesses; he had no need of it because he drew after him, like a comet's tail, impressions (which were inscribed in an objective world) of what he experienced in his dreamlike imaginations. During the Earth period proper this mode of experience disappeared. A different factor then began to operate which we must bear in mind if we are fully to understand the subject. An experience in consciousness can be engraved into the cosmic substance only when it has to some extent been ‘pre-experienced,’ that is to say not experienced for the first time by man, but beforehand. This will show you that all experiences in the consciousness of the Old Moon period were merely after-echoes of what had already lived in the thoughts of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. In the thoughts of the Beings of the Hierarchies there lived, in advance, what the Moon-humanity then ‘dreamed.’ The thoughts of the Moon-men came at a later stage—if indeed we can speak of ‘thoughts’ at all in connection with what was really a dreamlike, imaginative consciousness.

A different state of things appears in the Earth period. Human life is no longer so constituted that what a man thinks has already been thought, or remains visible. When he thinks, the thoughts are retained within his own being by the force of resistance offered by his physical body. His thoughts are engraved into his own etheric substance and only after death are they given over to the cosmic substance. Man can then look back, just as in earthly life he could look back on all that he experienced in consciousness. In the period between death and a new birth man lives through what was thus engraved in his ether-body and which, when he has passed through the gate of death, is borne out into the substance of the cosmos where it is destined to undergo a gradual change, inasmuch as in repeated earthly lives he has experienced the whole gamut of Earth-existence. Consider for a moment all that human beings think! Would it not be terrible if every human thought were objectively engraved in cosmic substance and remained there for ever and ever? That, however, is what would happen if man were not able, through repeated earthly lives, either to correct thoughts that are not worthy of permanence or entirely reject and substitute others for them. This is provided for in evolution by the repetition of earthly lives, for man is thus enabled to better what is impressed upon the etheric substance of the cosmos every time he passes through death and he can strive to the end that after his final incarnation on Earth only that will have been given over to the etheric substance of the cosmos which is worthy of permanence.

This is quite a different process from what took place in the dreamy, imaginative consciousness of the Old Moon period, when the thoughts were first evolved by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies and also to some extent by Elemental Beings and then echoed by the humanity of the Moon period. The thoughts evolved in this way remain visible, whereas during the Earth period everything a man thinks (as well as the feelings and impulses of will which are connected with his thoughts) is impressed upon his own ether-body, into his own etheric substance, and only when he has passed through the gate of death is it imparted to the etheric substance of the cosmos. But there it would remain if he were not able, in the course of subsequent incarnations, to correct it in so far as it needs correction.

This holds good for the whole of the normal life of soul during the Earth period, that is to say for the life of soul unfolded in waking consciousness between birth and death, though not for the consciousness which is ours in the period stretching between death and a new birth. The Spiritual Science which from now onwards must flow into human consciousness if humanity is to reach its earthly goal, springs, however, from sources other than those of normal waking consciousness. Spiritual Science must, as you know, come to birth in this earthly existence itself. It cannot be evolved in the life between death and rebirth. It must be acquired during earthly life and from this earthly life it streams out into the world where the dead are living between death and rebirth.

Spiritual Science is not a product of ordinary waking consciousness. It cannot, in its immediate form, be brought over into this world through the event of birth. Spiritual Science must evolve as the outcome of a different outlook, a different mode of thought and perception. Two kinds of consciousness have been described in these lectures: the consciousness of the period of the Old Moon and the consciousness of earthly life—objective consciousness. Memory in these two periods is different in character.

Now the consciousness by means of which man is able to assimilate the content of Spiritual Science is intelligible to healthy human reason. He can absorb it without actual vision of the spiritual worlds, but to bring it down from the spiritual worlds demands a very special kind of consciousness. It is this special kind of consciousness which, if it is understood, will enable man to shape future existence on Earth in the way in which it must be shaped if humanity is not to fall into decadence. Understanding of the in-streaming of the truths of Spiritual Science from the super-sensible into our earthly world must develop if mankind is not to fall into the decadence at the threshold of which it is perceptibly standing in our time.

If as they make their way from the spiritual into the physical world the truths of Spiritual Science are to fulfil their task in the future evolution of mankind, a certain insight into them must be acquired. The ordinary memory which functions in our waking consciousness ceases in a certain respect when we really begin to find our bearings in the spiritual world. Memory is something which, as you know, has in a way actually to be overcome in the consciousness that is able to penetrate to the mysteries lying on the other side of the Threshold. A new factor comes into play. That which has been consciously experienced must not, of course, be ignored, but this new factor is that a sentence or an utterance which, in the sense of Spiritual Science, has a true spiritual content, does not merely remain in a man's own ether-body until his death but is immediately engraved into the spiritual ether of the cosmos. An utterance which really voices a spiritual truth penetrates into and finds its place in the cosmic ether. In ordinary waking consciousness the thought is engraved first on a man's own ether-body and remains with him until he is able to correct it. Wrong thoughts, therefore, are corrected as karma takes its course. A thought which truly expresses the Spiritual is engraved into the cosmic ether. This is something that must be more and more understood. The process of world-evolution itself needs what can now be inscribed in the cosmic ether through Spiritual Science. Some people may say: ‘If this is what happens I prefer to leave Spiritual Science alone for then I need not fear that what I think will immediately be engraved into the etheric substance of the cosmos.’—During the Græco-Latin epoch of civilisation, such a statement might have had some meaning. In our age it has none, for although what I said earlier, namely that man can correct what is inscribed within his own being, is true, we cannot say the same of what happens under the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman. In the future, Lucifer and Ahriman will only be overcome when man has succeeded in setting up the balance between them. From our fifth Post-Atlantean period onwards, all that men produce out of themselves is capable of rectification. But under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, if men do not learn how to be on their guard, those thoughts and actions which have been influenced by Lucifer and Ahriman will be engraved into the etheric substance of the cosmos. Human thought and human action will be borne out into the ether just as the fruits of Spiritual Science are borne out into and inscribed into the ether.

There are fine distinctions here between what is engraved only into our own being, the content of. Spiritual Science which is in any case inscribed into the cosmic ether, and what is inscribed there because Lucifer is working as the Tempter and Ahriman as the Lying Spirit.

Constantly to repeat the phrase that one must be on perpetual guard against the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman is of no value whatever. If, however, we are to realise the necessity for and the mission of Spiritual Science, we must face this question with all its implications, fairly and squarely: What do those who have insight into the need for Spiritual Science to-day realise to be the great issue at stake? Very much depends upon a knowledge that we are actually now passing over into and preparing the period of world-history in which all that we ourselves think will be carried into the cosmic ether. If we seriously consider what this means, a sense of responsibility will arise in regard to everything that happens in our world of thought, a sense of responsibility for what we think. People are so apt to believe that thoughts have no objective significance—and up to a certain period of time which has now come to an end, this was, as a matter of fact, the case. But in our own age, downright untruth is taken hold of by Ahriman and imprinted upon the cosmic substance. This indicates the attitude which it behoves us to adopt to our thoughts. If people do not quite understand what has here been said, they may feel perturbed. But it need not be so if they will think about the matter coolly and collectedly. There is no need to get into a panic and say: ‘I must feel an awesome sense of responsibility for all my thoughts.’ But in the immediate future and indeed for many thousands of years to come it will be very necessary to acquire this sense of responsibility for our thoughts. And we may take this to apply to thoughts which have come to the point of being put into words and thus communicated to others.

So long as we have not actually formulated a thought to the point where it can become a communication, this thought has not reached the stage where Ahriman can do very much with it. But the moment we consider the thought ripe for the telling, and are ready to communicate it, Ahriman is on the alert to seize the thought and bear it out into the cosmic substance. In addition to taking care that our thoughts shall be formulated in a way that enables us to take full responsibility for them, we must learn to regard the process of thinking as a searching and a seeking. As a heritage from the fourth PostAtlantean period, and as an immature product of the fifth period, we are still too firmly convinced to-day that we can immediately formulate every thought. The faculty of thinking is not bestowed upon us for the purpose of immediately formulating thoughts but rather in order that we may seek out and collect the facts, turning them round, and round in our minds and viewing them from every angle. As human beings now are they like best to form their thoughts instantaneously and then with all possible speed utter them or write them down on paper so that they may be rushed into the world. The gift of thinking was not bestowed upon us for the purpose of a precipitate formulation of thought but for the purpose of searching and seeking. Thinking as such should be regarded as a process which should remain such for as long as possible. And when a thought has been formulated it should be held in abeyance until we can feel assured that the facts have been turned over and over and looked at from every possible angle.

Very much will depend upon whether a sufficient number of human beings can realise and understand the significance of what has just been said. It is impossible to imagine how greatly sinned against is the maxim that thought should be a process of seeking and that thoughts should be held in abeyance for as long as possible. This maxim is so sinned against that our world is entangled in a tissue of lies and lying is becoming more and more a habit. But this tendency to lying is leading mankind straight into decadence; there is a constant swinging backwards and forwards between Lucifer and Ahriman. On the one hand, untruth is spoken—either with deliberate ill-will or out of irresponsibility—but after all, as soon as these two words, ‘ill-will’ and ‘irresponsibility’ are spoken, they indicate that Lucifer is associated with the Lying Spirit. This is an easy way of approach for Lucifer! And lying, in turn, gives rise to passion. We lose the power to maintain the balance between what we feel and will on the one side, and what we think on the other.

It is very, very necessary that we should realise in clear consciousness how infinitely widespread to-day is the opposite tendency to what is demanded by the future, namely, a stern sense of responsibility for the truth. Of recent years this sense of responsibility has been vanishing before our eyes in a most terrible way. The most important thing of all is to be on the alert, for in their waking consciousness men do not realise how strong is the tendency to say what is not really true.

The truth—as those who carry out experiments know well—can only be arrived at when the matter has been looked at from every possible angle, considered in every possible light, and judgment held in abeyance for as long as possible.

No precipitate declaration of views, no hastily expressed opinion can be the truth. Such tendencies have the result of driving humanity further and further into decadence. Many people tell lies with the utmost glibness: but the worst thing of allis the unconscious and subconscious lying which is the outcome of Luciferic temptation—where a half, a quarter, an eighth or sixteenth of the truth is uttered. It may be that 98 per cent of truth is spoken but yet the dynamic force inherent in the two remaining fractions turns everything to evil.

And here we must take into consideration the fact that people lay so much stress nowadays on knowing everything. They never pause to meditate, nor do they attempt to use their faculty of thinking as an instrument for seeking. No! they must immediately formulate their thoughts. Of course it does occur to people now and then that a great deal of lying goes on in the world. No great insight is needed to discern this, especially in our times. We should, however, also realise that while the generalisation holds good that a great deal of lying goes on, we ourselves must take the path of thought which will from every aspect shed light upon the truth about the amount of lying. Otherwise it may happen that an actual truth, too hastily or inaccurately grasped, becomes the very reverse. A day or two ago I happened to read an article on the subject of the lying that is going on in the world at the present time. No great talent is needed to characterise the lies which hum through the air nowadays, but I can really think of nothing more inherently untruthful than this very article. The whole of it is one mass of lies, in spite of the fact that what is said is, in a certain sense, true. I am not saying this in order to denounce the article in question; what matters is that people shall wake up to the necessity of going more deeply into things, of examining them from every possible angle, and of avoiding hasty opinions.

Of all things in the physical world we need, first and foremost, this sense for truth; we need it over against the spiritual world which gives us a true understanding of the impulses of Spiritual Science; and we need it for the life we shall lead when we have passed through the gate of death. This attitude to truth is all essential, for without it there is no possibility of understanding our environment in the time between death and a new birth, or of understanding what we have to face in the spiritual world.

You see, therefore, that Spiritual Science must change man's attitude towards truth in the future evolution of the Earth. In many respects things that are happening at the present time are terrible indications of the downward path in contrast to the upward path which we must seek and find. For inasmuch as we have still to live through the rest of the Earth period and through the periods of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, very much that comes into being within our life of soul will be inscribed in the cosmic substance. This, then, is what I wanted to say on the subject of the metamorphosis of memory.

Of the metamorphosis of habit let me say the following. When we look back and perceive that from which habit has evolved and realise what habit was among the humanity of the Old Moon period, we say that impulses were poured into men by the Beings of the spiritual Hierarchies. In the Old Moon period there was no such thing as habit. Habit is a principle of the Earth period. But now that we have already passed the middle of this period we must prepare what is necessary for evolution in the future.

Through habit we tear ourselves away from the Beings who send down their impulses from the spiritual world. And through habit, the foundations are laid for free spiritual activity.

We must, however, now enter into a different relationship with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. During the Old Moon period and on into the early part of the Earth period proper, we were unconsciously dependent upon these spiritual Beings. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies and also certain elemental Beings sent their impulses into us. Now we are making ourselves free. As a residuum of this, a kind of relic, there remains the faculty of imitation in early childhood. But we must develop this living in habit to a further stage, to the stage where habit functions not only in external action but in moral conduct as well.^NoteNum What is this life of habit in reality? Within us we have a relic of our old connection with the spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies, which we only dimly perceive in our ordinary waking consciousness. An unknown world is there. Through the gateway of the senses we pass out of this unknown world into the physical world in which we live. The original source of our being lies in the world behind the veil of the sense-world, in the world which Spiritual Science reveals to us. We bear within us a relic of this world, although we do not realise it in our ordinary Earth-consciousness. We lived in the spiritual world with Beings of the higher Hierarchies until the end of the Moon period and during the early part of the Earth period. We left this spiritual world through the gateway of the senses. But we did not lose all sense of kinship with the Beings of the Hierarchies. A subconscious remnant still lives within us—for example, in conscience. Conscience is verily a legacy from the spiritual world. Gradually, as we learn again to understand the universe, as we unfold spiritual understanding, moral principles will arise which will illumine with the light of spiritual comprehension the instinctive morality that proceeds from conscience. A morality filled with a stronger and stronger light of understanding will emerge, if, that is to say, men seek for it.

Because this is so, we speak to-day in so many ways of abstract ideals, of the great abstract ideals of Truth, Beauty, Goodness. But remember what I have said on previous occasions: that Truth, Beauty and Goodness correspond to Beings in the spiritual world! It is to these Beings of the Hierarchies and not merely to abstract ideals of Truth, Beauty and Goodness that the human soul will evolve, although in our present human activities we simply follow after abstract ideals. From idealism we must evolve to the point where we become aware of our connection with a living spiritual world from which must flow the impulses for what happens here in the physical world. Spiritual Science must work in such a way that men shall receive from it the impulses for what ought to come to pass in the physical world.

Think for a moment of all the things that are said in this fifth Post-Atlantean period about the future of mankind, about what ought to be done. Much of it is good and I am not criticising it. But it is, after all, nothing but a search for abstractions. Moral ideals, national-economic ideals, all kinds of other ideals—they are nothing but abstractions compared with the living knowledge which Spiritual Science has to offer in regard to what ought to come to pass in the world. Think what it means to realise that the Hierarchy of the Angels will help us to fulfil our tasks and shape the world as it should be shaped! If you will take what is to be found in the different lecture-courses about the future evolution of humanity and compare this with the abstract moral ideals set up elsewhere, you will find the difference between what is living and what is abstract and dead. What is needed is a living consciousness that the world does not merely consist of mineral, plant, animal and man who invents all kinds of ideals for shaping the world, but rather that after mineral, plant, animal, man, come the Angels, Archangels and Archai, and the other spiritual Beings—a living, unbroken choir onwards into the heights of the spiritual world! And from this living choir of Being a stream of life is pouring once again into human evolution.

Not until a real understanding of these things awakens can there be anything but abstract ideals. Thoughts—what are thoughts? As if thoughts could have any creative impulse in them if they were not the thoughts of the Angels or the Archangels! This consciousness of living connection with the goal of the world will come. Truth will become more moral because man will feel a moral responsibility towards it. And morality will become a wisdom-filled knowledge because man will know what Being he is serving in his deeds.

The essence of what I have just said represents the true conception of the Christ-Principle for our times. The forces which have been drawn from the Christ-Principle up to our day have not been able to prevent the modern age from falling into decadence in very many respects. But Christ, as I have said more than once, did not say: ‘I am here now and only now, therefore write down as quickly as possible something of what you know about Me and let men believe that until the end of time!’—It is only a short-sighted theology, such as theology is at the present day, that teaches in such a way. Its teachings are indeed in many ways presented as though Christ had actually said: ‘I have done these things and now write it down quickly. Nothing must be added. This and this alone is to be taught until the Earth comes to an end.’—This conception is based upon such untruth that even those who act in accordance with it do not venture to express it in words!

There is no greater untruth than that which lies at the basis of the impulses upon which men act to-day. For the Christ said: “I will be with you always, even unto the end of earthly time”—which means that His revelation will always be open to us. At the beginning of Christendom this revelation formed the content of the Gospels; to-day it is the content of Spiritual Science which wells up from the same source.

Those who wrote down what could be written at the beginning of the Christian era did not say: ‘This we have written and there is nothing else to be said.’ No, indeed! They said: “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

The forces which pulse through Spiritual Science will serve to unfold an understanding of Christ which in the present age could be unfolded by nothing else. Truly it is a need of the present age that attention should be drawn to the attitude which men must adopt in regard to the thoughts and impulses underlying their actions. Much has been written about this, but for the most part it is lacking in substance, for the reason that people prefer nowadays to take an altogether different path. They want to get through their thinking quickly and not to make it a path to a goal which can only be attained after long, long journeying. Only when finally some relation to truth has actually been gained does the time come when we know that if a matter has been considered and tested from every angle we may have got to the truth of it, but even then we need never cease to study it from still other points of view.

This is the earnest warning with which Spiritual Science should speak to our souls. And it is in order that the consciousness of this task may be aroused that our Building stands there. It stands there to provide a starting-point, imperfect though it may be, in order that these things may penetrate into the hearts and souls of men. It is of course necessary that everything that can possibly be done shall be done, for in these times the opposing factors are many and strong.

• NoteNum. See Chapters IX and XII in, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.

From a poet who died some years ago. On one occasion, in the second half of the '80s of last century, he said to me that he was very anxious about the future of humanity. I admit that his expression of anxiety was somewhat of a paradox, but he was very much in earnest in his anxiety as to the tendency he wished to point out by his paradox; indeed, this anxiety inclined him to a certain pessimism. It seemed to him that the development of humanity in the future would be such that man would principally develop his head more and more, and that, compared with his head, all the other parts of a man would be stunted. He was very much in earnest over this idea, and he expressed this in paradox by saying that he was afraid the reasoning intellectual nature of man would get the upper hand to such an extent that the head would become like a great globe, and that men would then roll on earth as balls. The anxiety was very real to the man, for he reflected that we are living in the age of intellectualism, of the development of the intellectual powers which are expressed in the head, and that these reasoning powers would increase more and more, and that mankind was moving towards an unenviable future. Now that, of course, is a very paradoxical statement, and we might say also, in a certain sense, that even the anxiety which gave rise to his pessimism is also paradoxical. But the human intellect has a tendency to deteriorate, to draw conclusions when some or other observation has been made, and this is a case in point. This may be amply noticed in the realm of the theosophical movement as well as in the external, exoteric life. In external, exoteric life we do not have to look very far before we notice that the observations made by man at various times have always given rise to a great number of theories. How many hypotheses have been abandoned as worthless in the course of the evolution of humanity! In the theosophical-occult field it can also be observed that someone who has undergone occult training, and has thus acquired some clairvoyant power, may recount something from true clairvoyant observation, and then come the theorists who invent all sorts of schemes and theories, and so the matter develops. Very often the observation is quite an insignificant one, but the schemes and theories built upon it include whole worlds. That is always the danger; the intellect has this tendency. We have this tendency in a fairly passable sense in the well-known book, ‘Esoteric Buddhism’ by Sinnett. This book is based upon a number of genuine occult facts; these are in the middle of the book, and relate to the middle of the development of the earth. But upon these facts he built up a scheme of Rounds and Races, and this only rolls and turns, as it were, upon itself, always more or less in the same way. They are inferences, theories, made from the few genuine data to be found in the book. And this was the case also with my poet. In the background he had a sort of unconscious, instinctive imagination which told him something true; we might say, there is half an ounce of truth, and from this he made a hundred-weight, or many hundred-weight. We often find cases such as this in the world. Now, what is the truth of the matter? The truth is this, that in our age man's head is undergoing a certain evolution, the formation of the head, the whole structure of the head will undergo change in the future. If we direct our attention to a very far-distant period in the earth's evolution, we have to imagine that, for example, the formation of the human forehead, nose, and jaws will have undergone essential changes, and that, in a certain sense, all the rest which the human being bears as his earthly organism will have retrograded; but, of course, never, during the earth period, will the relation of the developing head to the rest of the body be that of a rolling globe. This must only be taken literally to a very, very limited extent. On the other hand, in ancient epochs of development on the earth, before the middle of the Atlantean epoch, the rest of the human organism was capable of change; it was engaged in a sort of development. Apart from the head, the human organism has changed comparatively little—and again I say comparatively little—since the middle of the Atlantean epoch; on the other hand, prior to that time the remainder of the human organism underwent great changes. From this you will be able to draw the inference—which will now be correct, because it is nothing but an actual observation clothed in words—that the further we go back into the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs the more essentially different man looked, even to his own observation. In the ancient Lemurian epoch, man looked quite different from what he now recognises as himself at the present day.

The appearance man would have presented to himself in the latter portion of the Lemurian epoch is apparent to him again, in a certain way, when he gradually approaches the clairvoyant impression leading to what we have described as the Paradise-Imagination. I have, indeed, told you—and it is true—that this Paradise-Imagination corresponds to a complete delineation of the human being, the physical human body, so to say, as the Paradise itself. Man separated—as it were—he divided; the present corporeal nature appeared outspread in the manner described; but at that time, the actual time to which we look back clairvoyantly, and we have the Paradise Legend before us, a mighty leap forward was made. And through this movement—which may also be observed by means of clairvoyance—what might be called the outspread human being was drawn together relatively rapidly into that which then became the starting-point of man for the development which followed. Directly after the time corresponding to the Paradise-Imagination, the form of man was, however, quite unlike what has developed out of it to-day. And, fundamentally, all that surrounded man in the kingdoms of nature was also quite unlike his present surroundings.

I have already mentioned in the previous lectures of this course that the pupil might attain to this Paradise-Imagination if he were suddenly to become clairvoyant for a moment during sleep, and to look back, as it were, at his physical body and etheric body, stimulated to this Imagination by these. On the whole, it may be said that a great deal of esoteric development is necessary before attaining to this Paradise-Imagination. The student must have gained many victories in order to transform his own personal interests into those common to humanity and the world. There then comes, when from the very deepest sleep—for there are degrees of sleep—he passes to a less deep sleep, and in this less deep sleep becomes clairvoyant—there comes what later in earthly evolution became reality: The condition of man in the ancient Lemurian epoch after he had made the great leap forward.

Thus we say that it is possible to see this primeval period of the earth through separation in the self and astral body from the physical body and etheric body, looking back at them. Now, as the order of nature comes to our aid—for in the night we are outside our physical body—we can make use of this arrangement of nature, and so regulate the training that, as if awaking out of sleep, but not returning to the physical body—as if awaking in a different state of consciousness—we see the physical body. From this you will be able to gather that the vision we have just spoken of provides the only true possibility of learning to know how man was formed in the primeval past.

In the far-distant future will come a time when we shall be able to say: How extraordinary were those people of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries! They believed themselves able to discover the origin of man by means of the external investigation of nature; they thought they could draw conclusions regarding the ancestry of man from the observation of the animals surrounding them on the physical plane. However, through the true development of human knowledge, it becomes evident that we can only arrive at a true idea of the origin of man upon the earth, and of his ancient form, by means of clairvoyant observation, and that we can never obtain insight into what man was like in the Lemurian epoch, for example, except through clairvoyant observation, through the retrospective vision stimulated by the impressions of one's own physical body and etheric body. But then it will be seen—this will be admitted in that future time—that man was never like any of the animal forms about him in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; for the forms which man had in that time, and which manifest themselves to his clairvoyant consciousness in the way we have described, are different from all the animal forms around man in the nineteenth century. And even the expressions we have made use of—bull, lion, etc.—are only used comparatively. The men of the future will say how very grotesque it is to see the way people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries traced back their ancestry to ape-like beings; for in the Lemurian epoch there were no apes at all in the form in which they later appeared upon earth; they only originated at a much later period, from degraded and degenerated human forms. Animal beings which may be compared to our present apes can only be found by clairvoyant vision about the middle of the Atlantean epoch of the earth's evolution. The further we go back in the development of humanity, the more we see that to the clairvoyant view, in the vision of our self during sleep in the night, our shape, our form in ancient times is to some extent preserved. And so it comes about that, when a student thus looks at himself, he learns to recognise his physical corporeality in an infinitely more delicate etheric body, one might say, though not in the sense of our present ether. Thus does man appear. His form appears more as a vivid dream-picture than as the form of flesh and blood he now bears. We have to become acquainted with the idea that when the self and astral body are outside the human being they can scarcely see the head; it is quite shadowy; not completely blotted out, but quite shadowy. On the other hand, the rest of the organisation of man is distinct. That is shadowy, too, but its condition is such that the human being does not appear as made of flesh and blood, but one has the distinct impression that he possesses a more powerful organisation. It may appear paradoxical, yet it is true that when a man looks at himself clairvoyantly in sleep he has at certain moments such an appearance—that is, to the self and astral body, his physical body and etheric body present such an appearance—that he is reminded of the form of the Centaur! The upper part, which appears in the Centaur as the human part, bears the human face, but in a very shadowy form; the other part, which is not exactly like any of our present animal forms, but which is reminiscent of them in certain respects, is more powerful, and the seer says to himself: ‘To the spiritual view this is stronger, even denser, than our present form of flesh and blood.’ I have already touched upon these matters in a previous course of lectures; but you must understand that all these Imaginations, except the Paradise-Imagination, are fugitive, and can be presented from different aspects. I might also present a somewhat different aspect—and you would see that this only corresponds to a different period of development—and then we should arrive at the form of the Sphinx. The consecutive order of the evolution of man is presented in various aspects, in different views. The mythological pictures, the so-called mythological symbols, contain much more truth than the fantastic intellectual combinations made by present-day science.

Thus, at night the human figure becomes very peculiar. Something else now becomes clear. When we consider with clairvoyant eye this lower part which reminds us of an animal, we become acquainted with something which makes a very definite impression upon us; as I observed in the last lecture, these impressions, these inner experiences, are really the essential thing. The pictures are important, but the inner experiences are still more so. We reach an impression so that we know afterwards: That which really drives me during the day to my personal interests alone, that which inoculates my soul with merely personal interests, is the outcome of what I observe at night as my lower animal part. During the day I do not see it; but it is within me as forces, and these are the forces which draw me down to a certain extent, and lead me astray into personal interests.

Developing this impression more and more brings us to the recognition of the place Lucifer really fills in our evolution. The further we direct our clairvoyant vision back towards the time that corresponds to the Paradise-Imagination, the more beautiful becomes the structure, which is really only reminiscent in a later time of what belongs to the animal—kingdom. And if we go back altogether into what belongs to Paradise, where the animal continuation of man appears as though separated from man himself, and multiplied into—bull, lion, and eagle, we may then say that these forms—which we know in those ancient times by these names—may also in a certain sense be for us symbols of beauty. More and more beautiful become these forms, and, going still further back, to the time of which we spoke in the last lecture, when we represented the impression of the sacrifice, we arrive at the period when Lucifer's true form appears to us in sublime beauty, just as he wished to preserve himself unchanged in the evolution from the ancient Moon to the earth.

From the account I have given in ‘Occult Science,’ you know that on ancient Moon the astral body was given to man. What we bear within us in our astral body played a great part on the ancient Moon. We have described it as personal selfhood, as egotism. This egotism had to be implanted in man on the ancient Moon, and, as man received his astral body on the ancient Moon, egotism has its seat in the astral body; and, as Lucifer has preserved his Moon-nature, he has brought egotism to the earth as the inner soul-quality of his beauty. Therefore, on the one hand he is the Spirit of Beauty, and on the other the Spirit of Egotism. And what we may call his error is only this: that he has transplanted to the earth something which, as far as man is concerned, if I may use the expression, belonged to the ancient Moon; that is, the permeating and impregnating of himself with egotism. But thereby, as has often been said, was given to man the possibility of becoming a self-contained, free being, which he never would have become if Lucifer had not carried over egotism from the Moon to the Earth.

Thus inner experience teaches us to know Lucifer as the Night Spirit, as it were. And it is part of the change that goes on in our self and our astral body that at night we feel—ourselves in the company of Lucifer.

You may perhaps at first think—if you only think superficially—that it must be disagreeable to a person, when he goes to sleep and becomes clairvoyant, to become aware that—during the night he comes into Lucifer's company. But if you reflect more deeply, you will soon come to the conclusion that it is wiser for us to learn to recognise Lucifer; it is better to know that we are in his company than to think that he is not there, and yet have him invisibly active with his forces within us, as, indeed, is the case during the day. The evil does not consist in Lucifer's being by our side, for we gradually learn to recognise him as the Spirit who brings—us freedom; the evil consists in our not recognising him. But after men had caught sight of him, as it were, when he misled them in the Lemurian epoch, they were not permitted to see him any more; for then, in addition to that original misleading in the Lemurian epoch, there would have been innumerable other smaller misleadings. Therefore, the divine-Spiritual Being who was watching over the progress of mankind had to draw a veil over the vision of the night. Thereby man lost as well all else that he would have seen during sleep. Sleep covers from man with darkness the world in which he is from the time of his going to sleep until he awakens. At the withdrawal of the veil which covers the night with darkness, we should instantly perceive Lucifer by our side. If man were strong enough, this would do no harm; but as at first he could not be strong in the sense required by our earthly development, this veil had to be drawn during his sleep at night. After the first great misleading, which left in its train the possibility of human freedom, no other misleadings, through the direct vision of Lucifer from the time of his going to sleep until reawakening, were to come to man.

Now, there is an equivalent. We cannot see Lucifer at night if during the day we do not see his comrade, Ahriman. Thus to the student who has progressed as far as this in the development of his self and his astral body, the daily experience which allows him to have the vision of outer objects becomes different from what it is to the ordinary man. He learns to recognise that he sees things in a different light from before the development of his self and his astral body. He first learns to look upon certain impressions, which ordinarily he considered in an abstract manner, as the activities of the Ahrimanic beings. Thus that which comes from outside, which awakens desire in him from outside—not that which comes from within, for that is Luciferic—but that which attracts him in the objects and beings around him, so that he follows this attraction from personal interests; in short, all that entices him to enjoyment from outside he learns to recognise as bearing the impress of Ahriman. We also learn to recognise this in all that rouses fear within us from outside. They are the two poles—enjoyment and fear. Around us are the so-called material world and the so-called Spiritual world; both these in our ordinary waking life are enveloped in illusion. The external world of the senses appears as maya, or illusion, for people do not see that whenever they are stimulated to enjoyment by outer objects and beings Ahriman peeps out and calls forth the enjoyment in the soul. But the fact that there is a true Spiritual nature everywhere in matter—which the materialists deny—that produces fear, and when the materialists notice that fear is beginning to appear from the astral depths of their soul, they then stupefy themselves, and think out materialistic theories; for what the poet says is profoundly true, ‘People never notice the devil (that is Ahriman), even when he has them by the collar.’ To what end are materialistic meetings held? In order to swear allegiance to the devil. This is literally true, only they do not know it. Whenever materialists gather together to-day, to explain in beautiful theories that nothing exists but matter, Ahriman then has them by the collar; and there is no more favourable opportunity for studying the devil to-day than by going to a gathering of materialists or monists. Thus, when a man has undergone a certain development in his astral body and self, Ahriman accompanies him at every step. When we begin to see him, then we can protect ourselves from him; we can see Ahriman spying out in the allurements of enjoyment and in the impressions of fear.

Again, on account of the immaturity of man, it was necessary that Ahriman should be hidden; that is, a veil was drawn over his nature. This was done somewhat differently from in the case of Lucifer; the outer world was plunged into maya for man, giving him the illusion that outside in the world, instead of Ahriman peeping out, there was matter everywhere. Wherever man dreams there is matter, there is, in reality, Ahriman; and the greatest illusion is the materialistic theory of physics about the material atoms, for in reality these are nothing but the forces of Ahriman.

Now, humanity as a whole is developing, evolving, and this evolution advances so that towards our future man will actually develop the powers of pure intellect more and more. This will cause his head to assume a different shape externally. In a certain respect the beginning of this development towards intellectuality was made with the dawn of modern natural science, about the sixteenth century. When intensified, this intellectual development will exercise great influence upon the self and the astral body of man. A time set in when there still remained traditions of the old clairvoyance. These came in contact with one another exactly at the dawn of our modern natural science. It was precisely in the sixteenth century; it was then known that a future would come when, through the higher development of the self and astral body, man would be able really to see Ahriman more and more clearly. Then, because in the early period of intellectual development it struggled against the perception of the Spiritual with all its might, a darkening set in; but in the figure of Mephistopheles, who is none other than Ahriman, at the side of Faust, the sixteenth century was able to point out that, fundamentally, Ahriman will become more and more dangerous in a conscious manner to the future development of humanity; that Mephistopheles will become more and more a sort of tempter of the human race. At that time this could only be demonstrated because man still had a remembrance of the ancient Spiritual figures. But this has now been forgotten by the general body of humanity, though in the future the knowledge will be forced on man that through all his waking life he is accompanied by Ahriman-Mephistopheles. Naturally, this corresponds to the complementary picture that man is living towards a future when, each time he awakes, he will have—at first like a fleeting dream, but later more clearly—the impression: ‘Thy companion during the night was Lucifer.’ You see from this that through the theosophical-occult development of the self and astral body we may have the fore-knowledge of what will come to humanity in the future, we can dimly sense the companionship of Ahriman and Lucifer. Through a definite law of evolution, Lucifer first came to man during the Lemurian epoch, then later, as the consequences of the Luciferic influence, came the Ahrimanic. In the future this will be reversed: The Ahrimanic will first be strong, and subsequently the Luciferic influence will be added. In the ever-developing clairvoyant conditions of the human soul, the Ahrimanic influence will work principally in the waking condition, the Luciferic influence principally during sleep, or in all the conditions which are indeed similar to sleep, but in which there is consciousness.

Thus, as Ahriman entered our external sensible life in our waking condition, man first needed a protection against Ahriman during this waking condition. These protective impulses are given in the development of humanity many, many centuries before the danger appears. Although the general body of humanity has not yet developed the full consciousness of Ahriman-Mephistopheles, the protective impulse came at the beginning of our era in the physical appearance of Christ in the earth-development. Christ once appeared in the physical body in the earth-development to make provision that man might be armed, through receiving the Christ-impulse, against the necessary influence which will come from Ahriman-Mephistopheles. The power through which man will be armed later on when the Luciferic influence is there, is an influence which will affect a different consciousness; man will be armed against this by the appearance of Christ in the etheric body, regarding which we have often said that it is drawing near. Just as Christ appeared once in a physical body and thence his impulse has proceeded further, so from this twentieth century onward Christ will be seen in an etheric form, at first by a small number, and then by an ever-increasing number of human beings. Thus we see that the progressive development of man is brought about by a kind of equilibrium; a kind of balancing of the different impulses. What is related in the Gospels as the story of the Temptation, the confronting of Lucifer and Ahriman by Christ, portrayed in different ways in the different Gospels—I have spoken of this on a previous occasion—is a sign that through the Christ-Impulse, through the Mystery of Golgotha, man will be able to find the right way of development in the future. It forms part of a true development of the self and the astral body of man that in this transformed self and astral body he can receive the impressions of the positions occupied by Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ in the development of humanity, and a correct development of the self and astral body leads to this knowledge of the three impulses which condition the evolution of mankind.

A correct development, however, includes the extension of the sense of self in the astral body to interests common to humanity and the world. And it acts like poison when a man carries his personal aspirations into those regions of his clairvoyant observation which he ought only to observe when filled with interests common to humanity and the world. He cannot then perceive the truth, but has imaginations which are incorrect, untrue, which are only the reflections of his own personal interests and aspirations. It may sometimes happen that a clairvoyant who is still filled with personal aspirations and interests experiences something like the following. I received a letter in which someone wrote that he had to communicate something that I ought to know. He said that Christ was reborn in a physical body, and his address is somewhere in London, W.; that Mary is reborn in a physical body; her address is that of his niece, in such-and-such a street. Paul is reborn, and was his brother-in-law, and his address was also given. And all those mentioned in the Gospels were reborn among the relatives, and in this letter all their various addresses were given. I could show this letter to anyone: it is a document—grotesque as it may appear—which shows the effect of carrying personal interests into those heights where there should only be the interests of the world and of humanity.

But now we must clearly understand that when someone makes a mistake in abstract intellectual knowledge in general, this kind of error can easily be controlled, it is something that can be done away with comparatively quickly, although, indeed, human knowledge has the frightful origin, which was referred to in the last lecture. As the knowledge of man, which is expressed in our waking daily life, receives such diluted impulses that everyone may develop perfect freedom with respect to them, hence no one need be dazzled by the foolish things thought out by human intellect, and those who allow themselves to be dazzled by these foolish imaginings can be cured in a comparatively short time. But suppose that in this clairvoyant observation a person arrives at incorrect imaginations in the manner we have described; these incorrect imaginings then act as a poison in the soul in a certain way; they poison it by obliterating the healthy human reason and intellectual grasp. Thus they injure one much more deeply than do merely intellectual follies. If, therefore, we try to permeate everything obtained in the fields of occultism with the forms of sound human intellect, we do well. If an Imagination is simply given out, without any attempt to justify it, as we have tried to justify such in this course of lectures (and incorrect imaginations would only be cited as mere imaginations), then this will impose upon the very faculty in others which should bestir itself to reject such imaginations. And it might very well be that, while one who spreads intellectual follies may easily provoke criticism, one who spreads false imaginations by this means takes away from those who believe in him the power to criticise; that is, he blinds them to the challenge that ought to be given to the imaginations in question.

From this we may gather, my dear friends, how very necessary it is that the moment the knowledge goes beyond what is intended for man in the natural course of evolution, the moment a man uplifts himself to clairvoyant knowledge, how unconditionally necessary it is that his development should move unswervingly towards interests common to humanity and the world. This will always be recognised in true occultism. And to assert the opposite, that there can be sound entry into the Spiritual world, that is, a sound development of the astral body and the self apart from the extension of the human interests to selfless world-interests and interests common to humanity; that is, to make the opposite affirmation to the one made here, could only spring from a disposition that permeates occultism with frivolity. We must bear in mind the serious importance of these things in speaking of the changes which take place in the astral body and the Self of man during his higher Spiritual development.

I would like to start by talking about the principle of development, which I already hinted at yesterday. I said: If we follow the metamorphosis of forces within a developmental series, we first come from the simple into the complicated. So I want to draw a simple [it is drawn]; then a next more complicated one would perhaps be this; then we would come to a third, to a fourth, which would be like this (Fig. 105). Now we might have four stages of development of the same thing.

Now the next one could be somewhat more complicated than the previous form. We would then perhaps get this [fifth] form. But this would not come out, instead this other form will develop. What I have drawn with the thick line, that would then perhaps be visible on the outside. And if it were a real form in nature, one would then progress from this to this form. And yet it is only in the etheric that development continues in such a way that the more complicated forms, which I have indicated with the dots, emerge, while the physical, the externally visible, that which reveals itself again, perhaps simplifies itself again.

The next forms would then perhaps be such that the ethereal forms would be these [sixth]. But it is not this ethereal form that comes to the fore, but rather what remains visible on the outside is this [the thick line], which in turn is a simplification, an essential simplification, so that if you just consider physical development, you go from a stage of 1-2-3-4 in complication, then in simplification. This is also really the principle of development in nature.

For example, we can see how, let us say, the eyes of certain lower animal beings – considered physically and externally – are more complicated than the human eye. Certain lower animals have blood vessel-like organs, a “sword-shaped process” and a “fan” in their eyes. These are also disappearing, and the human eye is relatively simpler in its outward form, but the etheric body has a more complicated form. We can only grasp the principle of evolution correctly if we present it in this way. The principle of development is correctly captured in the evolution of the columns, capitals, architraves and bases that you were shown yesterday.

If you want to understand our building, you also have to bear in mind that the entire treatment is appropriately designed for the new architectural style in terms of character. It is the case, for example, that even the artistic treatment of the wall is different from the way walls were treated in earlier architectural styles: the wall was always conceived as the boundary of the space that one wanted to close off. Here at the Goetheanum, the wall is conceived in such a way that it actually overcomes itself. This is physically achieved in our windows. Our windows, in so far as they are the main windows of the auditorium, are etched out of single-colored glass panes. It is then the case that the artistic works are actually only created by the sunlight shining through. So the processing of the window panes is a preparation, and the whole impression is created by the interrelationship between what has been worked on the pane and the sunlight shining through. In the windows, in particular, what has otherwise been striven for in the entire building has been physically achieved, whether through the design of the columns, the carving on the walls, or the painting: the wall virtually dissolves. So that when you look at the wall, you don't have the feeling that the space is closed off, but that you have the feeling that you are being led out into the cosmos through the wall. With the windows, you must have this feeling physically, because you lead directly, I would say, to the effect of light on the outside, purely through the physical design of the panes; but with the other wall designs, this has also been attempted artistically.

This will give you an idea of how a new stylization of building forms has been striven for here, down to the last detail, how the formal language of our building is to be a new one, so to speak. It is understandable that philistinism cannot immediately comprehend this new design language, my dear friends. Now, it is important that we first show you some of what has been achieved with painting. First of all, I will show you the painting of the small dome, because I only have pictures of it here for now.

Let us look at what our revered friends actually saw. By visualizing this now in non-colored images, we must immediately point out that the essential thing about the painting of the small dome is not the motifs, but the bringing out of the motifs from the colors. There lies, I might say, the very beginning of what painting of the future will have to bring. Man will indeed have to understand more and more that in the details of nature, in essence, there is always something essential. For example, when you immerse yourself in a color, or in a color combination, it is not just this color combination that is present, but the color itself is something alive, something that works out of itself, and it is possible to educate oneself, for example, to live with the color blue. You will then get the feeling that the blue color gives you the impression of the designed, the moving, that which moves or is formed in space. So if you approach it in a creative way, you will get something that you draw out of the blue. The red or yellow gives you the impression that it wants to reveal itself, come towards you, talk to you. While the blue glides past you, the red gives you the impression that it comes towards you.

In this way, being with a color, but especially with many colors, can be invigorated. And all these things actually are in the work of nature. And only someone who educates himself in this immersion in the elements of nature can understand this. Therefore, it is somewhat striking when, let us say, in the current, indeed, in itself quite justified new striving for art, things come across that actually show that one has come out of imitating nature and, isn't it true, into something that one is actually striving for new artistic things in the inartistic. When we see that all manner of expressionist and futurist and so forth things are put together in any old way, or put together differently, what appears in nature in a certain way, then very often – not always, of course – there is something very unjustified in such a combination. For example, someone who forms a human eye cannot help but place the second eye in the right place if they do not merely see, but if they know how to live intimately with the creative forces of nature. This is because the eye is not something in itself, but only exists with the second eye. But one only comes to the inner essential creation of nature when one can live with the entities of nature, for example with colors.

And now, look, how could it not be possible to create from color itself? I just want to know when someone says: I am not interested in something created according to the model, but I am interested in applying the colors, I just want to know why then the form should not emerge from this pure application of the colors as the creature of the color. We have to get away from the model again. We have to get away from being tied to the naturalistic. Art has worked on that long enough. But we have to be able to develop an interest in seeing a light surface simply as a color spot and seeing a dark surface as a color spot. I would like to know how, when you simply have a light and a dark surface in an arrangement [it is drawn], how you could not feel a face turned in this direction, surrounded by hair growth here (Fig. 105).

Everything can be brought out of the color combination. Just as everything can be brought out of the treatment of the surface, of the treatment of the form in sculpture. In contrast to color, if painting wants to work with color, the line, the drawing, is actually an untruth. Because, you see, the horizon is not really and truly present as a line. That is not true at all. It is not a horizon line. What is real is the blue sky, and below it perhaps something shaped by nature, and that borders on each other. It is the contact of two colored surfaces. Whoever draws the line is lying. Whoever paints two colored surfaces, which of course must then have a border, is telling the truth. And it is with things like this that one begins to get used to the truth. Because we, wanting to be naturalistic, have lied so much artistically, that is why we also have the plight that so many lies are currently being told in the other world contexts.

Just think what, let us say, for example, the drama has achieved. Drama, at the end of the 19th century, in the culmination of materialism, began to be materialistic as well. There were people sitting in the auditorium watching dramatic performances of Arno Holz or Gerhart Hauptmann and so on, and now they didn't have something dramatic in the old Shakespearean, Schillerian or Goethean sense, where great series of events that are far apart are summarized, but a back house, a front house, or something like that, which was to be recreated in a very naturalistic way. The people should not talk about anything other than what is usually talked about in three hours. What kind of naturalism is that? It is the naturalism that, just like today's natural science, only takes into account the extra-human, which also, in the artistic, only takes into account the extra-human: can it be seen? If you wanted to be a model for a drama, you would have to remove the third wall so that everyone could see inside; then you could see what happens in three hours and recreate it from the stage.

These things are of course not taken into account at all in the age of naturalism, and one does not find the possibility of really placing the human being back into the whole natural and cosmic context. But this must also happen in art. It is understandable that art has long adhered to the model; but now the time has passed when art can adhere to the model. Art must grow together with the creative forces of nature and work out of the creative forces of nature. For what is the point of recreating nature in a naturalistic way? Whatever is created in a naturalistic way can never be achieved by nature. Every smallest achievement that is made out of something that is not there in the senses can be more significant than anything that appears to be so perfectly created in nature. If you want something realistic, you can say that you are sticking to nature itself. And in addition, in many areas naturalism was even somewhat extraordinarily frivolous. One thinks of Hauptmann's “Weavers”: the well-fed people sat down in the theater to overlook the whole series of scenes in Hauptmann's “Weavers”. This was called “social art”, bringing the misery of life into the theater, something frivolous, a frivolous cultural phenomenon. So we have to turn to the supersensible again. Today, people find it difficult to decide to enter the supersensible in art. But it will not become light in humanity if we do not decide on something like this in all areas.

Because the small cupola room is painted, the motifs are only the novellistic, not even the truly pictorial, artistic. But you have seen the thing itself, and so you might remember, especially in the pictures that I can show here, what you saw. It is perhaps even interesting to note how what is on the dome wall there cannot be reproduced if you only have the motif. But the motif itself, if you have it, must show that there is something incomplete about it. A motif that only appears in black and white is simply not satisfactory, because you have to be able to say what is missing. There must be something missing, because what is actually supposed to be depicted is areas of color, not black and white, and not lines, while what will appear to us is the novellistic element, the thought, which basically does not belong at all.

What you see here is what meets you from the small dome when you enter it. A child, emerging from the indeterminate material forms, flying towards the medieval figure, which has been captured by capturing a kind of Faust figure. It should be captured in a certain sense, the initiation of the Middle Ages. After humanity had gone through the most diverse forms of initiation, this initiation of the Middle Ages came about with all its tragedy.

It is indeed the case that, according to the spiritual conditions of this stage of human development, the human being cannot rise to an understanding of the living unless the realization of death stands beside it. To see through the connection between life and death is what leads, ultimately, from the Middle Ages to our own day, and through it to true knowledge.

In the next picture you see here that which lies further to the east: this medieval initiate himself, who comes to his realization out of reflection, out of turning away from the world. But precisely if we want to experience this turning away from the world, we must experience it by acquiring an understanding of the forces of death that are out there in the whole world. And these forces of death are intimately related to our powers of consciousness. The same thing that confronts us in the human skeleton, that, my dear friends, that is the external image of death, at the same time expresses in external physical form what lives in our nervous system when we experience the reflective consciousness of modern times.

The consciousness of the early Middle Ages and especially the ancient consciousness were such that they did not depend on the human being dying in every moment of their waking lives in order to think. But in return, human beings were filled with images and imaginations in their consciousness, even if they were atavistic. Intellectualism has only developed since the middle of the 15th century. It has developed because our head organs have assumed a formation that, when it takes hold of the whole person, continually leads to death. A battle between life and death is constantly taking place in the human being. The head wants to die. This is prevented by the life forces that continually surge up from the rest of the organization.

This dying of the head, to which we owe our intellectual consciousness, is what should also be expressed through all the colors and everything that has been brought out of the color in this form. This is the only place where the letter, the written word, appears within our entire structure, and rightly so, because it is only in this time that the I, the I-thought of humanity, has become so abstract that it can be pointed to with letters. The I-thought will only be able to be borne more and more by the fact that this I is indeed filled with the Christ. That is why medieval mysticism had the task of developing the Pauline word through a whole series of sermons and reflections such as those of Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart. It is fixed for all eternity within the medieval language, which developed in the German-speaking areas after the modern era, that the I: written out, the initials of Christ Jesus: ICH;

For the reasons I have just explained, you see Death beneath the Faust figure; this Death comes from forces that work from the center of the Earth towards us and combine only with the Mercury forces that work from the cosmos towards the Earth. The sight of the Faust-like figure with Death below him would be unbearable if the counter-image were not created in his perception, in the child flying towards Faust and the ego.

The next picture shows us the Greek personality as she lives under the initiation, a more feminine figure, since in fact the Greek initiation spoke more to the feminine. In general, in Greek high culture, the content of the initiation had to be gained by the initiate acquiring what female figures, who to a certain extent intervened in the flow that comes to man from the cosmos, what could be gained from such female figures: The Pythian priestesses in Greece are intimately connected with the whole structure of the Greek initiation. So that then such things appear as these heads, for example, which are worked purely from form.

This already invites us not to ask in the abstract sense: What does something like this mean? This question is an unartistic one when posed in abstract form. At this point, one must look at what color is there and how, according to the principle that I have just explained here, the shapes themselves emerge from the experience of the colors. Everything that belongs to this figure has actually come about in the end through the perception of the colors.

The next picture: you have a larger area to see here, here is the flying child seen earlier; here the small dome connects to the large dome; then this figure of the medieval initiator, and here is death. And here is the figure you just saw, above it the inspiring figure, an Apollo-like figure. Unfortunately, the picture is very imperfect. And at the top there is still the higher inspirer.

In these pictures, there is always what is initiated as a personality. Above it, there is the figure that sinks the imaginations into the personality to be initiated, and above it, there is the figure of a higher hierarchical order that sinks the inspirations into it. So here you have the inspiring figure, which is above the Faust-like figure.

The next picture is unfortunately very unclear. This is the inspiring figure that is above the Greek initiator. If you imagine the one you saw earlier, with the three heads on the shoulder, then this is the figure above it, the one who lets the imaginations flow into the lower figure, and above that the inspirer of the heads of the inspirer. Here is the head of the inspirer, and below that would be this Athena-like figure, who inspires and is inspired and imagined.

And here you have the two figures. The figure at the bottom is that which sends the imaginations down into the Egyptian initiates, and the other figure is that which allows the inspirations to flow into them. And as we move forward, we come to the representation of Egyptian initiation.

So the next picture is the Egyptian initiates; above him are the two figures that have just been seen here.

And so we come to the older Persian-Germanic initiation. This Persian-Germanic initiation is still effective in our time, but it has, as it were, something enclosed within it, the medieval initiation mentioned earlier, that is, the one characterized in the first figure. The medieval initiation is, as it were, shorter, and this one encompasses the whole long period. What matters in it is that the duality in the world - the bright, Luciferic, the dark, Ahrimanic - be seen through in its entire effect on the world. Here you have on the one hand the dark, Ahrimanic: the small head is in fact Ahriman, the other is his shadow, which he carries with him. On the other side: the Lucifer figure. You can see how this is developed in the sculptural group – you have all seen the group. So you can see how the contrast between the head of Ahriman and the head of Lucifer confronts you. And in the painting, one could also clearly express this mutual relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer.

If you see, for example, how the forward thrust of Lucifer's forehead virtually takes away Ahriman's foreheads, or how Ahriman's foreheads are hardened towards the back, then you see the interplay as it is the organizing force of nature. This then goes down. You see how a kind of centaur shape corresponds to Ahriman – a kind of centaur shape also corresponds to Lucifer – that they are connected to each other, want to be apart and cannot, complement each other in the colors, and below that the Persian-Germanic initiate, who carries the child floating on his hand, pointing out how the future and the hope for the future must be taken up in man by seeing through dualism.

The next image: Ahriman is alone with his shadow. The Ahrimanic is therefore everything in man that works in one direction in man. The human being is so essentially that man constantly strives to keep the balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic in him. The Ahrimanic is everything in us that, if we take the matter spiritually, inwardly, strives in us for the sober, prosaic, materialistic, for the philistine, for the bourgeois, for the tantric. That is the Ahrimanic, that which hardens man, that which solidifies man within himself, which prevents him from opening up to the world, which makes him absorbed in his egoism. It is that which draws man to the earth, physiologically speaking, it is that which works in man and by which he would actually be continually exposed to the danger of succumbing to hardening, to sclerosis, to ossification, if it were not for the reciprocal, the Luciferic. He would be constantly in danger of becoming diabetic, for example, or of developing terrible gouty lumps. That is the Ahrimanic. Ahriman suffers greatly from constant gouty lumps, from constant rheumatism, etc. There are things that are physiologically connected with the soul-like philistinism, materialism, bourgeois conformity, and so on, as I characterized it earlier.

This is the Luciferian figure, the complete opposite image. It is the other side of man, that which continually causes man, in his soul, to stray into the mystical and the fantastic, continually causes him, as it were, to be a being that wants to get beyond the human head. All enthusiasm in man is that which is striven for by the forces that are, as such, Luciferian in man.

Now there are two ways in which these contradictions can be present in human nature: One is that man strives to achieve a kind of equilibrium, that is, to facilitate everything that strives within him towards the philistine, the bourgeois, by also developing imagination, by also being able to devote himself to the world, and by also understanding how to bring the artistic into the purely abstract. That is to say, it is possible for a person to achieve such a balance of these two opposing currents that the person becomes one through the two harmoniously blending into each other and becoming one.

But the other is also possible, that the two extremes continue to work in man, so that man does not find a balance in which they flow into one another, but that the two things are active in him. For example, you can meet mystical enthusiasts who ascend to the highest theosophical, symbolic regions, always wanting to rise above their heads, but in ordinary life they are philistines. Loving everything philistine, pedantic, materialistic, tough and so on - yes, tough! - goes quite well with mystical enthusiasm in a person. This, so to speak, obscures the balance deep within the unconscious. There, what is actually a twofold nature comes out in dualism. So in some ways, these two sides can also be present in a person, revealing themselves. One is not a philistine just because one is a dreamer. One can very well be a philistine and a dreamer at the same time. Figure 13 (Fig. 80):

There you see the one who is inspired by the insights of the interaction of the dark and the light world, who must connect what is indicated by the child's hovering.

Here you see that which is already there in a certain way as an initiation principle, but which will only have its task in the future: the way in which the secrets of the upper world can be received in Slavic countries today, a kind of Russian figure that has its own shadow beside it, as so often the Russian invisibly carries its own shadow with it, always has its shadow beside it. What is inspired from above, we will then see more clearly. A centaur figure, something that is already humanly shaped or already superhumanly shaped. There is no need to decide this question, but rather to think in terms of form. In between, as a counter-image, the angelic form. Just as we have Ahriman and Lucifer in the present culture, the Germanic-Persian one, so here, where we go a little further, we have the human form, stuck in the animal, and a superhuman form as its opposite.

You see here above the figure still reminiscent of the animal, so to speak the animal transported into the world of the stars, the animal having become ethereal, which contains within itself the forces of initiation for this future time, when these forces on the other side – these forces, which are more of an Ahrimanic nature – are held in the balance by the superhuman, by the angelic, which approaches this figure from the other side.

Here you have the angelic form together with the animal form, but it is something that is ethereally animal and ethereally superhuman. It is the interaction of the mysteries that work in one form or another that will bring about the initiation for the coming age.

The next picture: Here you have once more, so that you can see more of it, the initiating and the initiated. Thus, an attempt has been made to put together in the dome that which leads to the knowledge of the supersensible from the most diverse human conditions - Egyptian, Greek, medieval, past, future - and from the most diverse temporal conditions. And all of this is worked out of color to such an extent that one can have the impression that the wall is destroying itself, destroying itself with something that actually has no end in the soul, that enters into the spiritual; so that the wall, through its artistic design, cancels itself out.

Here you see the Luciferian figure as it is in the central figure; here is Christ. You will remember that you saw it over there in the building: it is in particular red color, worked out of red and yellow. I wanted to distinguish it from the other colors; so that the whole – if one may say so – the Luciferian experience – is a red-yellow experience, from the burning, phosphorous color, from the hot color, everything that leads people to want to rise above their own heads.

Everything that is otherwise in the dome and in the building in general is as if synthesized in this eastern group, in this Christ-like figure in the center, Lucifer above it, Ahriman below it, which is then completed in the rock group below. The whole mystery of man is there as a mystery: Christ, Lucifer, man, Ahriman, and thus there is a continuation of the building idea, which was found in its various metamorphoses from ancient Greek, Gothic times to our own. The Greek temple, as a dwelling for a god, had only one meaning in that it enclosed the god. One cannot imagine its forms of construction other than as the dwelling of the god. The medieval Gothic cathedral only has a purpose if the community is in it, otherwise it is abandoned. Its walling indicates that it only has a purpose if the community is in it. Inside, there should be that which leads man to self-knowledge, which presents man to himself, what man is: a being that has to seek the Hypomochlion between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic.

In the next picture, you can see below it the Ahrimanic, which is struck by the rays of fire emanating from the arm of the Representative of Humanity - the Christ Jesus. The Ahrimanic is also held fast by the forces of the earth. It is everything that pushes the human being towards the earth, the heaviness of the earth in the human being, just as the Luciferic is that through which the human being wants to move away from the world. The Ahrimanic: the inward brokenness, the inward heavy suffering. The Luciferic: that which leads the human being to stupefaction, to illusion, to hallucination. Here with Ahriman, everything bony, everything hardening. In Lucifer, everything feverish, pleurisy-like, etc., everything that, if developed one-sidedly by the human being, would cause the human being to burn inwardly through his joy and lust and greed and desire. The Ahrimanic: that which freezes within in pain and therefore endures infinite pain when the rays of fire come over its coldness.

The next picture: the head of the Representative of Man, as I believe it can be fully captured in spiritual science. The usual image that one has of Christ - it was actually only in the sixth century that the bearded Christ emerged - the history of Christ portraits is extremely interesting. The Christ portraits emerged from lively discussions about whether Christ was beautiful or ugly. Of course, these discussions took place at a time when there was no longer a living image of Christ. Then the urge to capture Christ in pictures arose at a time when people could no longer depict beauty in the old Greek sense. We have to try to see Christ spiritually. And as far as I believe I can advocate the matter, it is – precisely by transforming the whole into the spiritual, which can only be seen in what has been preserved in the Akasha Chronicle – the figure of the one who really walked in Palestine at the beginning of our era. But this should not be taken as if there were a portrait study, but it can be felt that the representative of humanity is also connected with history in this way. Everything must follow from the artistic intuition itself.

Now I still have a few figures in the next picture: you see the middle group here. Here the Russian initiation, above it the angel, the centaur; then this Golgotha Way, the threefold path, to Christ, to the two thieves or robbers. Here the Ahriman figure, struck by the rays of fire, then the Christ figure, above it Lucifer. Here again the other side: the angel, the centaur figure, thus the initiating one. Below that, in turn, would be the two initiators that belong together.

Here you see the five-part leaf that I mentioned yesterday. Then you see the Germanic-Persian initiation, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic one, and then the Egyptian initiation. But this is already very unclear in this picture. You can still see the Egyptian initiate. An attempt has been made to photograph the object in a variety of ways. It is of course true that photography can only give the motif in the most diverse ways, which is basically not what it is all about.

I would also like to mention that our building, the double-domed structure, is covered with Norwegian slate. Once, when I was on a lecture tour that took me from Kristiania to Bergen, I looked out of the window of the railway carriage and noticed the beautiful Voss slate from the Voss slate quarries. During that journey, I had the idea that it would be a good idea to use this Voss slate to cover our building – an idea that could then be realized. Those who look at the roofs of our building, as they shine, especially under certain effects of the sun in their grayish-blue, will see that this idea was indeed a justified one, to ship this Norwegian slate to the south just enough to cover this building. It does indeed reflect the sun's rays wonderfully, and the rays of light in turn.

Of course, I can only give a brief description of what was attempted in this building. If you combine what I have been able to discuss, because there are pictures, with what you will see in the future, along with many other things, in general and in detail, you will get an idea of how this building should become a hieroglyph, an immediate revelation in the forms and colors of that which lies in the entire anthroposophically oriented world view. It should be presented as a great hieroglyph to the present day. And something would really be done for our time and for the near future if this building could ever be completed. It has been started with a certain devotion to the cause, started at that time especially from those areas that are now confined to world life, that can no longer really contribute because they are completely impoverished in relation to the rest of the world. Events have brought it about that precisely these regions have become impoverished in the face of world events, which first gave rise to this idea of building, and it would actually be good if so much un-chauvinistic, pure humanity could arise in the world that this building could now really be completed on the part of those regions that have suffered less from the horrors of recent years. It should actually be completed.

However, if you look at everything that has been a motivating factor in the last five to six years, and if you see it continuing to have an effect on the winners and the defeated, if you see how nowhere does the realization dawn that a completely new situation must take hold, then there can be little hope that this edifice will ever be completed. But it is, my dear friends, a demand of the time, it is a demand of the future. It is something that should be understood quite differently than one has been inclined to understand it until now. And it would perhaps be the first sign of a manifestation of the will to heal the world if, let us say, an understanding were to awaken from the English, French, and American sides, precisely for the completion of this building. The first impulse came from Central Europe; the rest would have to come from those who were neutral in the last years or from those who were hostile to Central Europe, if there were real understanding.

But it really seems as if souls want to continue sleeping, as if most of them say to themselves: Oh, what's the point of getting involved in something new! Things will only turn out well if we go back to what was more or less the case until 1914. Many people long for that. My dear friends, that will never come back. And those who want that, and who are working to bring it about, those who cannot rise above the idea that something as new must come among us as the architectural styles of this building here are, they are working towards the downfall of humanity. Isn't it actually, I would say, heartbreaking in terms of the culture of humanity and its development, as Dr. Kolisko had to say here a few days ago, as he had to characterize, as it were, how at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century and well into the 19th century, the Goethe culture had emerged, and that this Goethe culture has completely dried up. It had already dried up in Germany by the 1880s.

Perhaps I may allow myself a subjective judgment in these matters, because I myself came to Weimar for the first time in 1889, then in 1890 to the Goethe-Schiller Archive. Yes, my dear friends, there we really were at the burial place of Goetheanism, at the real burial place of Goetheanism. And in that, there was no difference between the various nations of the world. There the German scholar, by cutting syllables, recalled Faust, together with Calvin Thomas, the American scholar, who cut syllables in the same way. People from all over the world worked there. Science had come to the point where it was far away, where it was concerned with Goethe. Truly, everywhere a cutting up of the living Goethean being, terrible, terrible!

In Austria, however, which already carried the seed of destruction within itself, which, through its state-political system, carried the seeds of destruction within itself, there were still a few isolated developers of Goetheanism, as Dr. Kolisko characterized it here in these days. Then, what once existed was finished, covered up! It is up to humanity itself whether the same fate that befell Goetheanism befalls all of European culture and its American offspring. It is hard to believe, but the question for humanity today is: Do you want something new and thus save the white race from barbarism, or do you want the same fate for the entire culture of the white race as for Goetheanism? And rising above this barbarism of the white race, what will the non-white races, namely the Negroes and similar races, bring about what is now the civilized world? ¹ The question today is: How many people are able to face this problem? How many people feel how serious it is today that it is a matter of the existence or non-existence of contemporary civilization?

This building was intended to be nothing less than a living expression of this. It is the continuation of what European culture has achieved, and this continuation should live, not die! But this building does not appeal to an indeterminate fate, to which one might comfortably surrender, but rather appeals to something actively alive. If people want to save European civilization without this active life, without this impulse for salvation, without this will, without this act of freedom, then this culture will not be saved, and will meet the same fate as Goetheanism in Central Europe. Then one might establish large archives and do philology in these large archives about what once was in Europe. But we should not let it come to archives alone; we should let it come to living buildings, both physical and spiritual, which already announce their liveliness through their forms. I would like that to be read from these forms. Because this name, Goetheanum, was longed for by someone, my dear friends, as the final name for this building here, which has already experienced the difference between a mausoleum of Goetheanism and what could be a living organism for the Goethean spirit, but in its further development, now for 1920, in fifty years for 1970, etc.

That is what I wanted to say to you today, following the description of the building.

• 1. See the reference on p. 159.

Verse for Wednesday. All esoteric life consists in taking in what we can understand and grasp exoterically with the soul with our hearty feelings. We must get to know the realms of Lucifer and Ahriman so we can protect ourselves against attacks. We must especially watch that we don't take concepts that we formed here in the physical-and that rightly exist for this world—with us into the spiritual when we cross the threshold.

Philosophy is something that some of you aren't very interested in, but you all know that philosophy tries to give men views about the world and life. In philosophy one mainly speaks about two things. Firstly about multiplicity, where everything is led back to the smallest parts, atoms, monads. For instance Leibniz's philosophy is a monadological-spiritual world view, and Haeckel's materialism is an atomistic one. The second thing that is spoken about in philosophy is unity. Spinoza's philosophy belongs here and Hegel's world view can be put here also. But multiplicity and unity are concepts that are only valid on the physical plane and in the elemental world to some extent, but are of no importance for the spiritual world. Anyone who worships unity and takes these concepts into the spiritual, succumbs to Lucifer. One who looks upon multiplicity as the only right thing falls prey to Ahriman. One who becomes conscious in the spiritual—and that's the main requirement for an advanced esoteric, that he's conscious outside of his body during meditation—first sees himself. He has himself before him as the main impression—his physical body and his relation to his physical being. Here in the physical world one feels that one is a unity with respect to one's surroundings that one looks upon as a multiplicity. One sees clouds, trees, mountains or the various kingdoms of nature around one. If we wanted to think that the clouds up there are part of us, like a finger is a part of us, we'd be making a big mistake. In the spirit one becomes aware of oneself as a multiplicity; we see all the forces and beings that work on our physical body in the elemental world as a multiplicity there. We see this like a hundred thousand fools there, like legions. But if we would only see these hundred thousand fools as a multiplicity and wouldn't say: All you little fellows there altogether are only I myself, all you together in your many-fellowedness only form me as a unity—if we wouldn't say this with all force and energy and self-contemplation, we would fall prey to Ahriman. And we shouldn't just tell ourselves that theoretically—which wouldn't be so difficult—but we must really experience this conviction that many are one in spiritual realms. If we did not do that, if we didn't strengthen our soul to have these feelings, and we looked upon these hundred thousand fools as just that, then pieces would fly out of us and we would be torn into multiplicity. Ahrimanic beings would take pieces of our being and disguise themselves with them and delude us with errors and lies.

Some African people only know lions as a multiplicity. They can't think of them as a unity, as a genus. One must grasp the concepts of unity and multiplicity really correctly and must leave ones that are only suitable for the physical plane behind when one crosses the threshold.

We must strengthen our soul through meditation to such an extent that when beings approach it in the spiritual world it immediately knows whether they want to lead it astray. The soul must be able to say: You (elemental beings) are the builders of my physical body. We often find schemata set up in theosophical literature that are somewhat useful. One starts with a unity which then forks and multiplies. Or one starts with many things and goes up to unity. And even if these things aren't quite right it doesn't harm anything too much as long as it stays on the physical plane. But it can become terrible if one wants to cross the threshold with this concept of a schema. The latter can be instructive if it only serves as a symbol, if one remains aware that one can portray the same thing in a hundred ways; if one isn't aware of this one has fallen prey to Ahriman.

Of course feelings and emotions play into all descriptions and explanations. One has to say things to one person in a vivid way, to another in a quite different way that would arouse antipathy in the first one. It has to be like that. But one must never force an esoteric truth on an esoteric by eloquent means, for then Lucifer would be at work. A pupil must be able to take things in freely.

So one has to keep life on the physical plane apart from the one in spiritual worlds. One must not take concepts that are valid in the physical realm with one when one crosses the threshold.

The working of ahrimanic and luciferic beings is necessary for the world order as long as they stay in their proper boundaries. An esoteric must strengthen his soul so that he recognizes the attacks of these beings and can protect himself from them. A man will only gain self-assurance in the spiritual world if he can keep a balance between Lucifer and Ahriman in physical life, if he knows from where everything that he encounters is coming.

An esoteric is supposed to acquire a different feeling from the one an exoteric has through what's given in esoteric classes and through his meditative life. He must let his entire life and actions be illuminated by spirituality so that quarrelling would be an impossibility in our ranks. That's really possible. In exoteric life an esoteric must behave like an exoteric. But his feeling about exoterics must be like adults' about children, quite objective, without arrogance or feelings of superiority. It's often quite painful to see how disputes, ambition and petty rivalries are present among esoterics also. This is just as if a 40 year old man were playing with children and he wanted to hit the bowling ball or pin that mashed his finger or blackened his eye. This way of expressing one's displeasure would be quite natural in a child. As an adult one can play better than children, but one accompanies this with other feelings; one stands above the play, whereas a child is completely engrossed in his play.

Some of our dear friends told me that my book Theosophy is very hard to understand, couldn't it be written in an easier way. I even lifted my pen several times to do this, but don't think that it's easy to write Theosophy in a popular way. But I always put the pen aside again. If one wanted to take in Theosophy without thought difficulties one would give Lucifer points of attack. It's quite good to torture oneself a little with it.

The idea that light is only based on waves is wrong. And it's quite wrong to speak of waves, oscillations and vibrations in connection with spiritual things. Some people like to talk about the good vibrations in an esoteric class, but one shouldn't do that.

Recently much has been said about the dangers that a pupil is exposed to on the way into the spiritual world. Now if someone wanted to say I don't want to go on this path, I don't want to develop myself into a spirit-bearer because it's too dangerous—then that's just as if someone would say: I'd like to live in a house that will soon collapse—I just don't want to know anything about the collapse. Everyone will have to go on this path sooner or later, and so it's necessary to become acquainted with the dangers. Man must go on this path into the spiritual realm because otherwise he'll dry out and atrophy. And here it's an esoteric's task to strengthen his soul to rightly recognize all of the difficulties—Lucifer and Ahriman and the Guardian of the Threshold—and to look them in the face and not fall prey to the hindering forces but to conquer them in order to show mankind the way. In the spirit lay the germ of my body .. In my body lies the spirit's germ ...

IN THE PRELUDE AND INTERLUDE:

Sophia.
Estella.
Two Children.

IN THE MYSTERY:

Johannes Thomasius.
Maria.
Benedictus.

Theodosius, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of the Spirit of Love.

Romanus, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of the Spirit of Action.

Germanus, whose prototype,, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of the Earth-brain.

Helena, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of Lucifer.

Retardus, active only as a Spirit-influence.

Philia, Astrid, & Luna, Friends of Maria, whose prototypes, as the Mystery proceeds, reveal themselves as spirits of Maria's soul-powers.

Professor Capesius.
Doctor Strader.

Felix Balde, who reveals himself as representative of the Spirit of Nature.

Felicia Balde, his wife.

The Other Maria, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as the Soul of Love.

Theodora, a Seeress.

Ahriman and Lucifer, conceived as Soul-influences only.

The Spirit of the Elements, conceived as a Spirit-influence.

A Child, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as a young soul.

As is usual in English stage directions, right means right of the stage, and not right of the audience as in the original German. So too the left is left of the stage.

The music at the representation of each play was by Mr. Adolf Arenson.

NOTES ON THE COSTUMES WORN: The costumes worn are those of every day, except that the female characters, over their dress, wear bright broad stoles of a colour to suit their character.

Benedictus is is usually in a black riding suit, top boots, and a black mantle.

Lucifer has golden hair, wears crimson robes, and stands upon the right of Johannes. Lucifer appears as female.

Ahriman, the conventional Satan, wears yellow robes and stands upon the left of Johannes.

In the fifth and eleventh scenes and when in spirit form or acting as hierophant, Benedictus wears a long white robe over which is a broad golden stole with mystic emblems in red. He also wears a golden mitre and carries a golden crosier.

On such occasions Theodosius is similarly robed except that the stole, mitre, and crosier are silver and the emblems blue. Similarly the stole, mitre, and crosier of Romanus are bronze and the emblems green. Retardus' costume is a mixture of the above three.

Germanus wears long brownish robes and is made to appear like a giant with heavy clogs, as if tied to earth. Scene 6.

Philia, Astrid, and Luna in the seventh and eleventh scenes and in the other plays have conventional angel-forms; Astrid is always in the centre of this group; Luna is on her right; Philia on her left.

Theodora wears white and has angel's wings in the seventh and eleventh scenes.

The Other Maria is dressed like a spirit (except in Scene 1) but one associated with rocks and precious stones.