The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is especially important in our time that the reality of spiritual life is not confused with the way people interpret this reality. We live in an age when human understanding and human conduct are strongly influenced by materialism. However, it would be wrong to think that because our age is materialistic, spiritual influences are not at hand, that the spirit is not present and active. Strange as it may seem it is possible, particularly in our time, to observe an abundance of effects in human life which are purely spiritual. They are everywhere in evidence and, the way they manifest, one could certainly not say that they are either invisible or inactive. The situation is rather that people, because of their materialistic outlook, are incapable of seeing what is manifestly there. All they see is what is so to speak "on the agenda." When one looks at people's attitude to the spirit, at the way they react when spiritual matters are spoken of, it reminds one of an incident which took place several decades ago in a Central European city. There was an important meeting of an important body of people and the degeneration of moral standards came under discussion. Immoral practices had begun to have adverse influence on certain financial transactions. Naturally a large part of this distinguished body of people wanted financial matters to be discussed purely from the point of view of finance. But a minority—it usually is a minority on such occasions—wanted to discuss the issue of moral corruption. However a minister got up and simply tossed aside such an irrelevant issue by saying: “But gentlemen, morality is not on the agenda.”—It could be said that the attitude of a great many people today in regard to spiritual matters is also one that says: But gentlemen, the spirit is not on the agenda. It is manifestly not on the agenda when things of importance are debated. But perhaps such debates do not always deal with the reality, perhaps the spirit is present, only it is not put on the agenda when human affairs are under discussion.

When one considers these things, and has opportunity to talk more intimately with people, a situation emerges which is very different from what is imagined by those who feel embarrassed by talking about things of a spiritual nature. When one comes to discuss how people got the impulse to do what they are doing one finds again and again that they decided on a project because of some prophetic vision or because of some inner impulse. As I said, if one looks at these things and is able to assess the situation, more often than not things are done because of some spiritual influence, perhaps in the form of a dream or some other kind of vision. Much more than is imagined takes place under the influence of spiritual powers and impulses which flow into the physical world from the spiritual world. People's theoretical rejection of spirituality, based on present-day outlook, does not alter the fact that significant spiritual impulses do penetrate everywhere into our world. However, they do not escape being influenced by the prevailing materialism. There has always been an influx of spiritual impulses throughout mankind's evolution and one ought not to think that this has ceased in our time. But people responded differently when there was more awareness of the existence of a spiritual world than they do in a materialistic age like ours. Let us look at a particular example.

It is extraordinarily difficult to convey to the world certain facts concerning spiritual matters, the reason being that people in general are not sufficiently prepared; they cannot formulate the appropriate concepts for receiving rightly such communications from the spiritual world. Such communications are all too easily distorted into the very opposite. Therefore it often happens, especially at present, that those who are initiated into spiritual matters must remain silent in regard to what is most essential. They must because it cannot be foreseen what might happen if certain things were imparted to someone unripe for the information. Nevertheless certain situations do often arise. On occasions, in accordance with higher laws, discussions take place about spiritual matters. When it is difficult, as it usually is at present, to discuss such things with the living it can often be all the more fruitful to discuss them with those who have died. Seldom perhaps was there a time when conscious interaction between the physical plane and the spiritual world, in which the dead are living, was so vigorous as it can be at present.

Let us assume that a discussion takes place of a kind possible only between someone with knowledge on the physical plane and someone who has died. In this situation something very curious can happen, something that could be termed a "transcendental indiscretion" can take place. The fact is that there are those who listen at keyholes, so to speak, not only on the physical plane, but also among certain beings in the spiritual world. There are spirits of an inferior kind who are forever attempting to obtain knowledge of all kinds of spiritual facts by such means. They listen to what is being said between beings on the physical plane and those in the spiritual world. Their opportunity to listen to such a conversation can arise through someone who, being especially passionate, in the grip of his passion is, as one might say, “beside himself.” This kind of situation often arises through passion, through being drunk—really physically drunk—or through faintness. It gives the lower spirit opportunity to enter into the person with the result that the person either then or later has visions of some kind and can hear things he is not supposed to hear.

It is well known to those able to observe such happenings that countless things, obtained through indiscretion in spiritual communication, appear in distorted form in all kinds of literature, particularly those of a more dubious kind. Nothing is more effective than when some lower elemental spirit (Kobold) takes possession of the writer of a detective novel, especially if drunk and, entering into his human frailties, instills in him a particular sentence or phrase which he then introduces into his story. Later the novel reaches people through all kinds of direct or indirect channels; the particular sentence has an especially strong effect because, given the way people take these things in, it speaks, not to the reader's consciousness, but to his subconscious.

Another method which is very effective is when, in a spiritualistic seance, such a spirit may have the opportunity to insinuate, into what is related through the medium, the spiritual indiscretion he wishes put to effect. This is not to say anything against mediumship as such, only the way it is used. Many things occur in the course of human karma which, in order to come to light, need mediumistic communications. We are not dealing with this aspect today, however. The point I want to make at the moment is to emphasize that there are at the present time spiritual channels between the spiritual world and the physical plane. These channels are very numerous and far more effective than is supposed.—Having said this you will understand better when I now say something which may seem paradoxical but is nevertheless a reality.

The years between 1914 and 1917 will no doubt be written about in the future in the usual way of historians. They will scrutinize documents, found in archives everywhere, in order to establish what caused the terrible World War. On this basis they will attempt to write a plausible account of say the year 1914 in relation to events in Europe. However, one thing is certain: no documentary research, no report drawn up in the way this is usually done will suffice to explain the causes of this monstrous event. The reason is simply that according to their very nature the most significant causes are not inscribed by pen or printer's ink into external documents. Furthermore their very existence is denied because they are not, so to speak, “on the agenda.”

Just in these last days you will have read reports of the legal inquiries going on in Russia. The Russian minister of war Suchomlinoff,²⁰ the Chief of the Russian General Staff and other personalities have made important statements which have caused a great deal of indignation. Many feel moral indignation on learning that Suchomlinoff lied to the Czar; or that the Chief of the Russian General Staff, with the mobilization order in his pocket, gave the German Military Attache his solemn promise that this order had not yet been issued. He said this because he intended to pass it on to the proper quarters a few minutes later. Such things are certainly cause for indignation and moralizing but so much lying goes on nowadays that no one should be surprised that really fat ones are told in important places. But these incidents and what people say about them are truly not the real issue. That is something quite different. When one reads the full report carefully one comes across remarkable words which are clear indicators of what really took place. Suchomlinoff himself says that while these events were taking place he, for a time, lost his reason. He says in so many words: “I lost my reason over it.” The continuous vacillation of events caused this state of affairs. He was not alone, quite a few others in key positions were in similar states.

Imagine a person occupying a position such as that of Suchomlinoff: The loss of his power of reasoning gives splendid opportunity for ahrimanic beings to take possession of him and instill into his soul all kinds of suggestions. Ahriman uses such methods to bring his influence to bear, especially when no importance is attached to remaining fully conscious—apart from sleep. When we are fully conscious such spiritual beings have no real access to our soul. But when our spirit; i.e., our consciousness is suppressed then ahrimanic beings have immediate access. Dimmed consciousness is for ahrimanic and luciferic beings the window or door through which they can enter the world and carry out their intention. They attack people when they are in a state of dimmed consciousness and take possession of them. Ahriman and Lucifer do not act in inexplicable terrifying ways but through human beings whose state of consciousness gives them access.

Those who in the future want to write a history of this war must discover where such dimmed states of consciousness occurred, where doors and windows were thrown open for the entry of ahrimanic and luciferic powers. In earlier times such things did not happen to the same extent in events of a similar kind. In order to describe the causes of events during earlier times what professors and historians find in archives will suffice, whereas in the case of present events something will remain unexplained over and above what is found in documents however well researched. This something is the penetration of certain spiritual powers into the human world through states of dimmed consciousness.

I spoke in an earlier lecture about how, in a certain region of the earth, conditions were prepared for decades so that at the right moment the appropriate ahrimanic forces could penetrate and influence mankind. Something of this nature took place in July and August of 1914 when an enormous flood, a veritable whirlpool, of spiritual impulses surged through Europe. That has to be rightly understood and taken into account. One simply does not understand reality if one is not prepared to approach it with concrete concepts derived from spiritual insight. To understand what is real, as opposed to what is unreal, at the present time spiritual science is an absolute necessity. Nothing can effectively be done in the political or any other sphere unless wide-awake consciousness is developed concerning events which must be approached with concepts and ideas gained from spiritual knowledge. Not that everything can be judged in stereotyped fashion according to spiritual science. But spiritual knowledge can stir us to alert participation in present issues, whereas a materialistic view of events allows us to sleep through things of greatest importance. A materialistic outlook prevents us from arriving at proper judgement of what the present asks of us.

A recognition of what here is at stake is what I so much want to be present as an undercurrent in our spiritual-scientific lectures and discussions, so that spiritual knowledge may become a vital force enabling souls to deal appropriately with outer life. It is essential to recognize not only the issues of spiritual science itself but also those of external life as they truly are. One must be able to arrive at judgements based on the symptoms to be seen everywhere.

I recently described the incredible superficiality with which a professor of Berlin University attacked Anthroposophy. I told you of the misrepresentations and slanders delivered by Max Dessoir.²¹ That such an individual should be a member of a learned body is part and parcel of the complexities of life today. Max Dessoir once wrote a history of psychology and mentions in the preface that he wrote it because the Berlin Academy of Science had offered a prize for a work on the subject. The history of psychology written by Max Dessoir is such a slovenly piece of work, containing fundamental errors that he withdrew it and prohibited further publication. Consequently not many copies are in circulation, though I have a reviewers copy and could say many things about it. For the moment I refer to it in my forth coming booklet concerned with attacks on Anthroposophy.

As I said Max Dessoir wrote a history of psychology and then withdrew it from circulation. But the fact remains that the Berlin Academy of Science did award it the prize. Such things should not be overlooked; they are symptomatic of what takes place nowadays. One must ask: who are the people who award such prizes? They are the very people who educate the younger generation; i.e., they educate those who will become leading figures in society. They also educated the generation which brought about the present situation in the world. It is necessary to see things in their true context and to recognize that all the symptoms reveal the need for that which alone can make our time comprehensible.

This again indicates what I wish so very much could flow as an undercurrent through our movement so that spiritual science would shake souls awake and make them alert observers of what really takes place in their surroundings. The occasion for sleep is in our time considerable and naturally ahrimanic and luciferic powers make use of every opportunity to divert the alert consciousness aroused by spiritual knowledge away from the real issues. The opportunities for dulling man's consciousness are plentiful. Someone who studies exclusively a special subject will certainly become ever more knowledgeable and clever in his particular field; yet the clarity of his consciousness may suffer as a result.—In speaking about these things one is skating on very thin ice.

While it is true that there are many things of which an initiate cannot speak at present because it could have terrible results, it is also true that there are things of which one can and indeed must speak. To give an example, there is a professor at a German university of whom much good could be said and I have no intention to say anything against the man. I want to give an objective characterization. He is a distinguished scholar of theology, has studied widely and his research in the domain of theology has made him very learned. Yet it has not made him awake and alert to what constitutes true reality. As professor of theology his task is to speak about religion, scripture and also about veneration and supersensible powers. This, for a modern professor of theology, is a rather uncomfortable task. Such learned men much prefer to speak about experiencing religion as such, about how it feels merely to approach the spiritual. This professor, as others like him, has a certain fear of the spiritual world, fear of defining or describing it in actual words and concepts. I have often spoken about this fear which is purely ahrimanic in origin. This professor has an inkling that he will meet Ahriman once he penetrates the material world and enters the spiritual world. He would then have to overcome Ahriman.

Here we see someone who as a theologian looks upon the beauty and the greatness of nature as a manifestation of the divine. But this aspect of nature he will not investigate for it is the beings of the Higher Hierarchies who reveal themselves through nature and to speak of them is not “scientific.” Nevertheless he does want to investigate the soul's religious experiences. However, in attempting investigation of this kind, without any wish to enter the spiritual world itself, one very easily succumbs instead to the very soul condition one is apt to experience when confronting Ahriman: the condition of fear. The religious experience of this theologian consists therefore partly of fear, of timidity in face of the unknown. The last thing he wants is to make the unknown into the known. He presumes that timidity and fear of the unknown—which stems from ahrimanic beings—is part and parcel of religious experience.

It is because he wants to describe the soul's religious experience but refuses to enter the realm of the Hierarchies who live behind the sense world that Ahriman darkens his comprehension of the spiritual world. Through the ahrimanic temptation the spiritual world appears as “the great unknown,” as “the irrational” and religious experience is confused with the “mystery of fear.”—Nor is that all, for just as Ahriman is waiting without when one seeks the spiritual world through external nature so does Lucifer wait within. The modern theologian of whom we are speaking also refuses to seek the Hierarchies within. Here again Lucifer makes the realm of the Hierarchies appear as "the great unknown" which the theologian refuses to make into the known. Yet he wants to know the soul's experience, so here he meets the opposite of the mystery of fear, namely the “mystery of fascination.” This is a realm in which we experience attraction, we become fascinated. The theologian now has on the one hand the mystery of fear and on the other the mystery of fascination; for him these two components constitute religious life.

Naturally there are critics today who feel that it is a great step forward when theology has, at last, got away from speaking about spiritual beings; no longer speaks of what is rational but about what is irrational; i.e., the mystery of fear and the mystery of fascination, the two ways to avoid entering the unknown. The book: Über das Heilige (About the Sacred) by professor Otto²² of Breslau University is certain to attain fame. This book sets out to derationalize everything to do with religious experience. It sets out to make everything vague, to make all feelings indefinite partly through fear of the unknown and also through fascination for the unknown. This view of religious life is certain to attract attention. People are bound to say that here, at last, the old fashioned idea of speaking about the spiritual world is done away with.

Anyone knowing something of Anthroposophy will recognize that in the case of this scholar there is a condition of dimmed consciousness. Such conditions frequently occur; philologists and researchers often fall into states of dimmed consciousness, especially when their investigations are within a limited field. In such conditions Ahriman and Lucifer have access to them. And why should Ahriman not prevent such a researcher from beholding the spiritual world by deluding him through the mystery of fear? And why should Lucifer not delude him through the mystery of fascination? There is no other remedy than clear awareness of the roles played by Ahriman and Lucifer, otherwise one is merely wallowing in nebulous feelings. Certainly feeling is a powerful element of the soul's life which should not be artificially suppressed by the intellect, but that is something different altogether from allowing a surge of indefinite feeling to obscure every concrete insight into the spiritual world.

One is reminded in this connection of something said by Hegel,²⁴ though it was cynical and purely speculative. Hegel was referring to Schleiermacher's²³ famous definition of religious feeling which, according to him, consisted of utter and complete dependence. This definition is not false but that is not the point. Hegel, who above all wanted to lead man to clear concepts and concrete views and certainly not to feelings of dependence, declared that if utter dependence was a criterion for being religious then a dog would be the best Christian. Similarly if fear is the criterion for religious feelings then one need only suffer an attack of hydrophobia in order to experience intensely the mystery of fear.

What I am bringing up in these lectures must be considered, not so much according to its theoretical content but rather as an indication of the kind of inner attitude which is indispensable if one wants to observe the conditions in the world as they truly are. And it is so very important to do so. No matter where or how one is placed in life one can either observe appropriately or be inappropriately asleep. What surges and pulsates through life comes to expression in small issues as well as in big ones and can be observed everywhere.

We are at the beginning of a time when it will be of particular importance that things I have indicated in these last lectures are kept very much in mind. Many people do arrive at awareness of a universal Godhead or a universal spirituality. Yet, as I demonstrated when I spoke about his article “Reason and Knowledge,” even someone of the stature of Hermann Bahr does not arrive at any real awareness of Christ. He allies himself with the most prominent Christian institution of the day, that of Rome. But despite all he says there is no sign in his “Reason and Knowledge” of any conscious search for the Christ Impulse. Yet the most pressing need in our time is to gain an ever clearer understanding of the Christ impulse.

In the course of the 19th Century there was a great upsurge of natural-scientific thinking and all its attendant results. One of the first results was theoretical materialism accompanied by atheism. It can be said that the materialists of the 19th Century positively revelled in atheism. But such tendencies are apt to reverse and the same kind of thinking which made human beings atheists—due to certain luciferic-ahrimanic impulses at work during the first upsurge of natural science—will make them pious once the first glow has faded. The teachings of Darwin can make people God-fearing as easily as it can make them atheists, it all depends which side of the coin turns up. What no one can become through Darwinism is a Christian; nor is that possible through natural science if one remains within its limits. To become a Christian something quite different is required; namely, an understanding of a certain fundamental attitude of soul. What exactly is meant?

Kant said that the world is our mental picture, for the mental pictures we make of the world are formed according to the way we are organized. I may mention, not for personal but for factual reasons, that this Kantianism is completely refuted in my books Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom. These works set out to show that when we form concepts about the world, and elaborate them mentally, we are not alienating ourselves from reality. We are born into a physical body to enable us to see objects through our eyes and hear them through our ears and so on. What is disclosed to us through our senses is not full reality, it is only half reality. This I also stressed in my book Riddles of Philosophy. It is just because we are organized the way we are that the world, seen through our senses, is in a certain sense what Orientals call Maya. In the activity of forming mental pictures of the world we add, by means of thoughts, that which we suppressed through the body. This is the relation between true reality and knowledge. The task of real knowledge and therefore real science is to turn half reality; i.e., semblance, into the complete reality. The world, as it first appears through our senses, is for us incomplete. This incompleteness is not due to the world but to us, and we, through our mental activity, restore it to full reality. These thoughts I venture to call Pauline thoughts in the realm of epistemology. For it is truly nothing else than carrying into the realm of philosophic epistemology, the Pauline epistemology that man, when he came into the world through the first Adam, beheld an inferior aspect of the world; its true form he would experience only in what he will become through Christ.

The introduction of theological formulae into epistemology is not the point; what matters is the kind of thinking employed. I venture to say that, though my Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom are philosophic works, the Pauline spirit lives in them. A bridge can be built from this philosophy to the Christ Spirit; just as a bridge can be built from natural science to the Father Spirit. By means of natural-scientific thinking the Christ Spirit cannot be attained. Consequently as long as Kantianism prevails in philosophy, representing as it does a viewpoint that belongs to pre-Christian times, philosophy will continue to cloud the issue of Christianity.

So you see that everything that happens, everything that is done in the world must be observed and understood on a deeper level. It is necessary, when assessing literary works today, to keep in view not only their verbal content but also the whole direction of the ideas employed. One must be able to evaluate what is fruitful in such works and what must be superceded. Then one will also find entry into those spheres which alone enables one to stay awake in the true sense. The terrible events taking place in our time must be seen as external symptoms, the real change of direction must start from within.

Let me mention in conclusion that before 1914 I pointed out how confused were the statements made by Woodrow Wilson.²⁵ At that time I was completely alone in that view. What I said can be found in a course of lectures I gave at Helsingfors in May and June 1913. At that time Woodrow Wilson had the literary world at his feet. Only certain writings of his had been translated into other languages and much was said about his “great, noble and unbiased” mind. Those who were of that opinion speak differently now; but whether insight or something different brought about the change of view is open to question. What is important now is to recognize that because spiritual science is directly related to true reality it enables one to form appropriate judgements. This is an urgent need in view of the empty abstraction on which most judgements are based at present. An example of the latter is Der Geistgehalt dieses Krieges (The Spiritual Import of this War) by George Simmel. It is an ingenious presentation and a prime example of ideas from which all content has been extracted. To read it is comparable to eating an orange from which all juice has been squeezed out. Yet the book was written by a distinguished philosopher and innovator of modern views. At the Berlin university he had a large following; the fact that he never had a thought worthy of the name did nothing to diminish his fame.

• 20. Wladimir Alexandrowitsch Suchomlinoff 1848–1926 Russian General
• 21. Max Dessoir 1867–1947 Philosopher and Psychologist
• 22. Rudolf Otto 1869–1937
• 24. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770–1831 German Philosopher
• 23. Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768–1834 Theologian and Philosopher
• 25. Woodrow Wilson 1856–1924 Professor of Philosophy, President of the U.S.A. 1913–1921

What we all want is to find entry to the spiritual world. We all have at least an inkling of a portal with a threshold before us, and certain exercises have been given that enable us to reach it. But the path is difficult and full of hindrances. It goes through a sea of troubles, and one needs a lot of patience. Who creates these hindrances? Our own nature and also Lucifer and Ahriman. The latter two are engaged in an activity on earth that could lead to something good if they would limit themselves to doing what they're supposed to do, namely, to live in the effects of the sense world. But they're not satisfied with remaining in the spiritual realm to which they belong and with only sending their effects to the physical plane—they also want to rule on earth with their ego-consciousness. We know that man attains his ego-consciousness on earth, the angels attain it in the elemental world and archangels in the astral world. Thus Lucifer and Ahriman would like to penetrate man's ego-consciousness.

Ahriman is the lord of death, as it's conditioned by man's nature. There's no life in a stone, so it belongs to him. But Ahriman would like to extend his power over what goes through the portal of death to what belongs to the spiritual world. That's why he foists the lie on modern materialists and monists that there's nothing eternal, that the soul is contained in the physical body and ends with it. Ahriman can approach men because of their fear. It's not too bad if it's only normal fear of which a man can easily become aware. But it's worse if the fear is slumbering in subconscious depths. Such a man falls prey to Ahriman. This fear is in adherents of materialistic science, although they wouldn't believe it if you told them, and it's in all people who have no relation to the spiritual world Goethe is quite right when he lets Mephisto say: Simple folk never sense the devil's presence, even if his hands are on their throats. If one goes to a laboratory where many people are working one soon sees how impregnated their etheric bodies are with Ahriman. A clairvoyant sees the very same forms there that he sees in the etheric body of someone who's filled with fear. If a man passes a mirror he sees his image, that however can only be there because the man is there. Likewise what one sees of a man on earth is only his mirror image, but Ahriman tries to make one think that it's a reality.

How can one protect oneself against Ahriman? By being satisfied with what's given to one:

Be glad for what's given to you;
Gladly do without what's not given to you.

Then Ahriman can't get at us. One shouldn't be an ascetic who flees the world and neither be someone who enjoys himself all the time.

Lucifer could do a lot of good if he stuck to his rightful sphere of leading men to self-consciousness. But he wants them to have an exaggerated opinion of themselves. Here's an example, imagine an artist making a statue. As long as this is supposed to be an image, all is in order. But if he breaks it apart and thinks that it's walking, if he wants to be a creator God, then Lucifer is standing behind this. Lucifer walks on the boards in the naturalistic, realistic plays that are created today. A 100 years ago Schiller could still put words into the mouth of his Tell that no man has ever spoken. For him art was a gift from heaven, as he often said. Today a Gerhard Hauptmann manages to eliminate everything from Tell that doesn't agree with his realistic views. The only way we can counteract Lucifer is to develop the deepest modesty and humility.

No doubt many people who look back at their day's work in the evening say that it was the Gods who directed their deeds and actions. Most of them think that they can be proud of what they did themselves. We protect ourselves from Lucifer if we nourish the spirit of humility and modesty in us. Ahriman can't get at us if we develop satisfaction within us.

I should like to add supplementary material to our recent considerations. The primary aim has been to show what, in view of the fundamental character and direction of present-day cultural life, is so urgently needed. Our studies also set out to show that from spiritual knowledge there must flow into man's thinking, feeling and willing the impulses needed at the present time. That spiritual impulses are needed must be obvious to many from even a superficial observation of present events.

Let me begin by illustrating the fact that at every turn we encounter proof of the need for spiritual insight. Many examples related to our recent studies could be chosen, but I will take an article that appeared a few days ago in a Berlin newspaper under the title: “Physiology of Politics.” We must pay attention to symptoms of this kind for they indicate the nature of contemporary man's thinking, feeling and willing. Provided one refrains from entering into a one-sided controversy over such an article, seeing it rather as characteristic of the present-day outlook, then a publication of this kind can be enlightening.

The author of the article, Max Verworn,⁷ as I have mentioned before, is deemed one of the greatest authorities in his branch of science. This famous professor of physiology sets out to show that politics ought to be influenced by his way of thinking. This is understandable, indeed it is almost a matter of course, for everyone naturally considers his own thinking the best and therefore recommends its application to important affairs of the time. However, the article leaves one with a peculiar impression. First of all it brings home the fallacy that materialism, even in its crudest form, has been eradicated from natural science. Many who are firmly in the clutches of materialism, nevertheless believe this to be the case. They may have absorbed one or two ideas considered to be philosophical and so imagine materialism to be transcended. This article, by a leading authority on natural science, demonstrates how little materialism is overcome. A sentence like the following brings it home: “The general concept of the animal kingdom includes as a special example the concept of man, just as the animal kingdom is itself a special example within the still more comprehensive concept of the organic world.” This means that if we want to understand man we must turn to the animal kingdom; to understand the animal we must turn to the general concept of organism. Furthermore, this distinguished authority finds it of utmost importance that mutual relationships in political life should be studied the way one studies—that is to say, the way professor Verworn studies—mutual relationships in the animal kingdom. He considers himself to have made a remarkable discovery, for he says: “No one can deny this fact (that man is a special example of the animal kingdom) unless he is completely ignorant of biological evolution. Man differs from the rest of the animal kingdom merely through certain distinguishing features and through his cultural achievements. Nevertheless he is and remains, an animal organism whose total behaviour is subject to the general laws that govern animal species.”

Official science is of the same conviction despite what is said, with more or less emphasis, to the contrary. It is obvious that this way of thinking is prevalent in every aspect of modern science even if theoretically some scientific statements go beyond this view. Consequently it leads Verworn to say: “No doubt our culture has evolved as a special instance of organic evolution.” This means that organic development is supposed to be the source of all man's cultural achievements. So we must study how animals eat and digest, how they gradually develop, how the individual cells in their organism interact. We must then transfer these ideas to family life, to larger and smaller corporations and other bodies within the greater body of the State. We then, according to Verworn, have a proper foundation on which to build up a science of politics. He says: “We shall arrive at sound ideas in this domain only when we try to think of the political State (as he calls it) as a great organism.” According to him the human organism is no different from the animal organism. When investigated one will find that individual cells and systems of cells in the organism are related and interdependent just like the various corporate bodies within the State.

Verworn sees development as a basic feature of the animal organism, but his view of development is peculiar. He says: “Development is a factor common to all living entities.” But what does he understand by development? According to him development takes place when an organic entity adapts itself to the conditions in which it finds itself. Thus development is the result of something organic; i.e., something living adapting to its environment. But at the very first hurdle he stumbles, for he says: “A lower organism such as the amoeba is no doubt adapted from the start for otherwise it would not be capable of life and would be destroyed.” There is the catch! If the lower organism is adapted from the first to its environment, and development is supposed to consist in adaptation, then why does the amoeba evolve further when it is already adapted?

You see from this example that modern science disregards the basic principle of scientific investigation when it comes to the exact application of concepts and ideas. If a sentence such as the one Verworn makes in regard to development was taken seriously the whole current concept of evolution would collapse. But he goes on to make another statement based on the first: “A comparison of the different stages of organization, in various organisms, shows that increasing perfection is due to ever more elaborate and improved physiological means for maintaining life within the most varied changes of environment.” In other words, because the amoeba, the lowest organism, is already adapted to the environment and therefore has no need to evolve further Verworn conceives the idea that the reason it nevertheless does evolve is in order to become ever better adapted. What is not explained is where this impulse to better adaptation comes from. The impulse cannot be inherent in the amoeba for Verworn says himself that if it were not already adapted it would perish.

This is the kind of evidence that is continuously brought forward. The public at large, though denying it has blind faith in authority, is conditioned to accept patiently such somersaults in ideas. These things are simply looked upon as signs of great and reliable science. When such ideas are applied in physiology they do no great harm in individual cases because what is investigated in physiology can be verified under the microscope. Facts may be falsely interpreted, the most extraordinary discoveries may be construed, but mistakes will be corrected when the facts are put under the microscope. It is in fact possible to be a great physiologist yet a dunce when it comes to working out ideas. However, the harm becomes immense when someone has the pretention to suggest that the concepts belonging to the realm of physiology can be transferred to social and political life. In this sphere false and misinterpreted ideas remain undetected as they no longer refer to something physical which can be verified under a microscope. Here concepts themselves are the guiding factor and if they are foolish their application results in foolishness. These things must be recognized, they lead to great tragedies in life.

In view of present-day intellectual proficiency it is astonishing how much ignorance, how much sheer lack of knowledge prevails among prominent scientific investigators—thoughtlessness on the one hand, superficiality on the other as demonstrated by claims such as those made by the famous authority just mentioned. One asks in despair if a man in his position can really be unaware that what he suggests has already been attempted not very long ago. And then it was based on concepts that were equally obscure. In three volumes by Schäffle,⁸ the former Austrian prime minister, entitled “The Structure and Life of the Body Social”^* the attempt is made to depict the State as a cellular organism. So the experiment had been made already and had ended in failure. Schäffle also wrote a book with the title: “The Lack of Prospect in Social Democracy”^** ; to which Hermann Bahr,⁹ then a young man, wrote a rejoinder with the title: “The Lack of Insight of Herr Schäffle.”^***

This kind of ignorance results in repeated attempts to try again what has already been tried and has failed. Before acting on a general notion of this kind one would expect some one like Verworn to acquaint himself with a work such as that by Schäffle on the body social. It is interesting to ask: How does Verworn come to entertain these ideas at all? The answer could be that only a few decades earlier Virchow¹⁰ spoke about the structure of the human organism and the animal organism in general. Concerning the animal organism he said that it contains various systems of cells which are related and which interact with one another. But the relevant point is the way Virchow arrived at this idea of interacting systems of cells: He coined a word; calling the animal organism a “cell-State.” In other words, he takes the idea of the State and compares the animal organism to it. Verworn turns the idea around, he extracts the concept of the State and proceeds to apply to it the whole evolution of the animal organism.—One is reminded of the story of the ingenious Münchausen who pulls himself up by his forelock.

That is just one example of the superficiality that one meets at every turn. Here is someone who conceives the notion of how a State functions and transfers this notion to organisms. Someone else comes along and transfers his notion of how an organism functions over to the State. The whole subject remains obscure to the public in general who simply accept what is presented and have no idea that concepts, belonging to quite a different realm, are introduced. It is the kind of situation that is prevalent everywhere. People, trying to gain a firm hold on life, turn to popular science for guidance but do not find the security they long for. All that the highly respected science has to offer are theories built on shaky foundations. The most arbitrary notions are bandied about; statements are issued and no trouble taken to verify their correctness first. If only they were examined first one would realize the nonsense they often present. Take this statement by Verworn: “All systems of cells are dependent on others, which however does not mean that one kind of cell exercises a power to suppress another kind. On the contrary, cell systems mutually promote one an-other's specific quality in the interest of the social whole and consequently in the interest of each individual cell.”—Verworn is here referring to the human organism. Thus groups of cells are supposed to be dependent on each other but in such a way that it is to their mutual benefit. This arrangement is then held up as a model for arranging the various departments within a State. The notion is that, in order to function, brain cells; i.e., one kind of cells, need the cooperation of blood cells, while the brain cells at the same time place themselves at the service of the blood cells. One wonders what the outcome would be were these notions introduced into organizing a State. The whole idea is so preposterous that we need look at one aspect only to realize the insanity of the whole idea.

Verworn visualizes individual departments of State interacting the way that, according to him, individual systems of cells interact in an animal organism. This, he maintains, reveals the real concept of freedom. He continues: “A close study of the direction evolution has taken in the case of the cell State in the animal organism, provides us with guidelines for the direction we should take in order to establish a corresponding system within the social organism of the political State. It reveals to us among other things the true idea of individual freedom, seen here in its natural setting, free from all nonessential externalities with which it is often associated.”—So, according to Verworn, because blood cells are enjoying freedom in their interaction with brain cells, human freedom can be discovered by studying their relationship!—As for the nervous system, Verworn sees it as corresponding in the organism to the administrative machinery of the State. Not only is the comparison ridiculous, it is not even consistent for he overlooks that nerves lead to sense organs, so where do we have the eyes and ears of the State?

When one works with spiritual knowledge one is led to lofty, sublime concepts. They apply to the way things are related spiritually; they therefore apply also to the spiritual connections in man's animal-human organism. But when concepts are derived one-sidedly from the human organism as such, especially as done in this case, one simply gets nowhere. Yet in another statement Verworn carries the absurdity even further when he says: “The level of greater perfection of organic development in the animal cell-State is only reached at a further stage through centralization. At this stage the function of single cells and groups of cells is regulated and guided, according to momentary needs, from a center which is able to assess the need on the basis of information received.” Verworn suggests with these childish ideas that the brain receives information from other groups of cells and sends messages accordingly to the stomach, and so on.

And how, according to Verworn, does civilization, does culture come about? He says: “Culture is the sum total of all the ways and means created by man himself that enables him to be fully conscious of his environment and adapt to whatever occurrence happens in his life. Culture is nothing else than the totality of all the values man has created for the preservation and advancement of his life.”—To define culture in this way one must have lost all capacity of observation and taken leave of one's reason as well! Culture is supposed to be the sum total of values created by man for the preservation and advancement of life! The intellect must indeed have ceased to function for undoubtedly the culture created by man at present consists mainly in instruments designed to destroy. Looking at what culture has become in this domain it can hardly be described as preserving and advancing human life. Had it been described as created for oppression and destruction that would have been correct, at least in regard to a part of culture. But statements like those brought forward by Verworn one meets everywhere in modern science. Take the following example: “The production of cultural values is a physiological function not just in individuals but is to a large extent a specific function of the political State. This is because there are many cultural values which cannot be created by single individuals, as they are values which serve the whole community they need the cooperation of many. The political State as such is therefore an organism that produces cultural values just like the individual. Moreover, as it is obvious that a close relation exists between politics and physiology it is time that practical results were gained from this fact. One should reckon with the reality that a political State has a physiological basis, therefore information should be derived from the living organism concerning all matters of organization.”—Verworn would no doubt have said that information should be derived from his knowledge of the human organism.

These things are symptoms and must be brought to light. They delude the unhappy soul of man who at present is longing to know how and where it belongs within the great organism of the universe. It is nonsense of this kind that makes it so extraordinarily difficult to reach any understanding, particularly with people who are proficient in science. It would be an illusion to imagine that someone like Verworn could begin to understand even the most elementary aspects of spiritual science. While that is unthinkable there is at least the possibility that spiritual science, through its own power, will sustain more and more people so that eventually such scientific folly with its colossal pretentions will be overcome. It is no use trying to refute it and trying to be understood is hopeless. All that can be done is for a sufficient number of people to become aware of the danger threatening mankind if what today calls itself science is allowed to lead the way and to insinuate itself into realms where concepts become realities. This danger is a serious one of which one ought to be well aware; it is all the more important because this kind of superficiality, prevalent though it already is, will undoubtedly increase. These things are staring one in the face and it is so much to be wished that a sufficient number of people would look at them from a deeper aspect as we have to some extent just done.

Very much depends upon these things being evaluated rightly, but what happens is usually something like the following: A speech by Virchow appears in print; how is it received? Because Virchow is famous and regarded as a very important person it is taken for granted—though of course no one is supposed to suffer from blind faith in authority—that what such a famous man says can be accepted without question, it must be Gospel truth. Yet even if for once it was the truth one still ought to think through and evaluate for oneself what has been said. Take another example: at a meeting of scientists in Munich, Haeckel and Virchow discussed the liberty that prevailed in spreading scientific theories. Virchow suggested that conclusions should not be drawn indiscriminately from the theory of evolution. Much of what he said in opposition to Haeckel was justified. He was more particularly against Darwinism being introduced without reservations into schools, where it would only serve to close the minds to other views. In his speech Virchow said among other things the following: “It is to my credit that I know my own ignorance. It is important for me to know the exact extent of my ignorance of chemistry, otherwise I should forever labor under uncertainty.” Of course, it is commendable of Virchow to admit knowing nothing of chemistry. However, the unfortunate consequence is that his followers refuse to concern themselves with chemistry, simply saying they know nothing about it. On the other hand they look upon those who confess to spiritual-scientific knowledge as fools or visionaries. If only these people would let what Virchow says about chemistry apply also to spiritual science, then they would say: It is important that I know exactly to what extent I know nothing about spiritual science. But this is not said; the same honest attitude is not forthcoming. So you see, it is essential to recognize the consequences even when what is said is correct.

Nonetheless there was much of greatness in the 19th Century, but it is necessary to have a proper understanding of this greatness. Many things which are now part of mankind's general destiny, can be understood only in relation to what took place in the 19th Century. Souls without a rudder, souls without a firm grip on life who feel they do not belong, are numerous in our time. They are for the most part souls who, out of an instinctive need, long for something different from what traditional values can offer, souls who have been searching without finding anything which could give them a feeling of security, of belonging. So what is lacking, what is it that man needs?—I will not say to give him security once and for all, that is no more possible than it is possible for a single meal to sustain the whole of life. It is perhaps better to ask: What does man need to find a secure path through life? What he needs above all is a consciousness of belonging within the world. Weakness and inner discontent comes from the soul's feeling of isolation. Life's greatest question is in fact: Where and how do I fit into the world? This is putting it abstractly; but this abstract question expresses much of immense significance concerning the deeper aspect of human destiny.

When man today turns to natural science in order to reach a satisfying answer to the question: Where, as man, is my place in the world? then at best the natural-scientific world view will tell him where his physical body belongs within world evolution as a whole. Today it is known, at least up to a point, where man's physical body belongs in the evolutionary process. But the natural-scientific world view has absolutely nothing to say about how man's soul, let alone spirit, fits into world evolution. Compare for a moment the evolutionary process, as described by spiritual science, with that described by natural science. The natural-scientific theory of evolution leads to the animal kingdom—how this is arrived at is a separate issue—spiritual science leads us back through the different phases of earth evolution: through the Ancient Moon evolution, the Ancient Sun evolution to the Ancient Saturn evolution. It shows us that what lives within us as soul and spirit were germinally present already within the Ancient Saturn evolution. Nothing physically was then present, except conditions of warmth. We are shown how we are related to the primordial warmth, pervaded through and through by the individual beings of the Hierarchies who are still about us. We are placed within a cosmos filled with soul and spirit. That is the great difference.

Spiritual science shows our soul and spirit to be part and parcel of a universal all which it can describe in detail. Thus spiritual science alone can give the human soul that without which it feels annihilated. The dissatisfaction and insecurity felt by modern man reflect modern thinking. This thinking disregards the soul and declares that only the human body exists within the cosmic all. Another aspect is that the soul feels it has nothing to relate to, and that prevents it from finding inner strength. To reach inner strength of soul one must have attained concepts and ideas which depict the cosmic all as containing man as a being of soul and spirit; just as natural science depicts physical man as part of the physical evolution of the universe.

The courage shown today so admirable in regard to external issues must be extended to the inner life. In this respect modern man is far from courageous. He draws back from all aspects of spiritual reality with the consequence that so many human beings experience inner dissatisfaction and insecurity. Very much has to be done it is true, before distorted ideas give way to sound ones. Nowadays there is, for example, still a preoccupation with atomic theories, even though the earlier crude form has given way to ions and electrons. The modern view is that everything consists of atoms. Many are of the opinion that everything can be traced back to minute atomic structures. Matter is thought to consist of the tiniest of particles; i.e., atoms. And many scientists, in fact most, endow matter with force so that the particles of matter are supposed to attract and repel one another. At this point investigations come to an end. The 19th Century will be seen as a significant period in mankind's evolution: the time when the universe was explained as a structure of matter and force, a view that has been given classical expression in innumerable works.

This example shows the extent to which ideas must be readjusted before it is possible to evaluate what is needed now. Let us hold on to the fact that there are those whose speculations are mainly concerned with matter; they imagine that the world consists of atoms. How does this view compare with what spiritual science has to say? Certainly natural physical phenomena do lead us back to atoms, but what are these atoms? They reveal what they are at the moment the very first stage of spiritual perception has been attained. At the stage of imaginative perception atoms reveal what they truly are. I have spoken about this in various connections many years ago in public lectures. Those who speculate on matter come to the conclusion that space is empty and atoms whirl around in this empty space. Atoms are supposed to be the most solid entities in existence. That is simply not the case, the whole issue is based on illusion. To imaginative cognition atoms are revealed as bubbles and the reality is where the empty space is supposed to be. Atoms are blown up bubbles. In other words, in contrast to what surrounds them they are nothing. You know that where bubbles are seen in soda-water there is no water. Atoms are bubbles in that sense; where they are the space is hollow, nothing is there. And yet it is possible to push against it; impact occurs precisely because, in pushing against hollowness, an effect is produced. How can nothing produce an effect? Take the case of the space, practically empty of air, within an air-pump; there you see how air streams into nothingness. A wrong interpretation might imagine the empty space in the bulb of the air pump as containing a substance that forced in the air. That is exactly the illusion prevailing in regard to the atom. The opposite is true: atoms are empty—yet again not empty. There is after all something within these bubbles. And what is it?—This is also something about which have already spoken—what exists within the atom bubbles is ahrimanic substance. Ahriman is there. The whole system of atoms consists of ahrimanic substantiality. As you see this is a considerable metamorphosis of the ideas entertained by those who theorize about matter. Where in space they see something material we see the presence of Ahriman.

Force is another concept which in particular occupies those who speculate about force in their attempt to build up a world picture. Here again the very first stage of spiritual cognition shows that where force is supposed to be active there is in fact nothing. But where the force is thought not to be, there something is at work. It is exactly as if two people walked side by side and were observed by a third person. He looks towards them and, as they are walking a little apart, he looks between them and describes, not one or the other person, but the space between them. He is concerned, not with the two persons but the emptiness between them. That is the way those who theorize about force are looking at what is between the reality. Where it is said that a force of attraction is operating there is actually nothing, but to the left and the right there is the reality.

I would have to go into many things were I to explain in detail what I have put forward simply as facts. It is time such things were discussed, for clear ideas corresponding to facts are needed. Otherwise it is not possible to refute such brilliant nonsense as, for example, the theory of relativity which has made Einstein¹¹ a figure of renown. The theory of relativity seems so self-evident: for example, when a cannon is fired at a distance the sound is heard after a certain interval; if one moves nearer to the cannon the sound is heard sooner. Now, according to the theory of relativity if one moved with the speed of sound one would not hear it for one would go with it. If one went even faster than the sound, then one would hear something which is fired later, before one would hear what was fired earlier. This idea is generally accepted today but it has no relation whatever to reality. To go as fast as sound would mean to be sound and to hear none. These quite distorted ideas exist today as the theory of relativity and enjoy the greatest respect.

As it has already been said, physicists draw lines to depict currents of force, but where the force is supposed to be there is in fact nothing, whereas all around there is something. There is Lucifer, the luciferic element is there. If we want to depict what corresponds to actual reality we must place the luciferic element where force is placed by those who theorize about it. In the 19th Century someone wrote a book with the title “Force and Matter” in which the world is presented as consisting of force and matter. In the 20th Century we must substitute that title with “Lucifer and Ahriman,” for Lucifer and Ahriman are identical with what are described as force and matter. What can be described as force and matter are really described by Lucifer and Ahriman. You may say: this is dreadful! It is not dreadful for as I have often emphasized Lucifer and Ahriman are only dreadful when they are not balanced against each other. In mutual balance they serve the wise guidance of worlds. When Lucifer is placed on one side of the scales and Ahriman on the opposite side the balance between them must be achieved. It is a balance for which we must constantly strive.

In our own being this balance comes about in a remarkable way. You may remember my speaking about the extraordinary way we are related to the whole universe through our breathing. We draw a certain number of breaths per minute; if we count the number of breaths inhaled in one day we arrive at a number which corresponds to the days of a person's life, if he lives to the age of seventy. It really is quite astonishing: we live the same number of days as the number of breaths drawn in one day. And that is only one detail of the mighty concordance of harmonies within the universe. One of our breaths is related to the days of our life as one day of our life is related to our whole earthly life and the whole earthly life is related to a great Solar Year, the so-called Platonic Year, just as one day of life is related to the whole life and one breath to one day. Thus our breathing is in a wonderful inner relationship to the whole cosmos. If in our cognition we could achieve a tempo that corresponded to that of our breath then we would come into harmony with the whole universe in a way that befits man. People in the Orient attempt this through breathing exercises which are not suitable for Western man. He must seek this harmony along a more spiritual path.

All the exercises described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment are the spiritual correlate suited to the West, of that for which the Orient longs: to bring the rhythm of the process of breathing into the process of cognition. If our thinking had the same tempo as our breathing many secrets of the universe would be disclosed to us. The universe does disclose its secrets but unfortunately not to our cognition—if one can use the word, unfortunately in this connection—but to our dim feelings which are subject to many illusions. On the other hand our cognition, our thinking by means of which we form mental pictures, is too “short” when compared to the rhythm of the breath. The swing of the pendulum in our thinking is too short. In our ordinary normal external life, we are not able to enter, by means of thinking, into the great rhythm of the cosmos. Our thinking is too small. By contrast there is something in us which is too large: that is our will. In the will the pendulum swings out too far; its amplitude is too strong.

Thus we live between our thinking and our will. In thinking the swing of the pendulum is too short, in the will it is too wide. That is the reason our thinking forms mental pictures which must always be modified by others. The only way we can gradually come to an insight is by adopting various standpoints. As for the will, because it swings out too far the amount we are able to catch hold of is always too small. The will must therefore flow together with another will in order to reach its predestined goal. The will can only achieve something in connection with another will; i.e., the will of one incarnation together with the will of a former incarnation and so on.

I am sketching these things in merest outline; they all require elaboration. But my aim is to indicate the kind of concepts spiritual science must bring to man; concepts that will enable him to recognize where he belongs, now and in the future, within the universe. Our ordinary thinking is too narrow. It does not oscillate far enough compared with the wider oscillation of our breath. However, thinking in itself is not the goal, only the path. All human beings think, but they are not conscious of everything which passes through their soul. A thought has not reached its goal by merely being formulated, it must unite itself with our being. Thoughts which become conscious pass over into memory; but we assimilate a great deal which does not reach consciousness. Just think of all the experiences that have passed through your soul, some you have thought about, others not. Some you remember, others not, but all are within you; within your etheric body. After death they separate themselves from us and pass over into the world in general. There they become what we behold in the time between death and a new birth. They enable us to perceive the reality around us. Our thoughts unite themselves with what there constitutes our external world. Just as here, in the physical world, we need light in order to perceive so do we there need what separates itself from us. I have often described this process of our thoughts separating themselves from us after death to become our external world.

The content of our will becomes our inner world, not that which we have merely wished; but will that has become deed. What we have willed here, what we have imprinted into the external world, the actions we have carried out become our inner world in the time between death and a new birth, whereas our thoughts, our inner life, become what illumines our external world. The outer becomes the inner; the inner becomes the outer. It is important to keep that well in mind.

To use a popular saying: a great deal of water will have to flow under the bridge before official science wakes up to the fact that force and matter should be termed Lucifer and Ahriman, or come to realize that we tend towards one-sidedness in two directions: our thinking, related to breathing, has a tendency towards the luciferic; while our will, related to metabolism, has a tendency towards the ahrimanic. We oscillate between Lucifer and Ahriman. In the middle is the breathing process, the sphere of equilibrium, where we partake of the great harmony of the universe. That is true science, that is experienced, not abstract science.

And now let us turn from spiritual science and compare it to the verse in the Old Testament where it says. “And He breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” It is not said that power of will or of thinking was bestowed upon man; it is the breath that is emphasized. You can sense that this primordial revelation stems from a knowledge very different from that of modern spiritual science. But you will also sense the marvelous concordance, the marvelous agreement that exists between the findings of spiritual science today and the content of this and other great historical documents dealing with mankind's evolution. It goes without saying that the revelations in the Old Testament were not arrived at in the same way as the findings of modern spiritual science, but for that very reason the agreement between them is all the more significant. We shall see in the next lecture that this agreement applies also to other historical documents such as the New Testament, especially to the Mystery of Golgotha.

My aim today was to call your attention to what is needed at present and also to point out how very difficult it is to come to any understanding, especially in the sphere of science, with people who hold on to outdated ideas which they regard as infallible. As I once said: the infallibility of the Pope may be questioned but the authority of a great many people is thought to be infallible by those who labor under the illusion that they are above taking things on authority.

• 7 . Max Verworn 1863–1921
• 8 . Albert Schaffle 1831–1903 Sociologist Austrian Minister of Trade.
• *. “Bau and Leben des socialen Korpers”
• **. “Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie”
• 9 . Hermann Bahr 1863–1934
• ***. “Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herrn Schäffle”
• 10. Rudolf Vischow 1821–1902 Founder of Cellular Pathology
• 11. Albert Einstein 1879–1955 Physicist, formulated the Theory of Relativity

Notes A by Camilla Wandrey All degrees

My dear sisters and brothers!

Every human being has the potential for occult abilities in the depths of his soul. The teacher, to whom the human soul entrusts itself, does nothing other than to awaken these sleeping, unconscious soul powers, to gradually raise them into consciousness and thus to give the soul the opportunity to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of the world, of the macrocosm, and to recognize its relationships to the microcosm, the human being, more and more. For those disciples who begin to make progress in occult knowledge, it is good practice to converse, so to speak, with the sense organs of their body.

For example, I could imagine holding a dialogue with my eyes. Of course, the consciousness of the eye is different from the consciousness that the whole person has. A person looks up at the sun; with consciousness, he allows the essence of the sun or the moon and the starry sky to take effect on him through his sense organs. But the eye itself cannot consciously see the sun, moon or starry sky. However, it can consciously see animals, plants - in fact, everything on earth. But it cannot consciously rise to the starry sky.

Man stands on the earth and looks up to the firmament, but not to heaven, for the eye cannot see it consciously. The only heaven to which the eye can rise is the earth. The earth is the same for the eye as heaven is for man.

Now someone might object: Yes, but we do see the starry sky through the eye. Yes, but only because the I in man is within it. It is the I that looks up at the starry sky and admires its splendor and magnificence. The eye alone cannot see it consciously.

The eye is connected to the rest of the human organism through the optic nerve. It is, as it were, rooted in the human being through this optic nerve. As a creature of the Earth, the human being stands on the Earth. They are connected to the entire Earth organism, and the occultist sees how the entire head of the human being is something like an eye through which the Earth spirit looks up to the firmament, and that the rest of the human body is, in a sense, something like a root through which they are connected to the interior of the Earth. When you look at the head and the rest of the human organism in this way, the human form only then takes on meaning.

Now you know that among the lower animals there are quite a number of insects that have not just one eye, but many eyes: the compound eyes. And so the earth spirit also has many, many eyes: these are the heads of the people through which the earth spirit looks up into the cosmos, and each person is a facet of the earth spirit's eye. And the earth spirit looks up to the sky through people with such intensity that it creates an imprint in the brain of the human child arriving on earth as soon as it is born. You will find a more detailed description of this in 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and of Humanity'.

And just as the human being carries his sense organs with him on his physical body, so too does the earth have its sense organs - and these are the human beings.

And the earth also thinks. How does it think? - The human being on earth initially thinks through the medium of his brain. The brain of the earth is the animals with their group souls. One could say: they form the entire nervous system of the earth, so that the higher animals form the brain, the lower ones the spinal cord and the solar plexus nervous system, the vegetative system. And the earth lives and breathes and also nourishes itself through the plant world.

And finally, what gives it the firm structure that the human body has in the bone system is what we see in the mineral kingdom.

Thus the earth spirit lives in its physicality. And the earth spirit looks up to heaven so that it is not separated from the universe, its home, by man and what man does on the surface of the earth. This earth spirit naturally has a different consciousness from that of humans; its gaze is freer, more unrestricted, and streams out into the vastness of the firmament when it looks up through its compound eyes: the heads of humans. Do not believe, my dear sisters and brothers, that it is ever held back by the hard skull. He, the spirit of the earth, sees through physical matter; it does not exist for him, it is transparent to him. He looks up to heaven, which is the home of the Christ, who has united with our earthly body since the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we think this through, we can say: It is the Christ who looks up through me to his true home: heaven. Not I, not my earthly self beholds heaven – but the Christ in me.

Let us, my dear sisters and brothers, look at this occult truth from yet another perspective: let us consider the state of sleep. We know that the astral body and the ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies. They are then in the spiritual world, in the world of hierarchies. And through them – while the human being is not present with his consciousness at first – the hierarchical worlds that act upon us have an effect on the human being and on the earth. We human beings, when we immerse ourselves in this spiritual fact, can know with reverence: spiritual beings feel, want, and even think through me: the hierarchies that rule over me. Through me, they send their feeling horns down into the physical world during the state of sleep, so to speak.

And for this they use my soul-spiritual, which is separated from the physical-etheric. This can give us as earth people the certainty that we, with our soul-spiritual, are members of the higher hierarchies.

My dear sisters and brothers, let us increasingly imbibe the following thoughts: through our physical and etheric sense organs, we human beings are of the earth, through which the Christ gazes up to the firmament, to the heaven that is His true home. And let us also feel how the spiritual hierarchies work through our astral body and our ego down to earth. Let us become more and more aware of how we are embedded through our human existence in the activity of all spiritual beings working on world evolution.

If we stop at this point in our human consciousness, we can know: here is where spiritual science becomes religion.

Often, my dear sisters and brothers, I have emphasized that we are living in a significant time in human development. In all modesty, however, we may know and feel that if we carry such soul content within us in all seriousness and dignity, we are called to form a select band within the rest of humanity. We are called to first receive the treasures of the spirit, which are to flow to humanity little by little for its salvation, and to spread them ever further.

At the turn of the millennia, the luciferic and ahrimanic beings are particularly at work, and something very significant will happen to many and more and more people in the last decade of the twentieth century. This is already being prepared. Care is taken for people from the spiritual world so that they grow towards this event. In the next higher world, a fact will take place from now until the end of our century and further into the following millennia: Man will transform himself inwardly in a very natural way, so that he will imbue his soul with a light that gradually emanates from the human being himself and will illuminate the Christ-form within the etheric world. And the more this inner light develops in man, the more the etheric form of Christ will become visible in the coming centuries. This introduces a completely new event that will have an effect on the Christ-development of humanity.

We may know, my dear sisters and brothers, Through what the earth spirit, in union with the Christ, accomplishes by looking into the heavens through our human head, and through what the hierarchies achieve by looking down into the earthly world through our soul and spirit, this inner light is kindled in us human beings when we become aware of these cosmic-earthly facts through meditation. With this inner light we perceive – as in an image that arises through us – the etheric Christ. The Christ has left his home, the world of the hierarchies, with which he was connected before the Mystery of Golgotha. And he has sacrificed himself into the earth.

The spiritual hierarchies must rediscover the Christ in the process of becoming earth. And they will find him again through the light that human souls ignite within themselves, as has been described to you, my dear sisters and brothers.

This light has been a factor in the development of the universe since the very beginning. It is a factor in the fact that at some point people will be proclaimed as instruments of the gods to help with the evolution of the earth through this inner light. And we are now approaching this point more and more. And by you, my dear sisters and brothers, being allowed to receive these secrets of the world, as is the case in today's lesson, you are called upon to help with the evolution of the world.

Now there are two spiritual entities that want to prevent this: the one entity - Lucifer with his hosts - is striving to prevent people from feeling like spiritual and soulful organs of the spiritual hierarchies. He seeks to fill people with other false ideas, teaching them ideas and desires that create error after error in the soul. One can truly say: He makes man obsessed with all kinds of false soul stuff.

In contrast, Ahriman seeks to present something as reality to man that, spiritually speaking, is nothing but maya, nothingness. He seeks to keep man always in a state of blindness that covers the true light from him. Just as a person is blinded when looking at the sun, so Ahriman seeks to blind him on earth by spreading out the colorful carpet of the sensual world in seductive colors, teaching him that this is the only true reality and thus covering the spiritual reality behind this carpet from the person. Blindness of men on earth, that is the mission of Ahriman.

Take, for example, the Copernican system, which entered into the cultural development at the dawn of modern times. It should not be denied that it has its justification for a certain period of time, but it is equally impossible to deny that it has great contradictions and deficiencies, as it is taught to young people today. But now, in the future, the urge will arise in many people to recognize these deficiencies and to penetrate to the truth. More and more people will clearly recognize how many errors it contains.

Ahriman will always try to darken [people's view], Only recently a book came flying onto my desk that can only be read by someone with a mathematical education. In this book, the author seeks with great ingenuity to prove that the earth is not spherical or lenticular, but that it represents an elongated surface. One can see in such a way how Ahriman leads the battle in an ingenious way against the thinking of truth in man.

Spiritual science shines into this web of error. Through it the most profound thoughts of truth of the gods are imparted to man, so that he can extricate himself from the web of error of Ahriman; and it shows the soul how it can be filled with the strong warmth of the love of the Christ for the world, which snatches it from all egoism and all selfish revelry in untrue sentimentalities that Lucifer produces in the soul. All religions have been based on sentimentality and egoism. People were told: If you behave as shown in it, then you have the right to expect this or that reward.

My dear sisters and brothers: spiritual science gives the true religion, which is also knowledge. A completely egoism-free religion that calls on people to work with the gods. And it is a necessity that it be given today.

In the cycle of time, a thousand years will soon have passed again. We are thus approaching a most significant event, which is already beginning to cast its shadows - ever more clearly perceptible - ahead of itself. Before the year 1000, people feared the approaching end of the world. Today, it will happen more and more that we grow into a time in which the luciferic and ahrimanic forces will receive a tremendous, ever more knowledgeable power. Yes, they will take hold of human souls in such a way that they will put their physical powers at the service of Ahriman and Lucifer in many, many people. More and more people will be possessed by demons of Lucifer and Ahriman. And they will believe that they are right. In their blindness, they will not even notice in whose service they are: for the devil does not notice the little people when he holds them by the collar.

But to whom will these people be unfaithful? They should be called upon to place their occult physical powers, as we have learned today, at the service of the world as a whole - to become servants, co-workers of the World Spirit!

The occultist must blush with shame before the World Spirit when he looks at such souls possessed by the adversaries - knowing what mission these souls have become unfaithful to: the mission to be instruments of this World Spirit in such a way that he can maintain his connection with the Christ-Spirit, can work with the Christ so that his sacrifice may find fulfillment.

This is what true occultism is given to us for today. To study it means nothing other than to gradually train ourselves to become a self-aware tool of the World Spirit.

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede, volume 1

If we continue to develop our occult abilities, we will be able to penetrate ever deeper into the secrets of the world, of the macrocosm in its relationship to the microcosm, to the human body. For those who are beginning to make progress in the occult, it is good to converse with their sense organs.

For example, I could imagine holding a conversation with my eye. Of course, the consciousness of the eye is different from the consciousness that the human being has. The eye cannot consciously see the sun or the moon or the stars, but it can consciously see animals, plants, in fact everything on earth. However, it cannot raise itself up to the starry sky. Man stands on the earth and looks up at the firmament. The eye is something like this in man, but the heaven to which the eye alone can raise itself is the earth. The earth is the same for the eye as heaven is for man.

Now someone might object: Yes, but we do see the starry sky through the eye! - Certainly, but only because the human ego is behind it; the eye alone could not see it consciously. And just as the eye is connected to the rest of the human organism through the optic nerve, through which it is, so to speak, firmly rooted in the human being, so the head of the human being is the eye through which the earth spirit looks up to the firmament, and the rest of the human being is, so to speak, the root through which it is connected to the interior of the earth. It is only in this way that the human form acquires meaning.

Among the lower animals, there are quite a number – the insects that have not just one eye, but many eyes, the compound eyes. So the earth spirit also has many eyes, namely the heads of the people, through which he looks up into the cosmos, and every person is a facet of the eye of the earth spirit. And the earth spirit looks so intensely through the human being to the sky that it is already imprinted in the human brain at the moment of birth! This has been pointed out in the book “The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity.

And the earth also thinks. How does it think? The group souls of the animals are the brain of the earth; one could say that they form the entire nervous system of the earth, for the higher animals form the brain, the lower ones the spinal cord and the solar plexus, the so-called vegetative nervous system.

And the earth lives and breathes and also nourishes itself, namely through the plant world. And finally, what gives it its solid structure, like our skeletal system, is the mineral kingdom.

The earth spirit looks up to heaven through the human being so that it is not separated from the universe. Of course, the earth spirit has a completely different consciousness than the human being; its view is freer, more unrestricted, the hard skull, for example, would not be an obstacle for it. He looks up to heaven, which is the home of the Christ, who has united with the earth spirit since the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is the Christ who, through me in me, looks up to his true home, heaven. Not I, but the Christ in me! We must also look at it from another point of view.

We know that during sleep the astral body and I are outside the physical and etheric bodies. They are then in the spiritual worlds, and through them the higher hierarchies work downwards on man and on earth. We must feel: the spiritual hierarchies feel, will, and even think through me, so to speak, they stretch their feeler horns down into the physical world.

Through our soul and spirit we are members of the higher hierarchies.

Let us increasingly imbue ourselves with the thought that we humans are the sensory organs through which the Christ looks up to heaven, his true home; but let us also feel how the spirits of the higher hierarchies work through our souls down to earth, how we are embedded in the higher hierarchies through our being. At this point, spiritual science becomes religion!

It has often been emphasized that we are living in momentous times. In all modesty, we can feel that we are a select group called upon to first receive the treasures of the spirit and then spread them further. And precisely because the luciferic and ahrimanic entities are always particularly active around the turn of the millennium, something very significant will happen for many: Through the work of the earth spirit, united with the Christ, as he looks up into the heavens through us humans - we perceive this as the etheric Christ; and in the image that arises, the spiritual hierarchies, with whom the Christ was united, must recognize him in his earthly incarnation!

Two spiritual entities seek to hinder the development of man. He who wants to prevent us from feeling ourselves as soul organs of the spiritual hierarchies is Lucifer. Instead, he seeks to fill man with other, false ideas. You can really say he makes him obsessed with all kinds of secular and spiritual stuff.

Ahriman, on the other hand, seeks to deceive man by presenting as reality that which is only Maya. When man is blinded, when he looks at the sun, Ahriman also seeks to blind him on earth by spreading the colorful carpet of the sensual world before him in seductive colors, hiding the spiritual reality behind it. The mission of Ahriman on earth is to blind man on earth.

Take, for example, the Copernican system, which entered the cultural development at the dawn of modern times. It is not to be denied that it has its good, but just as little is to be denied that it, as it is taught into the youthful age, also shows its great contradictions and deficiencies. More and more in the future, the urge will arise in many people to eliminate these deficiencies. More and more people will clearly recognize how many contradictions it shows, as far as their view is not darkened by Ahriman. Just recently a book arrived on Dr. Steiner's desk that can only be read by someone with a mathematical education. The author attempts to prove that the Earth is an elongated surface. This is not correct, but it is not as absurd as one would like to believe.

Only spiritual science can shed light on this, because it conveys the thoughts of the gods. That is why it will be the religion of the future. All religions so far have been based only on selfishness

and sentimentality. People were told: If you do this and that, you will receive such and such a reward. This true religion, which is also knowledge, is a religion completely free of egoism. And it had to be given now, because in the time cycle, another one thousand years will soon have passed. There is no longer the fear that the end of the world is near, as there was in the year 1000, but it will become more and more apparent that around the turn of this century, these luciferic and ahrimanic forces will assume ever greater power. More and more people will put psychic powers at their service and be possessed by Lucifer and Ahriman without realizing it, because the devil never feels the people, even when he has them by the collar.

The occultist must blush with shame before the World Spirit when he looks at such souls possessed by Lucifer, knowing what mission these souls have become unfaithful to, namely to be an instrument of the World Spirit so that he can maintain his connection with the Christ Spirit.

That is why true occultism is given to us today, and to study it, to study it seriously and devotedly, means nothing more than to train oneself to become such a tool of the world spirit.

Record C by Alice Kinkel For all degrees

One good way to develop the occult powers of perception is for a person to speak with his senses. We know that in all things, consciousness of various degrees is revealed. Spiritual beings also live behind our senses, but our senses have a different consciousness than that of a human being; they see the world differently than we do. If a person talks to his eye (an occultist can do this with any of his senses), this eye will tell him something that may sound paradoxical: the eye does not see a starry sky as a human being does, it knows of no sun or moon, but it does tell us about something like a heaven. This heaven is the earth with what appears on its surface. We see the sky above. The eye sees the earth below as heaven, and the eye sees this when it is awake. When it is asleep, it would say: My heels, the back of my knee, now perceive what the eye previously saw when awake. The illuminated part of the earth (for the eye, the sky) seems to have slid backwards, behind the eye. The eye perceives our body as its earth. How embedded the eye is in our body. And so embedded, stored in the earth, is the human being. For just as he stands on the earth, he is the sensory organ of the earth.

We are the eye of the earth as humanity. Every human being is an eye of the earth. The earth has many eyes. Just as there are lower animals that have compound eyes, so every human being is a facet of the eye of the earth. The earth has a different consciousness than humans. The spirit of the earth looks out through us as its sensory organs into the heavens, perceiving differently than we do; but it looks so intensely, with such power, that it leaves an imprint of its power in the sensory organ. Just as the physical eye would be blinded if it looked so intensely into the light that an imprint of the power were to arise in the eye, so the earth can bear this strong power. A bony covering, such as our skullcap is, does not prevent it from looking through. And it looks out into space so intensely through the human being at his birth that the human being shows an imprint of the whole starry sky in his brain.

We are the sensory organs of the earth. But our earth also thinks. Its brain and nervous system are the animals of the earth. The higher animals are its brain, the lower ones its spinal cord and solar plexus. And its thoughts are the group souls of the animals. They are also invisible, like our thoughts. The earth also breathes and feeds itself; and these are the plants of the earth. And just as the bone system underlies our body, so the mineral underlies the earth.

[And just as we stand on the earth, we are embedded in it, just as the eye is embedded in the brain. And just as the optic nerve continues into our brain and connects further with our body, so we are the eye of the earth, with which it looks out into space.

Just as the consciousness of the eye is a dreaming one, graduated in sleep, so our consciousness in relation to that of the earth, which is a much brighter one, is also a dreaming one. We can feel like the optic nerve of the earth, growing out of it into the sky. To know ourselves as a sensory organ of the earth is necessary for the future. We are the chosen ones for this knowledge. In all modesty and humility, we want to tell ourselves that. The Christ is the spirit of the earth. Through us, as his sensory organ, he looks out into his home in the heavenly realms: it is not I who looks out, but the Christ in me.

What is proclaimed from the pulpits about Christ can be understood as an atavistic world view, and is directed only at our egotism and sentimentality. But our karma leads us, so to speak, to proclaim a new world view. We are at the starting point of it. This twentieth century, the last century before the year 2000, will need more and more people who know that they are meant to become sense organs for the Christ. What does such knowledge trigger in us? Reverence and deep devotion, true religiosity.

Spiritual science must bring this new world view. That is why we are now receiving it as a gift from the higher worlds. It addresses the greatness of the human being by telling him: You human being [you are destined to become a sense organ for the Christ]...

But it will be difficult to feel and know that we are the sense organs of the earth. Because this awareness will always darken us and not want to let Ahriman arise. He will want us to think and speculate and philosophize about what man is when we cannot feel ourselves as the sense organ of the earth. And the time until the end of the earth will be just long enough for him to hold back people on earth. They would have become so accustomed to the earth that he could then lead them into his realm, that he could establish his kingdom. Because he wants to keep us from knowing that we are an organ of the earth, that is why we are so difficult to understand in the world. More and more confusion.

But our organization is such that at night we leave our physical and etheric bodies here, and the astral body and the ego go into the spiritual world. But we as souls can feel ourselves at night, projecting from the spiritual worlds into the physical world, like horns of feeling stretching out from ourselves into this world, widening more and more. As a soul being, feeling at night that embodies the will of the hierarchies, as they want to see man on earth. As a soul, we are the will, feeling and thinking of the gods. To feel this is even more difficult than to know oneself as a sense organ of the earth. For Lucifer will repeatedly cloud our clear consciousness of this and will present demonic things in front of it, so that people become obsessed with all kinds of spiritual stuff and say to themselves: You should not work on earth with the physical instrument of the body, but with your spiritual powers. That is Lucifer who says that.

It is uncomfortable to have to think again and again in spiritual science, to have to reflect again and again on the thoughts of the gods; because that is what we are doing. It is more comfortable to say to oneself: you don't need any of that, you have all of that in spiritual powers. These are demons, and people will become more and more obsessed by them. The blinding of the human being as an organ of the senses of the earth, that is what Ahriman wants. Being obsessed comes from Lucifer. Why we are being told this, we must ask our karma. We are the ones to whom this is said and we vow loyalty, firm and true loyalty to that to which we have committed ourselves; for the temple is no bauble, but the most sacred thing for us, to which we want to be loyal.

If what has been said is received by our hearts as warmly as it has been given, then we will find the right way, despite all difficulties, to know ourselves by day as the sense organ of the Christ and by night to feel ourselves as the feeling of the hierarchies, which say: The Christ was with us in the spiritual world; he took leave of us in the Mystery of Golgotha; he entered into the earth, and we must feel him down there through the souls of men. A sign that the hierarchies feel the Christ will be when people see the etheric Christ, and this must always be the case in the last century of the second millennium and in the first centuries of the third millennium. Today, many people are confused. For the adversaries of the Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman, will be unleashed around the year 2000, and there will be great confusion. But we should feel that we are the ones who know: Through me, the Christ looks into the spiritual worlds, and my etheric vision is the feeling of the hierarchies of the Christ (on earth) in the earth. He who knows the connections must blush before the good advice of the world spirits, the true light gods, when he sees how all kinds of spiritual stuff, demons, are mistaken for the true spiritual world.

We must know that we are placed in the struggle between Ahriman and Lucifer with the true light gods.

[“I am the eye of the earth with my physical body.

And with my soul, I am the tool for the activity of the gods.”]

Notes D by Unknown

Something very important that we should awaken in ourselves more often in meditation is a kind of conversation with our senses. Take the eye, for example. The eye does not see as we see the sky above us with the sun, moon and stars, but we have to imagine that we are the microcosm of the earth for the eye, and the surrounding world is for the eye what the sky is for us. The eye is as if in a dreaming consciousness, not as we are in a bright daytime consciousness. And at night, when we sleep and close our eyelids, the eye sinks into a deep, dreamless sleep, and it is as if the upper half were dark and could only be seen through the hollow of the heel and knee, just as the sun disappears behind the earth for people on the other side of the world in the evening.

Just as the eye is the sensory organ of the human being, so the human being is the sensory organ of the earth, only that the earth has many eyes, just as there are animals that have what are known as compound eyes. And our head is to the earth what the eye is to us. The powers with which the earth looks out into the cosmos are so strong that they penetrate the firm skullcap and look at the cosmos and the sky. The starry sky is imprinted in our brain, and right at birth a certain part of the starry sky is imprinted in our brain. We must endeavor, in humility and modesty, to provide the best possible organ of vision for the spirit of the earth, through which it can look up into the cosmos.

But the earth also needs breathing and nourishment, just like humans. The plant world is there for this purpose, supplying the earth with substances and forces from the cosmos.

And the earth can think too. What is achieved through the human brain, spinal cord and nerves is done for the earth by the animal world. The higher animal world corresponds more to the human brain, the lower to the nerves and the extended marrow. It is the group souls of the animals through which the earth thinks.

The earth's bone system is in the mineral kingdom.

The spirit of the earth is the Christ, who, through us as the earth's sensory organ, looks up to the higher hierarchies from which he came and which he left to connect with the earth. And we must increasingly make ourselves the appropriate tool and seek to develop the abilities slumbering within us so that we can see the etheric Christ in the last century of the second millennium. Then we will also make ourselves a tool for the high gods of light, who will look up to the Christ through us, whom they have been seeking on earth since he left his true home. This realization will lead us to true religiosity, not what is proclaimed to us from the pulpits by the priests. There, appeals are made to people's selfishness and sentimentality to awaken religiosity. They are told: Your sins will be punished, your good deeds will be rewarded.

Just as the eye is implanted through the nerves and is connected to the human organism, so is our head, the eye of the earth, connected to the earth through our physical body. Our body is like the nerve that attaches to the eye and integrates it into the human organism.

We should consider ourselves, in all humility and modesty, to be the select few of people who, in the last century of the second millennium, are to hear this wisdom and these truths first. For they must now flow into humanity. We should not sink into the mire of the swamp, but rise up to the world of light.

Yesterday I tried to point out to you ideas which should really be clear to people who are truly striving for progress in the present day. In particular, I tried to point out ideas that are suitable for bringing real new life into the cultivation of intellectual life and especially into the cultivation of the educational and school system. And among the hindrances that stand in the way of real clear-sightedness in this field, we have found above all the modern tendency to use empty phrases and meaningless words. For as soon as a thought is expressed in words, the words lead to action, for action follows. For there is an abyss between the word and the deed. This is always the case because the word lacks the thought. And our spiritual science, which, since it has existed as such, has wanted to serve the real spiritual and thus also the social progress of the present, has always endeavored to infuse new spirit into words that have gradually become mere phrases, that have become empty of content.

In view of what has just been said, it is necessary for you to grasp something quite correctly. We speak of many forces in the universe, which we then designate with certain names, that is, with certain words. It goes without saying that something new should be consciously expressed in such words. But for this to happen, it is necessary to slowly develop this newness. Our spiritual science movement has existed for a long time. What was to be laid down in it has been laid down in a series of books and in a series of lecture cycles. These books and cycles are intended to fill us with such a spirit that we can think our way into certain words in which we then have to express what is actually the content of the whole anthroposophical world view. It is essential that we do this. And for that we must fully realize: if we do not make an effort to evoke an understanding of this spiritual content through one or the other way, then the words we use for our spiritual content must, of course, sound like an empty phrase to the outside world. This must be particularly well observed today because we have to put ourselves in a position to properly influence the spiritual and the teaching and educational spheres. If the teaching and education system continues to develop as it has done so far, it will put the social life of humanity in a terrible position. Then, precisely because of this teaching and education system, the anti-social spirit will take root ever more deeply in our modern humanity to an extreme degree. There is also external evidence for this, which, I might say, can be found at every turn in the street, but which, strangely enough, only leads people to stop halfway. I would like to point out a very telling example in this regard, which could, however, be multiplied a hundredfold or a thousandfold.

As early as the last decade of the last century, Theobald Ziegler, a philosopher teaching in Strasbourg, gave lectures in Hamburg on general education. These lectures have been republished time and again, and they contain much of what should actually be of particular concern to today's humanity, that is, to those who actually reflect on such things, on education, from today's point of view. I will single out one question, the question of the state's supervision of schools. Theobald Ziegler discusses how the difficulty in this area of school supervision arose from the fact that this school supervision was still entirely in the hands of the clergy relatively recently, and that the teaching profession struggled with the help of the state to wrest this school supervision from the clergy. As a result, the teaching profession also turned to the all-protective state and found that it is better for the state to protect us than for the clergy to do so. And people like Theobald Ziegler, who deal with such questions from the point of view of our current higher education, say the following to themselves. I will read his words to you: “If, however, the sovereignty of the state over the school is both right and duty,” - that is, right and duty at the same time - “then we must not close our eyes to the dangers of this nationalization of education, as they have often emerged in the field of higher education in particular. The spirit of bureaucracy weighs heavily on schools as well. Above all, it hinders the freedom of movement that is so necessary, as it would be granted to the municipalities and school institutions according to the various local needs, but also according to other differences that may exist in the teaching staff; it works towards an intellectual uniformity that is very detrimental to our education; this already suffers enough from templates and uniformity. The formalistic lawyer at the head of most German school administrations also hinders pedagogical progress; because he himself is sterile – never has a director of legal studies had a pedagogical idea that would have made a mark in the field under his supervision! It is important to resist this bureaucratic school regime and to demand far-reaching freedom for the schools of larger and more intelligent communities, which are often superior to the state in their understanding of socio-political demands and usually also ahead of it in their realization.

A man of this kind sees all this. Yet he introduces this sentence with the words: “But the supremacy of the state over the school is both a right and a duty.” Now, should not the thought arise in some souls: how little courage such people have to draw the consequences from what they actually understand. The question must arise in our minds: How is it actually that when a plight of the worst kind is recognized, people only come to the conclusion: But we have to leave it, we have to let the state have this supervision of the school; it has a right to do so and it has a duty to do so? This question should at least be raised today by some courageous souls. For our university professors recognize the evil, but they do not want to cure it. This question should be raised. And if it is raised, it cannot be answered at first. Look for answers to this question – you cannot say that the good will is not there. Why can't it be answered at first? Yes, because there is only one answer. However paradoxical it may still sound today, there is only one answer to this question in the present: our education, our entire spiritual life will never again acquire a cultural physiognomy if it is not imbued with a world view that belongs in our present time, but which is born out of the modern, not the traditional human being. Spiritual science has sought such a world view and is still seeking it. It is therefore called upon above all to provide the answer to this question. There is an inner connection here, and all social striving in the present time will not get beyond this connection. But it is up to us to make this connection clear and distinct and intensely present to our souls.

It is truly not for any agitational reasons, such as wanting to stand up for one's own, but it is the realization that out of necessity, it is to be brought into this present time what this present time particularly needs for a renewal of spiritual life. But spiritual science can only be brought into the present in a truly liberated spiritual life. This spiritual science itself brings to light truths that are unfamiliar to today's humanity. And when these truths are clothed in the words that today's humanity is accustomed to, then this humanity becomes furious. For it is indeed a characteristic manifestation that today's humanity rages over everything that has some kind of spiritual-scientific background. It is not aware of the reasons for its rage, but it becomes all the more furious the more it clings to the old. It simply becomes furious when it feels instinctively: There is something underlying that we just do not want to have, there is something spiritual-scientific underlying. That was also the case with the Appeal. People do not admit to themselves that they are angry, but say: It is incomprehensible to us. But the fact is that they are angry because something is coming from a side that they would actually like to perhorteszieren. We should not deceive ourselves about this fact either, for this spiritual science must one day, in all seriousness and with all its strength, bring truths to light that today's humanity simply does not like, but without which the further development of today's humanity cannot happen. That is why we are rushing into decadence, because humanity rejects what it actually needs for progress from the old habits of thinking.

I would like to start today's reflection with two truths. To do so, I would like to return to something I said yesterday. You know that we summarize certain forces that play a role in world evolution and also have an influence on human beings as, on the one hand, Luciferic forces and, on the other, Ahrimanic forces. With such words, it takes years to grasp what lies within them, otherwise they remain mere phrases. But once one has grasped their content, then in these words one has something one must have, just as the electrician has two impulses in his positive and negative electricity, which he must have in order to be able to speak of the things.

The aim is to take the scientific spirit that prevails in inorganic natural science and carry it up into the life of the spirit, but not in the sense of becoming a monist in the popular sense. Rather, it is about actually metamorphosing the way of thinking that prevails there for the higher branches of the life of the spirit, and expressing it in these higher branches. If someone were to speak of positive and negative soul forces in relation to the soul and spiritual life, they would lapse into the most extreme abstraction. Yet the very same way of thinking that correctly speaks of positive and negative in an inorganic field speaks of Luciferic and Ahrimanic in the soul-spiritual field. We can also define what Luciferic and Ahrimanic are in the abstract. We can say: the human being as we actually see him, as we ourselves are, is a state of equilibrium; he is actually always only something that is a balance between two poles, between the Luciferic pole and the Ahrimanic pole. Everything in us tends on the one hand towards the fantastic, the enthusiastic, the one-sided, and, if it degenerates, towards the illusory. That is the one extreme towards which we tend. If we did not carry this Luciferic extreme within us, we would never be able to become artists. It can never be a matter of our saying, in a false ascetic way: Let us flee the Luciferic! But then we flee everything in us that gives us artistic impulses. But if we want to be human beings who can fulfill their tasks here on earth in the fullest sense of the word, we must bring this Luciferic element into balance with what is at the other pole in us. This other pole is the ossified, the intellectual, the sober. Physiologically speaking, the Ahrimanic in us is everything that develops the forces in us that make us bony people; the skeleton characterizes the Ahriman. The Luciferic in us is everything that develops the forces that organize us towards muscles and blood. Between these two poles, between the life of blood and the life of bone, we are stuck as human beings and, if we are fully human, we must strive for a state of equilibrium between the life of blood and the life of bone, between what the blood always wants to push us towards, which is the illusory, and what the human being of bone always wants to push us towards, which is the sober, dry, philistine. We are in between, and man is never truly at rest, but inwardly moved between these two extremes, and he can only be understood if he is inwardly moved between these two extremes.

Consider that we human beings actually have the task of experiencing within ourselves what the balance beam experiences when it constantly sways and only has a state of equilibrium between left and right, swaying back and forth. Thus, as human beings, we must really sway between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. The Ahrimanic element is always present in thought that is based only on the external sense world. This abstract thought, which is based only on the sense world, tends to represent an Ahrimanic element in us. And the will, which draws on the experiences of our body and rises in the egoistic impulses of our body, constantly tends towards Luciferic character.

Thus the soul is also interwoven with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. My task in Dornach was to place the main group, which represents the representative of humanity between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, in the context of the School of Spiritual Science. The attempt has been made to depict the figure of Christ in this central figure of the representative of humanity, who stands in the middle. This Christ-figure is surrounded by two Luciferic figures, that is, two such figures that would emerge if only the blood-muscular were to develop in man. And below, the figure is subjected to two Ahrimanic figures, that is, two such figures that would arise if only those forces were to develop in man that strive towards ossification. Thus, the Christ is related above to everything that leads to illusion, and below to what leads to the sober, pedantic, philistine. — I do not have any examples of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic figures here, but I do have a few replicas of the central figure, which I would like you to see here afterwards. In woodcarving, an attempt has been made to express in material form what I have only briefly touched on in abstract terms. But I would ask you to consider these things not as symbols but from an artistic point of view, which must be the opposite of anything abstractly symbolic.

Yesterday I presented you with something that may not be entirely clear to you; but I would ask you to accept it simply as a result of spiritual science. I have often pointed out the underlying fact. Yesterday I said that our physiological science is based on a terrible fallacy, namely, that there are two kinds of nerves, motor and sensitive, whereas in truth everything is sensitive and there is no difference between motor and sensitive nerves. The so-called motor nerves are only there so that we can perceive our movements internally, that is, so that we are sensitive to what we ourselves do as human beings. Just as the human being perceives color through the sensitive optic nerve, so he perceives his own leg movement through the “motor” nerves, which are not there to set the leg in motion, but to perceive that the movement of the leg is being carried out. The wrong interpretation has even led present-day science into a fatal error with regard to the tabes phenomena. While it is precisely these tabes phenomena that fully prove what I have just briefly discussed and already presented yesterday.

But what deeper fact is actually at the root of this? One always goes wrong if one simply puts forward the judgment: something is wrong, something is incorrect. For the incorrect thing, which has a particular essential meaning, is real. On the one hand, there is the physiological school of thought that there are motory and sensitive nerves, and on the other hand, it exists in numerous minds, which are by no means always stupid, but only biased in the world view of the present. Where does the whole thing come from? One must not only gain the opinion of something being wrong, but one must also investigate the underlying facts to find out why such an inaccuracy could arise. Only spiritual science can provide a real answer.

Nowadays, when a physiologist arrives at his science, he is, if you will excuse the harsh word, not really a human being. Through the particular development of this science in modern times, he has lost his sense of equilibrium. He does not describe the equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, but has slid down into Ahrimanism. He is actually possessed by the Ahrimanic and describes with an Ahrimanic attitude. And because one always fails to see the state one is in, one sees the other instead. If one has an Ahrimanic attitude and describes something in the human being, one describes the Luciferic. In fact, today's physiology, which prattles on about the difference between the motor and sensitive nerves, has come about because Ahriman describes Lucifer in man, and what comes about under this description is actually the nature of Lucifer, who is now so constituted that in a certain respect one can speak of him — but then they are spiritual, on a different plane — of sensitive and motor elements. It is extraordinarily interesting to see how, under the influence of present-day world views, man has slipped from a certain state of equilibrium, which he had in Greek, into the Ahrimanic. And one describes the progress of our culture correctly if one describes it as I did some time ago in 'The Reich', if one identifies it with an increase of the Ahrimanic. The interesting thing is that in relation to all these things, a state of equilibrium was reached in Greek culture for a short period of time, and that today we are actually inciting all the damage to which I have to draw attention with regard to the Greek element in us by seeing Greek, which was in a state of equilibrium, through our Ahrimanic spectacles. I am not opposed to Greek as such, but to Greek interpreted in an Ahrimanic way. So we have rushed down into the Ahrimanic, and today we have the impulse within us to describe, view and also do everything actually from Ahrimanic motives.

Before the Greek period, things were different. There was an ancient science, and in Egyptian culture one can still study it externally. Today people do not understand this science at all, because it is the opposite of what is called science today. Today we have descended into the Ahrimanic. Those who developed towards Greek culture and reached their decadence in Egyptian culture were still in the Luciferic above. They were at the other extreme. They had a physiology in which Lucifer describes Ahriman, while we have a physiology in which Ahriman describes Lucifer.

It is not enough to understand these things theoretically; one must realize that when one is immersed in social life – for a certain social life is always around man – then these things become real. For the social structure is, after all, man's creation. Everything that is in man goes into the social structure, and we have things in our social structure that we do not pay attention to, but that must be paid attention to today, otherwise we will not get out of certain damages of our time. Not only do we carry within us the two poles of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, between which we are to maintain balance, but we also carry the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic into the states of the soul. I have repeatedly spoken about this from the most diverse points of view, and again and again I have drawn attention to the false asceticism that says: I will hold myself back from Lucifer and Ahriman so that I may become a good person. But the moment you put money into your pocket, you are in the objectified Ahrimanic in its most extreme consequence. For everything that permeates the social order from the monetary side is Ahrimanic, and the rule of money is an Ahrimanic rule. And everything that we have brought into the outer structure of life, into the social structure, in terms of Luciferianism – yes, don't be too much affected by a shock – everything that we bring into the structure of life from the side of Lucifer, that is all what office and dignity is. By taking up an office in the outer structure of life, we are drawing ourselves to Lucifer. It is no different. The privy councillor belongs to Lucifer, and the money he has in his purse belongs to Ahriman.

This is a fact – not something to laugh about! This is a fact, a very real, indeed the most real truth for our time. And the real aspiration of our time is to find our way back into balance within these things, the balance that we have lost historically by rushing into the Ahrimanic. If we go back to the time before the Greeks, when, I might say, equilibrium was attained for a moment in the world, we find that under the domination of the spiritual there was only ossification, covered over with theology and militarism. (Theology and militarism actually belong together; there is an inner affinity between them.) Under the domination of the theological and the military, Lucifer in particular came into his own. Then Greek culture attained a state of equilibrium for world development, which, however, every human being should actually strive for. And then begins the descent on the sloping plane into the Ahrimanic, beginning with the uninspired Romanism, and then encountering that mighty wave that comes from the north as Germanic culture, but which is once again drowned out. And we are caught up in this drowning out and today we have to save ourselves from this drowning out. For what the physiologists, the more theoretical scientists, have done by letting Ahriman represent Lucifer, that wants to be realized more and more outwardly. Man is on the way to absorbing more and more of the Ahrimanic, and what the physiologists have only talked about — for the description we have of man in the physiological textbooks today is not a description of man, but a description of Lucifer. Many people would like to do what the physiologists only talk about, not out of ill will, but because they do not yet know where the real path must lead. The moment we were to satisfy the socialist demand and reduce the social organism to a mere economic body, we would be Ahrimanizing the whole social order. A purely Ahrimanic programme would demand only the so-called economic foundation, on which the spiritual superstructure would then arise by itself. It is so grotesque when the extreme Left says what was really possible to say: We fully agree with Steiner's criticism of capitalism; we agree with the threefold social organism, but we must vigorously fight Steiner, because we want nothing but the class struggle, and the threefold social organism must arise by itself.

There you have an example of eminently Ahrimanic striving and will, which wants nothing to do with the state of equilibrium and rushes headlong into an Ahrimanic culture. That is today's difficulty. Yesterday I pointed this out from a different angle. If you go with those people who stand on the right — you will not do this, of course, if you are reasonable — then you will preserve the remnants of an old luciferic culture; go with the people of the left, then you expose yourself to the danger of collaborating in a world structure that is purely ahrimanic. The bourgeoisie has indeed succeeded in handing over such a culture to the proletariat that this proletariat regards bourgeois thinking as an ideal – the ideal of a purely Ahrimanic state on earth, where everything is bureaucratized, where, at the thought of a change, for example in the field of education, even naive souls like Theobald Ziegler shrink back. And in the Ahrimanic economic state, you can be sure, it will look bad for spiritual life! The proletarian impulse is forward, but humanity will only escape disaster if it is spiritualized, if it is permeated by that which makes half-reality into whole reality. That is the task. But this other reality can only be the spiritual one, and that makes people angry. This anger must be withstood. True venom is already being spat; but this venom against the spirit breaks out of the real powers of anger, which today hide everywhere, treacherously, as the ahrimanic powers in our world order.

Truly, it is not without reason and not without reference to the great problem that is now emerging that anthroposophists were offered the opportunity to see the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic as the two poles of humanity, and to see more deeply the problem that is emerging today as a social one than it can be seen without spiritual science. Particularly in the sphere of reform, of revolutionizing spiritual life, the social problem can only be seen in the light of spiritual science, because only there does it appear in the right sense. And this imposes a certain obligation on anthroposophists to look at how culture has always swung back and forth in a kind of pendulum swing. If we go back to old oriental social structures, we find the pendulum swinging in the direction of theology on the one hand, and in the direction of militarism on the other. We carry theology and militarism in the oriental sense as our heritage, and today is the time when we must see these things clearly. Later, another took the place of theology and militarism. For just as theology and militarism are related, namely, they vibrate in a Luciferic and Ahrimanic way, so are related: metaphysics in the medieval scholastic sense, also as it has the Kantians, even if half-rejecting it, and the jurisprudence that rests entirely in the metaphysical spirit, as Roman jurisprudence does. This is again connected with the civil service. Just as theology is connected with militarism, so jurisprudence is connected with metaphysics, with officialdom and the good bourgeoisie, while theology and militarism are connected with the aristocracy. These things, theology as the Luciferic on the one hand, militarism, which lives out itself aristocratically, on the other hand as the Ahrimanic, oscillated in the pre-Greek period. We carry the heritage within us. Jurisprudence and the metaphysics that stands above it developed in Romanism. They had the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie, which was brought into the world by Romanism, as their followers. Anyone who sees the transition between Greek and Roman culture can grasp with their hands how the real spiritual entities of Greek culture became metaphysical in Roman culture. Compare the Greek gods in their liveliness as imaginations with the abstract concept of a Jupiter, a Juno or a Minerva in Romanism: everything has become abstract, a shadowy concept. And so the state institutions of Greek life are also alive, working from person to person, even if they are no longer suitable for our time. In Romanism the whole State is cast as a concept in a system of juridical concepts. These juridical concepts educated the newer bourgeoisie, and now we have entered, for a long time already, the realm of world views that have emerged from the theological-juridical-metaphysical sphere; now we have entering the sphere of so-called positivism, which only recognizes the real as perceived by the senses and has the proletariat as its companion phenomenon, with all that is good and all that is wrong with the proletariat today.

But with that, we have also arrived at the lowest point, and we have to go up again, otherwise we will fall into the abyss. When people were theologically minded, they could descend, descend to the legal-metaphysical sphere. If we do not begin to ascend again today, we will sink into the abyss. This means that now, when we have arrived at the extreme end of materialism and are just about to make materialism practical, we must grasp the spiritual with all our energy, which alone can restore the materialistic attitude. That is the fundamental duty of our time. But that is also what makes the work so difficult. For it is not the striving that has been brought out of human class or status prejudices, or that which has been brought out of party phenomena, but the striving that has been brought out of world-historical development itself, that people are not yet willing to approach, because basically it affects people at a time when they are most badly fragmented in terms of selfishness and when they feel most comfortable being as unspiritual as possible.

The whole thing is connected with a real, physiological-physical development of the human being. I have often pointed out this physiological-physical development of the human being. Do you think we still have the same bodies as the Greeks? Our bodies are different. The human physique also undergoes metamorphoses. The Greeks, in their equilibrium, had a keen observation for such things. We must appropriate them from the depths of our soul, from our spiritual striving. Anyone who looks at Greek sculpture finds a wonderful trinity expressed in it. This is not observed enough. Compare the head of Hermes with that of Zeus or Athena in its entire physiognomy. And compare the head of a satyr with the head of Hermes on the one hand, with the head of Athena or Hera on the other. Then you will discover the remarkable fact that the Greeks sensed something by introducing these differences into their sculpture. The distances between the ears and the position of the nose are things that speak clearly. Anyone who really studies a head of Hermes knows, or at least can know, that the Greeks wanted to represent in the head of Hermes the humanity from which the Greeks felt they had grown, the past humanity that still had abilities and powers that came more from the animal world. The Greeks themselves wanted to represent themselves in the Zeus type, which for them was the only beautiful type. Compare the position of the ears and the nose of a head of Hermes with those of a head of Zeus: the special way in which the Greeks saw themselves, formally, artistically – and the whole Greek world view was basically an artistic one – they wanted to express this in the three types of their sculpture.

These things have been lost to a great extent by modern humanity. They must be re-conquered, re-acquired. But what the Greeks were able to achieve from their unconsciously assumed state of equilibrium, we must achieve consciously, by consciously gaining the point of view that enables us to say something like: You physiologists, you are describing Lucifer from the point of view of Ahriman. And why do we do it today? Because the physical body has changed since Greek times. We are more thoroughly rooted in the physical plane than the ancient Greeks, who had a presentiment of this and wonderfully expressed such great intuitions in their mythology. The Greek foresaw us modern people. But he foresaw us as Prometheus, chained to the rocks of the bone system, chained to the Ahrimanic. He foresaw us imaginatively. And that which wants to rush into the Ahrimanic will chain us ever more strongly to the rocks of ossification.

We must free ourselves by grasping the spiritual and loosening the fetters of Prometheus. We can only do this if we seriously reflect on ourselves. The Orient can never do this to us, because it is itself too Luciferian; the Occident can never do this to us, because it is too Ahrimanic for itself. That is the task we must set ourselves. And if we set it ourselves, then we have given Central European culture a real goal, a goal similar to that which lived in the forces of Greece, which poured out into the forms of Greek art, into the artistic creation of Greek dramas, into the thoughts of Plato pointing to heaven. But we must seek these things for ourselves. We must not be imitators of Greek culture. We will best understand Greek culture if we grasp it in its uniqueness and if we learn from it to grasp the tasks of our time.

We must look without illusions at the social structure of the present, we must look at how money has become a commodity out of Ahrimanic thinking. For the value of our money has the pure character of a commodity, the value of silver or gold. And people should reflect on how something that functions as a “commodity money” does not correspond to any original human need, but is something for which the need must first be created in the greed of people. To put it trivially: we cannot eat or drink gold and silver. That is the Ahrimanic, in which the present-day human being is placed, and from which our economic life must be freed by having only the production, circulation and consumption of goods in it. And money must become nothing more than a large bookkeeping entry, the respective instruction for the goods. What is issued as a banknote is merely the commodity written on the credit side, which one has given in return for it. One has a credit balance in society until one has exchanged the other commodity for it. Money must lose its Ahrimanic character.

And so, on the other side, on the side of spiritual life, there is the terrible Luciferian aspect that the spiritual person is pushed into offices, that the human side of the person perishes in office and dignity. Because every office puts on a Luciferian uniform. Anyone who can see through these things in reality will see especially when he sees tenured teachers and professors walking along, poor people who are stuck in Luciferic clothing and who have to fight as human beings against their Luciferic clothes. This fight demands in the present that man be de-Luciferized in the spiritual realm, that he be given back to humanity as a whole. This can only be achieved in a liberated spiritual life. The issues run deeper than is usually admitted. They run so deep that they impose certain obligations on anyone who penetrates into their depths. These obligations must not be misunderstood in their true form. We are called upon, in the middle of Europe, to find our way out of misfortune, misery and need, from matter to spirit. For decades, in narrower circles of Western peoples, the Anglo-American peoples, it was always pointed out that a world conflagration would and must arise, and that Eastern Europe would take on a shape from this world conflagration, so that socialist experiments would have to be carried out within this Eastern Europe, experiments which we in the West and in the English-speaking areas would never want to carry out ourselves. This had become a tradition, and it can be traced back to the 1980s, that the opposing but generous Anglo-American policy foresaw what this Central European policy of nullity was unfortunately blind and deaf to: that a world conflagration would come, and that Eastern Europe would be ripe for socialist experiments.

It must never be allowed to happen that the Western nations are left alone to carry out socialist experiments in Central and Eastern Europe. But this can only be avoided if we take up our task and set a goal for Central European intellectual life. That is our task. Let us not look at it in a small-minded way! We have had to experience time and again that anthroposophical intentions have been translated into selfish pettiness due to a certain lack of courage in the face of the big picture. Those who professed anthroposophy were only too willing to seek their own way, saying – to take just one example – that orthodox medicine was on the wrong track, so they took all kinds of devious routes in order to avoid being cured in the way that orthodox medicine does, and to be cured differently. You are familiar with these things. Devious routes were sought for this or that. But they always failed when it came to presenting the matter in public. It is not a matter of reaching those who are branded as “quacks” in public by secret routes, but of incorporating into the public structure, into the social structure, those who can then rightly practice medicine out of the spirit. Let us summon up the real courage! Let us not say in our little room: we do not want to be cured by the doctor who has been stamped at the university, but we will go to the one who cures without public law, because we do not dare to represent our attitude before the whole of public and demand that such a medicine should not be there, which we do not consider to be the right one. Today it is no longer possible to take the back roads. Today, public life is pulsating with what must come: a courageous forward thrust that only needs to be shown the right paths. My dear friends, this is what we must now keep in mind again and again: that anthroposophy was not intended for the selfishness of individual sectarians, but as a cultural impulse for the present time. Those who have misunderstood Anthroposophy are those who believe that they are serving it by shutting themselves away in the back room and doing something sectarian. Of course, the things that are to have a public effect must first be known, and for my part they must first be done in the back room; but it must not remain there. What lies within the anthroposophical impulse belongs to the world, not to any sect. And anyone who applies anthroposophical ideas in a sectarian way sins against anthroposophy itself. Therefore, now that the great question of the times, the social question, has arisen, anthroposophy must put its trust in this social question. That is its task. And it must, as it were, pass over all sectarian tendencies, which unfortunately have become so prevalent in the Anthroposophical Society itself. In this respect, we will have to look within ourselves in order to elevate all sectarian tendencies in our soul to cultural tendencies. For it is only from this field of spiritual science, from the tendency to make spiritual life alive in our materialistic time, that a real transformation of spiritual life, of the school and teaching system, can come about.

Everything is of course needed within a cultural council. But without a real soul, which should come from a new world view, this cultural council can only gradually — however well it is applied now — become cultural rubbish. We must bear in mind that today the paths are very, very much divided, and that it takes courage to choose, but that if we are to avoid disaster for the development of humanity, we must choose. Of course we cannot turn the whole world anthroposophical overnight, bless it with a new world view. But if we work ourselves, we must remain aware that we have truly not attained anthroposophy in order to now either hide it in an Ahrimanic or a Luciferic way, but to seek the state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic so that we can counter the rush into the Ahrimanic with what this equilibrium brings forth, which today's humanity so urgently needs.

When social questions are discussed from a spiritual scientific point of view, this is not done out of any subjective motive or impulse. Everything is based upon observation of the evolution of humanity and of what the forces underlying that evolution demand of us now and in the immediate future.

To reveal the deeper impulses working at the present time is not a congenial task, for there is little inclination to enter into such matters with any real earnestness. But our age calls for this earnestness wherever the affairs of humanity are concerned, above all for the discarding of prejudices and preconceptions. Today, therefore, I shall put before you certain deeper aspects of matters to which reference has often been made.

Once again it is necessary to survey a rather lengthy period in the life of humanity. As you know, we distinguish the present epoch from other epochs, reckoning that it began in the middle of the fifteenth century A.D. We speak of it as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, distinguishing it from the previous epoch which began in the eighth century B.C. and is called the Greco-Latin epoch after the peoples responsible for its culture. It was preceded by the epoch of Egypto-Chaldean civilization.

When we come to consider the Egypto-Chaldean epoch we find that the records of ordinary history break down. Even with the help of accessible Egyptian and Chaldean lore, external evidence does not carry us very far back in the history of humanity.

But it is not possible to grasp what is of importance for the present time unless we understand the intrinsic characteristics of that third post-Atlantean epoch of culture.

You are certainly aware that in the ordinary history of that ancient time, all civilization, all culture in the then-known world, goes by the name of paganism. Like an oasis, Hebraic culture arises in its midst as a preparation for Christianity. But disregarding for the moment this Jewish culture, which differed so fundamentally from the other forms of pre-Christian civilized life, let us turn our attention to paganism. Its special characteristic may be said to lie in its wisdom, in its deep insight into the things and processes of the world. The knowledge contained in paganism had its source in the ancient Mysteries and although according to modern scholarship it bears a mythical, pictorial character, it must be emphasized that all the imagery, all the pictures which have come down to posterity from this ancient paganism are the fruits of profound insight.

Recalling the many treasures of this super-sensible lore which we have been endeavoring to bring to light, it will be obvious that here we have to do with a primeval wisdom, a wisdom underlying all the thinking, all the perceptions and feelings of those ancient peoples. A kind of echo of this primeval wisdom, a tradition in which it was enshrined, survived here and there in secret societies, actually in a healthy form, until the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth. In the nineteenth century the source ran dry and such vestiges as remain have passed into the hands of isolated groups belonging to certain, nationalities. And what is in the possession of ordinary secret societies today can no longer be regarded as wholesome or as a genuine tradition of the old pagan wisdom.

Now this ancient wisdom has one particular characteristic of which sight must never be lost. It has one characteristic on account of which Judaism, the smaller stream then making preparation for Christianity had to be introduced as a kind of oasis.

If this ancient paganism is rightly understood, it will be found to contain sublime, deeply penetrating wisdom, but no moral impulses for human action. These impulses were not really essential to humanity, for unlike what now passes as human knowledge, human insight, this old pagan wisdom gave one the feeling of being membered into the whole cosmos. People moving about the earth not only felt themselves composed of the substances and forces present around them in earthly life, in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, but they felt that the forces operating, for example, in the movements of the stars and the sun were playing into them. This feeling of being a member of the whole cosmos was not a mere abstraction, for from the Mysteries they received directives based on the laws of the stars for their actions and whole conduct of life. This ancient star-wisdom was in no way akin to the arithmetical astrology sometimes considered valuable today, but it was a wisdom voiced by the initiates in such a way that impulses for individual action and conduct went forth from the Mysteries. Not only did human beings feel safe and secure within the all-prevailing wisdom of the cosmos, but those whom they recognized as the initiates of the Mysteries imparted this wisdom in directives for their actions from morning till evening on given days of the year. Yet, neither Chaldean nor Egyptian wisdom contained a single moral impulse from what had been imparted by the initiates in this way. The moral impulse in its real sense was prepared by Judaism and then further developed in Christianity.

Inevitably the question arises: Why is it that this sublime pagan wisdom, although it contained no moral impulse, was able, for example in ancient Greece, to come to flower in such beauty of art and grandeur of philosophy?

If we were to go much farther back, to a time more than three thousand years before the Christian era, we should find that together with the promptings of wisdom there did come a moral impulse, that the moral principles, the ethics needed by these people of old were contained in this wisdom. But a specific ethos, a specific moral impulse such as came with Christianity was not an integral part of paganism. Why was this? It was because through the millennia directly preceding Christianity, this pagan wisdom was inspired from a place far away in Asia, inspired by a remarkable being who had been incarnated in the distant East in the third millennium before Christ—namely, Lucifer.

To the many things we have learned about the evolution of humanity, this knowledge too must be added: that just as there was the incarnation which culminated in Golgotha, the incarnation of Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth, there was an actual incarnation of Lucifer in far-off Asia, in the third millennium B.C.And the source of inspiration for much ancient culture was what can only be described as an earthly incarnation of Lucifer in a man of flesh and blood. Even Christianity, even the Mystery of Golgotha as enacted among human beings, was understood at first by the only means then available, namely the old luciferic wisdom. The one-sidedness of the gnosis, for all its amazing profundity, stems from the influence that had spread from this Lucifer incarnation over the whole of the ancient world. The significance of the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be fully grasped without the knowledge that rather less than three thousand years previously, there had been the incarnation of Lucifer.

In order that the luciferic inspiration might be lifted away from its one-sidedness, there came the incarnation of Christ and with it the impulse for the education and development of European civilization and its American offshoot. But since the middle of the fifteenth century, since the impulse for the development of individuality, of personality, has been at work, this phase of evolution has also contained within it certain forces whereby preparation is being made for the incarnation of another super-sensible Being. Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh and an incarnation of Christ in the flesh, so, before only a part of the third millennium of the post-Christian era has elapsed, there will be, in the West, an actual incarnation of Ahriman: Ahriman in the flesh. Humanity on earth cannot escape this incarnation of Ahriman. It will come inevitably. But what matters is that people shall find the right vantage point from which to confront it.

Whenever preparation is being made for incarnations of this character, we must be alert to certain indicative trends in evolution. A being like Ahriman, who will incarnate in the West in time to come, prepares for this incarnation in advance. With a view to his incarnation on the earth, Ahriman guides certain forces in evolution in such a way that they may be of the greatest possible advantage to him. And evil would result were people to live on in a state of drowsy unawareness, unable to recognize certain phenomena in life as preparations for Ahriman's incarnation in the flesh. The right stand can be taken only by recognizing in one or another series of events the preparation that is being made by Ahriman for his earthly existence. And the time has now come for individual human beings to know what tendencies and events around them are machinations of Ahriman, helping him to prepare for his approaching incarnation.

It would undoubtedly be of the greatest benefit to Ahriman if he could succeed in preventing the vast majority of people from perceiving what would make for their true well-being, if the vast majority of people were to regard these preparations for the Ahriman incarnation as progressive and good for evolution. If Ahriman were able to slink into a humanity unaware of his coming, that would gladden him most of all. It is for this reason that the occurrences and trends in which Ahriman is working for his future incarnation must be brought to light.

One of the developments in which Ahriman's impulse is clearly evident is the spread of the belief that the mechanistic, mathematical conceptions inaugurated by Galileo, Copernicus, and others, explain what is happening in the cosmos. That is why anthroposophical spiritual science lays such stress upon the fact that spirit and soul must be discerned in the cosmos, not merely the mathematical, mechanistic laws put forward by Galileo and Copernicus as if the cosmos were some huge machine. It would augur success for Ahriman's temptings if people were to persist in merely calculating the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in studying astrophysics for the sole purpose of ascertaining the material composition of the planets—an achievement of which the modern world is so proud. But woe betide if this Copernicanism is not confronted by the knowledge that the cosmos is permeated by soul and spirit. It is this knowledge that Ahriman, in preparing his earthly incarnation, wants to withhold. He would like to keep people so obtuse that they can grasp only the mathematical aspect of astronomy. Therefore he tempts many people to carry into effect their repugnance to knowledge concerning soul and spirit in the cosmos. That is only one of the forces of corruption poured by Ahriman into human souls. Another means of temptation connected with his incarnation—he also works in cooperation with the luciferic forces—another of his endeavors is to preserve the already widespread attitude that for the public welfare it is sufficient if the economic and material needs of humanity are provided for. Here we come to a point that is not willingly faced in modern life. Official science nowadays contributes nothing to real knowledge of the soul and spirit, for the methods adopted in the orthodox sciences are of value only for apprehending external nature, including the external human constitution. Just think with what contempt average citizens today regard anything that seems idealistic, anything that seems to be a path leading in any way to the spiritual. At heart they are always asking: What is the good of it? How will it help me to acquire this world's goods? They send their sons to a private school, having perhaps been to one themselves; they send them on to a university or institute of advanced studies. But all this is done merely in order to provide the foundations for a career, in other words, to provide the material means of livelihood.

And now think of the consequences of this. What numbers of people there are today who no longer value the spirit for the sake of the spirit or the soul for the sake of the soul! They are out to absorb from cultural life only what is regarded as “useful.” This is a significant and mysterious factor in the life of modern humanity and one that must be lifted into the full light of consciousness. Average citizens, who work assiduously in their offices from morning till evening and then go through the habitual evening routine, will not allow themselves to get mixed up with what they call the “twaddle” to be found in anthroposophy. It seems to them entirely redundant, for they think: that is something one cannot eat! It finally comes to this—although people will not admit it—that in ordinary life nothing in the way of knowledge is considered really useful unless it helps to put food in the mouth!

In this connection people today have succumbed to a strange fallacy. They do not believe that the spirit can be eaten, and yet the very ones who say this, do eat the spirit! Although they may refuse to accept anything spiritual, nevertheless with every morsel that passes through the mouth into the stomach they are devouring the spiritual, but dispatching it along a path other than the path which leads to the real well-being of mankind.

I believe that many Europeans think it is to the credit of their civilization to be able to say: We are not cannibals! But these Europeans and their American affinities are, none the less, devourers of soul and spirit! The soulless devouring of material food leads to the side-tracking of the spirit. It is difficult to say these things today, for in the light of such knowledge just think what would have to be said of a large section of modern culture! To keep people in the state of being devourers of the soul and spirit is one of Ahriman's impulses in preparation for his incarnation. To the extent to which people can be roused into conducting their affairs not for material ends alone and into regarding a free and independent spiritual life, equally with economic life, as an integral part of the social organism—to that same extent Ahriman's incarnation will be awaited with an attitude worthy of humanity.

Another tendency in modern life of benefit to Ahriman in preparing his incarnation is all that is so clearly in evidence in nationalism. Whatever can separate people into groups, whatever can alienate them from mutual understanding the whole world over and drive wedges between them, strengthens Ahriman’s impulse. In reality we should recognize the voice of Ahriman in what is so often proclaimed nowadays as a new ideal: “Freedom of the peoples, even the smallest,” and so forth. But blood relationship has ceased to be the decisive factor and if this outworn notion persists, we shall be playing straight into the hands of Ahriman. His interests are promoted, too, by the fact that people are taken up with the most divergent shades of party opinions, of which the one can be justified as easily as the other. A socialist party program and an anti-socialist program can be supported by arguments of equal validity. And if people fail to realize that this kind of “proof” lies so utterly on the surface that the No and the Yes can both be justified with our modern intelligence—useful as it is for natural science but not for a different kind of knowledge—if people do not realize that this intelligence lies entirely on the surface in spite of serving economic life so effectively, they will continue to apply it to social life and spiritual life irrespectively. One group will prove one thing, another it’s exact opposite, and as both proofs can be shown to be equally logical, hatred and bitterness—of which there is more than enough in the world—will be intensified. These trends too are exploited by Ahriman in preparation for his earthly incarnation.

Again, what will be of particular advantage to him is the short-sighted, narrow conception of the Gospel that is so prevalent today. You know how necessary it has become in our time to deepen understanding of the Gospels through spiritual science. But you also know how widespread is the motion that this is not fitting, that it is reprehensible to bring any real knowledge of the spirit or of the cosmos to bear upon the Gospels; it is said that the Gospels must be taken “in all their simplicity,” just as they stand. I am not going to raise the issue that we no longer possess the true Gospels. The translations are not faithful reproductions of the authentic Gospels, but I do not propose to go into this question now. I shall merely put before you the deeper fact, namely that no true understanding of Christ can be reached by the simple, easy going perusal of the Gospels beloved by most religious denominations and sects today. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and for a few centuries' afterward, a conception of the real Christ was still possible, because accounts handed down by tradition could be understood with the help of the pagan, luciferic wisdom. This wisdom has now disappeared, and what sects and denominations find in the Gospels does not lead people to the real Christ for whom we seek through spiritual science, but to an illusory picture, at most to a sublimated hallucination of Christ.

The Gospels cannot lead to the real Christ unless they are illumined by spiritual science. Failing this illumination, the Gospels as they stand give rise to what is no more than hallucination of Christ's appearance in world history. This becomes very evident in the theology of our time. Why does modern theology so love to speak of the “simple man of Nazareth” and to identify the Christ with Jesus of Nazareth—whom it regards as a man only a little more exalted than other great figures of history? It is because the possibility of finding the real Christ has been lost, and because what people glean from the Gospels leads-to hallucination, to a kind of illusion. An illusory conception of Christ is all that can be` gleaned through the way in which the Gospels are read today—not the reality of Christ. In a certain sense this has actually dawned on the theologians and many of them are now describing Paul's experience on the way to Damascus as a “vision.” They have come to the point of realizing that their way of studying the Gospels can lead only to a vision, to hallucination. I am not saying that this vision is false or untrue, but that it is merely an inner experience, unconnected with the reality of the Christ being. I do not use the word “illusion” with the side-implication of falsity, but I wish only to stress that the Christ Being is here a subjective, inner experience, of the same character as hallucination. If people could be brought to a standstill at this point, not pressing on to the real Christ but contenting themselves with a hallucination of Christ, Ahriman's aims would be immeasurably furthered.

The influence of the Gospels also leads to hallucinations when one Gospel alone is taken as the basis of belief. Truth to tell, this principle has been forestalled by the fact that we have been given four Gospels, representing four different aspects, and it does not do to take each single Gospel word-for-word on its own, when outwardly there are obvious contradictions. To take one single Gospel word-for-word and disregard the other three is actually dangerous. What you find in sects whose adherents swear by the literal content of the Gospel of St. Luke alone or that of St. John alone is an illusory conception arising from a certain dimming of consciousness. With the dimming of consciousness that inevitably occurs when the deeper content of the Gospels is not revealed, people would fall wholly into Ahriman's service, helping in a most effective way to prepare for his incarnation, and adopting toward him the very attitude he desires.

And now another uncomfortable truth for humankind today! Living in the arms of their denominations, people say: “We do not need anthroposophy or anything of the kind; we are content with the Gospels in all their simplicity.” They insist that this is said out of “humility.” In reality, however, it is the greatest arrogance! For it means that such persons, making use of ideas which have been presented to them through their birth and surge out of their blood, are deigning to rule out the deeper treasures of wisdom to be discovered in the Gospels. These “humblest” of human beings are generally the most arrogant of all, especially in the sects and denominations. The point to remember is, however, that the people who do most to prepare for the incarnation of Ahriman are those who constantly preach. “All that is required is to read the Gospels word-for-word-nothing more than that!”

Strange to say, in spite of their radical differences, the two parties play into each other's hands: those whom I called “devourers of soul and spirit” and those who demand the literal, word-for-word reading of the Gospels. Each party plays into the hands of the other, furthering the preparation of Ahriman's incarnation. For if the outlook of the “devourers of soul and spirit” on the one side and that of professed Christians who refuse to enter into the deeper truths of the Gospels on the other were to hold the day, then Ahriman would be able to make all human beings on the earth his own. A good deal of what is spreading in external Christianity today is a preparation for Ahriman's incarnation. And in many things which arrogantly claim to represent true belief, we should recognize the preparation for Ahriman's work.

Words nowadays do not really convey the innermost reality of things. As I have often told you, far too much store is set upon words—for words do not necessarily lead to that reality; nowadays indeed it is rather a case of words separating people from the real nature of things in the world. And this they do most of all when people accept ancient records such as the Gospels with “simple understanding”—as the saying goes. But there is a far truer simplicity in trying to penetrate to the in dwelling spirit of things and to understand the Gospels themselves from the vantage ground of the spirit.

As I told you, Ahriman and Lucifer will always work hand in hand. The only question is which of the two predominates in human consciousness at a particular epoch of time. It was a preeminently luciferic culture that persisted until after the Mystery of Golgotha—a culture inspired by the incarnation of Lucifer in China in the third millennium B.C. Many influences of this incarnation continued to radiate and were still powerful in the early Christian centuries; indeed they are working to this day.

But now that we are facing an incarnation of Ahriman in the third millennium after Christ, Lucifer's tracks are becoming less visible, and Ahriman's activities in such trends as I have indicated are coming into prominence. Ahriman has made a kind of pact with Lucifer, the import of which may be expressed in the following way. Ahriman, speaking to Lucifer, says: “I, Ahriman, find it advantageous to make use of ‘preserving jars.’ To you I will leave people's stomachs, if you will leave it to me to lull them to sleep—that is to say to lull their consciousness to sleep where their stomachs are concerned.”

You must understand what I mean by this. The consciousness of those human beings whom I have called devourers of soul and spirit is in a condition of dimness so far as their stomachs are concerned; for, by not accepting the spiritual into their human nature, they drive straight into the luciferic stream everything they introduce into their stomachs. What people eat and drink without spirituality goes straight to Lucifer!

And what do I mean by “preserving jars?” I mean libraries and institutions of a similar kind, where the various sciences pursued by human beings without really stirring their interest are preserved; these sciences are not really alive in them but are simply preserved in the books on the shelves of libraries. All this knowledge has been separated from human beings. Everywhere there are books, books, books! Themselves students, when they take their doctor's degree, have to write a learned thesis which is then put into as many libraries as possible. When the students want to take up some particular post, again they must write a thesis! In addition to this, people are forever writing, although only a very small proportion of what they write is ever read. Only when some special preparation has to be made do people resort to what is moldering away in libraries. These “preserving jars” of wisdom are a particularly favorable means of furthering Ahriman's aims.

This kind of thing goes on everywhere. It could only be to some purpose if people took a really live interest in it, but they do not, its existence is entirely separate and apart. Just think—if one were so disposed one might well despair—just think, for example, of a lawsuit where a lawyer has to be engaged to plead the case. The time comes when one has to discuss the matter. Documents pile up! The lawyer has them all there in a dossier, but when one starts talking, this lawyer has no inkling of the circumstances. The papers are turned over and over without getting anywhere; the lawyer has no connection at all with the documents. Here is one portfolio full of them, there another. The number of documents grows and grows but as for interest in them—that is simply nonexistent! These professional people make one despair when one has dealings with them; they really know nothing about the matter at issue, have no connection with it, for everything remains in the documents. These are the little preserving jars and the libraries are the big preserving jars of soul and spirit. Everything is preserved in them but human beings do not want to connect themselves with it, to permeate it with their interest. And finally there arises the mood which does not want the head to play any part in a professed view of the world. But after all, the head, or some element of the head, is necessary for any understanding! What people like is to base their religious faith, their view of the world, on the heart alone. The heart must play a part, of course; but the way in which people today often speak of their religion reminds me of a saying much quoted in the district where my youth was spent. It was to this effect: “There is something very special about love. If you buy it, you buy the heart only and the head is thrown in gratis.” This is more or less the attitude which people today like to adopt in their view of life; they would like to take in everything through the heart, as they say, without exerting the head at all. The heart cannot beat without the head, but the heart is well able to take things in if by “heart” here one really means the stomach! And then, what ought to be achieved through the head is supposed to be thrown in gratis, especially where the most important things in life are concerned. It is very important indeed to pay heed to these matters, because in observing them it becomes evident what earnestness must be applied to life at this juncture, how necessary it is to learn from the illusions to which even the Gospels may give rise, and how dearly humankind today loves those illusions.

Truth is beyond the reach of the kind of knowledge for which people aspire today. They feel on secure ground when they can reckon by means of figures, when they can prove things by statistics. With statistics and figures Ahriman has an easy game; it suits him admirably when some erudite scholar points out, for example, that conditions in the Balkans are due to the fact that the population of Macedonia consists of so many Greeks, so many Serbs, so many Bulgarians. Nothing can stand up against figures because of the faith that is reposed in them; and Ahriman is only too ready to exploit figures for his purposes. But later on one begins to see just how “reliable” such figures are! Admittedly, figures are sometimes a means of proof, but if one goes beyond them and investigates more closely, one often notices things like the following. In the statistics of Macedonia, for example, a father may be put down as a Greek, one son as a Serb, another son as a Bulgarian; so the father is counted in with the Greeks, one son with the Serbs, and the other with the Bulgarians. What would really help one to get at the truth, however, would be to discover how it has happened that in the same family one is said to be Greek, one Serbian, and one Bulgarian, and how this affects the figures—rather than simply accepting the figures that people find so satisfactory today. If the father is Greek then naturally the sons are Greek too. Figures are means whereby people are led astray in a direction favorable to Ahriman for his future incarnation in the third millennium A.D.

We shall speak of these things again in the lecture tomorrow.

If you take the concept of Jesus from the Koran, for example, and consult from 19th Surah, you will see that it specifically mentions that the Nathan Jesus Child actually spoke immediately at his birth. This is what the Koran says: “Jesus spoke and said:‘See, I am the servant of God. He has given me the book and He has made me to a prophet and He has blessed me wherever I am, and He has given me His blessings so long as I live, and love to my mother and peace upon the day of my birth and the day when I die and the day when I am resurrected again to life. This is Jesus, the son of Mary, the Word of truth’ ”. This actually appears in the Koran.

In the ancient Jewish teachings as they are contained in the Talmud and other writings apart from the Old Testament, you learn that which is more of a conceptual nature, but on the other hand the Haggadah is the name given to that which modern people would call legends and tales. However, these legends and tales in the Haggadah refer more to actual perception in the spiritual world; they go back to imaginative knowledge.

I am going to share a portion from the Haggadah about Solomon with you. It says: “Rabbi Joachin says: The feet of man guarantee for him that they bring him to that place where he is supposed to go. And they tell about those Moors who are the sons of Shesher named Elacoraf and Akia who are the scribes of Solomon. One day Solomon saw the Angel of Death who was very sad and he asked: Why are you sad? The Angel of Death replied: Because I require these two Moors. As a result of that Solomon gave his Moors to the Seherem (Seherem are those demons who for imaginative vision look like goats and fly through the air) and sent them into the City of Loos. When these two Moors arrived there, they died. A few days afterwards, Solomon again saw the Angel of Death and this time the Angel was laughing. And Solomon said to the Angel: Why do you laugh? The Angel of Death replied: You sent them precisely to the place where I wanted them to go. So at that time Solomon said the following: The feet of the human being guarantee for him that they bring him to the place where he is supposed to be. Thus Solomon had an experience with the Angel of Death, an experience which confirmed the truth of that which Rabbi Joachin said, namely, the feet of man guarantee for him that he is taken to the place where he needs to be.”

Now, my dear friends, you will see that a number of questions are raised in this story from the Haggadah. The feet of the man guarantee that he is brought to the place where he is supposed to go. Why are the feet spoken of so precisely? In such ancient imaginative legends, nothing of an arbitrary nature is there, everything has its definite deep significance. So we have the first question which one can ask. Then we also have another: Why was the Angel of Death sad when he appeared before Solomon with the statement that he is going to take the two scribes away? It seems ridiculously trivial to say that the Angel was sad; he was going to do his job. Then Solomon asks him: “Why are you sad?” What is the significance of this question? The Angel of Death says he is sad because he demands the two scribes. But Solomon gives them to the demons who carry them into the City of Loos.

Now, you see the question about the city of Loos can be more easily answered. The city of Loos was so organized that no one was allowed to die within the city, hence those people who were ready to die were carried outside the city. It was the only city which had this organization. Therefore when Solomon heard that the Angel of Death was going to take his scribes, he sent them to the city because he believed that if they were in the city, the Angel of Death could not get hold of them. This is the story given in the Haggadah. However, these stories are found in many other places in Jewish tradition. There it is related in this way: They had only arrived at the gates of the city because they fell down during their flight. And because they were not able to enter the city, the Angel was able to get hold of them. However, the next day you have the Angel of Death standing before Solomon and laughing. This is very strange; the Angel is laughing because he was able to get hold of these two scribes for death. Solomon recognizes the truth of Rabbi Joachin when he says: “The feet of human beings are a guarantee that he is brought to the place where he is supposed to be.”

Now, it is important to understand that both scribes, both Moors, are the sons of Shesher, who himself was the scribe for David. Thus, this indicates that these two scribes of King Solomon were very special. we must put all these things together if we want to perceive the whole significance of the questions which surface when we speak about this very significant cognitive moment in the life of King Solomon. Now, remember that King Solomon was not wise because he was clever in the sense that modern man is clever, he was called the wise Solomon because he was able to have real vision into the spiritual world; the spiritual world was open to him. Therefore Solomon was to experience that truth which Rabbi Joachin imparted, namely, the truth in connection with the feet of human beings.

When you consider the human being in comparison with the animal, then you see a very important difference. Through the fact that man has a vertical spine, he is at right angles to the surface of the earth. The spine of the animal, however, is parallel to the surface of the earth. Now I hope that no one here is going by object to telling us about the kangaroo. These are exceptions which can be explained if we go into the details of the situation. But let us put that on the side for the moment. We know man has an upright spine and the spine of the animal is horizontal. Now, when we draw a line through the spine of the animal—it is not a straight line, but a curved one—then we have a line curving parallel to the curvature of the earth which means when we draw a circle parallel to the earth then that passes through the spine of the animal. However, when we draw the same curve for the human being, then we find that this curve has a middle point. In the case of the animal we have seen the middle point of the curve was the middle point of the earth. However in the middle point of the curve that we draw through the spinal column of man, there you have the middle point of the moon. Why? Because that particular stage of development which the animal is going through at present, man already went through in the ancient Moon period. Therefore, at the present time man still has a connection with the moon insofar as the curve passing through his spine has its center point in the moon, just as the curve passing through the animal has its center point in the earth. Therefore man is connected with the moon in a similar descriptive way as the animal is connected with the earth.

Now, man has torn himself away from the earth; man is not as united with the earth as is the animal kingdom. As far as his external physical nature is concerned, man has torn himself loose from his earth planet. However, he has only torn himself loose in one aspect of his nature; he has another aspect through which he is attached to the earth, and that is with his feet. Man has to stand upon the earth with his feet. However, passing over from the Moon development to the earth development, he has torn himself away from the earth with his hands. His feet, however, are still connected with the earth. If you understand the human form as it has developed itself in the transition from the Moon evolution to the Earth evolution, so you must say: In so far as man belongs to the earth, the earth has been able to attach itself to him in his feet. What guarantees does man have to come to the earth? This is guaranteed by man's foot situation. Hence we have the explanation in the Hebrew: The feet guarantee him. The word ‘guarantee’ in the Hebrew is the same as the word you use in reference to guaranteeing someone an amount of capital, the word guarantee indicates that as far as his feet are concerned, it is guaranteed that he has a connection with the earth. That does not mean that the feet of the human being carry him to the place of his death, but the whole secret of the human form lies in this sentence as Solomon has recognized it through the fact that he is able to look into the spiritual world.

Now, I have yet to describe that which Solomon revealed when he had words with the Angel of Death. We will see this from the example of how we have a wisdom present in humanity which we previously called the primal wisdom. This primal wisdom passed away in order that man could have an opportunity during the Earth evolution to develop this wisdom again, but to develop it out of himself in complete freedom.

Now, there is another riddle in this story about the Angel of Death. At one time he is sad and at another time he is laughing. We can just think about the true nature of laughing and weeping. You know very well that if you see a person walking along the street who is laughing to himself, you would say that he is crazy. You see that laughing is something which you expect one to participate in with other people. On the other hand, when it comes to crying, you know that usually you cry when you are alone. To explain this phenomenon of weeping and laughing, we have to remember that we generally think that what we are as human beings is only enclosed within our skin and we forget the fact that the air is outside us and when we breathe it in, it becomes part of us and then we breathe it out again. Therefore we are part of our whole environment. And when we go to sleep, we breathe out our ego and astral body, we breathe it in again when we wake up. So we see that there is a flowing life between us and the spiritual world. Actually when we laugh, we spread out our ego and astral body outside us. You stretch out, you expand your astral body and your ego when you laugh. And this expansion of the astral body goes out to the ether body. The invisible man spreads himself out elastically. That is the process when you laugh. The reverse process takes place when you weep. There you have the astral body contracting together with the ether body and pressing itself an the physical body which then presses out tears.

Now we go back to Solomon. When Solomon looked at the Angel of Death, he did not see a physical body, but he saw a spiritual being. What he really saw when the Angel laughed was the Angel spreading himself out. The first time he saw the Angel, he was weeping, that means the Angel was drawing himself together. Here we see how spiritual beings fulfil their activities. Laughing and weeping is an accompaniment of life with us human beings through which we only express our inner being; we show how our inner being is constituted. In the case of spiritual beings, they show their actions. As far as we are concerned, when we laugh and cry, it has very little significance for other people. We do not produce activities through our laughing and crying. These are accompaniments of our life. However, in the moment when we approach certain spiritual beings who with their actual self are occupied more in working than we are, there you have the significance of the expanding out and the contracting in. The Angel of Death, because he was in the position of having to fetch these two Moors to death, had to hold his forces together, he had to condense himself in order to give support for his forces because he was about to perform some activity which expressed itself in the fact that he was sad. That is only an indication of how he is drawing himself together. The next day when he had accomplished his task, then the elasticity expressed itself again, he spread himself out and you had the appearance of laughter.

Now we come to the next question: Why were they led to the City of Loos and what is the meaning of this whole process with Solomon? In the first place we must contemplate the fact that Solomon was a person who stands in connection with the spiritual world. I told you that it is very significant that both scribes were the sons of Shesher who had been the scribe of King David. Thus they are very valuable personalities and scribes at that ancient time signified something different from what it means today. Scribes in Egypt, for example, were people who were able with all sorts of inner fervor to paint letters in the sense of the ancient Egyptian script, and when someone painted a false letter, he stood under the penalty of death, because he was dealing with something of a holy nature. There was something of a holy nature in the letters; this applied to the scribes of King Solomon who also stood in connection with the spiritual world. They stood in communion with Solomon who imparted his knowledge of the spiritual world to them. And the City of Loos points out the fact to us that there was something in these scribes which enabled them to have a feeling of their immortality even during their life, they had this connection with the spiritual world. We ought to bring our attention to the fact that they knew of their soul-spiritual kernel which passes through the portal of death. They knew this not only theoretically, but they belonged to those who, as it were, were initiated in a certain degree into these mysteries.

Hence the Angel of Death had some difficulty here, because it was necessary to put himself in a certain connection with King Solomon, which means that both scribes, as well as King Solomon, lived in the consciousness of their immortality. Therefore it was necessary for the Angel of Death to enter into the whole process which he had to execute because a consciousness was present of the death which was involved here. This did not mean that King Solomon wanted to protect his scribes from death and therefore sent then to the City of Loos, but it was supposed to indicate that here we are dealing with death which was completely conscious, that the knowledge of death was part of their knowledge. Here the main emphasis was that Solomon was conscious of the death of his scribes and when it is said that he sent then to the city of Loos, that should only indicate to us how the Ahrimanic force represented by the Angel of Death is represented by its agent as the demonic goat which enters into the situation. Thus the whole process which occurs consciously is supposed to be explained to us through the story in the following way: A death once occurred in such a way that a wise man was conscious of it. That is what Rabbi Joachin wanted to indicate. The whole process is connected with the spiritual world. This arising of knowledge of the super-sensible world in King Solomon is indicated by this story. Rabbi Joachin said: “Man is bound to the earth through the form of the feet and its relationship to the earth, and it is expressed that man is connected to the earth in a one-sided way, that only his feet are guarantee for the fact that man belongs to the earth. The upright posture of man is a guarantee for the fact that he is given over to the spiritual world with his essential kernel. And because Solomon was able to believe him, he was able to be made consciously aware of the death of his scribes who were dear to him.

Therefore we see that the idea of these ancient traditions can only be understood with the aid of spiritual science. You learn from that that Solomon's wisdom is connected with the fact that he was able to look into the spiritual world and discover the mystery of death. In the line of the generations which descends from King Solomon, you have the physical preparation, as it were, for this clairvoyance in so far as it is able to enter the portal of death. Therefore we see the body of Jesus descending from the Solomon line of the House of David, but the soul is that of Zarathustra. We have to be clear about the soul being that of Zarathustra and why it had to enter into a body which descended from someone who was permeated with clairvoyance.

Now, I have often spoken about that which came with the soul of Zarathustra. Today I only want to emphasize the fact that that which came later was mostly removed from the teaching of Zarathustra and then passed over into the teaching of Mani, and further on into the teaching of Manichaeisn. We know the deepest questions of the riddle of man belongs to the question of the relationship of good and evil, and we know that we can understand it when we have insight into the working of Lucifer and Ahriman. But this working of Lucifer and Ahriman leads us back to Zarathustra. Lucifer and Ahriman are already present as a fact of the spiritual world in the teaching of Zarathustra. And let us try to bring the Zarathustrian teaching of the good and evil into connection with the teaching of predestination which is connected with the Islamic religion.

Let us consider the import of this teaching of predestination. On the one side it says: Everything which occurs has been predetermined, so that even taking a step in front of my door was predetermined. Even when I die that was predestined. Everything is strongly predestined, which means that for the consciousness of the Islamic person, everything that occurs was already previously written in the Book of God. However, every time this Islamic person is confronted with something, he says: “If it is the will of God.” He is completely convinced of the fact that everything is written in the Book of God; however, he says: “I will only do this thing if it is the will of God”. A Westerner would say to this Islamic person: “If you say that everything is predestined, then it does not make any sense to say I will do it if God wills it. Why do you say: ‘I will do it if God wills it?’ There is no doubt about it since everything is already determined from the beginning.” Here we have an insoluble contradiction; it really is an insoluble contradiction. Look at Western philosophy, at Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling and so on, and you will find the after-working of this insoluble contradiction, but it appears in a particularly crass way in the teaching of Kismet, of everything being predestined. Here we have a teaching which, in this connection, is different from the teaching of Zarathustra, that the people who know Zarathustra know about Lucifer and Ahriman. At first we have the teaching of primal wisdom which did not contain any contradictions and this transforms itself into teaching which does carry a contradiction. A person who does not recognize that life is filled with contradictions will really never understand life. Life, when it is only approached with the human understanding is bound to give many contradictions.

First we have the age of Zarathustra and then this is followed by a time when man is confronted by contradictions. But through these contradictions he should be stimulated to develop his real inner life. Now, you have something happening in the earth evolution where something which did not belong to the earth evolution comes in in order that man can resolve these contradictions. Here we have the Nathan Jesus coming into earth evolution and with this Nathan Jesus you have something which helps to solve all the earth contradictions, because the Nathan Jesus comes from the spiritual world and is not attached to the earth. In the Nathan Jesus we have a healing of the contradictions which occurs in human beings during the earth sojourn. So we find where you have this contradiction of the predestination and the idea ‘If God wills it’ in the Koran, and you have in this very same Koran the allusion to the Nathan Jesus which I quoted earlier, who spoke immediately at birth. You see, all these things are very complicated.

It requires courage, courage in order to think things toward the end. And this is the sort of courage that we get from spiritual science. Too often today people are apathetic, but in spiritual science we want to replace apathy with calmness. With apathy you do not care; with calmness you are able to absorb these things in a mood of equanimity.

Certain duties imposed on me from the spiritual world have made it necessary for me to research some things regarding the life of Christ Jesus in recent times. You know that it is possible to gain access to events that took place in the past through the so-called Akashic Records research. So an attempt was made to gain access to the most important event in the evolution of the earth, the event that is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. A number of things have emerged that can complement the more spiritual scientific explanations that have been given to you on various occasions about the Mystery of Golgotha. What has now emerged from the Akasha Chronicle research is of a different nature; it is, so to speak, more concrete, a sum of facts related to the life of Christ Jesus. It is hoped that these facts will, over time, come together to form a kind of fifth gospel, and we will talk about why it is necessary in our time to extract from the occult sources what can be described as a fifth gospel in a certain respect.

Today I will begin by telling a few stories that relate to the youth of Jesus of Nazareth and that will culminate in an important conversation that he had with his stepmother or foster mother. Some of what will now be discussed as the Fifth Gospel has already been communicated to some of you by Miss Stinde; but for the sake of the context I shall also have to briefly mention the things that have already been presented to some of you.

I would like to begin my story today with the event that I have already described to you several times, with the passing over of the Zarathustra ego into the physical form of the Jesus child who descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David. I will briefly mention that, according to the Akasha Chronicle research, two Jesus children were born around the same time. One was born out of what we can call the Solomon line of the House of David, the other out of the Nathan line of the House of David. The two were very different in terms of their entire childhood. The body that descended from the Solomonic line of the House of David contained the same ego that once walked the earth as Zarathustra. This ego had advanced to become a spirit that, as is often the case occurred in such cases, he appeared childlike during the first twelve years, but he proved to be endowed with the very highest gifts, and he learned with great rapidity everything that human cultural development had produced up to that age. We would call a boy of the highest talent, according to what emerges from the Akasha Chronicle, this boy from the Solomonic line of the House of David. We cannot address the other Jesus boy from the Nathanic line with such predicates. He was basically untalented for everything that can be learned through the achievements of the earth sciences and arts of man. He even showed a certain reluctance to learn anything of what mankind has achieved. On the other hand, this Jesus-boy showed the most profound genius of the heart; even in his earliest boyhood he radiated the warmest love imaginable, and in human and earthly terms he absorbed everything that could lead to the development of a life of love.

We also already know that after the two boys had turned about twelve years old, the ego of Zarathustra emerged, as sometimes happens in the occult processes of the evolution of humanity on earth. It emerged from the body of the Jesus-child of the Solomonic line, and passed over into the bodily sheaths of the other Jesus-child. The Gospel of Luke indicates this by telling how this Jesus boy then sat among the scribes and gave astounding answers and was hardly recognized by his own parents. Thus, from the age of twelve, we have come to know this Jesus child, with the genius of the heart, who had united within himself the sum of all human gifts related to feeling and the soul; we have the union of Zarathustra's ego with this Jesus child, who at that time did not yet know what was happening to him: that it was the ego of Zarathustra that left the body of the Solomonic Jesus child and moved into him and already worked in his bodily shells, so that both elements gradually permeated each other to the highest perfection.

We also know that the biological mother of the Nathanian Jesus child soon died, as did the father of the Solomonian Jesus child, and we know that a family was formed from the two families from which the two Jesus so that the Nathanian Jesus from the other family got step-siblings and the natural mother of the Solomonian Jesus boy became his step- or foster mother. In this family he now grew up in Nazareth. The extraordinary talent which he had shown when he gave those great and powerful answers in the temple among the scribes, astonishing everyone, increased further. Something wonderful took place in the soul of this Jesus child of Nazareth, in whom was contained the ego of Zarathustra, from the age of twelve until about the age of eighteen: something emerged from the depths of his soul life that no one else at that time was able to experience; a tremendous maturity of spiritual judgment, alongside a deep originality of his soul abilities, asserted itself. To the amazement of those around him, that mighty divine voice from the spiritual regions, which in the Hebrew secret teachings was called the great Bath-Kol, spoke ever more clearly and distinctly to his soul. But differently than to the scribes, the great Bath-Kol spoke to this adolescent boy in a sublime way. It came up like an inner, wondrous illumination. So it came about that even in his youth, Jesus of Nazareth could say to himself in a sad mood: What has become of Hebrew humanity since those times, since this humanity heard the old prophets, those old prophets who themselves still received the spiritual secrets from higher worlds through their inspirations and intuitions? Then it dawned on Jesus of Nazareth through inner illumination that there had once been a close communication between the old Hebrew prophets and the divine spiritual powers; that the greatest secrets were revealed to the old prophets through the holy, solemn voice of the great Bath Kol. But times had changed until the present day, when Jesus of Nazareth lived. There were scholars and scribes, and some prophets, who could only grasp the echoes, the faint echoes, of what the great prophets had once received as revelation. But all that could be attained in the present time was only a shadow of the old teachings. But what was preserved in the scriptures as tradition, Jesus felt and sensed - now that he received it through his direct inner inspiration, through lights that shone more and more brightly in him from day to day, that it was there, but that the present was no longer suited to understand it. His life was powerful in these inspirations.

One gains an immensely strong impression when one directs one's spiritual gaze to this point in the evolution of the earth, when one sees again, in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, what was revealed in ancient times, as it were, to the patriarchal prophets, and one sees how lonely he stood in humanity, which was without understanding for what he experienced. He had to say to Himself: Even if the great Bath Kol spoke loudly and clearly from heaven, there are no people here who could understand it. What has become of humanity? This weighed heavily on his soul as an enormous pain. So we see the boy growing into young adulthood. From week to week, new insights arose for him, but each new insight was linked for him to an ever-increasing suffering, to deep, deep pain over what humanity has forgotten, what it can no longer understand. The entire descent of humanity was borne by the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. One learns many things about the pain and suffering that people in the world have to endure when one focuses one's spiritual vision on the evolution of humanity. But the impression that one receives from that soul, which out of pure compassion for humanity felt the most intense pain at the descent of humanity, at what humanity was no longer able to receive of what was prepared for it from spiritual worlds. This pain increased all the more because in the whole environment of Jesus of Nazareth, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, there was no one with whom he could have spoken about it in any way. Even the best disciples of the great scholars, such as Hillel, did not understand the greatness that was revealed in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. He was alone with his revelations and alone with his infinite pain, embracing humanity in boundless compassion. Above all, I would like to characterize this mood of his soul in Jesus of Nazareth. While he was going through all this inwardly, while worlds were unfolding within him, he worked unpretentiously on the outside in his father's business, which was a kind of carpentry. And so he matured until he was eighteen years old. Then, according to the will of the family, he was to go on a kind of journey through the world, moving from place to place to work there for a while. So he did. And this brings us to a second period in the youth of Jesus of Nazareth, which lasted from about the age of eighteen to twenty-four.

He traveled to many places, both within and outside of Palestine. He came into contact with Jews and Gentiles in all kinds of Gentile regions. One could discern something remarkable about this personality, which will always be among the most instructive aspects of any attempt to explore the secrets of the human depths: One could see that the immense pain he had experienced in his soul had been transformed into immense love, as it often does when he is selfless, into a love that works not only through words but also through his mere presence. When he entered the families in whose midst he was to work, they knew from the way he presented himself, from the way he was, that the love that can only come from one person radiated from this soul; a love that did everyone good, in whose atmosphere everyone who was aware of it wanted to live. And this love was transformed pain, was the metamorphosis of pain. Many things happened that gave the people among whom he lived the impression that they were dealing with a person unlike any who had ever walked the earth. By day he worked; in the evenings the families gathered at the places where he worked and there he was among them. Everything that could radiate from his love lived in such families. People felt that they were more than mere humans when he spoke his simple words, but they were imbued with what he had experienced from the age of twelve to eighteen. And then, when he had moved away from the place, it was as if these families felt him still among them, as if he had not left at all. His presence was still felt. Yes, it happened again and again that they all had a real vision: while they were talking about what he had said, while they were inwardly rejoicing in what they felt of his presence, they saw him come in through the door, sit down among them, feel his loving presence, and hear him speak. He was not there in the flesh, but there was a vision shared by all.

And so, in many regions, a sense of community gradually developed between Jesus of Nazareth and the people with whom he came into contact over the years. And everywhere people talked about this man of great love. Many scriptures were applied to him. The scriptures were not understood, and he was also understood little with the mind; but with the heart, one felt all the more deeply his love, the extraordinary of his existence and his effect. He came not only to Hebrew but also to pagan areas, even outside of Palestine. Strangely enough, his path also led him to such pagan areas where pagan teachings had declined. He got to know some pagan places whose old places of worship had fallen into disrepair.

And then one day he came to a place that had suffered particularly from the decline of the old pagan places of worship, the old pagan priesthood. The pagan places of worship were, after all, an external expression of what had been practiced here and there in the mysteries. The ceremonies in the places of worship were images of the mysteries. But all this was in decline, had fallen into disrepair in many areas. Then Jesus of Nazareth came to a place of worship where, for reasons unknown to him, the outer buildings had also fallen into disrepair. I still do not know the location of this place of worship. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to determine the exact location and name of the place in the Akasha Chronicle; for some reason, the impression of the place has been blurred on the map of the earth, so to speak. What I am telling you is absolutely correct, in my opinion, but it is not possible to indicate the location; for some reason it cannot be found. But it was a pagan place, a dilapidated place of worship, and all around it the people were sad and sick and burdened with all kinds of diseases and hardships. Because they were burdened with such diseases and hardships, the priesthood had left and fled. The place of worship had fallen into disrepair. The people felt unhappy because their priests had abandoned them. There was tremendous misery when Jesus entered this pagan place of worship. As he approached, he was noticed by some and immediately it spread like wildfire among the people: here comes someone who can help us! Because of the power that radiated from his love, which had already become a kind of sanctifying love, people felt as if someone special was approaching, as if heaven itself had sent them another of their cult priests. They flocked there in great numbers, hoping that their cult would now be performed again. Jesus of Nazareth was not inclined to perform the pagan cult, as is understandable; but when he looked at the people with his gaze, which had now been heightened to a kind of clairvoyance, born of pain and love, he already understood something of the essence of the decline of paganism. Then he learned to recognize the following: He knew that in ancient times, when the still good priests served and sacrificed, good spiritual beings from the sphere of the higher hierarchies bowed down at these places of worship for the pagan sacrifices and rituals. But little by little – that dawned on him – paganism had fallen into decline. Whereas in the past the rivers of mercy and grace of the good gods worshipped by the heathens had been sent down to the sacrificial altars and united with the sacrifice, now demons, emissaries of Ahriman and Lucifer, had descended. He saw them among the people and realized that these demonic entities were actually the cause of the evil diseases that were raging among the people, who now pitied him in their deepest souls. And when he perceived these mysterious connections, when he thus came to understand the secret of the declining paganism, he fell down as if dead. This occurrence had a terrible effect on the people, who believed that a priest had come down from heaven. They saw the man fall down and flee, flee in terror from the place to which they had just flocked. With the last glance that he cast, in his ordinary consciousness, at the fleeing people, Jesus of Nazareth saw the demons fleeing with the people; but other demons still surrounded him. Then the everyday consciousness receded and he felt as if he had been transported into a higher spiritual world, from which the blessings of the pagan gods had once flowed, which had united with the sacrifices. And just as he had otherwise heard the voice of the great Bath-Kol, so now he heard the sounds from the divine-spiritual realms, from those hierarchies to which the pagan good gods belonged. He heard human primordial revelation in this enraptured state.

I have tried to put into German words what he heard there; as well as I could, to reproduce what he heard. And it is characteristic: I was able to share these words first at the laying of the foundation stone of our Dornach building. It is like the reverse of the Christian Lord's Prayer, which he only had to reveal much later in the well-known form. But now it impressed itself on him as it might have been revealed in the beginning of the evolution of the earth as a cosmic Lord's Prayer. This is how it sounds when translated into German:

Amen

Evil rules
Witnesses of dissolving egoity
From other selfhood guilt
We experience in our daily bread
in which heaven's will does not prevail
in which man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgotten your name
you fathers in the heavens.

So then:

Amen
Evil reigns
Witnesses of the disintegration of the ego
Of the guilt of selfhood owed to others
Experienced in the daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
In which man has separated himself from your kingdom
And forgotten your name
you fathers in the heavens.

What spoke to him from the regions from which the gods of the heathens had once worked was like a great, powerful revelation to him. These words, which at first sound simple, in fact contain the secret of the whole incorporation of man into physical earthly corporeality. They contain this secret. One comes more and more to realize, as I have convinced myself by gradually meditating on these words, what tremendous depths are contained in them. One would like to say that the whole ancient pagan heaven, which expressed itself in this mystery of the Incarnation as in a macrocosmic Lord's Prayer, once worked on the fallen Jesus of Nazareth, who was in a raptured state. And when he came to again, he still saw the last fleeing demons, who had taken the place of the old good pagan gods, and in the far distance he saw the people fleeing. But he had suffered not only from the pain caused by the revelations of the Bath-Kol, for which humanity was no longer ripe, but now he had to suffer the second pain, because he had to recognize: Even that which had once been spoken to paganism, even that which were divine-spiritual revelations for paganism, is now in decline. Even if all the voices of the heavens were to resound today, humanity would not have the capacity to receive them. — So he had to say to himself.

It is a tremendous impression to see how much pain had to be accumulated in a soul for the Mystery of Golgotha to be prepared. It is a tremendous impression to realize, through these things, what pain had to be poured into that impulse which we call the Christ impulse for the further development of the earth. In this way, Jesus had also come to know the essence of paganism and the essence of its decline.

When he was about twenty-four years old, he went home; it was around the same time that his biological father died. He was now alone with his siblings, who were all his step-siblings, and his foster or stepmother. Now something strange happened: little by little, the love and understanding of the stepmother or foster mother for him grew more and more, while his brothers and sisters did not understand him. Something like a genius of the heart blossomed in her. She was able to understand the lonely man, who carried the suffering of humanity within him, little by little – even if only little by little – while his brothers did not care.

But first he would get to know something else: the community that showed him, so to speak, the third aspect of the decline of humanity. He would get to know the Essene community. This Essene community, which had its main center at the Dead Sea, was widespread throughout the world at that time. It was a strict, closed order that strove to ascend again through a certain regulated, renounced life to those levels above which humanity had descended in its decline ; to ascend by spiritual exercises to that spiritual height where something could be heard again of—no matter whether it was called in the Jewish sense, the great Bath-Kol, or in the heathen sense, the old Revelation. The Esseneans sought to achieve this through strict training of the soul and isolation from the things that otherwise characterized humanity. What they strove for had attracted many. They had various possessions far and wide throughout the land. Whoever wanted to become an Essenean had to give up what he had inherited or could still inherit to the common possession. No one was allowed to keep property for himself. Many Essenes had a house or a country estate here or there, which they dedicated to the order. As a result, the order had scattered settlements throughout the Near East, especially in Palestine, including Nazareth. Everything had to be in the public domain. The Essenes performed great deeds of charity. No one owned anything for themselves. Everyone was allowed to give away from the common property to anyone they considered poor or in need. Through spiritual exercises they attained a certain healing power, which had an enormous beneficial effect. They had one principle that would be impossible today, but which was strictly observed at that time: anyone could support people they considered worthy from the common fund, but never their relatives. They had to free themselves from all the ties of the senses that connected them to the outside world.

Jesus of Nazareth did not actually become an Essene, like John, whom he briefly met among the Essenes; but because of the enormity of what his soul held, he was treated with great trust in the order. Much of what was otherwise only known to members of the higher degrees was discussed with him in confidence, based on the way his soul worked. In this way he learned to recognize how they were striving upwards again along a steep path to the heights from which men had descended. Often it seemed to him as if he could say: Yes, there are still people among us who are ascending again to that which was once revealed to mankind in primeval times, but which mankind in general does not understand today.

Once, after he had had a profound conversation about the secrets of the world within the Essene community, he had a great, powerful impression. As he walked out through the gate, he saw two figures in a vision. He recognized Ahriman and Lucifer and saw them flee from the Essene gates. He knew that they fled into the rest of humanity. He often had such a vision from then on. It was the custom of the Essenes not to pass through the ordinary gates of a city or house of that time that were somehow decorated with sculptures. They had to turn back at such gates. But since there were so many Essenes – there were as many Essenes as Pharisees in Palestine at that time – they were taken into consideration and had their own very simple gates built. So the Essenes were not allowed to go through any gate that had any images on it. This was connected with their entire spiritual development. Therefore, there were special Essene gates in the cities. Jesus of Nazareth had often passed through such Essene gates. He always saw how Lucifer and Ahriman in a particularly threatening way for humanity departed from the gates. Yes, you see, when you learn about such things in theory, they certainly make an impression; but when you learn about them as you can learn through a glimpse into the Akasha Chronicle, when you really see the figures of Lucifer and Ahriman under the same conditions as Jesus of Nazareth saw them, then it makes a completely different impression. Then you begin to grasp the deepest secrets not only with your mind, with your intellect, but with your whole soul, you not only know them, you experience them, you are one with them.

I can only stammer with poor words what now, as a third great pain, was discharged onto the soul of Jesus: He recognized that it was indeed possible in his time for individuals to separate themselves and achieve the highest insight, but only if the rest of humanity is all the more cut off from all development of the soul. At the expense of the rest of humanity, such people seek the perfection of their soul, and because they strive for such a development, through which Lucifer and Ahriman cannot approach them, they must flee. But as these individual people break free, Lucifer and Ahriman flee to the other people. These are plunged into decadence all the more, the more such people rise in their isolation. This was indeed a terrible impression for Jesus of Nazareth, who felt undivided compassion for all people, who could not feel without the deepest, most profound pain that individuals should rise in their soul development at the expense of humanity in general. And so the idea formed in him: Lucifer and Ahriman receive in general humanity an ever-increasing power precisely because individuals want to be the pure, the Essene. That was the third great pain, even the most terrible pain; for now something like despair of the fate of mankind would sometimes break out in his soul. The secret of this fate of mankind came over him terribly. He carried this fate of the world, crowded together in his own soul.

So it was in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, so it was after the mother, who was his stepmother or foster mother, had more and more of an understanding for him that one day, when they both felt that their souls could understand each other, he entered into a conversation with this stepmother or foster mother, into that conversation which was so infinitely significant for the development of humanity. Now, during this conversation, Jesus of Nazareth realized how he could truly pour into the stepmother's heart what he had experienced since he was twelve years old. Now he could gradually put into words to her what he had been through. And he did so. He told her what he had felt about the decay of Judaism and paganism, about the Essenes, about the hermitage of the Essenes. And it was so that these words, which passed from the soul of Jesus to the soul of the stepmother or foster mother, did not work like ordinary words, but as if he could have given each of his words something of the full power of his soul. They were inspired by what he had suffered, what had come directly from his suffering for love, for the holiness of the soul. He was so connected with his suffering and love that something of his self floated on the wings of his words into the heart and soul of this stepmother or foster mother.

And then, after he had told her what he had gone through, he brought up something else that had come to him as an insight and which I will now summarize in words that we have gained in spiritual science. What Jesus of Nazareth said to his stepmother or foster mother will only be said in accordance with its actual meaning, but I will choose the words so that you can understand them more easily than if I were to speak directly in German the words that came to me from the pictures in the Akasha Chronicle. Jesus of Nazareth spoke to his stepmother or foster mother, as in all his pain he had come to understand the secret of the evolution of humanity, how humanity had developed. And so he said to her: I have recognized that humanity once went through an ancient epoch in which, unconsciously, it received the highest wisdom in the freshness of childhood. With these words, he hinted at what we refer to in spiritual science as the first post-Atlantic cultural epoch, when the holy rishis of the ancient Indian people were able to impart their great and powerful wisdom to humanity. But these teachings were seen by Jesus of Nazareth in such a way that he could say to himself: How were these teachings received by the holy rishis? What forces were active in the souls of the rishis and in the entire ancient Indian people? They were forces that otherwise only prevail in childhood, between birth and the seventh year, but which then died away for the individual human being, but were poured out over the entire human age. Because the childhood forces were spread over the entire human age, these ancient, sacred, divine truths flowed down into the human mind, inspiring and intuiting. But with the passing of this first epoch of humanity in the post-Atlantean era, which we call the ancient Indian cultural epoch, which Jesus of Nazareth compared to the first childhood to his mother, the possibility of preserving the forces of childhood until later in life also passed. They faded away and therefore humanity was no longer able to absorb and preserve within itself that which had once been revealed to it. Jesus of Nazareth further spoke of the fact that an epoch then followed which can be compared to the human age from seven to fourteen years, but where the forces that are otherwise only present from seven to fourteen years of age were poured out over the whole of human life, so that people still experienced them as old men. Because this was the case, and because these forces could still be present at later ages, it was possible in this second, the primeval Persian epoch, to attain the wisdom that we recognize as the wisdom of Zarathustra, which Jesus of Nazareth now saw rejected by humanity due to a lack of understanding. In the third epoch, which Jesus of Nazareth could look back on and spoke of to his mother, what is otherwise experienced between the fourteenth and twenty-first year was poured out over all generations, so that even at fifty or sixty years of age people still had the powers that otherwise only last until the age of twenty-one. Thus accessible for this third epoch were those great sciences of the workings of nature that we so admire when we penetrate into Egyptian, into the ancient Chaldean science, into the true foundations of their astrological knowledge, that deep knowledge that deals not only with the earth, but with the secrets of the world in their effect on people, and of which later humanity could understand only a little. But the third age also saw Jesus of Nazareth fading away. Just as the individual human being grows old, he said, so has humanity grown older.

The greatest impulses for Greek culture came from the mystery wisdom, which caused a high point of philosophical thought and art in it, but also brought about the transition to the fourth cultural period in which we ourselves live, which already appeals to the independence of the human being and creates new social structures that break with the dependency on the old mystery being. The decline of the old mysteries begins with the rise of the new state system and its rivalries among itself; but its rapid intellectual ascent is also connected with this. The forces that can only grasp the slightest when they are poured out over the entire human lifespan are now there. We live within a humanity that can only grasp with the powers that are inherent to humanity between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight. But when this cultural period has faded away, humanity will have reached its middle age; a certain peak will have been reached that cannot be maintained. The descent must begin, albeit slowly at first. Humanity is entering an age in which the forces are dying, in a similar way to the age that the individual reaches in his thirties, from which the descent begins. The descent of all mankind begins with the next age, so said Jesus of Nazareth, as all the pain of this future decline of mankind passed through his soul. Humanity itself, he said, is entering the age when the original forces have died. But while for the individual, as it were, the forces of youth can still continue to work, this cannot be the case for humanity as a whole. It must enter an invincible age of old age if no new forces come into it. He foresaw the desolation of earthly culture if no young forces came into it. The natural forces have dried up as humanity enters the age that, for the individual, runs from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five. If no other sources then open up, humanity will grow old.

Summarizing this, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother: “What will become of all mankind if it is subject to the fate of the individual?” Faced with the force of this question, Jesus and his stepmother felt the need for a new spiritual impulse. Something had to come that could only come from outside, that was not in humanity itself, because after this middle age something new in inner human powers, not connected with the sense world, could no longer unfold freely in man. Something had to be expected from outside, which otherwise grows from within in the time between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth year of life. And with an enormous force, which cannot be compared to anything, the soul of Jesus of Nazareth was wrung from the pain that there was nothing in the environment that could pour the forces of renewal into decaying humanity.

That was how the conversation went, and with each word something flowed from one's own self into the stepmother or foster mother. The words had wings and in them it was expressed that they were not just words, but that something was wringing itself out of the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth, which was precisely like his self, which had become one with his pain and his love-power. In that moment, as his self was wringing itself free, it shone in him for a moment what this self truly was: the consciousness of one's own ego as that of Zarathustra. He felt himself to be Zarathustra's ego, shining for a moment as if shining. But it seemed to him as if this ego went out of him and left him alone again, so that he was again the one, only greater, grown, who he had been in his twelfth year of life.

A tremendous change had also taken place in his mother. If one researches in the Akasha Chronicle to find out what was happening there, one comes to the conclusion that soon after Jesus of the Nathanic line had reached the twelfth year and the Zarathustra ego had become indwelling in him, the soul of his physical mother had ascended into the spiritual regions. Now she descended again as a soul and inspired his stepmother, who was thereby rejuvenated. Thus the stepmother or foster mother, who was the biological mother of the Solomonic boy Jesus, was now spiritualized by the soul of his own mother. So now the soul of the physical mother of the Nathanian Jesus child also walked again on earth in a physical body, in the body of the mother of the Solomonian Jesus child. But he himself was as if alone with his three bodies, but most highly spiritualized by all his experiences, alone with his physical, etheric and astral bodies; the self, however, had gone away. For in this physical, etheric and astral body dwelt all that came from the ego of Zarathustra. Although the Zarathustra ego had withdrawn, all its impressions had remained. This had the effect that in this remarkable personality, which Jesus of Nazareth now was, after the ego of Zarathustra had departed from him, something very special was. And what was in it, that presented itself to me, when I could see the further progress in this Fifth Gospel, as I describe it.

After the conversation with his mother, something stirred in Jesus of Nazareth, from whom the ego of Zarathustra had gone. It seemed like a mighty cosmic urge that pushed what was now there to the banks of the Jordan, to John the Baptist. On the way there, this strange being met—for that is what Jesus of Nazareth was now, a being who wore the highest humanity, as it is otherwise only compatible with fully developed four human limbs, only in three human covers across the ground, a being who felt inwardly different than a human being, but who had the human form on the outside. After the conversation with his mother, when he had felt the urge within himself to go to the Jordan to John the Baptist, he encountered this being, two Essenes, two of those Essenes who knew Jesus well. Of course, they found what was said in his features strange; but they still recognized him by his outward appearance, which had not changed and which was clearly recognizable. But they found him strange. The change that had taken place in him had given his eyes a very special expression. Something spoke from these eyes, like an inner light that shone gently, like the light embodied, not earthly, but heavenly, love of man. The two Essenes saw him as an old acquaintance. They felt that they could not escape the tremendously mild, infinitely mild gaze of Jesus, as he now was. But then again, when they looked into those eyes, they also felt something like a reproach that did not come from him, that was something like a force that welled up in their own soul, radiated into his eyes and back, like a mild moonlight, but like a tremendous reproach about their own being, about what they were.

Only with such words can I describe what can be seen by looking into the Akasha Chronicle, what these Essenes saw in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, which they felt through his body, that is, through his physical, etheric and astral body, which they saw looking at them, which they heard. His presence was hard for them to bear; for it was an expression of infinite love, but at the same time it was something of a reproach to them. They found his presence deeply attractive, but at the same time they felt the urge to get away from it. But one of them pulled himself together, since they both knew him from the many conversations they had had with him, and asked him: “Where are you going, Jesus of Nazareth?” — I could translate the words that Jesus then spoke into words of the English language something like this: “To where souls of your kind do not want to look, where the pain of humanity can find the rays of the forgotten light!” They did not understand his speech and realized that he did not recognize them, that he did not know who they were. From the strange way he looked at them, which was not at all like the way he looked at people he knew, from his whole behavior and from the way he spoke the words, they realized that he did not recognize them. And then one of the Essenes pulled himself together again and said: “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you recognize us?” And this one answered with something that I can only express in the following words in German: “What kind of souls are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in deceptive covers? Why does a fire burn inside of you that is not kindled in my Father's house?” They did not know what was happening to them, did not know what was wrong with him. Once again, one of the two Essenes pulled himself together and asked, “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you know us?” Jesus replied, “You are like lost lambs; but I was the shepherd's son, whom you fled. If you recognize me, you will soon flee again. It has been so long since you fled from me into the world. — And they did not know what to think of him. Then he spoke further: You have the tempter's mark on you! He has made your wool glisten with his fire. The hairs of this wool pierce my gaze! — And they felt that these words of his were something like the echo of their own being from his being. And then spoke Jesus further: The tempter met you after your escape. He has saturated your souls with pride! Then one of the Essenes took courage, for he felt something familiar, and spoke: Did we not expel the tempter? He has no more part in us. Then spoke Jesus of Nazareth: You did indeed expel him; but he went to the other people and came over them. So he is not around you, he is in the other people! You see him everywhere. Do you believe that you have elevated yourselves by expelling him from your gates? You have remained as high as you were. You seem to have become high because you have humiliated the others. By belittling the others, you have seemingly come up.

Then the Essenes were frightened. At that moment, however, when infinite fear came over them, it seemed to them as if Jesus of Nazareth had dissolved into a fog and disappeared before their eyes. But then their eyes were transfixed by this vanishing being of Jesus of Nazareth and they could not avert their gaze from where it was directed. Then, as if in cosmic distance, their gaze fell on a huge apparition that looked like the face of Jesus of Nazareth, enlarged to an excessive size, which they had just seen. What had spoken to them from his features now spoke with gigantic size from these enlarged features, which captivated them. They could not avert their gaze from the apparition, whose gaze was fixed on them as if from far away. As a result, something like a reproach settled in their souls, which seemed to them to be deserved on the one hand, but unbearable on the other. As if transformed into a mirage in the distant sky, the Jesus appeared to these two Essenes, enlarged to gigantic proportions, and the circumstances that lay in the words also appeared to be magnified to gigantic proportions. Out of this vision, out of this countenance, there sounded the words which can be rendered in the German language in something like the following way: “Vain is your striving, because empty is your heart, you who have filled yourselves with the spirit, which deceptively shelters pride in the garment of humility.

These were the words spoken by the being to the Essenes he encountered, after the ego of Zarathustra had detached itself from the physical shell of Jesus, who in turn had become only what he had been in his twelfth year, but now imbued with all that the ego of Zarathustra and all the experiences of which I have told you could sink into this peculiar body, which had already announced its uniqueness by being able to speak wonderful words of wisdom in a language only the mother's heart could understand.

That is what I wanted to give you today in a simple story that first takes us to the path that Jesus of Nazareth took after his conversation with his mother to John the Baptist at the Jordan. The day after tomorrow, we will continue the story and try to build a bridge to what we have tried to grasp as the meaning of the mystery of Golgotha.

Human beings are dwellers in two worlds. Our uniqueness amongst the creatures of the earth lies in this role that we have as half beast and half angel. A dynamic tension exists because of the contrary demands which living in each of these realms places on us. We experience this on a daily basis, an internal tug-of-war, pulling first in one direction, then to the opposite pole. Whenever we are called upon to make a choice, a decision, the earthly and the heavenly draw us one way or the other and often both at once!

A long held view has been that, of course, one should always give way to the heavenly or spiritual; the alternative is to succumb to the earthly, the fallen, to evil. The struggle has been portrayed as white versus black, as good versus evil. The enduring legacy of this attitude has been to deem the earthly, the bodily nature of the human being as soiled, unclean, corrupt, shameful. With this view the spiritual aspirant of the past had no choice but to reject the body, the earth. In India incarnating into a physical body has long been considered a curse, the entering into the “veil of tears” which constitutes life.

The physical body was especially singled out for punishment, to be starved and tortured, purged and scourged. St. Francis derided his body as his “donkey,” but reluctantly acknowledged that he must give it some care if it was to continue carrying him about. The medieval Cathars saw the human body as a pit into which the devil had lured the souls of weakened angels. Procreation was thus looked upon with horror as an act of unwitting cruelty—each new birth dragged a heavenly soul into the fallen world of matter, bringing another diabolically corrupt angel into the flesh. Even to study the physical body too closely was suspect, hence Leonardo's need for secrecy in dissection of corpses. The accumulation of an inordinate amount of the material realm in the form of wealth has also been rather suspect.

Such views have persisted on varying levels into modern times, and not just amongst the puritanical or the late Victorian. Sigmund Freud had difficulty, as a scientist, in acknowledging an angelic side in his patients. He reframed the conflict as one involving human bodily nature and the probably superstitious religious and moral beliefs they maintain. This wrestling match between the instinctual id and the moralistic superego was refereed by the central ego.

Later psychologists have continued to use this framework of two opposing forces moderated by the central force of an ego (though they all interpret the ego somewhat differently). Gestalt psychologists very pragmatically focus on how an individual becomes caught in this struggle between the two poles, without worrying about the relative merits of either pole—what is important is to get the individual “unstuck,” to empower the central ego to again be able to choose, to act more decisively through becoming conscious of its dilemma. The Italian psychiatrist, Robert Assagioli, wrote of the pull between the lower and higher unconscious, once again recognizing an earth/heaven dichotomy. He developed a therapy that sought a “psychosynthesis” of the two opposing forces, paving the way for the discovery of one's unifying center. Similarly, Carl Jung described the marriage of Eros and Logos within the soul, with the sometimes alchemical participation of the ego.

Some of these more spiritually inclined psychologists share with Rudolf Steiner the recognition that it is a synthesis of the two poles and not the choosing of one over the other that frees us for self-development. Humanity has both an earthly and a heavenly mission, tasks in the outer world as well as the inner, necessitating an acceptance, an embracing of both our natures.

In examining this predicament of living in two worlds, Rudolf Steiner, by virtue of his capacity for spiritual research, went much further than previous researchers. Steiner was able not merely to speak of opposing psychological forces, but to relate these specifically to the influence of mighty spiritual beings, Lucifer and Ahriman. The influence of these beings is not to be thought of as limited to the realm of the soul but rather taken in the widest context as encompassing human evolution, history, and almost every aspect of our existence.

The name Lucifer comes from the Latin meaning “bearer of the Light.” One's childhood picture of Lucifer as a slithering manifestation of evil is difficult to reconcile with the beauty of this name. Lucifer, however, represents a force that paradoxically can combine beauty and if you will, beauty gone too far, to the extreme of decadence, hence to evil.

In the Greek legend, Icarus and his father Daedalus escape from the tower of their island prison with wings fashioned of wax. Despite his father's warning, Icarus becomes enamored of his newfound power and of the beauty of the Sun; he flies up to the light (and heat), his wings melt, and he falls to his death. The wiser and more restrained Daedalus keeps his flight balanced between heaven and earth, thus succeeding in his escape from bondage. The Greeks were very aware of the temptation of Lucifer—in most of their tales of tragedy, “hubris” or overweening pride was the source of a hero's downfall.

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, the Representative of Humanity, Lucifer is portrayed as an exceedingly handsome and powerful winged form. Despite his having fallen from Heaven, he was nevertheless, an angel, a leader of angels. As the Light Bearer he has particular gifts for humankind, especially that of wisdom, the gift he first offered to Adam and Eve. By their eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Lucifer promised that they would “be as gods.” Like Icarus, they were not yet prepared for such a gift and ignoring warnings to the contrary, they accepted it and fell from Paradise. In this example it should be noted that the gift in and of itself is not evil. As in our earlier psychological examples, neither the heavenly nor the earthly is of itself to be seen as either absolutely desirable or absolutely forbidden. The beings of the polarities actually have something of value to offer to humanity. This is very different from the traditional view of the Devil's offerings! However, an individual must be inwardly prepared for the reception of these gifts if they are to be of any value. The hallucinogenic drug user is open to receiving Luciferic light and often feels quite wise when in the midst of the drug experience. Without the meditative discipline of the serious student of the spirit, however, the contact with those realms is rarely beneficial and, in fact, is often quite harmful.

In this century, society has especially interested itself in the material. Partially in response to the excessive rejection of the earth and the body, and of the authoritarianism which maintained this position, we have now fully entered the realm of matter, with head, heart, and soul. Whereas in former times humankind was more dreamy in its consciousness and thus more prone to the Luciferic realm of fantasy, illusion, and superstitious thinking, modern consciousness tends to the concrete, to materialism. The belief only in what can be ascertained by the physical senses (and the instruments which extend those senses) binds us to the earth and to the influence of the being named Ahriman.

Aingra Mainu, or Ahriman, was first spoken of in the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia. He was the evil god, the lord of lies who tempted men and women to believe that they were solely earthly beings. At a time in history when the clairvoyance which had once been common was becoming rare, the ethical teachings of Zarathustra sought to remind the people of their divine origin and to teach through the revelation he had received of the Lord of the Sun, Ahura Mazda.

The influence of Ahriman has grown through the centuries, quietly gaining respectability in the age of the Renaissance and flourishing in our own century as the predominant worldview. Only in the last years has there been any serious questioning of the notion that the only reality is the physical one. For the most part the realm of soul and spirit has been dismissed. The prevailing scientific view has been that only what can be weighed, measured, or quantified should merit serious attention. Ahriman has welcomed statistics as his handmaid.

At the beginning of the century, the Russian philosopher, Vladimir Soloviev, warned of this danger in his “A Short Narrative about Anti-Christ.” In this fictional essay Soloviev described the appearance of a great individual who taught world peace and became first the World Leader, and later the reuniter of the world's religions. He is a vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist and brings great material prosperity and physical comfort to all who acknowledge his authority, all of this without effort on the people's part. The world becomes peaceful, even docile, for the minor sacrifice of individuality and freedom.

The influence of Ahriman is seen in the generous gifts that he has bestowed on humankind in the past centuries and for which we must feel very grateful. All of the technological marvels which science has made possible have given many of us relative freedom from all manner of drudgery while maintaining a high standard of living, freeing us to pursue other interests, giving us more time ... or do we have more time? The great difficulty with our acceptance of Ahriman's bounty has been our relative blindness and lack of foresight as we have lost ourselves in its enjoyment. The birth of the ecology movement and discussion of the reductionist nature of science has wakened some consciousness of the danger into which we have strayed. Some awareness has arisen as to what we are sacrificing in the Faustian bargain which society has struck, a sacrifice which involves our very humanity.

Through Darwin's theory of evolution as well as through Freud's positing of the sexual as the primary motive of humankind, the idea that we are no more than “naked apes” has become quite accepted. To this instinctual or animalistic picture of the human, science has added the model of the human being as machine, with the brain as computer. With such a confining definition of humanity, is it any wonder that we have increasingly come to act and to see ourselves as just machines, or just animals?

The challenge for the individual is often not how to face either Ahriman or Lucifer, but how not to be torn asunder in the encounter with both forces. In T.S. Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, is conducted to an examination of himself and his past by a succession of four Tempters. The first three attempt to win him with the Ahrimanic enticements of pleasures of the senses, good fellowship, and temporal power for himself and for his Church. Becket turns away from these three only to be approached by a fourth Tempter, clad like himself as a priest and tonsured. The Luciferic temptation now offered is the most dangerous and difficult for Becket, the whisper of spiritual pride—to die in order to attain immortality on earth, to envisage the saint's tomb being visited by pilgrims for centuries, to stand high within the ranks in heaven. Only with difficulty does Becket turn away from these “higher vices.”

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, a strong figure stands with one clenched hand upraised to the beautiful Lucifer, the other hand stretched downward to the twisted and sclerotic Ahriman. The Representative of Humanity stands heroically, holding at bay and in balance the two opposing forces, centered within the “Third Force,” that force which we recognize in ourselves in the word ‘I’.

In this series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner strives to deepen our understanding of the two opposing forces, to alert us especially to the dangers of Ahriman, whose wiles have lulled us into a soporific state. The intent, however, is not to drive us to obsession over Luciferic or Ahrimanic demons, but rather to remind us, to reawaken us to our true center. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical means, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep.” We recognize that dawn in the figure of the risen Christ who stands for all of us as the “Representative of Humanity” in the modern struggle for the kernel of our being.

Thomas Poplawski

What is written at the end of the Gospel of John is a relief for me when I speak about the Fifth Gospel today. We remember at the end it states that in no way is everything that Christ Jesus did told, for if one wanted to tell of all the events there wouldn't be enough books in the world to contain them. So it cannot be doubted that in addition to what is described in books, much more can have occurred.

I would like to tell you about Jesus of Nazareth from the time he was twelve years old. As you know, it was the time when the I of Zarathustra, which was incarnated in one of the two Jesus children transferred, be means of a mystical act, into the other Jesus child, into the Jesus child described at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. [See Note 1] So we will begin with the year in Jesus of Nazareth's life when the Jesus of the Luke Gospel received Zarathustra´s I. We know that the Gospel of Luke describes the moment when Jesus is said to have been lost and he is found again sitting with the scribes and how all were so astonished by the powerful answers he gave. We know, however, that these meaningful, powerful answers came from the fact that the spiritually veiled memory of the I of Zarathustra acted in a way to enable Jesus to give such surprising answers. We also know that due to the mother's death in one of the families and the father's death in the other, both families joined together and the Jesus boy who bore Zarathustra's I grew up in that unified family.

According to the Fifth Gospel it was a very special growing up period. At first his immediate neighbors had a most favorable opinion of him because of the surprising answers he gave in the temple. They saw the potential scholar (scribe) in him, one who could reach a high level of scholarship. They had great hopes for him and hung on his words. Nevertheless, he became ever more silent – so much so that they became ill-disposed to him. He, however, was engaged in an inner struggle, a mighty struggle in himself between his twelfth and eighteenth years. In his soul there was something like a rising up of the treasures of wisdom, as if the sum of the former Zarathustra-knowledge was rising in the form of Jewish scholarship.

At first the boy listened attentively to everything the many scribes/scholars said who came to his home in Nazareth, and was able to give exceptional answers. In the beginning he astonished those scribes who looked upon him as a wunderkind. But then he became more and more silent and listened without speaking to what the others said. At the same time great ideas, meaningful moral impulses arose in his soul. What he heard from the scribes at that time made an impression on him, but it was an impression which often left a trace of bitterness in his soul, because he had the feeling – already in those young years, mind you – that there was much uncertainty, things that could lead to error in what the scribes spoke based on the old tradition, from the old scriptures which are collected in the Old Testament. It was always depressing when he heard that in ancient times the spirit came over the prophets, that God himself had spoken to the old prophets and that now inspiration had abandoned the succeeding generations. But he paid special attention to one thing, because he felt that it would happen to him.

“Yes, that great spirit, that powerful spirit which came to Elias, for example, no longer speaks.” What did still speak, however, which many believed to be an inspiration from the spiritual heights, what still spoke was a weaker voice which some believed to hear as coming from the spirit of Jahveh himself. “Bath Kol” was the name given to that inspiring voice, although a weaker, lesser voice than that which inspired the ancient prophets, but nevertheless something similar. Some in Jesus' surroundings spoke thus of Bath Kol. Later Jewish scriptures also tell of this Bath-Kol. [See Note 2]

Now I will insert something into this Fifth Gospel which doesn't really belong, but will help to explain Bath Kol. Later on there was a conflict in two rabbinical schools, because the famous Rabbi Elieser ben Hirkano formulated a teaching and as proof of the teaching – the Talmud also describes this – he claimed that he could work miracles. He had a Carob tree rise from the earth and replant itself a couple of hundred feet away; he made a stream flow backwards, and as the third miracle he invoked a “voice from heaven” that his teaching would be made manifest. But this was not believed in the opposing rabbinical school of Rabbi Josia, who replied: “However much Rabbi Elieser has carob trees transplant themselves from one place to another, however much he makes streams flow upwards, or invoke Bath Kol – it is written in the Law that the eternal laws of being must be lain in the mouths of men and in the hearts of men. And if he wants to convince us, this Rabbi Elieser, he should not invoke Bath Kol, but he should invoke what human hearts can apprehend.”

I tell this story because we can see from it that soon after the introduction of Christianity Bath Kol was still held in a somewhat lesser esteem in certain rabbinical schools. But she [Bath=daughter; Kol=voice – ed.] had bloomed as an inspiring voice amongst rabbis and scribes.

While the young Jesus heard and felt all that, he was receiving inspiration through Bath Kol. What was remarkable was that by means of fecundation of his soul with the I of Zarathustra, Jesus was in fact capable of assimilating what the others around him knew. Not only that he could give the scribes such strong answers in his twelfth year, but he could also hear the Bath Kol in his own heart. But it was just the fact of this inspiration through Bath Kol that caused him to experience bitter inner struggles when he was sixteen, seventeen years old. For the Bath Kol revealed to him – and he believed it to be true – that in the continuation of the stream of the Old Testament, the same spirit which had spoken to the Jewish teachers of long ago would no longer do so. One day – and it was terrible for his soul – he believed that Bath Kol revealed to him the following: I no longer reach to the heights where the spirit can reveal to me the truth about the future of the Jewish people. It was a terrible moment when the Bath Kol seemed to reveal that she could not continue the old revelations, that she was incapable of continuing to inspire the old Judaism. Jesus of Nazareth felt the ground under his feet swept away, and many times he said to himself: All the soul powers with which I thought myself to possess only allow me to understand that in the evolutionary substance of Judaism no capacity remains to ascend to the revelations of the spirit of God.

Imagine ourselves for a moment in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth when such he experienced this. It was at the same time – in his sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth years – when he traveled, partly because of his trade, partly for other reasons. On those travels he got to know various regions of Palestine, and probably various places outside Palestine. At that time an Asiatic cult was propagated over the Middle East, and even in Europe, an Asiatic cult which was a mixture of many other cults, but which was mainly the Mithras cult – one can see this clearly when one clairvoyantly absorbs the Akasha Record. In many places in various regions temples for the Mithras rituals existed. In many places it was similar to the Attis ritual, but it was essentially the Mithras ritual. In a certain sense it was ancient paganism, but penetrated by the Mithan or Attis ceremonies. An example of the extent to which it spread is the fact that St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome stands on the same spot where a Mithras cult was previously celebrated. Yes, one must say what for many Roman Catholics will seem blasphemous: that the rituals of St. Peter's cathedral and everything which derives from them is in its outer form not unlike the old Attis ritual, on whose site St. Peter's stands.

Jesus of Nazareth learned about what was done in those sites when he began traveling around during his sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth years. And he continued doing so later. He learned to know the souls of the pagans through physical, outer observation. Because of the incorporation of the I of Zarathustra into his soul the capacity to do this developed in a natural way, something that others could only attain with great effort: clairvoyant power. He experienced in those pagan religious rituals something which others did not – shocking things. It may sound fantastic, but I must emphasize that when Jesus was present at certain pagan rituals as the priests carried out the ceremonies at the altars, he saw that demonic beings were attracted to them. He also discovered that many idols which they prayed to were not images of good spiritual beings, but of demonic powers. Yes, he also discovered that the demonic powers often merged with the faithful who were attending the services. It is not difficult to understand why these things are not described in the other gospels. And it is only now possible to speak about them in the confines of our spiritual movement, for human souls can only now, in our times, understand the enormously profound experiences which played out in the young Jesus of Nazareth.

His wandering continued into his twentieth, twenty-second, twenty-fourth years. He always felt bitterness in his soul when he saw the force of demons spawned by Lucifer and Ahriman and how paganism had gone so far as to take the demons for gods, even to depict wild demonic powers in idols, and the powers were attracted by these images and rituals and merged with the praying people, possessed them. They were bitter experiences, and they came to a climax when he was about twenty-four years old.

It was a new, difficult experience added to the Bath Kol disappointment. I must say that at this time I am not able to indicate at which place in his travels this experience took place, although it was possible for me to decipher the scene correctly to a large extent. Only the place is still unknown to me. It seems to me that the scene took place outside Palestine. Although I cannot say that with certainty, I must describe the scene.

In his twenty-fourth year Jesus of Nazareth came to a place where sacrifices were being made to a certain god at a pagan place of worship. Around it, however, were sad people affected by all kinds of terrible mental and physical illnesses. The place of worship had long since been abandoned by the priests. And Jesus heard the people wailing: “The priests have abandoned us and the blessings of the sacrifice do not come to us and we are leprous and sick because the priests have abandoned us.” Those people cried out to Jesus. Infinite love for these aggrieved people flared up in his soul. The people must have noticed something of this infinite love; it must have made a profound impression on those lamenting people who had been abandoned by their priests and, as they believed, by their gods. And then arose, instantaneously, in the hearts of most of them who saw the expression of infinite love on Jesus' face, the need to say: “You are the new priest sent to us.” They pushed him to the altar, they placed him at the pagan altar. He stood there and they demanded of him that he perform the offering in order that they receive the gods' blessings. While that happened, while they were pushing him to the altar, he fell down like dead, his soul left him and the people around him who thought their god was to come back saw that the one they took to be the new priest sent from heaven fell down as if dead. But Jesus of Nazareth's soul felt itself carried up to a spiritual height, to the realm of the sun. And now he heard, as if coming from the realm of the sun, words which he had previously often heard through Bath Kol. But now Bath Kol was transformed, had become something completely different. The voice also came from a different direction, and what Jesus of Nazareth heard, translated into our language, may be summarized by the words I was first able to pronounce when we recently laid the foundation stone of our building in Dornach. [See Note 3]

Occult obligations exist! And following one such occult obligation I disclosed what Jesus of Nazareth heard from the transformed voice of Bath Kol. He heard the words:

AUM, Amen!
Evil rules,
Witness of the severing I,
Selfhood's guilt by others owed,
In daily bread now felt,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom,
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

I cannot otherwise translate these words which Jesus of Nazareth heard from the transformed voice of Bath Kol. [See Note 4] Not otherwise! It was what the soul of Jesus of Nazareth brought back when he awoke again. And when he looked for the crowd of troubled and burdened people who had carried him to the altar, they had fled. And when he directed his clairvoyant gaze to the distance he could only see a horde of demonic beings united with those people.

That was the second meaningful event, the second meaningful climax of the various periods which Jesus of Nazareth lived through since his twelfth year. No, my dear friends, the events which made the strongest impression on the maturing Jesus of Nazareth were not of the pleasant kind which could have a happy effect on his soul. He had to encounter the depths of human nature before the baptism in the Jordan took place.

Jesus of Nazareth returned home from his travels. It was when his father, who had remained at home, died – when Jesus was about twenty-four years old. When Jesus came home his soul contained the powerful impression of the demonic forces which deeply influenced the pagan religions. But it is the case that one only reaches certain stages of higher knowledge by encountering the depths of life, and it was also so for Jesus of Nazareth that he – in a place that I don't know – when he was around twenty-four years old, saw so deeply into human souls, in souls in which were concentrated all the human sorrows of that time; he had also delved deeply into wisdom, which is like a red hot iron penetrating the soul. But it makes the soul so clairvoyant that it can see into the spiritual reaches of space. Thus was the relatively young soul of Jesus equipped with a calm, vivid ability to read the spirit. Jesus of Nazareth had become a person who could look more deeply into the secrets of life than any other earthly being, because no one previously had been able to observe how profound human misery can be. He had seen concentrated misery – how through religious ceremonies one can conjure all the demonic powers. Surely no other person on the earth had so deeply observed this human misery as Jesus of Nazareth had, none had such an infinitely deep feeling in his soul as he had when he saw those people possessed by demons. Surely no other was so prepared for the question: How, how can the spreading of this misery be prevented?

Thus Jesus of Nazareth became an initiate not only through the ability to see, and through wisdom, but also through life itself. That became known to people who at that time had come together in a certain order, which is known the world over as the Essene Order. The Essenes were people who cultivated a kind of secret rite and teachings at certain places in Palestine. It was a strict order. Whoever wanted to enter it had to first pass through a strict probation year, mostly longer. He had to show by his conduct, his culture, by his dedication to the highest spiritual powers, by his sense of justice and human equality, by his disregard for earthly possessions and so forth, that he was worthy to be initiated. Then there were various degrees which one passed through to reach a life determined by separation from normal humanity in a strict monastic discipline and by certain purification exercises through which all that was physically and spiritually unworthy was meant to be eliminated in order to approach the spiritual world. This was expressed in various symbolic laws of the Essene Order. Deciphering the Akasha Record shows that the word Essene derives from, or is at least related to the Hebrew word “essin” or “assin”, which means “shovel” or “trowel”, because the Essenes always carried a small trowel as an insignia, something that in many of today's orders has been retained. The Essenes' objectives were also expressed in certain symbolic practices – that they never carried coins, that they could not pass through gates which had been painted or were even close to graven images. As the Essene Order at that time enjoyed a certain degree of recognition, unpainted gates were made in Jerusalem so they could enter the city. If an Essene came to a painted gate he would have to turn back. The Order possessed ancient manuscripts and traditions, about whose contents the members were obliged to maintain strict silence. They could teach, but only what they had learned in the Order. All who entered the Order had to give all their possessions to the Order. The number of Essenes was four to five thousand. People came from all over the known world and observed the strict rules. Even if it was far away, in Asia Minor, or even farther, all property, a house for example, had to be given to the Order. So the Order possessed small properties from many places – houses, gardens, acres of land. None was admitted to membership who did not contribute everything he owned to the Essene community. Everything belonged to all, there was no personal ownership. A very strict rule for our present day mentality – but what was understandable was that the Essene could care for the needy with the goods belonging to the Order, except those who belonged to his own family.

There was an Essene community in Nazareth, made possible by a donation, so the Order was known to Jesus. At the Order's center they were aware of the wisdom which Jesus' soul possessed – especially among the most important members. They had what we can call a prophetic view that a Messiah must come to the world. Therefore they were on the lookout for especially gifted people. They were deeply impressed when they learned about Jesus of Nazareth. It is no surprise, then, that they accepted Jesus of Nazareth in their community – not as a member of the Order proper – more as a guest, without him having to pass the trials of the lower degrees. And the wisest Essenes were, in a certain sense trusting, open-hearted towards this wise young man in respect to their secrets. In fact Jesus of Nazareth heard more profound things about the secrets which were kept in that Order than from the scribes and scholars. He also heard much that he had previously learned through Bath Kol as an enlightenment which shone in his soul. In short, a lively exchange of ideas took place between Jesus of Nazareth and the Essenes. And Jesus of Nazareth learned almost everything that the Essenes were able to give during his 25^th, 26^th, 27^th, 28^th years, and beyond. For what was not communicated to him by words was expressed by all sorts of clairvoyant impressions. Jesus of Nazareth received important clairvoyant impressions either within the Essene community or a short time later at home in Nazareth, where a more contemplative life was possible; they penetrated his soul from powers which had come to him and which the Essenes had no idea, but which were experienced in his soul.

One of these experiences, these inner impressions, must be particularly emphasized, because it can cast light on the whole spiritual course of human evolution. It was a meaningful vision manifested by a kind of separation from his body in which the Buddha appeared to him directly. Yes, the Buddha appeared to Jesus of Nazareth as a consequence of the exchange of ideas with the Essenes. One can say that a spiritual conversation took place between Jesus and Buddha. We may and must touch upon this meaningful secret of human evolution today. In this meaningful spiritual conversation Jesus heard that the Buddha said something like this: "If my teaching, as it is, is completely fulfilled, then all men on earth must be like the Essenes. But that cannot be. That was the error in my teaching. The Essenes can only progress if they separate themselves from the rest of humanity; other human souls must be there for them. The fulfillment of my teaching would mean nothing but Essenes. But that cannot be." That was a meaningful experience, which Jesus of Nazareth had through his association with the Essenes.

Another experience was that Jesus of Nazareth made the acquaintance of a slightly younger man who had joined the Essene Order, but in an entirely different way than Jesus had, but who nevertheless did not completely become an Essene. He was John the Baptist, who lived as a lay brother within the Essene community. He dressed like the Essenes, who used clothing of camel's hair in winter, but he never completely exchanged Jewish teaching for Essene teaching. But the teachings and life of the Essenes made a great impression on him, so he lived the Essene life as a lay brother. He was stimulated and inspired and by and by became the John the Baptist described in the Gospels. Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist conversed often. One day – I know what it means to simply tell these things, but nothing can stop me; I also know that these things must be told – One day when Jesus of Nazareth was talking with John the Baptist, the physical body of the Baptist seemed to disappear and Jesus had a vision of Elias. That was the second meaningful experience in the Essene community.

But there were still other experiences. For a long time Jesus of Nazareth had observed something noteworthy. When he came to a place where imageless Essene gates were, Jesus of Nazareth couldn't pass through those gates without again having a bitter experience. He saw those imageless gates, but for him there were spiritual figures on the gates. To him appeared on both sides of those gates what we have learned to know from many spiritual scientific explanations under the names Ahriman and Lucifer. And gradually he became convinced that the Essenes' aversion to images on the gates had to have something to do with the attraction of such spiritual beings to them, that images on the gates were images of Lucifer and Ahriman. Jesus of Nazareth noticed this often.

When one experiences such things he doesn't dwell on them overmuch, for they are too shocking. One also soon feels that human thoughts are insufficient to understand them. One considers thoughts incapable of penetrating these things. But the impressions not only engrave themselves deeply on the soul, but become a part of the soul's life. One feels himself united to the part of his soul in which such experiences have been stored and carries them through life.

Thus Jesus of Nazareth carried through life the images of Lucifer and Ahriman which he had seen on the Essene gates. He also became aware that a secret existed between those beings and the Essenes. Since that experience, Jesus and the Essenes could no longer understand themselves well. For something lived in Jesus' soul about which he couldn't speak to the Essenes. What he had seen on the gates always injected itself into the conversations.

One day after an important conversation in which many sublime spiritual themes were discussed, as Jesus of Nazareth was leaving through the gates of the Essenes' main building he encountered the figures who he knew were Lucifer and Ahriman. He saw them fleeing from the gates of the Essene monastery ... and a question entered his soul, not as though he asked it himself, but a strong elemental force instilled in his soul the question: Where are Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing to? For he knew that the sanctity of the Essene monastery had caused them to flee. But the question remained: Where to?

The question burned like fire in his soul and he lived with it continuously during the following weeks. After that spiritual conversation when he left through the gates of the Essenes' main building, the question burned in his soul: Where did Lucifer and Ahriman flee to?

What he did under the influence of this question in his soul and having fallen on the pagan altar and heard Bath Kol's changed voice, and what it means – we'll speak of all that tomorrow.