The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Address in Dornach after the fire of the Goetheanum on New Year's Eve 1922/23.

My dear friends! Esteemed attendees! I would have to read you a book if I wanted to share with you all the extraordinarily kind words and the words of heartfelt connection with what has been lost here as a result of the terrible catastrophe; I will therefore take the liberty of just sharing the names of those who have signed such words of sympathy and devotion to the cause. Some of them are a sign of how deeply the hearts of many people have been touched by what may be communicated from here to the world. Some of them are also signs of truly heartfelt desires and energetic resolutions of will to regain what we have lost. The widespread sympathy for our work and for our loss will certainly be a source of strength for many of you, and for this reason alone I am allowed to communicate all this here. For our cause should not be merely a theoretical one; our cause should be one of labor, of philanthropy, of devoted service to humanity, and therefore, what should be said from here should also include the communication of what is being done or intended to be done. I will only take the liberty of mentioning those names that do not belong to personalities who are here, because what the hearts of those who are here have to share has been expressed more silently, but no less deeply and clearly, in these days, in these days of truly painful togetherness. So you will allow me not to mention the dear friends of the cause who have expressed their sympathy in writing. You know them, of course. [The names are read out.]

We may assume that what has been attempted here is deeply rooted in many hearts, and I would like to fill this evening's lecture by interrupting the reflections of these days, as it were, and remember that it was a course that brought a large number of friends from outside to join the friends who otherwise try to work on the anthroposophical matter here at the Goetheanum. And in particular, I would like to turn first in thought to the young, to the younger friends who have come here for this course and who, to the greatest satisfaction of all those who are serious about anthroposophy, have recently found their way into this movement in such a beautiful, deep and heartfelt way.

We must be absolutely clear about the significance of young souls, souls that are striving to acquire all that can be acquired by a young person today in the way of science, art and so on, finding each other to work within the anthroposophical movement. These younger friends who have come to this course here are among those who came here recently, saw the Goetheanum, saw it again and probably thought that they would leave it in a different state than they are now on their return journey. And if I turn first to these younger friends in my thoughts, it is because everyone who cares about the anthroposophical movement must feel that everything that concerns any group or individual within the movement is their direct concern. Most of our younger friends are people who want to find their way into anthroposophical work through what is today called spiritual life. And I would particularly like to speak first to those who belong to academic life and have felt the urge — but hardly generated by it — to join with others within the anthroposophical movement for further striving.

Above all, it is the holy earnestness of the striving for the fulfillment of the human soul with spiritual life that has driven these young people. Within anthroposophy, however, there is talk of a spiritual life that cannot be acquired in direct contemplation in the easy way that is particularly loved today. And it is made no secret of the fact – not even in the literature, from which everyone in the broadest circle can see for themselves what they will find within the anthroposophical work – that the paths to anthroposophy are difficult. But difficult only for the reason that they are connected with the deepest, but also with the most powerful, of human dignity, and because, on the other hand, they are also connected with what is most necessary for our age, our epoch, what may be said that the discerning person, who correctly appreciates the phenomena of decline in our time, must recognize the necessity of such progress as is at least attempted by the anthroposophical movement.

Now it should certainly not be forgotten that the anthroposophical cause can be of value to the modern man in many ways. He can indeed benefit from it if he tries with true inner devotion to gain a direct insight into the spiritual worlds, and thereby convince himself that everything that is communicated from the spiritual worlds is absolutely based on truth. But I must emphasize again and again that, however necessary it may be for individuals, or perhaps for an unlimited number of people, to take this serious and difficult path in the present day, anyone with unbiased, common sense can gain an insight into the truth of anthroposophy that is based entirely on real inner reasons.

This must be emphasized again and again, lest the objection, which is quite invalid, seemingly gains validity: that actually only the one who clairvoyantly looks into the spiritual world can somehow gain a relationship to what is proclaimed as truth in the anthroposophical movement. Today's general intellectual life, general civilization and culture, they indeed bring forward so many prejudices that it is difficult for man to come to full consciousness in the healthy human mind, to convince himself of the truth of the anthroposophical cause without clairvoyance.

But it is precisely in this area that the Anthroposophical Society should lead the way and focus its work, so that the prejudices of contemporary civilization are increasingly overcome. If the Anthroposophical Society does its duty in this direction, then one can hope that those inner powers of knowledge will arise even without clairvoyance in those who, for whatever reason, cannot strive for the exact clairvoyance that is being spoken of here, but that they can still come to a fully-fledged conviction of the validity of anthroposophical knowledge.

But there is another very special path that younger academics can now find for themselves to anthroposophy. Consider what academic study should and could actually provide today as a solid starting point for coming to one's own view – and I say this expressly: for coming to one's own view – of the anthroposophical spiritual knowledge, if science and knowledge and inner life within our school system were present in the way that the possibility for this is actually available today.

But consider how little younger people today are inwardly connected with what they are supposed to strive for as their science, as their knowledge, within the present civilization. Consider how it cannot be otherwise today, for the most part, than that the individual sciences approach younger people more or less as something external. They approach with a system that is not at all suited to letting the often extraordinarily significant, so-called empirical knowledge speak for itself in its full value. Yes, my dear friends, today within every science that is cultivated, there are harrowing truths, sometimes harrowing truths in details, in specialties. And there are, in particular, such truths that, if properly presented to young people, would act as a kind of mental microscope or telescope, so that, if properly used by the soul, they would unlock tremendous secrets of existence.

But precisely those things that would be tremendously revealing if they were properly cultivated, that would carry hearts and minds away if they came from the depths of humanity and personality within academic life to the youth, precisely those things must be said today in many cases are often brought to young people within a spun-out, indifferent system, often with indifference, so that the relationship of young people to what our empirical science has produced in the most diverse fields of information remains a thoroughly external one. And one would like to say: many, indeed most, of our young academics today go through their studies without any inner interest, letting the subject pass by more or less as a panorama, so to speak, in order to be able to take the necessary repetitions for the exams and find a permanent position.

It almost sounds paradoxical to say that the hearts of academic youth should also be involved in everything that is presented to them. I say that sounds like a paradox, although it could be so. For the possibility exists, because for those who have a subjective disposition for it, sometimes even the driest book or lecture can be enough to be deeply moved, if not by the power of the writer or lecturer, then perhaps by one's own strength, even in one's heart. But I must say that sometimes it goes quite deeply to the soul when one notices, perhaps even in the best of the young friends who come to the anthroposophical movement, that through no fault of their own, but through their destiny within today's civilization ization life, not only have they received nothing for their hearts from the current knowledge base, but — perhaps some will not forgive me for saying this, but most of the young academics here will probably understand — they have also received nothing for their minds.

Today, in this age, as a result of the development of science, which I have tried to characterize during this scientific course, we have reached a point in the development of civilization where it is possible that, without any Anthroposophy, through the mere practice of the life of science and knowledge by fully human beings, young people would have to experience what I would call a kind of deep mental oppression from ordinary natural science. Yes, contemporary science is such that precisely those who study it diligently and earnestly and take its things seriously feel something like a mental oppression, can feel something of what comes over the human soul when it wrestles with the problem of knowledge. For anyone who looks around a little from this or that point of view, which is available within natural science today, is confronted with great world problems, world problems which, however, are often clothed, I might say, in small formulations of facts. And these formulations of facts urge one to seek something in one's own soul, which, precisely because these scientific truths exist, must be solved as a riddle; otherwise one cannot live, otherwise one feels oppressed.

Oh, if this oppression were the fruit of our scientific studies! Then not only the longing for the spiritual world would arise from this oppression, which takes hold of the whole person, but also the gift to look into the spiritual world. Even if one takes knowledge that cannot satisfy the human being, it is precisely through the unsatisfactory, when it is brought to the soul and heart in the right way, that the highest striving can be kindled.

That, my dear friends, is what is sometimes felt as so terrible, so devastating, within the realm of knowledge in the present day, that no claim is made to allow people to feel how the things that are present in the present in such a way that he is prevented in his young life from even approaching what is most human in nature, if he does not, precisely because of a particularly strong yearning, free himself from that which only afflicts him with the obstacles that are placed in his way.

And if we look away from the natural sciences to the humanities, we see that during the age of natural science they have reached a state in which, if a young person were to be given instructions that would treat these humanities from a fully human point of view, they would be able to devote themselves to them in such a way that they would at least receive what I would call a spiritual sense of urgency. All the abstract ideas, the results of documentary research and all the other things that are contained in the humanities today, if they were at least presented to young people with a human element, could pursue the goal of awaken in him the urge to ascend into the fresh air that is to be brought into the field of today's spiritual contemplation through anthroposophical world view.

Anyone who has followed the spirit of my lectures on the scientific development of modern times will certainly not be able to say that I have criticized this natural science of the present unnecessarily. On the contrary, through my lectures I have proved its necessity, have tried to prove that natural science and, finally, also spiritual science of the present time can be nothing but foundations, for they served and must serve as the foundations of civilization, which must be laid once so that further building can be built on them.

But man cannot help it, being human, being full of humanity in body, mind and soul. And since today's young people have to live in an age in which they are inevitably confronted with something that does not include the human being at all, the noblest and most powerful human striving could nevertheless be aroused if only that which is necessary but not humanly satisfying were to be offered to them today in the highest sense of the word, out of full humanity. If that were to happen, our young people would need nothing more than to hear about the achievements of today's physical science and today's spiritual science at the academies themselves; and from this they would receive not only the innermost urge but also the ability to absorb spiritual science in full humanity. And from what would then live in young people, it would arise of its own accord that the anthroposophical form of science would also become that which is necessary for us to progress in human civilization.

I believe that our younger friends, if they reflect on the words I have spoken, which may sound somewhat paradoxical, will find that they go some way to characterizing the main difficulties they have had to endure during their academic years. And I can assume that this difficulty is the reason why they have come to us. But for many of them, this difficulty belongs to the past, a past that can no longer be made up for. For what one should actually have in a certain period of youth can no longer be had in the same form later. But nevertheless, I believe that one thing can serve as a substitute. What should be a substitute for what one can no longer have is the realization of the task that younger people in particular have among us to cultivate anthroposophical life in the present. |

Set yourselves this task: to do for the anthroposophical movement what you already know, from your own conviction, can be done for it, or what you can, in the course of time, become convinced of in your innermost being, in your very individual innermost being, that it is necessary for the further civilization of mankind: then you will be able to carry something in your heart for longer than this earthly life lasts: then you will be able to carry the awareness of having done your duty to humanity and the world in an age of greatest human difficulties. And that will be a rich reward for what you may rightly lose.

If you have a true sense of the situation of young people in our age, you will also look in the right way at the fact that academic youth has found its way into our circles, and then, if I may may say so, the talent will gradually arise within the Anthroposophical Society to gain a relationship with this youth, on the part of those who, let us say, do not belong to it as youth in this or that respect.

But I believe that there is a word that can come from our present mourning, that I can also speak to the oldest members of the Anthroposophical Society, and that is this: that the human being who today can truly understand himself as a human being within the Anthroposophical Society, and that this, in turn, must be taken seriously if civilization is to continue for humanity, if the forces of decline are not to gain the upper hand over the forces of ascent. It has almost come to this within general culture and civilization of the present day, that it almost sounds funny when someone says: When a person is in his spiritual-soul life between falling asleep and waking up, he should have ensured that his spiritual-soul life can behave in the right way during this time. But within the anthroposophical movement, you learn that this spiritual-soul, as it lives between falling asleep and waking up, is the germ that we carry into the eternity of the future. What we leave behind in bed when we sleep, what is visible to us when we perform our daily work from morning to evening, that we do not carry out through the gate of death into the spiritual, into the supersensible world. But we do carry out into the spiritual, supersensible world that which is subtlest in our natures and exists outside the physical and etheric bodies when we are between falling asleep and waking up. We shall not concern ourselves here with the significance of the life of sleep for man here on earth. But it can be made clear to man through anthroposophical spiritual science that this fine, substantial something, imperceptible to ordinary consciousness, , lives between falling asleep and waking, is precisely what he will carry within him when he has passed through the gate of death, when he has to fulfill his task in other worlds than this earthly world. But the tasks he has to perform there, he will be able to perform them, depending on how he has cultivated these spiritual and mental abilities. Oh, my dear friends, in that spiritual world, which is around us just as the physical world is, those human soul beings also live a present existence who are not in a physical body right now, but may have to wait for decades, centuries, for their next embodiment on earth. These souls are there just as we physical people are there on earth; and in what happens here among us physical people, what we later call historical life, not only do the earthly people work in it, but also those forces that reach out from people who are currently between death and a new birth. These forces are there. As we stretch out our hands, so these beings stretch their spiritual hands into the immediate present. And it is a desolate historiography when only the documents are recorded that deal with the earthly, while the true history that takes place on earth is also influenced by the spiritual forces from the spiritual world of those who are between death and a new birth. We also work together with those who are not embodied on earth.

And just as we commit a sin against humanity if we do not educate young people in the right way, we commit a sin against humanity, a sin against the noblest work to be done from invisible worlds by not embodied human beings, we commit a sin against the evolution of humanity if we do not cultivate our own spiritual nature so that it passes through the portal of death in such a way that it can develop there more consciously and more consciously. For if the soul and spiritual aspects are not cultivated on earth, it happens that this consciousness, which in a certain way immediately and then more and more between death and a new birth begins to shine, remains clouded in all those souls who do not cultivate a spiritual life here. When a person becomes aware of his full humanity, then the spiritual belongs to it.

Those who truly understand the impulses of the anthroposophical movement should take it seriously, knowing that what has been acquired through anthroposophical spiritual science is a world-life treasure, a world-life force. It is a sin in the higher sense to neglect to cultivate that which must be there in order to further develop the earth, in order to further develop mankind on earth, because its absence must lead to the downfall of the earthly. And in many ways, it depends on feeling the deep seriousness of connecting with a spiritual and comprehensive human cause, in addition to what one may more or less accept in theory from spiritual science.

And that, my dear friends, is something that does not apply to a particular category of people, it is something that most certainly applies to young and old alike. But that also seems to me to be the one thing in which young and old can come together, so that one spirit may prevail within what is the Anthroposophical Society.

May the younger people bring their best, may the older people understand this best, may understanding on one side find understanding on the other: only then will we move forward. Let us, from the sad days we have gone through, from the painful suffering we have been imbued with, let us let resolutions enter our hearts that are not mere wishes, not mere vows, but that are so deeply rooted in our souls that they can become deeds. Even in a small circle, we will need deeds if we want to make up for the great loss.

Youthful deeds, if they are in the right direction, are deeds that can be used around the world. And the most beautiful thing that one can want as an older person is to be able to work together with those people who can still perform youthful deeds. If one knows this in the right way, oh, my dear friends, then youth will indeed come to meet you with understanding. And only then will we ourselves be able to do what is necessary to compensate for our great loss, when young people, who can offer us what was once necessary for the future, can see – and most certainly then to their own satisfaction – beautiful examples of what older people can do to compensate for this loss.

Let us endeavor to see the right and powerful in each other, so that strength may be added to strength, for only in this way will we make progress.

Today I would like to mention something that comes from outside, but which is actually already inwardly connected with all spiritual scientific impulses, namely, that it really does depend on whether we finally take these spiritual scientific impulses very seriously. Then we can hope that the goals that must be set with them will be achieved. And this seriousness cannot be great enough. You see, my dear friends, at the time when the Anthroposophical Society was founded, founded out of an inner necessity – in the face of all the impossibilities that existed at that time with regard to spiritual science – the way in which I, for example, have to stand within this anthroposophical movement was formulated, precisely formulated. This foundation must be maintained. And everything that has happened in the last few years, right up to the present day, proves that this foundation must be fully maintained if the spiritual science movement, as we understand it, and this anthroposophical movement are to continue. We really won't get anywhere by burying our heads in the sand like an ostrich. As I said recently, it could look as if you were constantly moving forward as a blind man, when in fact things are already clear to you in the eye of your soul.

Various things have been perceived again and again: When this or that happened, many things emerged that — I would like to say — gave me such a position within spiritual science that the pure effectiveness, the pure flow of spiritual scientific truth suffered from many things. And yet it is so remarkably strange how little this is taken into account.

It would be quite wrong for you, my dear friends, to believe that the words I am speaking now are directed against anyone in any way, or spoken so vaguely that this or that person might believe they are meant. That is not the case: there are dear friends among us who work faithfully for our cause, who give much, much of their energies to it, and who really do everything they can to further this spiritual scientific movement, that is, to advance it in a concrete way so that it can continue. But they, in particular, must realize that certain things must be sharply defined. So don't take it the way you would if you thought: Oh, I'm supposed to think, I'm doing it wrong either way, the words I speak are far from that. But there must be room for an understanding that it is an anomaly, for example, do you see that in our circles people keep appearing who, so to speak, turn all facts into their opposite. For example, if someone, some X, does this or that that one is obliged to turn against. What happens?

In rare cases, a real handling of the interest occurs that one must turn against this or that. Or, if the interest occurs, it fades away very quickly. Things are quickly forgotten. On the other hand, when one has to turn against this or that, then those who say: Do everything you can to ensure that something particularly unpleasant does not happen to the one who did it, against whom you have to turn, that something particularly unpleasant does not happen to him. You have to make every effort to cajole the one who has done something wrong, so that everything - you have to treat him in a particularly charming way, so that he is not angry that you think the truth about him, that he has done something wrong that you have to turn against him.

Taking the wrong side to protect, turning protection to the wrong side, that is such a typical phenomenon. What attacks we have experienced; against the board, against the members of the board! Yes, the interest in the attacked board or the attacked board members has always waned terribly quickly. There has always been a lot of talk about it, but very soon even what one has said oneself has been forgotten.

But the interest has stubbornly persisted that what has been said has been said: that person has been treated badly, that person has been reproached. And now letters have been written to the members of the board. [And now the members of the board are supposed to] go there and reconcile those who actually caused the whole thing! It is a very typical phenomenon. Always turning the understanding in the wrong direction.

Now, my dear friends, many things seek a channel, as it were, and make this or that a recurring typical phenomenon: Thus, it has occurred before, one can say, in a frightening way in recent times, has occurred again and again, that the honor that has been done to me in a dubious way for so long, that whenever someone did not want to take responsibility for something but still wanted to advocate it, they would say, “Doctor Steiner said so.” This way, this dubious way, has been transferred to Dr. Steiner for some time. And wherever it occurs — “She said so” — it is incredible! Or: “She said this or that about it.”

Dear friends, the way Dr. Steiner has to work with me, always has to work with me, it is only possible to maintain that trust within society if complete clarity is brought into this matter. But what is behind all these things? Behind these things is really everything. From the simplest statement: “Dr. Steiner is behind this again.” – From writing private letters: “Dr. Steiner is behind this again.” – From this simple statement to those undertakings that have recently come from this angle of mind, I would like to say.

I had to speak to you about such an attack here recently. It had to be mentioned for the simple reason that I had to make a comment in connection with this attack. I said quite simply at the time - without claiming that it was originally connected with the intentions one has: But what one undertakes in this direction can lead to claims and statements that I characterized at the time, which is sailing directly towards undermining my activity, our activity within the anthroposophical movement – insofar as it is linked to this structure – just as I said at the time: that we are separated from the structure, exiled from the structure. The movement is not going the way I described it, in terms of subjective intentions, but in the direction of the actions and assertions of certain people, the movement is going that way. Because I had to point out, without naming names – and I still don't want to name names today – I had to point out that among the attackers is a very respected writer who writes pages and pages about facts that don't even exist, and who chooses the way to carry out his attacks – including against me – but chooses to do so via Dr. Steiner, who attributes characteristics to her - I don't even want to talk about them - that one can hardly decide whether they arise from madness or from a particularly sophisticated way of representing certain things. A writer to whom one was extremely close, to whom one did exactly the opposite of what he now makes the basis of his attack, and who formulates the attacks in such a way that they can achieve their goals in a particularly sophisticated way. I said at the time that I ascribe the intentions, the subjective ones, to what emerges from the letter out of incredible national chauvinism. Without wanting to talk about intentions, I am talking about the consequences that may occur. And that I was not completely wrong, that I characterized at the time not without reason, you can see that simply from the fact that the same words that appear in that letter, those words that are pulled out of thin air and that – even if they were true – show that the person concerned, according to his own statement that the person in question has been pretending for six years, that these words, which were in the letter, appear in a newspaper that could be described as a rag, literally the same words, literally the same attitude, that it is now already being incorporated into this current, that is important now; not important because of this paper – because printing ink contains so much – but that the way is found by someone who – despite the fact that we have done exactly the opposite – takes what he has made the basis of his attack, his fundamentally untrue attack, and that this finds its way into such rags, that speaks volumes. Not that it is found in these rivulets, but that it is what came to us in this way, as I had to characterize some time ago.

My dear friends! The attitude of any person is not in the least affected by anything that must happen within our anthroposophical movement. Everyone may have attitudes that they believe they need. But saying untrue things is something else. And if you want to prove an attitude with untrue things that you direct against someone personally, then that characterizes the whole kind of attack that is made and the whole kind of attitude and way of thinking from which such attacks are possible.

The person in question – after saying this about Dr. Steiner – turns to me. If someone honestly refutes what I have done, that is something different from writing personal things that border on objective defamation, which then find their way, as can now be seen, to such prey.

So there we were, my dear friends, there we were for years, endeavoring to carry out honestly that which leads from one cultural current to another, that which brings peace and harmony between the individual cultural currents. There are attacks in this way, not resorting to refutations, but to defamation. This is only the most generous of the attacks that are already being made in this direction. Don't think that I would have said a word about what is sent out into the world in the form of printing ink. I have often said that I have a good remedy for such things: when I have read them and held them in my hands, I wash my hands afterwards. But that is not the case here. And the fact that these are the same words that appear in the letter of a person who has lived in our midst for years, who is now incapable of writing a single correct sentence, who must know that everything he says is a pure untruth, the opposite of truth, does not incite me to speak in such a way, and to speak again, but, my dear friends, it compels me to do so because there is no other way to get through to people who, in another way, do not want to be reached. , but rather, my dear friends, it is because they do not want to do it in any other way, now, by inciting what can be incited, [because] they want to get at our movement out of national chauvinism.

I can count, my dear friends, on the fact that I will never teach in this building! I can count on the fact that I only contributed to the realization of the forms – I, my dear friends, can only not draw any conclusions about these things. What should I draw as a conclusion? I could have drawn a different conclusion from all of this before the construction began. Iron obligations bind one to what has been done. The construction came about because a large number of people made their sacrifices, which I believe was on the condition that the construction remains connected to me in a certain way as long as I live. I am forced, because people have made their sacrifices in reliance on this fact, not to be able to draw the conclusion that would have to be drawn today in order for one point of view to be made absolutely clear: so that no one can find the opportunity to insult the one who works closest by my side, calling her a person who wants nothing more than to satisfy a desire for power or the like.

I cannot resign. I must maintain the commitment that I have had since the construction began, not to disappoint those who have made their sacrifices precisely with a view to our remaining connected to this construction. Real commitments are kept. That is why I said the other day: nothing will induce me to voluntarily loosen the ties that bind me to the building. Don't think that I am speaking thoughtlessly or without realizing the gravity of the situation. But let it be quite clear: I will hold out as an adviser and I will see if a sufficient number of people will understand.

Whatever lies are told, if there are any desires for power or the like that are deadly to everything within our movement, and if such lies are told as are being told now, our movement cannot continue to exist. I will not resign from the Honorary Presidium out of politeness to the Anthroposophical Society, but for the time being I will remain purely passive with regard to this ownership of the Honorary Presidium. But I ask you to take into account that I only want to be an advisor for all spiritual matters, as it was intended at the beginning of the Anthroposophical Movement.

However, Dr. Steiner will, as quickly as possible, now carry out her decision and resign from her position on the Central Council, so that she too stands within this movement only as a private person, as I myself do. She will fully meet the challenges she faces as a private person through her spiritual potency, she will do everything she can do; but she will no longer hold any office as soon as possible, she will no longer hold any office in any direction, but [she will] only stand as a private person, like myself, within the Anthroposophical Society.

I would like to say: there have been enough words; there have been enough meetings about all kinds of things; there has been enough talk. Perhaps it will have more effect if there is an action for a change. The next step should be for Dr. Steiner to resign, on my advice. The measure is full of what has been directed against her from all sides in recent times. Not a week goes by without the most incredible attacks coming from somewhere. Such things would at least undermine what is needed for real productive work. We will only be able to continue working if we both stand as private individuals within this society. It remains to be seen whether there will still be people who will find the opportunity to speak of all kinds of agitation and all kinds of lust for power. Yes, we have come a long way in our time, a wonderful way!

I would not have returned to that letter, which I mentioned at the time, if after this letter there had not been a number of developments that filled the cup to the brim, and if it had not become completely clear how closely related what lives in this letter is to what is subtly revealed in every line, wherever one looks, what one strives for. Well, my dear friends, as long as possible I will remain connected in this way with what the Bau should be. For the reasons stated, I cannot voluntarily resign from the Anthroposophical Society. But when one sees how – and as I said, I am not talking about subjective intentions, but about objective facts – what is done by people who should know that they are saying untruths is turned into the opposite, then it has gone far, and then it just has to be said.

In this formulation, my dear friends, I must announce to you that I ask to always be taken seriously as a private person, as has been the case since 1912, and to take note that the measure has been taken and that Dr. Steiner is resigning from her post on the central committee and her other offices and will devote herself to the Society in the future in a spiritual activity in the direction she has already taken. I think I have said enough.

The considerations we are currently undertaking concern matters that are treated as mysteries by many people who know something about them in one form or another. And for certain reasons, knowledge of these things is kept away from the world from many sides, because it is believed that the things in question are parts of a comprehensive knowledge of supersensible matters that should not yet be communicated to mankind. I do not consider this view to be correct with regard to certain things that are being discussed here. On the contrary, it seems to me necessary for humanity to make the courageous decision to enter into a real consideration of the supersensible worlds. And one cannot do that otherwise than by directly grasping what is specifically considered in relation to the question in question.

Today, I would like to deal with a preliminary question first. Yesterday we spoke about the stages a person goes through between death and a new birth. A very common objection to discussing these things, not on the part of the initiated, but on the part of the uninitiated, is that one simply says: Yes, why is it necessary to know something about these things? One could indeed wait until one passes through the gate of death, and then one will see what it is actually like in the spiritual world. It is something that is said very often. Now, the thing is that we can never answer such questions from a so-called absolute point of view when we talk about reality, but that we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, must always answer them from the point of view of the time in which we live. We live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which began in the 15th century of our calendar. It concluded the fourth post-Atlantic period, which, as we know, began in the 8th century BC and came to an end in the 15th century AD. There are seven such cultural periods. From this, however, it can be seen that we have passed the midpoint of the cultural development of the earth, which was in the fourth post-Atlantic period, and that we are simply entering – we are, after all, also in the fifth great earth period – the time when the earth is in a descending development.

The considerations we have been making in these days can already draw your attention to the fact that it is important to look at the descending development, at that which is, so to speak, not in evolution but in devolution, which is in retrogression. Our whole evolution on earth is in retrogression. Certain abilities and powers that were present in the previous period of ascending development cease to exist, and others have to take the place of these ceasing powers and abilities. This is particularly the case with certain inner psychic abilities of the human being. It can be said that until the fourth post-Atlantic period, until around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people still had the ability to have a certain connection with the supersensible world. We know that these abilities have disappeared in the most diverse ways. They no longer exist as elementary abilities; they have, so to speak, dwindled away. Not only has the life of man on earth changed between birth and death with regard to such abilities, but actually, and even more radically, has the life of man changed between death and a new birth. And it must be said that for this period of time, from death to a new birth, in the present cycle of mankind, which thus already belongs to the descending ones, it is so that men, when they go through the gate of death , they must have certain memories of what they have acquired here in the physical body if they want to find the right attitude and the right relationship to the events to which they are exposed between death and a new birth. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a right life after death that people here before death acquire more and more certain ideas about life after death, because only when they remember these ideas, which they have acquired here, can they orient themselves in the time between death and a new birth. It is factually incorrect to claim that one can wait until death to have such ideas about the life between death and a new birth. If people continued to live in these prejudices, if they persistently refused to want to gain insights here already about life between death and a new birth, then this life, this life free of the body, would become a dark one for them, one in which they would be disoriented; they would not be able to penetrate their spiritual surroundings in the right way through everything that I described to you yesterday. Until almost the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that people brought abilities into their physical life here that originated in the spiritual world. That is why they had atavistic clairvoyance. This atavistic clairvoyance came from the fact that certain spiritual abilities extended from the pre-birth state into this life. That stopped. People no longer have abilities here in physical life that extend from the prenatal life. You know that. But the other thing must be done instead: people must acquire more and more ideas here on earth about the post-mortem life, the life after death, so that they can remember after death, so that they can carry something through the gates of death.

That is what I want to comment on in particular regarding this preliminary question. So the comfortable notion that one can wait until death to form such ideas does not apply if one considers in concrete terms at what point in time of the development of the earth we actually are. And this must always be borne in mind. For views that are absolutely valid, that apply at all times, do not exist; there are only views that can guide people for a certain period of time. This is what one must acquire in such an eminent sense through spiritual science.

And now I would like to discuss a few things that can bring our considerations to a preliminary conclusion. We started from the assumption that the present human being feels a gulf between what he calls ideals, be they moral or other ideals, which he also calls ideas, and what he feels to be his views on the purely natural order of the world. The concepts and views that man forms about the natural order of the world do not enable him to assume that what he carries in his heart as ideals has real power and can actually be realized like a natural force.

The essential thing to consider in this question is now the following: We now know how it is with the structure of the human being here on the physical earth. We also know how it is with the structure of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some time ago I raised a question which actually already comes before the human soul as a concrete question when the human being looks at life, but which is precisely a question to which one cannot say anything when one is faced with the gap just characterized between idealism and realism between idealism and realism, that is the question: How is it that in our world order some people die very young, as children or young people or in middle age, while others only die when they have grown old? What is the connection with the order of the world? Neither idealism on the one hand nor realism on the other, which cannot regard ideals as real powers, can shed any light on such questions, which are, however, questions of life. These questions can only be approached if one has something very definite in mind. And that is to realize that the present human being, as he will one day stand before us as an earthly human being, can cope relatively easily with space, but he does not cope in the same way with time. In this respect, the sum of all existing philosophical views does not really offer any significant insight, and the question of the nature of time has so far only been treated in the narrowest human circles. It is not that easy to speak about time and its essence in a way that is accessible to the general public, but perhaps I can succeed in giving you an idea of what I mean by bringing time into discussion in analogy to space. I will have to tax your patience a little, because the brief consideration I want to give to this subject seems to have a somewhat abstract character.

If you simply overlook a piece of the room, you know that what you overlook reveals itself to you in a perspective character. You have to take into account the perspective of the room when you overlook a piece of it. If you now bring the piece of room that you overlook and to which you instinctively ascribe a perspective character onto a surface, then you take the perspective into account. If you look down an avenue, you see the distant trees of the avenue as smaller and closer together. You can express this in perspective, and you can, in a sense, express in perspective on a surface what you see in space.

Now it is clear that what you see in space is juxtaposed in a flat surface. In space, it is not juxtaposed; there are two trees in front (see drawing on p. 164), and two trees are far away. But by bringing the visible space into the flat surface, you place what is behind one another next to one another. You have the instinctive ability to transpose what you have painted or drawn on a surface into three dimensions. That you have this ability is due to the fact that man, as he is now as an earthly man, has become relatively detached from space as such.

Man has not detached himself from time in the same way. And that is something tremendously important and significant, but something that unfortunately is hardly noticed, hardly noticed by science. Man believes that when he develops in time, he has time. But in reality he does not have real time. He does not have real time at all, but what you experience as time is actually, in relation to real time, something that can be called an image. Just as this image (see drawing) in the plane relates to space, so what the ordinary person calls time relates to real time. The ordinary person does not experience real time, but rather experiences an image of time. And that is very difficult to imagine.

For example, it is extremely difficult for you to imagine that something that is effective today does not need to be present at the present moment in time, but is real at a much earlier point in time and is not real at the present moment in time. You can, so to speak, project that which is present in a very early period of time into your own time.

What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.

Yes, now you have to imagine looking into it. What you see before you in the present contains no ahrimanic powers, but Ahriman works through nature from the past, from a particular past.

And to you, Ahriman appears in nature, when you become aware of him there, in perspective. If you were to say: Ahriman is at work in the present — then you would be making the same mistake in relation to nature as if you were to say: When I survey a room, the distant trees stand beside the near trees (see drawing on page 164) because they can be placed in perspective within the space.

A fundamental requirement for a real view into the spiritual world is this: that one learns to see in perspective in time, that one learns to place every being at its correct point in time.

If I said yesterday that after death the I is, as it were, transferred from a fluid state into a kind of solid state, that is not all there is to it. Suppose you lived here on earth with your I from 1850 to 1920, and in 1920 you became aware of your I. I mean: you will become aware of it earlier, but now you look back, with the spirit self through the hierarchies you look back at your ego; there you see your ego always as it was from 1850 to 1920. The ego stays there, stays put. This means that your experiences do not go with you soon after your death, but you look back on them. You now look back from a temporally distant perspective and you see into the length of time, just as you see into the length of space here in the physical world. I can also express it this way: when you die, say, in 1920, you live with all that I described to you yesterday as the members of your being, but then you look back on the stretch of time in which you lived here on earth with your ego. And that stretch of time remains there, and you always see it as you continue to live in perspective, at the point in time where it was. And so you have to imagine that Ahriman is active outside in nature, but from an earlier point in time.

This is very important. It is something that is given very little consideration. If one wants to understand the world, if one wants to speak spiritually of time, then one must absolutely imagine time in a spatial way and must consider this connection of the spiritual substance with time. This is very important.

Now, what I said to you about the Ahrimanic powers, that they work from the past, is true for nature. But with human beings it is different. For the human being, while he lives here between birth and death, it is different precisely because everything that comes to an end in time becomes maya, deception, for him. While he lives here, the human being lives within the course of time itself, and by living through a certain number of years, he lives through the course of time. As time passes, he himself passes with time. That is not the case with space. When you walk down an avenue, the trees remain behind and you move forward, and you do not take the trees, which are left behind, and your impressions with you in such a way that you would have the impression that the tree image is moving with you when you take a step. You do that with the image of time. Here in the physical body you actually do this – because you yourself continue to develop in time – by allowing yourself to be deceived about time in relation to its perspective. You do not notice the perspective of time. And in particular, the subconscious mind does not notice it. The subconscious mind does not notice this living with time at all, and gives itself over to a complete deception with regard to the perspective of time. But this has a very definite consequence. It has the consequence that Ahrimanic powers can now work as present powers in what happens in man. Ahrimanic powers work in the life of the human soul as present powers. So that man stands in relation to nature in this way: when he looks out into nature, there is nothing Ahrimanic in the present. The Ahrimanic works in him as a presence, precisely as Maja, as deception. But the human being is given over to this deception about the things that I have explained to you, so that through the human being the Ahrimanic powers gain the possibility of creeping into the present, of walking into the present. We can say that the Ahrimanic forces – and the same applies to the Luciferic forces, albeit from a somewhat different point of view, which we will discuss in a moment – work in nature in such a way that they actually have nothing to do with the present, but extend their effects from prehistoric times. These Ahrimanic forces are currently at work in the human being.

What are the consequences? The consequence is that, in his deepest soul, man cannot feel related to nature in relation to the point just discussed. He looks at his being, or rather feels himself in his being, senses the nature-based being. Because ahrimanic powers are countervailing powers in him, and ahrimanic powers are past powers in nature, everything that is natural appears to him differently from that which develops within himself. Man does not unravel the difference he perceives between himself and nature in the right way. If he unraveled it in the right way, it would be as I have just explained. He would say: Outside in nature, Ahriman works from the past; in me, Ahriman works as a present power. But because of this, even if he does not know the difference, he behaves in the sense of this difference and perceives nature as spiritless. He does perceive that in the present the Ahrimanic powers are not directly active in nature, but he perceives nature as spiritless because he does not say to himself: Ahriman works from the past – instead, he only looks at present-day nature. Ahriman does not work in it.

But Ahriman, however strange it may sound, is the power that the general creation of the world uses to bring forth nature. When one speaks of the spirit of nature, when one speaks of the pure spirit of nature, one should actually speak of the ahrimanic spirit. There it is fully justified, the ahrimanic spirit. The beings of the normal hierarchies make use of the ahrimanic spirit to bring forth what extends around us as nature. The fact that we do not perceive nature in a spiritualized way is precisely because in the present life of nature the spirit is not contained, but works from the past. And that is the secret, I would say, of the world-creative powers, that they make use of a spirit that they have left at an earlier stage to work at a later stage, but let it work from the past.

When we speak of nature, we should not speak of matter, nor of forces; we should speak of ahrimanic entities. But then we would have to place these ahrimanic entities in the past. The result is a strange one: suppose some natural philosopher ponders, ponders what is behind the phenomena of nature. Well, he comes up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses about atomic connections and the like. But that is not the case. Behind what is spread out around us in a way that appeals to the senses, there is not actually what the natural philosophers usually assume, but behind all of this there is the sum of the Ahrimanic powers, but not as a presence. So if the natural philosopher is compelled to assume, let us say, that there are some atomic structures behind the chemical elements, then that is wrong; behind the chemical elements there are Ahrimanic powers. But if you could detach what you see from the chemical elements and look beyond, you would see nothing behind them in the present: it would be hollow where you look for atoms, and what is at work there comes from the past and works in this hollow space. That is how it is in reality. Hence the many unsuccessful theories about what the “thing in itself” is; for this “thing in itself” is not there at all in the present. Rather, where the “thing in itself” is sought, there is nothing; but the effect is there from the past. So that one could say that if Kart had sought his “thing in itself,” he would have had to say: Where I want to approach the 'thing in itself', there I cannot approach. — That is what he said. But he did not realize that in the beginning he would have found nothing there at all, and that if he had gone behind the veil of things, he would have had to go far back; then he would have found Ahrimanic powers.

In man himself it is different. It is precisely because man is vividly placed in time that it has been possible for the Ahrimanic powers to enter our world through the gateway of humanity and to work within man as such. And the consequence of the Ahrimanic powers working in man is that man detaches what he sees in the present from the spiritual, that man detaches his present existence from the spiritual. This is the consequence of our carrying the Ahrimanic powers within the Maja in us. So that one can say: Just as we view the world materially, detached from the spirit, as a mere natural order that believes it has reached its peak in the law of the conservation of energy and matter — which is an illusion — what we see as a natural order is merely brought about by the fact that we carry the Ahrimanic powers within us, and that they are not present as powers in nature outside us. Therefore, what we think about nature, in that we think of it merely materially, does not correspond to nature, but only to present nature. But this present nature is precisely an abstraction, because the past Ahriman always works in it.

Now, not only the Ahrimanic but also the Luciferic is at work in people. This Luciferic, however, has, so to speak, a different tendency in the universe than the Ahrimanic. Let us visualize the tendency of the Ahrimanic as we have now expressed it. The tendency of the Ahrimanic in us is to present the world in materialistic terms. That we conceive the world materialistically, that we think of a mere natural order, is the consequence of the fact that we carry Ahrimanic in us. That we carry ideals within us, which detach themselves from the general nature, according to which we want to orient ourselves in our mutual behavior, but which must appear to us only like dreams within the present world view, which are dreamed out when, according to the natural order, the earth has arrived at its final state , that is the consequence of the fact that the luciferic powers, which, like the ahrimanic ones, live in us, are constantly striving to tear the part of us that is accessible to them completely out of the natural order and to spiritualize it completely. The main tendency of the luciferic powers, insofar as they live in us, is to make us as spiritual as possible, to tear us away from all material life if possible. That is why they present us with ideals that are not natural powers, but that are powerless in the present natural order. And if, in the course of the future period of the earth, man were to fall entirely prey to the influence of Lucifer, so that he would believe that ideals are just imagined things towards which the mind can be directed, then this man would follow the luciferic powers. The material earth, to which we belong, would decay, scatter in the universe, would not fulfill its purpose, and the luciferic powers would lead man into another spiritual world to which he does not belong. To do this, they need the trick of making us believe in ideals that are actually mere dreams. Just as Ahriman, on the one hand, presents us with a world that is a mere natural order, so Lucifer, on the other hand, presents us with a world that consists purely of imagined ideals.

This is something very significant. And at present, I would say, a balance is only being struck in those areas that still lie in the human unconscious. But people must become more and more aware of this, otherwise they will not get out of this dilemma, they will not be able to build a bridge between idealism and realism, but this bridge is necessary.

What currently still creates a kind of balance is the following. When very young people die, for example children, these children – and the same applies to young people – have just looked into the world; they have not fully lived out their existence here on the physical plane. With a life unlived on the physical plane, they pass over into the other world, which is lived between death and a new birth, as I described yesterday. Because they have only lived part of their earthly life, they bring something of earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be brought across when one has grown old. You arrive differently in the spiritual world if you have grown old than if you die young. If you die young, you have lived your life in such a way that you still have a lot of strength in you from your prenatal life. As a child and as a young person, you have lived your physical life in such a way that you still have a lot of the strength in you that you had in the spiritual world before you were born. In this way, a close connection has been created between the spiritual part that one has brought with one and the physical part that one has experienced here. And through this close connection, one can take something that one acquires on earth with one into the spiritual world. Children or people who have died young take something from earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be taken at all if one dies as an older person. That which is taken along is then over there in the spiritual world, and what is carried over by children and young people gives the spiritual world a certain heaviness that it would not otherwise have, the spiritual world in which people then live together, gives a certain heaviness to the spiritual world and prevents the luciferic powers from completely separating the spiritual world from the physical one.

So you see, we are looking at an enormous secret! When children and young people die, they take something with them from here, which the luciferic powers use to prevent us from completely detaching ourselves from earthly life. It is extremely important to realize this.

If you get older here on earth, you cannot thwart the luciferic powers in the way described, because after a certain age you no longer have that intimate connection between what you brought with you at birth and physical life on earth. When one has grown old, this inner connection is dissolved and just the opposite occurs. From a certain age onwards we instill our own nature in a certain way into the spiritual substance within the physical earth. We make the physical earth more spiritual than it would otherwise be. So from a certain age onwards we spiritualize the physical earth in a certain way, which cannot be perceived by the outer senses. We carry spiritual into the physical earth, as we carry physical up into the spiritual world when we die young; we squeeze out, so to speak, spiritual when we grow old, I cannot say it any other way. Growing old consists in the spiritual sense from a certain aspect of squeezing out spiritual here on earth. This in turn prevents the reckoning of Ahriman. As a result, Ahriman cannot, in the long run, have such an intense effect on people that the opinion that ideals do have a certain meaning could completely die out. But in today's time frame, we are already very, very close to people falling into the most terrible errors precisely with regard to what has been said. Even well-meaning people easily fall into such errors with regard to what has been said. And these errors will become ever greater and greater and, with increasing earth development, can become enormous.

To give you an example: a very ingenious philosopher, Robert Zimmermann, wrote an “Anthroposophy” in 1882. I have already mentioned this in a context. This “Anthroposophy” is not what we now call Anthroposophy, it is more or less a concept jungle. But that is because Robert Zimmermann was not able to see into the spiritual world, he was only a Herbartian philosopher. Now he has written this “Anthroposophy”. But it is precisely in this “Anthroposophy” that Robert Zimmermann deals with the question that I have placed at the top of our considerations these days from his point of view. On the one hand, he sees ideas: logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, ethical ideas; on the other hand, he sees the order of nature. And he cannot somehow find a bridge between the logical, the aesthetic, the ethical ideas and the order of nature, but he does stop at it: on the one hand, there is the order of nature, and on the other hand, there are the ideas. And the conclusion he comes to is extremely interesting, because it is actually typical of a person in the present day. He comes to the conclusion that it is forbidden to man once and for all to populate nature with ideas and to ascribe to ideas the power of nature. The two worlds can actually only be connected in the mind of man. So he says. And so he means at one point, where he summarizes almost everything he says and thinks: “The realization of ideas is neither a fact of the past nor a fact of the present, but a task whose fulfillment lies in the future and in the hands of man. The dream of a “golden age”, of which a sober rationalist like Kant as of that of “eternal peace, as an extreme positivist like Comte as the ‘état positif’, raved about, will be fulfilled when the entire world of ideas has become real and the entire reality is permeated by the ideas, that is to say, when that which Schiller called “the secret of the master's art,” the “consumption” of matter by form, becomes manifest, or, as Schleiermacher put it, “when ethics become physics and physics become ethics.”

Yes, but that can never be! It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. Therefore such a philosophy always remains abstract and must finally confess: “A philosophy which, like the one above, neither takes the theocentric point of view, inaccessible to human knowledge, as in theosophy, and regards the ‘dream of reason’ as a reality that has long since been created, nor, like anthropology, takes the anthropocentric but uncritical standpoint of common experience, in order to view from there a reality filled with ideas as a 'dream of reason', which thus simultaneously wants to be anthropocentric, that is, starting from human experience, and yet philosophical, that is, going beyond it, at the hand of logical thinking, is Arihroposophie.” “Anthroposophy” is therefore here the admission that one can never cross this chasm between unreal ideas and idea-less reality.

But in man himself there is a natural being, which thus belongs to the natural order, connected with a spiritual being that can absorb the spiritual. This is not denied by an anthroposophist like Robert Zimmermann. But man cannot be regarded by contemporary science either in such a way that the riddle would be solved through man, through this microcosm.

Let us now look back at something we have already mentioned during this stay. We have said that we actually have to divide the human being into three parts, not as conveniently as the skeleton, of course, as I have already explained. But I have also spoken about this in the final notes to my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul). We can divide the human being into three parts: the head, the trunk and the extremities, with everything that belongs to the extremities belonging to the extremities, including everything sexual. If we divide the human being in this way and now apply what we already know: that the formation of the head, the shape of the head points to forces of the previous incarnation, the limb man points to the future incarnation and actually only the trunk belongs to the present. So, after what I have explained today, you will no longer find it very incomprehensible when I tell you: insofar as the human being carries his head, this head points back to the earlier incarnation, into the past. The forces of the past, Ahrimanic forces, are at work in the head, and what applies to Ahrimanic forces in general applies to the human head in particular. Everything that is actually formed in the human head does not actually belong to the present, but the forces of the previous incarnation have an effect on the head; and the creative powers make use of the ahrimanic powers to shape our head, to give our head its actual form. If the creative powers did not make use of the ahrimanic spirits to shape our heads, then we would all – forgive me, but it is so – wear a much softer head, but we would all have an animal head: one who is bullish in character would have a bull's head, another who is lamb-like in character would have a lamb's head, and so on. It is due to the influence of the Ahrimanic powers, which the creative forces use to shape us, that this animal head, which we would otherwise wear, does not really sit on us, as the Egyptians drew it on some of their figures; that we do not go around like these Egyptian figures, who have good reasons for this, because in the Egyptian mysteries, too, though from an atavistic point of view, things were taught that can be taught again now. We also do not go around like that, as in the Rosicrucian pictures, where every woman is painted with a lion's head and every man with an ox's head. That is the Rosicrucian painting of man. The Rosicrucians chose a more average animal and therefore gave the women the head of the animal that most resembles them, the lion, and the man the head of the animal that most resembles him, the ox, the bull. That is why in Rosicrucian figures you see man and woman placed side by side: the woman with the most beautiful lion's head, the man with a bull's head. But this is absolutely correct. That metamorphosis – to use a Goethean term – can take place, that our head, which tends towards the animalistic in its form, can be shaped so that it is a human head, comes from the influence of the Ahrimanic powers. If the deities did not make use of Ahriman to shape our bony heads, then we would walk around with animal heads.

But the divine powers also make use of the luciferic spirits. If they did not make use of these luciferic spirits, our limbless man would not be able to transform from the present to the next incarnation. The luciferic beings are necessary for this. And it is to the luciferic entities that we again owe the fact that, by dying, the form that the man of the extremities still has now is gradually transformed into the broader form that he is to have in the next incarnation. Then, in the middle of the path between death and a new birth, Ahriman must intervene to take on the other task: to reshape the head in the appropriate way. Just as we would go around with animal heads if we did not owe it to Ahriman that we get a human head, so our nature of the extremities would not metamorphose into the human until the next incarnation, but would pass over into the demonic. We lose our head, as we now have it, under all circumstances through death, not only as matter that unites with the earth, but also as form; in the next incarnation we carry over what will become the head from the extremity of man. But this would become a demonic being if we did not have the luciferic powers, who are connected with us, to thank for the fact that the transformation can take place from a demon, which is merely a spiritual soul, into the human form of the next incarnation.

Thus, Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers must participate in our becoming human, and the human cannot be understood without calling upon the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic for help. Humanity cannot be spared the task of truly understanding the activity of Ahriman and Lucifer in the future. The Bible quite rightly says that the Deity of whom it speaks at the beginning breathed the living spirit into man. But the living spirit works in the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the normally functioning divine entities, we are dealing only with the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the head man, we are dealing with an opponent of the powers of Yahweh, and thus also with an opponent of the Christ. And insofar as we are dealing with the man of the extremities, we are dealing with the Luciferic opponent.

Therefore, one will only understand the human being if one presents him under these three aspects. In our central group for our building, we therefore have this trinity: the representative of humanity, who is trained in such a way that the forces of breathing, of the trunk, of heart activity and so on are primarily active in him – this is the middle figure; then the figure in which everything main, head-related is active: Ahriman; and the figure in which everything extremity-related is active: Lucifer.

We must dissect the human being in this way if we want to understand the human being, because in the human being, the human being as such is united with Ahriman and Lucifer. At the same time, this is an indication that everything that is more or less connected with human thinking, which, after all, is bound to the head in relation to

its physical connection to the head — human thinking flows on the basis of perceptions as something external and obvious — that all this has an Ahrimanic character. Through the senses of the head we perceive nature primarily, and we build up an image of nature with the ahrimanic character just described, because we ourselves carry the ahrimanic in the formation, in the shaping of our head.

Ideals, on the other hand, have a great deal to do with love, with everything that belongs to the man of the extremities, inwardly, psychologically. I shall come back to this in the near future. That is why the Luciferic power has special access to ideals. Ahriman takes hold of us through our head, Lucifer through our extremities. Through our head Ahriman tempts us to conceive of nature without spirit; through our extremity man Lucifer tempts us to conceive of ideals without the power of nature.

But it is the task of the present human being, by surveying such things, to arrive at a correct overview. For you see, there is a certain boundary within us, precisely in our chest-humanity, in our trunk-humanity, whereby the forces of the head, which are Ahrimanic forces, are separated from the luciferic forces that belong to the extremity-humanity. If we were able to see ourselves completely by looking mystically into ourselves, then we would indeed comprehend the natural order through the head, but we would also see into ourselves through the natural order. And if the luciferic powers were to decide in us, then the luciferic powers would also enlighten us about the ahrimanic powers, and in this way we would come to a connection between the natural order and the spiritual order. But for a certain reason we cannot do this, and that is because we have a memory. What we absorb from nature in the way of ideas and concepts, of impressions, we store in our memory. And if here (see diagram on page 179) we have only schematically drawn the head human being, the trunk and torso human being, and the extremities human being, then in the trunk human being there is the septum, which leads to that which we take in through the head, in the natural order, coming back to us as memory material. As a result, we do not see down to the Luciferic, and thus we do not notice the Ahrimanic, as we do not see what is behind a mirror, but rather what is reflected. Here the natural order is reflected in what at the same time separates our Ahrimanic from our Luciferic, and what is the basis for the forming memory, for the forming power of recollection. If we could not remember the things we have experienced, if this partition were not there, if, looking into ourselves, we could see through ourselves, we would look down into ourselves as far as the Luciferic. Then we would also perceive the Ahrimanic.

But now consider: what appears to us in this mirror is what we live through in the course of our lives, what we look back on after death, what becomes a solid ego from a fluid ego. This is what we look back on. That is what we live with. And Ahriman and Lucifer work with us, working with us in such a way that Ahriman brings us to wearing a human head, and Lucifer brings us to not becoming a demon, but to having the possibility of coming to a next incarnation.

I have perhaps tried your patience a little with things that are perhaps a little more difficult to understand, but I wanted to at least evoke a feeling for what actually creates the gap between idealism and realism. It arises from the fact that the Luciferic in us arouses idealism, which is powerless in nature, that the Ahrimanic in us evokes the mere natural order, which appears spiritless to us. Thus idealists, abstract idealists, are actually under the influence of Lucifer, while materialists are under the influence of Ahriman. It is necessary to engage with these things, not just to engage in so-called theosophy in a schematic way, but to engage with these more precise things. For it is necessary that man should become conscious of the fact that he must do something to remain united with the spirit for the rest of his development on earth. It is an uncomfortable truth, one might say, even a hated truth, truly a hated truth, for it contradicts so much that is pleasant to man, that is pleasant to him out of laziness. Nothing is more difficult for people today than when they are told: If you want to maintain your connection with the spirit in the future, you have to do something about it. Most people would like the Mystery of Golgotha to have dissolved into the ground, so that they have nothing to do with their own affairs, so that they can be redeemed from their sins through Christ and go to heaven without having to do anything. And that is why most theologians get so angry about anthroposophy, because the anthroposophical side can never admit that man has nothing to do to maintain his connection with the spirit, that this can also happen in the future of the development of the earth without any action on his part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what the members of man are between birth and death, and what the members of man are between death and new birth, this connection is called into question by the future development of the earth, and it will only not come into disorder if men will really occupy themselves with the spiritual towards the future. Spiritual scientific evidence for this already exists today. This spiritual scientific evidence is highly, highly inconvenient truth, but it sheds light on important and significant matters.

I would like to say that the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in the human being of the counterweight has already become very loose, and it is necessary for the human being to be more and more alert to himself, so that nothing happens in the connection between his physical-etheric and soul-spiritual that could, so to speak, suck him dry, that could suck him dry soul-spiritually. For when such prejudices become more and more active, when one does not need to know anything about what happens after death in life, or when the gulf between so-called idealism and pure natural order becomes ever greater, then people are in danger of losing their soul more and more. Today, I might say, this loss is still held in check by the fact that when young people die, a certain heaviness is given to the spiritual world and Lucifer is thwarted, and when old people die, so much spirituality is poured into the physical world that Ahriman is thwarted. But one must not forget that as a result of people turning away from the spiritual realm, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers become more and more powerful, and that little by little, as the devolution of the earth goes on and on, this dam could no longer be fully effective.

That is what I would like to see emerging from our deliberations as a kind of bottom line, a feeling – and feelings are always the most important thing that can arise from spiritual scientific life – of the necessity of dealing with the spiritual from the present earth cycle onwards. I have emphasized this from the most diverse points of view, that it is necessary from the present point of view that people occupy themselves with the spiritual. And there will be no other way of dealing with spiritual matters in the future than by acquiring understanding and not resisting the process of really absorbing even the more difficult considerations such as we have been discussing in recent days and particularly today. People must come to understand the perspectivity of time. When this understanding of the perspectivity of time comes among people, then they will no longer say: Here is idealism, but it is only a mere dream that has no force of nature, and on the other side lies the natural order. Instead, people will come to recognize that what lives in us as ideals is the germ for the future, and that what is the natural order is the fruit of the past.

This sentence is a golden rule: every ideal is the germ of a future natural event; every natural event is the fruit of a past spiritual event. Only by this rule can one find the bridge between idealism and realism. But for this one thing is necessary: any ideal could never become the germ of a future natural event if this future natural event were prevented by the present natural event. We can put any hypothesis before our eyes. Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. This final state follows quite well if one assumes that, according to pure causality, the present physical states will simply continue. If one thinks as present-day physics does, that such a final state will one day exist according to the law of conservation of energy and matter, then there is no room in this final state for an ideal to arise in it as a future natural event, because the future will simply be the consequence of the present natural event. But that is not how it is, that is not how it presents itself to the present study of nature, but it presents itself differently. All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. And what surrounds us in the world of the senses will no longer be there in the future. And then, when nothing of what is physical now remains, when all this has been completely dissolved, the time will have come when the present ideals will join the natural process of what is now perishing.

This is how it is in the great universe. And for the individual human being, it is the case that he will be incarnated again in the next world incarnation when everything that he has grown into with the present incarnation has been partially overcome, when, that is, an environment can be created for him that is different from the present environment, when everything that is keeping him here on earth can be removed from the present environment. If all this has changed so that he can experience new things, then he will be incarnated again. The present ideals that can form in man will be nature, when all that is now nature will no longer be there, but something new will have emerged. But the new that arises is nothing other than the spiritual that has become nature.

Behind appearances and ideals we must seek that which forms the bridge over the abyss. But one must discover it. Today one can only discover it if one is not afraid to develop the concepts so powerfully that they themselves can penetrate reality. Therefore, the present time really has the necessity to engage very much in everything that can be experienced spiritually. But — let me add this as a postscript — it will be necessary for people to be able to develop ever greater and greater impartiality towards spiritual considerations. The day before yesterday, I ended by pointing out, as it might seem unnecessary to do for some people, but I do not like to do it, it is never unnecessary, a number of things that stand in the way of fruitful spiritual scientific work, including on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Above all, what is needed here is real impartiality. Time and again, we see that the dissolving power that actually brought about materialism and destroyed the old spirituality is penetrating into human thinking, especially into the spiritual, into the willed spiritual. I have pointed out how materialistic some theosophical views are. Of course, it is not easy to find the right words when discussing spiritual-scientific matters, because our language today is no longer suitable for the spiritual, because we first have to search again for such a connection between language and the subject that is suitable for the spiritual. But it is necessary that the spiritual-scientific movement is not always corrupted by what is most harmful. One must characterize impartially what takes place in the spirit. Again and again I experience that I am asked: There is someone, there is someone who has spiritual experiences. — The meaning of the questions, which are often asked in this way, is that the actual question is: Is it now possible to surrender to what this or that person sees with blind faith in the truth? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then blind devotion arises; if it is in the negative, then the person in question is immediately denounced as a heretic and it is said: Well, that is atavistic clairvoyance, you don't give anything to that. — Yes, this either-or must be taken quite differently in this field. We must really face up to the statements about the spiritual with all our healthy reason. But if we want to become dogmatists, we cannot become spiritual scientists. If we want to either idolize or condemn, we cannot become spiritual scientists. There will also be infinitely valuable contributions to the characterization of the spiritual world from sides that one does not necessarily want to swear by.

On the other hand, there are times when people swear by some esoteric personality. Then it can be shown that this seer personality has at some point – well, maybe even once – retouched a little, or retouched a lot; then that personality is finished. Before, the same people swore by them, and now they have been undone.

Yes, you don't get ahead within humanity in this way. You don't get ahead within humanity with the either/or of deification or demonization, but only by facing things with your common sense. For example, it may also be the case that someone, of whom one even knows: Well, he does not disdain to tell a tall tale now and then – something quite true, important, essential comes out of the spiritual world.

We would not have the either/or that I am talking about if we wanted to introduce dogmatics, but if we wanted to place ourselves with common sense, precisely within this anthroposophical movement. That is one thing. The other is this: it is extremely difficult, because of the way things are often handled within our circle, to place the Anthroposophical Society in the cultural movement of the present day. This requires discernment on the part of those who are already members of this society. Once you are a member, you have a certain obligation to exercise this discernment. For we will go completely wrong with this Anthroposophical Society if we do not seek to connect with the general spiritual culture of the present, if we repeatedly and repeatedly fall back into the error of being sectarian. That will be the death of our movement if we become sectarian. Just consider that things like the ones we have discussed these days will not seem particularly strange to someone who is currently involved in science and cultural life, if he or she only acquires the necessary lack of prejudice. But in order to achieve something in this way, it is necessary to have the will to distinguish. With us it can easily happen that a question is asked in a stereotyped way when it is a matter of: should someone listen to anthroposophical lectures or should he be given a cycle? So the question is asked in a stereotyped way, without taking into account the level of education, the whole world position of the person concerned. But the stereotyped way is what is absolutely harmful to us. It is the schematic that makes it possible for a person like the one in Holland, around whom a whole bunch of nonsense has crystallized, to swim into the Anthroposophical Society and find protectors there, while people who are capable of judgment are often repelled by it.

To mention a specific example: some time ago, Mr. von Bernus appeared within the Anthroposophical Society with the clear aim — which one may find a little better, a little worse, as common sense may speak — of building a bridge between the general cultural life, the literary and scientific life of the present, and our anthroposophical life. Now, Mr. von Bernus, in his own way, has poetically reworked and brought out into the world a number of things, some of which are in my books and some of which are in cycles. He showed me himself: he has received a pile of letters, letters of criticism, because a truly contemporary attempt has been made here! One would not be surprised if someone who perhaps has a lot at stake could be repelled by such behavior as was perpetrated against him by the Anthroposophical Society in the past. Nevertheless, the journal he founded will be of tremendous service to the Anthroposophical Movement. He had, after all, managed to get the Anthroposophical Society represented in Munich in his art gallery. But everywhere one could see certain resistances to something that was as justified as possible! And if one looks at Bernus' experiences, they give a good picture of how the Anthroposophical Society should learn to be a real society.

In so far as the Dornach structure came into being, it is a society. But much else, in particular, is left undone, clearly showing that the Anthroposophical Society does not see itself as a society at all, but as a sum of individual sectarian little circles. But we must get beyond this stage of sectarianism. And we will not get beyond it unless some thought is given to the matter.

It is so difficult, and it is true that one does not like to say such things, but after all, many things are necessarily said to me because I am personally so closely involved with this anthroposophical movement. If the Anthroposophical Society should gradually develop more and more into a society with an expressed tendency to keep me completely quiet — which is what it is actually developing into and what it has always had as a tendency — then it is not a matter of personal vanity when I emphasize this. It makes me very uncomfortable that I have to emphasize it, but in the Anthroposophical Society there is a tendency to keep quiet about me, and there the personal is linked to the factual. Because of this – because everything that a society otherwise does is not being done – only the venomous words that the apostate members have created bubble to the surface.

Yes, these are things that I sometimes have to point out and that must not remain unspoken. I have raised them in the places where I have been able to speak recently, because I really believe that in these catastrophic times it is very important that anthroposophy is represented in the world in the right way. But it is so difficult to get people to reflect more deeply on how one should actually proceed in the anthroposophical field in order to make this Anthroposophical Society a real society. — Individuals have indeed made a start, but as a rule everything gets stuck in the starting blocks. Now, I think that perhaps, by drawing attention to the matter a second time, it will be given a little thought. I am not saying this for personal reasons, but because of certain necessities of the time, as you will indeed gather from what I have just said, from which you will be able to discern many seeds that can serve to help you understand our catastrophic times.

[Blackboard writing] September 2, 1918

Every ideal is a germ for a future natural event.

Every natural event is the fruit of past spiritual events.

My dear friends! A whole group of new members of this school have arrived here today, and so I am obliged to say at least a few words once again to convey something of the principles of this school.

The first thing to be said about this school is that it forms the esoteric aspect of the existing Anthroposophical Movement, which with the Christmas Conference here at the Goetheanum has been newly reestablished. Earlier there were a few esoteric circles at the Goetheanum. All these esoteric circles must by and by come into this school, for it certainly has occurred that with the Christmas Conference a new spirit has come into the Anthroposophical Movement, insofar as it streams through the Anthroposophical Society.

I have also just spoken the words abroad, in recapitulation, which should point out the difference between the Anthroposophical Movement before Christmas, and what we now have since Christmas. Previously the Anthroposophical Society was a sort of administrative body for anthroposophical teachings, for the substance of Anthroposophy. Since Christmas it is different. Now it does more than merely foster Anthroposophy in the Anthroposophical Society. Now it is constituted so that Anthroposophy is actually done, which means that all things that flow through the Anthroposophical Society bearing on operations and ideas are constituted so as to be anthroposophical through and through.

What has happened with this renewal, my dear friends, must be taken in with sufficient depth, and fundamentally must be taken in with deepest sincerity. The renewal will then allow a differentiation between the Anthroposophical Society in general, and this esoteric school within the Anthroposophical Society. In keeping with the principle of openness that was established at the Christmas Conference, the Anthroposophical Society will of course require no more of its members than that they stand honestly by whatever Anthroposophy is, that they are, we might say, listeners to Anthroposophy, and that they make of this Anthroposophy whatever they can with their hearts and souls.

It is quite different within the school. Whoever enters this school, declares thereby that as a member he will be a true representative of the Anthroposophical Movement. And in this esoteric school, that eventually will be expanded into three classes, in this esoteric school the freedom implicit for every member of the anthroposophical community most certainly must be made to rule. Also, for the directorate, the Executive Council at the Goetheanum,¹ whose members answer for the school, full freedom must rule.

Being a true member of this school entails that in whatever matters a member is engaged with in daily life, that an anthroposophical approach is displayed to the world. And the Goetheanum Executive Council, as it appears to them, must be able to decide whether a member, not being able to be a representative of the Anthroposophical Movement, should therefore be stricken from the membership of the school. It must be a two-way relationship.

In the future, in the holding and handling of this school, a certain spirit must be engaged, a spirit that is ever more and more serious and in a certain sense stronger. Otherwise, we just cannot progress further with the Anthroposophical Movement. We ourselves must really feel it within the school, especially if we have a chance to enhance and strengthen Anthroposophy. There will be hard times ahead for Anthroposophy, and so the members of the school must know the difficulties that they have taken upon themselves. They are not simply devoted to Anthroposophy, but are members of an esoteric school.

And it must be seen as a commitment, a most inward commitment, that the operation of the Executive Council, as it is presently constituted, is seen in its esoteric substance. This must ever more and more come into the awareness of the members, which has not yet happened. It must happen. It must come to be generally known. And it says a lot, that at this time an Executive Council has come into being out of the esoteric.

What is certainly being pointed out, is that all of those who rightfully regard themselves as members of the school, should see the school as having been founded not by men and women, but rather by the will of the present-day ruling spiritual powers of the world. The school should be seen as having been put in place by the spiritual world, and should be seen as the meaningful work of the spiritual world, the spiritual world that not only feels somewhat responsible for it, but the spiritual world that feels responsible for it in the strongest sense. Therefore, whoever does not take this School seriously, and does not carry it within when involved in daily activities, without fail, for such a member, who does not take the matter seriously, his membership must be stricken.

Actually, lassitude to a very great degree has infiltrated the Anthroposophical Society in the last few years. To remove this forever is to be one of the many functions of this school. We should feel ourselves to be responsible for the words that we speak, we should before all things feel responsible for them, so that every word we speak, in the most serious sense, has been so fully verified by us, that we can represent it as truth. For untruthful statements, even when coming forth with good will, will work destructively within an occult movement. There must be no deceit about this, but rather the fullest clarity must reign. It comes down to this, the intention is not to allow it to wash lightly over a person, but the intention is to arrive at the absolute truth. And among the first responsibilities of a student of the esoteric, is that he not only feel a commitment to relate what he believes to be the truth, but that a commitment is felt to verify that the things that are said are actual objective truths. For only when (in the sense of objective truth) we have won godly spiritual might, the strength of which runs through this school, will we thereby be able to steer our way through all the difficulties that will beset Anthroposophy.

One should also not fail to attend to what is happening in the external world. Now please, my friends, whatever is spoken in the environs of the school should remain within the environs of the school. Yet I tell you that even within the environs of the school, one may not forget the sorts of things that are being discussed by authoritative personalities, such as the following: “Those who represent the principles of the Roman Church will be doing their utmost in the near future to make the individual states of the former German Empire independent,” and I am merely reporting, “so that out of these independent states, with the exclusion of Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation can once more be established, which in turn, having been established out of such a prominent quarter, will of course spread its influence over neighboring regions.” These persons say that they will have to do this in order to destroy, in root and branch, those movements that are most dangerous and frightful. They add that if they fail to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, then they will find other means by which to destroy in root and branch those most contrary, those most dangerous movements. The movements they are referring to are the Anthroposophical Movement and the Movement for Religious Renewal.

I am quoting them almost word for word. And you should see, from what I say time and again, that the difficulties will not become smaller, but rather every week greater, and that what I say is built through and through on a firm foundation. I would like you to take this to heart at once, by bringing an earnest heart-felt quality to what you become acquainted with as members of this school. Only when we are members of this school openly, fully, in earnest, and actively, will we be able to reach the bedrock that is absolutely necessary, if we are to make it through the difficulties of the future.

You may conclude from this that opponents will take Anthroposophy, and its branch Religious Renewal, much more seriously than many already ensconced as members. For when one becomes aware of the intention of reconstituting the broken-up Holy Roman Empire of 1806, and the implication that it is in order to dispose of our Movement, then one must take the matter very seriously. In a movement grounded in the spirit, it really and truly does not matter, my dear friends, just how many members are in the movement. What does matter is the sort of strength living within, strength that has come out of the spiritual world. The opponents know that this sort of strong force dwells within our Movement, so don't enter into it lightly, but with sufficient strength and firmness.

It is not easy to present to someone that the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold can really happen, if the person has not had the experience of knowing what it means for their human nature to be in the "I am” and their astral body to be outside of the physical body. For if a person's essential being is closed up within the physical body, he can only take whatever is in his vicinity as the truth, when it has been verified through the apparatus of the physical body. And through the apparatus of the physical body, the sensory world can only come to be taken as a reflection of the spiritual world, which initially is not disclosed through the senses, but is merely reflected.

Now in general, it is not so difficult to leave one’s body. It is done every time one goes to sleep. A person is then outside of his body. But when outside of his body in the state of sleep, then his awareness is also quenched to the point of unconsciousness. Only illusory dreams, or perhaps also dreams that are not illusory, surge up out of this loss of consciousness. It is part of the subject matter of the attainment of higher awareness, however, to leave the physical body with fully aware-self-possession, so that external to his physical body one may perceive around about himself, just as within his physical body with the help of the physical senses he perceives the physical world. And he partakes then, outside of his physical body, of the spiritual world in truth.

Initially, however, a person just sleeps without awareness. Under ordinary conditions it is not given to us to know what could be seen when outside of one’s body. And this specifically is due to a person being protected from coming upon the spiritual world unprepared.

If and when a person is sufficiently prepared, what happens with him then? Then, when the person steps up to the abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world [It was marked in red.], when the person has been found to be prepared, as has been pointed out in the last lesson, then the Guardian of the Threshold takes the true individuality of the person out and beyond, allowing over-flight of the abyss [It was marked in yellow.], under the agency of what has been delineated in the foregoing mantric verses. And for the first time, from the other side of the Threshold, a person can then observe his own sensory being, his physical being.

Such is the first grand impression of true experience, my dear friends, when the Guardian of the Threshold can say to a person, "Look over there, there you are, so you appear to the outside while within the physical world, but with me, you appear in your innermost being."

And then resounding again and again from the Guardian of the Threshold is a significant word. For now, it resounds from the Guardian of the Threshold out over the abyss, this significant word, in calling out to the person, for him to retain his presence of mind when he looks upon himself quite differently from the other side of the abyss. And he does look upon himself quite differently. He beholds himself as threefold. [It was marked in green.]²

He beholds himself in his threefold nature, expressed in soul in thinking, in feeling, and in willing. There are actually three people, the thinking person, the feeling person, and the willing person, all of which have been stuck into each person, and for the time being are really only drawn together in the physical world through the physical body. And all this, that the person looks upon, is intoned by the lips of the Guardian of the Threshold in the following manner.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness on the earth.

Or it could be the human stamp, for one must of course translate the words from the occult speech.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

Experience the head’s world-gestalt
Feel the heart’s world-beat
Think the limb’s world-strength

They are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

[The mantra was now written on the board.]

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the human stamp
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

Experience the head’s world-gestalt
Feel the heart’s world-beat
Think the limb’s world-strength

They are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

The Guardian of the Threshold points out here how the three, which separate from one another as soon as the person leaves his physical body, how the three appear in relationship to this physical body. The gaze is directed out upon the physical body, upon the head, the heart, the various members of the body, and as said by the Guardian of the Threshold, "When you in actual truth behold the human head, this human head will be an image of the heavenly universe. You must gaze out upon the far-flung depths that seem to border on and to define the world, and realize it is not so, your physical one-sided envisioning of it, you must gaze out and on, and in your gazing out and on, you must remember that your head, in its roundness, is really a truthful image of the surrounding heavenly world.” And one may connect to this here and now by bringing into awareness the mantric verse.

Experience the head’s world-gestalt

One connects outwardly through the symbol of a triangle pointing up. [It was drawn before the line.]

Through this symbol, as one pauses at this line of the mantric verse, you send your attention to the wide-open space above, and take note that everything around and about the earth is certainly part of this wide-open space above. You send your attention out and make it all an immediate presence.

Feel the heart’s world-beat

Through this cosmic-heavenly presence flows the rhythm of the world, resounding as music of the world. When we feel the human heart beating, it seems as though this human heart is merely beating out upon all that passes before the human organism. In reality, what beats in the heart is a harmonious counterpoint to what has been circling as world-rhythm for not merely a thousand years, but a million years. Hence one again pauses, as the Guardian of the Threshold speaks accordingly the words "Feel the heart’s world-beat" and one senses, finds with empathy, feels what takes effect both in the heart and all around and overhead. [Now the symbol ⧖ of a down-pointing and an up-pointing triangle connected at the tips was drawn before the second line.] The triangles in this diagram join all that is below with all that is overhead.

Think the limb’s world-strength

This world-strength is the one in which gravity and the other earthly forces are concentrated and rise from beneath. In our thinking, that is, insofar as it is earth-thinking, adapted merely to grasping the earthly, we must gaze down and under, then we grasp the things that stream out of the earth working effectively in men and women. Again, one pauses by the "Think the limb’s world-strength” in a triangle facing downward. [▽ was drawn before the third line of the stanza.]

And one will feel the character of the word of the Guardian, how it should work today on the human heart, on the human soul, if one allows this mantric verse in commensurate manner to come alive within and to work effectively.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

One says the following verse while rendering the up-pointing triangle symbol △ before the head:

△ Experience the head’s world-gestalt

⧖ Feel the heart’s world-beat

One says the last verse while rendering the down-pointed triangle symbol ▽.

▽ Think the limb’s world-strength

These are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

And one tries, after having allowed this mantric verse to work on his soul, to blunt the senses, to close the eyes, to hear nothing with the ears, to perceive nothing, and to remain in the dark for a while, that one might live fully and completely in the atmosphere of what sounds through the words. And in this manner, a person will place himself in the sphere in which initiation into all reality can then be experienced. In undertaking this, a person may take the first step beyond the Threshold.

But one must allow the profound word of the Guardian to work upon him fully and in earnest. This profound word of the Guardian speaks of everything, the moment we cross over the Threshold, of everything being different than it is in the sensory world. In the sensory world we think that thoughts, that ideas are predominant in people. This is the way it is in the sensory world. By itself this predominance of envisioning, of thinking, which is perceptible to customary awareness as well, is always intermixed with a bit of willing. Always in stepping from one thought to another, we must be using our will, as we do when we bring an arm into motion, or a leg into motion, or in doing just about anything we wish to do. But it is easy and refined, this willing that carries one thought on to the next. And so it is, when we are in the sensory world, the two are bound together, the predominance mostly of thinking with a little bit of willing, an easy willing. Yet as soon as a person comes across over the Threshold and comes before the Guardian, it will be quite the opposite, for there the bundled predominance is mostly of far-flung will and minimally of thinking. And in this willing that is otherwise sleeping in people, one catches in it a scent of the spirit, for the human head is constituted out of the cosmos, out of the heavenly world, a spherical copy in all particulars.

Hence the Guardian of the Threshold, when we have crossed over to the other side of the Threshold, calls out the following words. [A new part of the mantra was written on the board forthwith.]

The head's spirit,
You can will it;

And now one sees that willing is something quite different than it was previously. Previously the senses facilitated sensory perceptions, mediated sensations, and one had no awareness of will coursing through the eyes, of will coursing through the ears, of will coursing through the sense of warmth, of will coursing through every sense. Now, one sees that of all that the eyes sense as manifold colors, that the ears hear as manifold tones, that a person discerns as warmth and cold, as the difference between coarse and smooth, as odors, tastes, et cetera, that all this, all in the spiritual world is a sort of willing. [The mantra was continued on the board.]

And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving;

If a person has come to know this by looking back at his head from the other side of the Threshold as willing becomes predominant, [The verb "willing" in the second line of the mantra was underlined.] how the mind sets willing in place there, [The word "willing" in the third line of the mantra was underlined.] then he would furthermore know, how the heart harbors the soul, and how he can feel the soul in his heart, just as he can will the head's spirit correspondingly in the head. And then he knows for the first time, when he regards thinking not as a capacity of the brain, but rather as an capacity of the heart, of the soul of the heart, how thinking belongs not to an individual person, but rather to the world. Then he experiences world living, circling around as world music. [The second stanza was begun on the board.]

The heart's soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling becomes for you
Thinking’s seed-awakening world living;

You live in glory, not in soulless semblance of glory, but rather in the glory of the glow of the being of the world. [The summary lines of the first and second stanzas were now written, as the first stanza was once again spoken.]

The head's spirit,
You can will it;
And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving;

Summarized in the final line:

You weave in wisdom.

Summarized, bearing on the heart's soul, on feeling, in the sentence:

You live in glory.

[The words "wisdom" and "glory" were underlined.]

Just as a person gets to know the mind as a willing, so he gets to know feeling as a thinking in regard to personal presence and awareness in the world, if from the other side he observes the three, which only in the sensory world are one. [In the second stanza “feel” and "feeling" were underlined.]

And the Guardian continues in the third section. [The third stanza was begun on the board.]

The limb's strength,
You can think it;

Now we have the full reversal. On the other side a person maintains a concentration in the head of something else than thinking, for willing is here [The first stanza was indicated.], as I have just explained, concentrated in the head. Feeling remains in the heart, where it is also felt in the sensory world, for the inner force of the heart continues on in the spiritual world,

The limb's strength,
You can think it;

["Think" was underlined.]

On the other side, thinking is brought together directly with the limbs, which is quite the reverse in the sensory world. [The writing was continued.]

And thinking becomes for you
Willing’s goal-directed human striving;

And the will does this for thinking. ["Thinking" was underlined. The writing was continued and the word "virtue" was at the same time underlined.]

You strive in virtue.

And so, we have the full reversal in the spiritual world, by means of what the Guardian of the Threshold has said to us. While not being able to differentiate willing, feeling, and thinking while a person looks up from down under, it is differentiated as a trinity when the person looks on it from the other side, willing up at the head, feeling in the middle, and thinking down among the limbs.

In this way one becomes aware that what is willed, concentrated in the head, is wisdom woven into the world, in which all the beings of the spirit stream forth, and that thinking, seen in the extremities, is human striving, that can live as human virtue. And the three appear before the spiritual gaze:

The head's spirit,
The heart's soul,
The limb's strength.

[At the same time the words on the board "head's", "heart's", and limb's" were underlined in white, and the words "spirit", "soul", and "strength" were underlined in red.]

In this way the mantric verse is built. And a person must be aware of the inner congruence, more than aware, for as it floods into him, he must allow the mantric verse to work on him:

heavenly weaving
world living
human striving

[Forthwith were these three word-groups underlined on the board in yellow.]

These are the words of the Guardian of the Threshold, in which the three, emerging from the one as we cross over into the world on the other side of the Threshold, the three are guided into our mind's eye.

The head's spirit,
You can will it;
And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving;
You weave in wisdom.

The heart's soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling becomes for you
Thinking’s seed-awakening world living;
You live in glory.

The limb's strength,
You can think it;
And thinking becomes for you
Willing’s goal-directed human striving;
You strive in virtue.

These are the impressions through which the soul must sift, if real insight, real inward knowing is to be attained, resounding in the admonitions of the Guardian of the Threshold, as he also says to us:

Enter
The door is opened³
You will⁴ become
A true human being.

[It was written on the board.]

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being.

And these are the words, that for countless thousands of years, that yawn at all portals to the spiritual world, and at the same time, that resound spiritedly:

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being.

Imagine, my brothers and sisters,⁵ saying to yourselves at once, "I will take these words of the Guardian of the Threshold seriously; I will know that I was not yet human; I will know that I become so through insight into the spiritual world." Imagine, my brothers and sisters, saying to yourselves a second time, "Why, the first time I did not take these words seriously enough; I will tell myself that I need twice as many steps, from my present state of being, not being a true human being, in order to become a true human being." Imagine declaring to yourselves a third time, "I will know that I need three steps, from the spot on which I stand, not being a true human being, in order to become a true human being."

Serious is the first admonition that you give to yourselves. More serious is the second admonition. But the stamp of highest seriousness must be borne by the third admonition. And when you know how to bring this trinity in three-fold seriousness into the depths of your souls, then you will have an inkling of what it means for a person, through insight, through actual inwardly knowing, to become a person. And then you will have come full circle, as we have in this class today, coming full circle to the first admonition, all of which should live in our souls as one self-transmuting verse.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

△ Experience the head’s world-gestalt
⧖ Feel the heart’s world-beat
▽ Think the limb’s world-strength

These are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

Just so, my brothers and sisters, it has sounded just so in the heart, since there has been human existence on the earth, struggling for awareness. There has been a pause in this struggle since the emergence of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This pause is at an end, by will of the heavenly, spiritual entities leading mankind. May it once again commence in a worthy manner. In your human hearts may it sound again. So the wise leaders of mankind, ever since there has been human existence upon the earth, have guided human hearts into glimpsing what works as spirit in the world, what works as spirit through the world in human beings, as the crown of the world.

• 1. Der Vorstand
• 2. Sinn is “mind-awareness,” whereas Geist is “body-free spirit-awareness.” Body-free thinking becomes many-formed sensing. Body-free feeling becomes seed-awakening heart-thinking. Body-free willing becomes goal-directed willing.
• 3. Das Tor ist geöffnet is neither present-perfect in German nor in English, so should not be “The door has opened,” which would imply that someone has opened it. Instead, it is phrasal-reflexive auto-causative intransitive, so must be “The door is opened.” This leaves one with the proper sense of wonder at how one’s meditative activity in conjunction with the spirit has caused the door to be opened.
• 4. Regarding the translation of wirst in the next to last line, according to the Oxford Dictionary, normally “shall” is used only with first person pronouns, and “will” is used with second and third person pronouns, but if strong determination is expressed, the order is reversed. The word “shall” is now seldom used in any normal context in American English. The question is does the Guardian say to put our will into entering and “You will become,” or does he admonish us with determination to enter and says, “You shall become.” Both are correct translations.
• 5. In this lesson for the first of many times Steiner says the phrase Schwestern und Brüder. This sounds just fine in German, but in English, one always says it the other way around, for otherwise it just does not sound right, so it should be translated always as “brothers and sisters.”

The lectures here published make in their substance a supplement to what Rudolf Steiner has given us in his book, ‘The Story of My Life’, and may be felt as forming a whole with it. Delivered with all the living flow of spoken word and narrative, they were not designed for a book; but the exceedingly important matter they contain, and the whole historic context, makes them a document of inestimable value, and not only for the Anthroposophist. He indeed learns to see in full light the conditions and circumstances of that movement to which he has attached himself; and so gains firm ground under his feet, through learning to recognize in these events a necessity that supersedes any sort of justificatory argument. But those people too, who otherwise know no more than the shallow judgments they hear uttered, or find printed in some reference book, may also be grateful for this occasion to acquire a real insight into the facts. Surely there must be an ever increasing number of human souls, who will eagerly seize such an opportunity to learn from personal experience that an answer can be found to those questions, which stand like sphinx-riddles before the inner eye, and that the way to the answer can be actually shown them.

No ground any longer exists for the eternal re-iteration in every paper and pamphlet, that the one salvation in mankind's desperate plight would he the appearance of a universal genius, one who should master all the multifarious branches of life and knowledge, co-ordinate and combine them, balance one with another, and thence new-create a civilization;—and that the only escape from uncertainty would be some breaking-through of the boundaries of knowledge,—but that this is impossible!

For this genius has been here amongst us; he has broken through the boundaries of knowledge. His work lies before us, and bears testimony that he has done so. No word of his, however intimately uttered, need shun the light; it can be thrown open to one and all. The moral power, the transcendent altitude of his whole life and. being shine forth from this work as luminously as the calm certainty of his all-embracing knowledge.

Why was it then that they shrank from no means to block and bar his way, to render him impotent by calumny, when mere silence no longer sufficed?

Why?—Because this age will not endure superiority, and hates it. Because it concedes no right of life to any-thing that transcends the common,—and thereby plays into the hands of those powerful organizations, whose interest it is to let nothing come to light which they themselves are not willing to give to mankind. The idol of the present day, materialistic science, is in their eyes more preferable. Those words still keep their truth, which Goethe dedicated to the Masters of Knowledge:

‘... What you call Knowing!’
‘Why, who dare give the child its proper name?
‘The few who had some knowledge of these things,
‘And, fool-like, set no guard on their full hearts,
‘Revealed their feelings, visions, to the herd,
‘—These from of old they crucified and burnt.’

No further explanation is needed for this hatred. It is the hatred that the world turns upon whatever is higher than itself. This hatred displays the face and works the works of the World's Adversary.

But now, when, the excesses of this hatred can scarcely be further surpassed; when the great messenger of human liberation is dead; when the base and selfish motives of the warfare on him have manifested themselves only too plainly,—there must now ever more and more come souls, who will desire to see further, to penetrate through all the rubbish and trace the process of the spiritual events, discover the source whence they emanated, and the first steps on the road. Those who are interested in the historic development of the movement will find in these pages the information they need, and will at the same time learn the self-evident explanation and very simple reason of what arose as a matter of course out of the existing circumstances: namely, the original association with that German society of theosophists who were looking about for a teacher possessed of knowledge. When someone is appealed to, and the accompanying conditions are accepted, why should he not go to the aid of those who call upon him? When he is solicited for guidance on the road, and when he never for a moment hesitates to make plain what this will mean for those who go along with him,—that it will mean completely changing old habits of mind, awaking to the demands of the times, developing a sense for the progress of evolution and for the mission of the Western World;—why then should one, who is secure of his own road, not take compassion on those who are groping leaderless, and point them the way to the Divine Leader and to their own liberation?

If Mrs. Besant, at the most critical moment of her life, when the ground failed beneath her feet, had not been blinded, all might yet have turned to good, and she might have found the missing bridge to the Christ, without needing to manufacture as substitute the little sham god who has now slipped through her hands. And with her, thousands in the Theosophical Society might have trod the road of inner deliverance.

On the Blavatsky question and its riddles, Rudolf Steiner alone has thrown light. For him, she meant no kind of stumbling block; for he saw the positive element in her work and influence, and knew how to direct this positive element into channels where, freed from all its aberrations, delusions and clogs, it could remain a fruitful factor of knowledge, without working harm. And thus Blavatsky, in her progress as an individuality, received her due meed of thanks, and had her Karma lightened. Her own inner self,—all that she was as honest soul and sturdy force,—will figure greater in history thus, than if she remained involved with the spiritualistic phenomena that represent the heavier weighted side of her Karma. It was difficult to make one's way to what one felt must be the true, inner core of her being, when one heard all the marvellous tales told about her by her intimate, as well as by her distant friends;—and so the present writer found in those days. Yet one received the impression of a quite peculiar power and big-ness from merely reading a few pages of Isis Unveiled or The Secret Doctrine, which were quite of a different calibre from anything in the whole collection of the Theosophical Society's writings. The key to this intricate character was given us by Rudolf Steiner; and although the reports of the year 1915 are very defective (for at that time we possessed no professional stenographer in Dornach), his lectures on this subject—despite their mutilations—will have to be published, in order to throw light on these puzzling phenomena.

H. P. Blavatsky was born in 1881. The centenary of her birthday falls in the present year; and one may imagine that many festivals and celebrations in honour of her memory will -be held by the theosophists in all countries. Blavatsky was a child of nature, with a temperament of great native vigour. She had suffered much under the conventionalisms, so foreign to her nature, of Anglo-American society; and to its representatives in turn she was merely a phenomenon, a semi-barbarian, not under-stood by any, the medium through which the border-world knocked at the door of the fast-closed world of materialism. What is more, she did not understand herself, and suffered horribly each time on awaking from states that eluded her consciousness. Those will do her memory best service, who interpret her in the light and connection of one who was involved with the first attempts of the occultists to break through the enchanted circle of materialism.—Not to let fall whatever has been accomplished, accompanied though it may be by mistakes and errors; but to rescue what is positive, and preserve it for the future;—this is the constant duty of every occultist who is spiritually mature; and this too is the light in which one must always understand that first association on the road, when the Anthroposophical Society kept company for a while with the Theosophical Society,—down to the day when Mrs. Besant would no longer tolerate any thwarting of her own personal aims.

Although Rudolf Steiner tells us in these lectures, that by the end of its second stage the anthroposophical movement had outgrown everything which had come over as a legacy from the Theosophical Society, yet still the fact remains, that the influx of new generations and of many theosophical members into our society has brought a constant recurrence of many previously outgrown and not very pleasing symptoms, which in the past he had applied himself with all severity to cure. It shows that people to-day are of the same make and kind as those who went before them, and that accordingly they must be expected to go through the same mistakes and the same nursery-epidemics,—only, unfortunately, with ever increasing self-assertiveness and greater determination to live-out their own peculiar bent. What, after all, were the faults which Rudolf Steiner so sharply censures in these lectures,—the adulation of Max Seiling (a little local episode), or Bhagavan Das (a mere whim of the hour),—compared to many phenomena that have made their appearance in the last few years? But he picked out such things as symptoms, to point out whither they lead, to lay bare the causes of these ever recurring signs of decay, and to show how societies may be wrecked when such things make their way into the leading circles. Of this last, he thought in those days there could be no question amongst us. But he left us too soon alone; and amongst those who had come too young, too soon to leader-ship, the old faults—humanly all-too-human—flamed up with double force.

It behoves us to come to self-recollection. Let us make ourselves out no better than we are. There is no need for shame-faced concealment of our faults; on the contrary; out of their darkness we must evoke the light that brings self-knowledge. Communal consciousness is hard to be won. The common ‘I’ can only grow up strong and firm amongst us on a soil of vigorous wakefulness, of will to active knowledge, of courage for truth. These things are not to be achieved in solitude and secrecy; they must be fought for and won in community. Honest mutual struggles will do us no harm, will gain us the respect of all well-wishers. And ill-wishers may look back and reflect what the Church went through and displayed in its communal life, notwithstanding all the strict discipline imposed from without; and what imperfections, what contradictions to its own ideals had there to be worked out in life! It will then be seen, that it is not the leader, not he who gives the impulse to a movement, who must be held responsible for the faults in the disciples of his doctrine, but the Species Homo, which needs many round-about roads and much rising and falling and oft-renewed climbing, before it can attain at last to its goal.

Anthroposophy is a way of education. The Anthroposophical Society certainly presents no model institute for the living demonstration of anthroposophic ideals. One might even say that in many respects it is a nursing-home; as is of course very natural in an age of sick and sorry humanity. There flock to it the halt and maimed of life, those crippled under the burden of the age. May we only have nursing-homes for the physically diseased? Is it not right, that there should be places, where human-beings may spiritually get upon their feet again? And this came to pass here in abundance. Letters there were in more than plenty and words of overflowing gratitude from people testifying, that through Anthroposophy and its Teacher they first had learnt to find life again worth living.—For people to find Anthroposophy, however, there had to be a society, where the work was carried on.

And so the Anthroposophical Society was a workshop; and a vast amount of work was done in it. Anthroposophy found means to bring fruit into all the branches of life, artistic, scientific, and practical, too. During the worst times of economic crisis, anthroposophists were very largely unsuccessful in carrying out what they had as an ideal in sight; but they had doubly strong obstacles to contend with. One must remember, that the people who flocked into the Society, and started working outwardly when the Society already had a name and stood for some-thing in the world, were people as the modern age has made them, not as the ideal of Anthroposophy would have them be; and so there were many, unquestionably, who succumbed again to the temptations and the practices of the day.

The young people who had been disappointed with their experiences in the organized ‘Youth-Movements’ and by what they failed to find there, not Only found here an answer to the problems that perplexed them, and not only sought to satisfy their aspirations in this new community Anthroposophy, but they also brought their own habits into the Society,—including much that they might have left behind them, to start in Anthroposophy afresh.

And so the Anthroposophical Society cannot yet be a model institute; it remains a place of education.—But does not mankind need places of education too, in the wider human sense, if it is to move onwards to a better future?

Turn the question then which way we will, the Society is a necessity. It must educate itself; and it must afford the possibility of being a place of education for mankind. The life-forces that have been laid in it, have strength to per-form this work, if people come together in it who are strong and capable and devoted,—people who know, that they must join together to work as a community for mankind in a larger sense, not to shut themselves off and indulge only in self-culture,—who know, that it would be but a thankless return to take what is given as a saving anchor for oneself alone; who know, that one takes with it also the obligation to pass this anchor on to others whose life's ship is in distress.

Readers of this lecture-cycle who do not know from their own experience what was taking place when it was being delivered in the Theosophical Society, then headed by Annie Besant, will perhaps object to the polemical tone of several passages, especially those in which the conception of Christ held by this individuality is criticized. To understand this tone it must be realized that at that time the authority of Annie Besant still counted for much among many of those for whom the lectures were intended, and that the lecturer had to defend his own interpretation of Christ which, however, was in no way different from what he had hitherto maintained.

Now, since these battles lie far back in the past, some readers may well think that the polemical passages should be deleted. This is not the view of the present editors, who believe that, for historical reasons, the lectures should be preserved just as they were given. In addition, some readers may find it not without interest to know the superstitions against which the interpretation of Christ advanced here had to be defended, and how contrary to all Western feeling such superstitions were. Anyone who envisages the matter correctly is bound to see that for the lecturer it was really not a question of quarreling in the way characteristic of those societies and sects which hold their own views of the world. On the contrary what was at stake was the validity of his views, for which he had to answer before his own scientific conscience, as against a distorted belief motivated by personal interests. Reasonable people may certainly conclude that this belief was self-evidently absurd. Nevertheless it was such absurdities that were advanced in the Theosophical Society against what the lecturer had to say. In the world of reality, even things contrary to rational thinking may play their part.

Now, because the lecturer could not abandon his interpretation of Christ, which he had advanced since 1902 and which had been entirely unchallenged by leading members of the Theosophical Society, the Society, under Annie Besant's authority, among other similarly glorious deeds excluded all those members who, convinced by the lecturer's arguments, refused to accept Mrs. Besant's muddled beliefs. In this respect the Theosophical Society behaved like all inquisitors in a case which the lecturer himself had not thought of as a quarrel over dogma and had not treated as such. All he wished to do was to make an exposition based purely on facts. However, this is the kind of thing that usually happens when there is a collision between a valid factual presentation and a fanaticism reinforced by personal interests. In the course of time those who had been excluded from the Theosophical Society converted themselves into an Anthroposophical Society, which has continually increased its membership since then. Indeed, if we take into account the foolish calumnies directed so violently against the Anthroposophical Society and the lecturer in particular by the idol of the theosophists, Annie Besant, and by some of her idolizing followers, we can certainly not regard the separation of the Anthroposophical from the Theosophical Society as in any way a misfortune—especially if we also take into account many other things that since that time have emerged from the bosom of the Theosophical Society, supposedly as products of “the most noble philanthropy!”

Many readers of this cycle, who were at that time interested in the separation, will look upon the consequence of these battles, an echo of which appears here and there in these studies, as a kind of document that can be understood only in connection with the words that had to be spoken here. It may also be regarded as a demonstration of the manifold difficulties encountered by someone who believes he must defend something on purely factual grounds. However, if anyone does not agree with this viewpoint, he should be tolerant enough to skip, without resentment, those passages which in his opinion do not concern him. However, those for whose sake the lectures were given at the time they were delivered found in such passages a certain significance that should not be underestimated.

Rudolf Steiner.
Berlin, 1918

From yesterday's discussions, you were able to see how, in our time, the human being is part of the overall development of humanity. It was shown what, as it were, approaches the individual personality through the development of humanity itself, and how this development of humanity absolutely requires that the urge to fire and awaken the inner soul awakens more and more, so that man will find progress less and less as an external influence, so to speak, but that he will have to acquire it from within himself. That is the purpose of spiritual science: to enable human individuality to progress further, whereas in ancient times, simply by being born into humanity, a person had a certain amount of experiences that matured him to a certain degree. You will feel that the realization of such a fact, as we were able to describe it yesterday, is of tremendous importance and thoroughly illuminates what is needed in our time, what is needed by people of our time.

One can only really get into these things, as one should in the sense of a spiritual scientist, by looking with open eyes at the way in which people in the present day relate to the whole of earthly evolution. One can make discoveries of infinite significance. One must only make these discoveries in such a way that one is in a position to evaluate the facts. There are certainly people in our time who feel that something is needed to lead the soul, as it were, beyond itself, that is, beyond the twenty-seven years. But the courage and energy that accomplishes such wonders in external fields today, the courage and energy to really develop the inner soul forces, are not so common today. And so it happens that we meet people who have a certain striving in their nature to find something other than what can be offered by the culture of our time and the tasks of the world around us. But they do not have the courage to approach the kind of work and attitude that wants something truly new: spiritual science. And so we learn that such people do not clearly say to themselves, but feel: In the past, the environment gave people more, so we must again seek what the world gave people in the past, we must find the connection to earlier human gifts again.

That is why people who are more longing for the spiritual, I would say, out of powerlessness, take refuge in all sorts of things that have actually already been extinguished within human development. We could cite examples of this everywhere. Let us quote a very characteristic example from the writer Maurice Barres, who in his youthful impetuosity once wanted to storm, one might say, the spiritual heavens, but then, because he did not find the courage to join some new spiritual movement, sought to join Catholicism, as so many do in the present day. But it is a strange attitude that seeks a way backward instead of a way forward. And the words with which Barres describes his striving for Catholicism are characteristic, for these words testify to how a dispirited, energy-less soul, because it does not want to seek the new, reaches for the old. But how he reaches is the characteristic thing. Take the words of a man of this kind of mind, who has grown entirely out of the education of today, stands entirely in it, and out of this education has developed his inclination towards Catholicism. Take these words: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist!” Imagine someone who has sought this connection to Catholicism talking about the hereafter: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist; and however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers; whatever form mysticism may take, it contradicts reason. But let us turn to the Church, first of all because she is inseparably linked to the tradition of France. And then, because it formulates, with the authority of centuries and great practical experience, the rules of that ethic that must be taught to nations and children. And finally, because it, far from abandoning us to mysticism, defends us directly against it, silences the voices of the mysterious groves, interprets the Gospels and sacrifices the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society.” You see the motives of a man who is characteristic of the present age, driven to seek the spirit of his own kind: he reaches for what humanity once had without human effort. But he takes it without really laying any claim to the full meaning of what he takes. One would be tempted to say that such a thing is cynical or frivolous if it were not for the great seriousness of the endeavor. But that is precisely the fatal thing: the seriousness of the endeavor itself becomes frivolous due to the conditions of the time. Do not take this word lightly! The great damage of our time is rooted in the fact that people are always inclined to take things lightly. Examples like that of Maurice Barres could be cited countless times. What is characteristic of our time, in the sense of what has just been explained, would emerge everywhere in the most diverse ways.

We ask ourselves: What is the cause of this? We ask ourselves this question because it is important for us to recognize how we must do things differently. However, we can only find our way around in this if we have a little insight into the plight of the time, into what underlies such an attitude. We must look back a little into the meaning of human evolution if we want to understand what we must understand in the present if we are to move forward. If we go back in the evolution of European humanity and the Asian part of humanity that belongs to it — we only need to go back to the first third of the post-Atlantic period — we find today, even by outwardly scientific means, that people in those days clearly distinguished between the three basic components of the human being, and that the old, albeit more vague and dreamlike, understanding has come to the point that people knew how to distinguish between the three basic components of the human being. And this, in turn, is the reason why I emphasized with particular clarity in my 'Theosophy' that these three basic components must be taken as the basis for the whole structure of the human being. If we go back, we find everywhere that people can see how the human being can be traced back to body, soul and spirit. But just think about the lack of clarity that has arisen today, even among those who seek clarity, with regard to an overview of the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit! You can pick up one philosophy after another today, you can study Wundt, who was not only famous in Germany but world-famous, with great zeal, and you will see that the gentleman is unable to distinguish the soul from the mind, even though distinguishing the soul from the mind is one of the most fundamental necessities today. When did it actually come to light that people have confused the soul with the spirit? As I said, you can find it everywhere: man is divided into body and soul, and the soul is confused with the spirit, without any distinction. This was clearly expressed in 869 at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was abolished, excuse the harsh expression, because the teachings that were formulated at that time essentially culminated in making it a dogma that man has a thinking soul and a spiritual soul within him. Thus the spirit was done away with, and what little spirit was still sensed at that time was smuggled into the soul by saying: It has the power of thinking and something spiritual as well. Then came the Middle Ages with their scholastic research, which was admirable in many respects; but this was everywhere subject to the strict constraints of dogma, and so-called trichotomy was strictly proscribed. Spirit had to be left out everywhere. And this is also the source of the way in which modern university professors, who, according to their own statements, pursue science without preconditions, think – or do not think – about soul and spirit. But they are unaware of the prerequisites, namely the decrees of the Council of 869. The fact that they have no idea what they actually depend on is the reason why they call themselves unconditional. That is the way things are, and they must be heard and vigorously considered; there is no point in closing our eyes to them. For if spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy is to become for man what it must become according to the laws of human evolution, then such things must above all be faced, and man must be given back an understanding of the threefold constitution of the human being as body, soul and spirit. Just as on the one hand there is the body, which between birth and death or conception and death, is the physical mediator of consciousness, so the spirit must be recognized as the spiritual mediator of that higher consciousness that man has to develop between death and a new birth. But this is connected with the deep inner, significant life circumstances of modern humanity. Let us take a characteristic example from our time. In many cases, public life is based on three abstract ideas, even though people have deviated from them here and there. And particularly in our time we see these three abstract ideas being wielded by the whole world against the center of Europe. But this center of Europe will only spiritually grasp its task if it is willing to make the three abstract ideas into concrete ideas imbued with reality. These three ideas were forcefully called into the consciousness of mankind at the end of the 18th century in the words: fraternity, freedom, equality. They almost remind us of three very concrete ideas, which are only now being understood in a very abstract way, but which were meant very literally in their time when they were incorporated into the consciousness of mankind. They remind us of faith, hope and love. But let us dwell on the three ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality. It is a shadowy thinking that one seeks to visualize these three ideas in the whole modern world. All the efforts that the human soul makes in this direction are based precisely on the fact that people do not have the inclination to enter into reality. They do not approach these three great, these three cardinal ideas any differently than they would the idea of reorientation: that every person should stand in the place that is best for them. They declaim beautiful ideas, make abstract concepts out of these ideas, but have no inclination to engage with reality. And this reality lies in understanding spiritual science.

Just as one muddles mind and soul, so one also muddles freedom, equality and fraternity. The idea of brotherhood will only be grasped by humanity in the right way when it becomes clear that man is only fully present here on the physical plane with one part of his being, the part we call the body. It is with the body that man stands here on the physical plane; but this body connects man with the whole human race through blood and other ties. Let us think back to older times, especially with regard to the way the physical human being relates to the physical human being here in the world. After all, the human being does not only have within him what he has inherited from his parents; he carries within him the part of immortality that passes through birth and death. But this is divided into embodiments in the physical body. In ancient times, as I discussed yesterday, the human being was able to perceive the spiritual in the environment by going through eating, digesting and breathing; he was capable of that. In this way, something was instinctive in him, so to speak, which we can call a sum of feelings, sensations, perceptions and concepts that regulated his behavior towards his fellow human beings. Instinctively, this was in him. We see this instinctive element diminishing in more recent times, and the terrible explosions of hatred that we are now encountering can only be understood if we understand their real basis, if we understand how the old instincts are diminishing. These instincts of hatred are much more serious than is still recognized today. We will experience terrible things as a result of this state of affairs. And if that which must be conquered in the sense of the developmental history of mankind could not be conquered, the instincts of hatred would grow ever greater and greater. For even if, especially in this age of freedom from authority, in this age of the unconditioned nature of science, there are individuals who particularly strive to be led by the hand again and again, the feelings that arise from the unconscious do not allow this. Today, such people seek out all kinds of leaders. The more unnatural it is for them to strive to follow these leaders unconditionally, the more they are exposed to the danger of their so-called love turning to hatred. This is not something that can be remedied by mere criticism, because it is deeply rooted in the entire laws of human development. The more philanthropy is preached as an abstract idea, the more fraternity is preached in the abstract, the more mutual antipathy between people will develop. This is also a truth that must be taken very seriously and deeply into consideration if one wants to understand the present. What must happen is that what we call the view of repeated lives on earth is transformed into feeling. Merely adhering to the theory of repeated lives on earth does not account for it!

But if we take together all that is being attempted to be gathered together in order to extract from the laws of human development, in the course of time, that which does not present itself to us as an abstract idea but as a concrete fact, that something lives in every human being that goes through birth and death, then the abstract idea is transformed into feeling, not into instincts like those that existed earlier, but into conscious instincts, into a certain way of relating to other people. Today, there is still all too much of an urge to interpret what one takes on board as the idea of repeated earthly lives in an egotistical way. And how much of it have we experienced, that one person or another is above all keen to know some earlier incarnation of themselves very well indeed! This cannot be the practical consequence of the idea of repeated embodiments, of the idea of repeated earthly lives. The genuine consequence must be that we learn more and more to look at each person as if there were much more to him than he can live in one earthly life, in which he is now standing before us. Above all, what is often mentioned is the sense of distance, the right measure, the feeling for finding the right relationship with the other person: without deifying him, but always seeking deeper and deeper what belongs to infinity in him.

It is a false mysticism to brood within oneself. The mysticism we need is the one that guides us to a practical, but intuitive knowledge of human nature, so that we do not approach a person from the outset as either sympathetic or unsympathetic, but with the awareness that every human soul is actually an infinite mystery. If we take the idea seriously, something streams forth from repeated earthly lives, and from this outpouring into our soul there wells up what should be experienced in the right sense for later humanity as brotherhood, as brotherly love. Such brotherly love will not typically and repeatedly want to help people only according to the idea that appeals to us; it will want to respond to people so that we help them in a way that is appropriate for them, that helps them as their deeper selves require. But such an idea will also keep us from the thoughtless criticism that often erects a barrier between us and the other person, especially today, which does not allow us to look impartially at what lives in another person. Only when the idea of repeated earthly lives is alive and practically working in our soul, then the idea of brotherhood for what people in their corporeality are for each other will be able to take on the right form.

A second factor that must be taken into account in the development of humanity is that we not only recognize the physicality of the human being, which materialism alone wants to recognize today, but that we also recognize the soul of the human being, that we consciously ascribe soul to every human being. But we do not ascribe soul to him if we only seek to violate this soul in our attitude, that is, if we think that we really respect the soul by expecting this soul to have our thoughts, especially the form of our thoughts. We must grant freedom to the soul; we cannot grant it to the body. Freedom is only the basis in the interaction between soul and soul, that on which it depends. And the fundamental nerve of freedom is, namely, freedom of thought. If we come to understand this second link of humanity, the soul alongside the physical, then we will no longer confuse freedom and brotherhood, but will say: brotherhood is necessary because people must establish a social order in the sense of brotherhood. A social structure in the sense of brotherhood must come about, and until people are seized by right, practical ideas of brotherhood, they will not be able to find state structures in which people can live together reasonably. But if people do not recognize that within the state structure man lives not only as a body but also as a soul, they will never be able to grasp the idea of freedom in the appropriate way. For freedom lies in the relationship from soul to soul, not from body to body. The freedom that bodies need comes about of its own accord as a necessary consequence when soul to soul expands in the sense of freedom of thought. Above all, however, this requires that we finally learn to no longer want to impose our own thoughts on people, but that we learn to duly respect the direction of thought in every soul. But above all, we must acquire a sense of reality, for there is no field in which more sins are committed than in the fields of science and religion.

I can only refer to an example that I once encountered in a town in southern Germany. I gave a lecture on wisdom and Christianity. It was a town in southwestern Germany, so two Catholic priests were also at my lecture. After the lecture, they said: Yes, after what you said today, there is not much to be said against your assertions in terms of content, but one cannot agree. — I said: Yes, why? — Yes, the main thing, said the two gentlemen, is that you talk about all these things in relation to Christianity in a way that can only be understood by certain people with a certain level of education, with certain needs and so on. But we are seeking a way of speaking that is for all people; we are formulating our thoughts so that everyone can agree. — I replied: Pastor, how I or you think about what is good for all people depends on you or me, you and I can certainly form ideas about that; and when we do form such ideas, we will of course be fully convinced that they are right. We would be strange old fogies if we formed ideas that we did not believe were suitable for all people. But what matters is not what you or I think, according to our particular development, that something is suitable for all people. In the end, that is completely irrelevant. We have to get beyond that through proper, active, practical self-knowledge. What matters is to study reality and ask: What does reality dictate, what does the time and its content teach us as necessary for people, what do people's longings teach us? But then a question arises that is different from the one you ask: Do all people today go to your church? If you spoke for all people, everyone would go to you. — There they could not help saying: It is true that not all people go to church anymore. — So, I said; you see, and among those who have sat here are mostly those who do not go to church, but who also have the right to find the way to Christ, and I speak for them.

One must not form an idea about what people need according to one's own stubborn opinions, but according to what reality says. But it is more uncomfortable to study reality. There one must always and again apply the sense of observation accordingly, always and again have the will to ask: What are the needs of the time? How does what is necessary in our time present itself? — And until this sense, this practical sense, which must underlie freedom of thought, enters into the souls of men, we will not come to a corresponding relationship from soul to soul. Just as the social structure towards which humanity must strive depends on arriving at a correct understanding of the body in the sense of spiritual science and being able to understand the idea of brotherly love, so we must learn to gain understanding for souls and to help realize the idea of freedom of thought in the field of science and education, in the field of religious sentiment.

And a third aspect is the spirit. If we now really succeed in reinstating the rights of the spirit, in reversing what the Council of Constantinople in 869 recognized, then the spirit, too, will come to what, in a practical sense, leads the life of the people of the future. We already have two tendencies today: one tends to move in the same direction as the Council of Constantinople, that is, to abolish the spirit. A monistic world view also seeks to abolish the soul, and anyone who thinks that scientific monism has so much tolerance – as the word is used today – that it would not be able to hold a council and ban the soul is thinking wrongly. The tendency is already moving towards abolishing not only the spirit but also the soul. And those who are today the little monists will want to grow into quite great monists, and even if they disdain to hold councils, for they are free spirits, because they have freed themselves from all spirit, if they disdain to hold councils, then they will have a certain custom naturalized. And it will come - do not let this be a joke! —that the soul will be abolished. In addition to the various physical remedies that exist today, a series of others will be added that will be designed to treat those who talk about such fantasies as spirit and soul; they will be cured, they will be given medicine so that they no longer talk about spirit and soul. The spirit could be done away with in a trice; the soul can only be driven out of man by treating the body in the right medical way. However grotesque it may appear today, there is a tendency in a certain direction to invent means by which all kinds of stuff is instilled into the child, so that his bodily organization is so enfeebled that the materialistic attitude lives quite well in him, and it does not even occur to him to treat the old idea of soul and spirit as anything other than something in which the old days believed and into which it is a great delight to look.

Of course, saying such things is considered madness by a great many people today; but if one does not have the courage to admit these things to oneself, one will never find the energy to bring spiritual science spirituality to full bloom and to spark it in the souls of others. Therefore, in addition to this tendency, which I have just characterized and which will also cure the soul because it will be considered an illness, the other tendency must be added: the tendency to assert again energetically that, in addition to the body and the soul, the human being also carries the spirit within himself. For this, however, it would be necessary that knowledge of the spirit take hold, that spiritual science really becomes established, that it is recognized by man what belongs to his nature when he has passed through the gate of death. And one of the old folk proverbs that so often carry old good views into the new time is this: In death, all are equal – because all become spirit, and because the idea of equality is the one that corresponds to the spirit. Equality to the spirits! One cannot confuse the three ideas – liberty, fraternity, equality – but one must know in the concrete, in reality, what man is, and that he should be free according to the soul, fraternal according to the body, that men must be equal

must be equal in spirit. For the inequality that exists among people is that specialization brought about by body and soul, in that the spirit specializes in body and soul. Pneumatology, spiritual teaching, spiritual insight is the basis for the idea of equality. And so we have the strange fact that at the end of the 18th century the idea of brotherhood, freedom, equality was shouted out all over the world in a chaotic way, but that gradually it must be understood how the ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality can only be realized if one is also able to carry the knowledge of the threefold nature of

human being, in body, soul and spirit, into reality. This was the underlying reason for the attempt in my Theosophy to carry out this division into body, soul and spirit in such an energetic way: This division is a demand of our time and the near future. But it is only by realizing these ideas in practice, by learning to see humanity in this way, that one can go beyond the twenty-seven years; otherwise one gets stuck in the twenty-seven years. And just imagine the prospect: our fifth post-Atlantic period will be followed by a sixth and a seventh. In the sixth, general humanity will yield that which, in the individual development, corresponds to the time between the fourteenth and twenty-first year. No matter how clever the people are who direct education in the outside world, they will not be able to get more than what corresponds to individual development up to the age of twenty-one. One will not be able to live past the age of twenty-one, even if one does not die there. And in the seventh post-Atlantic age, one will not live beyond the age that corresponds to the fourteenth year of life in individual development. If one does not grow older through the inspiration of the inner being, then an epidemic of juvenile feeble-mindedness will seize humanity. Anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, and does not live thoughtlessly, can, armed with such ideas, already evaluate many phenomena of the present in the right way!

Let us take just one area: Where has our present age brought us in our understanding of, say, the Christ impulse? How many people are quite close to Barre's idea that the Savior's generous world view has been adapted by the Church to the needs of modern society, and that it is precisely for this reason that we can get along so well with the Churches? Who is making an effort – perhaps there are still individuals who do, but generally speaking – who is really trying to resurrect from the Gospels the teachings of Christ that were directed against the other, the principal opponent? How are the most significant and profound teachings of Christianity understood today? I would like to mention just one central Christian concept: the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even Blavatsky ridiculed the prediction that the Kingdom of Heaven would come, saying that at the time it should have come, no more wheat had blossomed than before, the grapes had not grown larger, in short, the Kingdom of Heaven had not come to earth.

One thinks oneself clever; but from this cleverness nothing else comes out than this judgment, and this cleverness does not allow the deeper question: Could not perhaps the Christ have meant something else? — One already recognizes the Christ today, but in such a way that one wants above all that one's own ideas, precisely as one has conceived them oneself, also live in the Christ. The socialist makes a good socialist out of him, the liberal a liberal, the Protestant a Protestant, and so on. A modern school theologian constructs him in the image of Professor Harnack, and people listen to how Professor Harnack speaks about the most important concepts of Christ Jesus. Once it happened that I had to give a lecture in a club whose chairman was a man well versed in the Bible and also in modern 'T'heology. In the course of this lecture I said that Harnack actually had a strange concept of resurrection, because in his “Essence of Christianity” there is the strange sentence: “Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, we can no longer judge it today, because it exceeds human knowledge and also exceeds the legitimate demands of faith. But from the garden in Gethsemane came the belief in resurrection, and this has become especially valuable to mankind. Whether it is true that the Christ was resurrected in some way is not the point! One should believe that from the garden in Gethsemane came faith. That is Harnack's doctrine. The man who was the chairman of the association said: You were mistaken, because in that case Harnack would be nothing less than a Catholic – the man in question felt quite Protestant and exalted – it would be just like the Catholics who say: Where the piece of clothing that is venerated as the Holy Robe of Trier comes from, or where any old knucklebone comes from, it doesn't matter, what matters is that faith has spread, that these things come from a particular saint. But that is Catholic, said the person concerned. Of course, we cannot believe in something like that. And it would be all the same if Harnack said that it does not matter whether it is true that Christ was resurrected in some way, but that people believe that faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane. So, he said to me, you must have been mistaken. – So I said: Yes, you know, but it is written in 'The Essence of Christianity'. – No, he replied, it cannot be written there. Have you read it? – Oh, often, I said, tomorrow I will send you a postcard with the page and line from the book 'The Essence of Christianity' where it says that.

The man, who knew theology so well and was so well-versed in the Bible, could not read so carefully that he knew what was in the book. But it is in there. That is how today's thinking is. In all areas, it is quite strange, especially when one endeavors to make it so popular.

But not only theologians are guilty of sin; natural scientists are guilty too. There is a little book called “The Mechanics of the Spiritual Life”. I do not know whether there is already a book about the stiffness of iron. The author's name is Verworn. I esteem him, as I do many of those I criticize. In this little book he also deals with dreams and asserts that in dreams a subdued, paralyzed brain life takes place, that brain life is only partially active. If someone were to tap a pin against a windowpane, Verworn says, we may dream that cannon shots are going off one after the other. That is a well-known dream. Verworn says this at the top; then he says something in between, and at the end he says further down on the same page: The dream has its peculiar character because the brain is tuned down in its activity. Now imagine the cleverness: when we have a full brain, we hear the soft taps, the soft pinpricks; when the brain is down, less active, we hear the thunder of guns. — That is an explanation that is accepted, like much of Freud, and accepted with pleasure, because a few lines are in between.

But this is the basis of our time: the will to really go through with thinking what comes to one is very rare in our time. And so it is not particularly incomprehensible that one does not easily want to understand something like the coming of the “Kingdoms of Heaven”, because it takes a lot to do so. Until then, until the Mystery of Golgotha, the Kingdoms of Heaven approached man as in a dream. Before the Atlantean catastrophe, they were even assimilated through digestion. But now they had to come down. They came down, but in such a way that man had to exert his mind to grasp the Kingdoms of Heaven. It is not meant that the grapes become larger, that the ears of wheat become fuller, but that the kingdom lives in the midst of us, but we must find it through the preparation of our own spirit around us. |

This, as I have briefly outlined it, underlies the grandiose conception of Christ Jesus. This is, however, a conception that demands energy from our soul if we want to empathize with it. And so are many Christian conceptions. With these the Christ opposed the Imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire, which developed in complete opposition to Christianity. This Imperium Romanum, which had developed into Caesaranism, brought the old mysteries under its control through its tyranny. Augustus was the first Caesar who, because of his external power, had to be initiated into the mysteries. And his successors, Tiberius, Caligula and others, were people initiated into the mysteries. They only applied the mystery view to the external realm of the world; they did not, like the Egyptian temple priests, carry the realm of the spirit into the realm of the world. Commodus even had himself made an initiator, and when he initiated another man whom he had to initiate, he is said to have given him such a strong blow, symbolically, that he killed him.

So there were two powerful contradictions facing each other: the Imperium Romanum and Christianity. This contradiction must find its resolution. It has not yet found it to this day. We must become capable of recognizing the spirit and also of introducing the spirit into life. I only want to say so much about this point, because in our thinking, in our feeling, lives on in many ways that which has moved into people as the logic, the way of thinking and feeling, as it was dominant in the Roman Empire. Our grammar school pupils learned Latin first and with it the way of thinking of the Imperium Romanum, which has been passed on. We do not know how much of this is at the innermost nerve of our lives; we still do not know how to seek and find the spiritual path to Christ in the right sense. But this path can only be one that has the will to think, which has particularly declined in our time; one could say, intelligence itself. Our time, so proud of its intelligence, actually lacks intelligence because it lacks conscientiousness on the basis of thinking.

A much-read booklet, which deals with “Christianity in the ideological struggle of the present”, reproduces lectures that have been given to thousands upon thousands of people by a very leading spirit of the present day, who has of course thoroughly studied philosophy and theology. Ideas are developed there that make you want to climb up the walls! Finally, you come across a beautiful sentence, yes. Goethe is supposed to have said:

No created spirit can penetrate into the innermost nature

,

Happy the one to whom she only

reveals the outer shell!

We would actually have to get to that point in order to recognize something like that! The man knows his Goethe so well that he cites this saying of Haller as a saying of Goethe, despite the fact that Goethe said:

I curse it, but furtively.

Nature has neither core nor shell;

All at once it is everything.

You alone are tested most of all,

Whether you are core or shell.

So today people are talked into believing as a Goethean view what Goethe himself said: “I curse it”! But people listen willingly to it, that is the general thinking of today. It is of no use to look up with desire at certain ideas that come from spiritual science. These ideas must fully enter into the life of the soul, then the other current will establish itself, the spiritual current, which does not allow today's way of thinking to take over humanity, but allows people to develop individually so that they can bring into the general development that which can now be released from what is there by itself. But much must still come before such things are grasped in the right concrete sense, grasped in such a way that thinking really based on reality reaches people.

A very fine book has been published: “The State as a Form of Life” by Kjellen, the famous Swedish political scientist. I mention him because he is a man who has been very sympathetic to our cause, to my cause, so that one should not think that I am angry about anything. But for that very reason I may mention him as typical of certain ways of life.

In this book, he attempts to gain ideas about the state that may lead out of many an error. He naturally comes back to the idea of the state as an organism. He is further along than Wilson. Wilson in his time criticized very sharply the fact that in Newton's time people did not think independently about the state, but were so influenced by the theory of gravity that they judged the various impulses in human thought according to abstract gravity. One must think about the state as one would about an organism. In doing so, he fails to realize that people thought in Newtonian terms and he in Darwinian terms. Kjellén also thinks that the state is an organism; the individual people are then the cells. Now, of course, you can compare a whole that has impulses of life within it with an organism and its parts with cells. But you can actually compare anything if the ideas are not willing to delve into reality, ultimately even a lizard with a pocket knife. Everything can be compared. Only when one has a sense of reality does comparison lead to the right conclusion. In Kjellén's comparison, one state would be understood as a single organism and the other as a neighboring organism. However, anyone who can think realistically cannot possibly think of people as cells. The comparison could apply if one compares the whole of the states with an organism and the individual states as cells; but then the whole person does not merge into the state. Only social life over the whole earth can then be compared with the organism. But if one wanted to insert the human being now, it would look like this: if we imagine an organism, the cells would have to stick out everywhere. A strange kind of hedgehog would come out of it. But if that were the case, an organism with living things coming out everywhere, then that would be an organism with which we can compare the whole social life on earth.

But that means that the entire life of man cannot be absorbed into the state order at all. It must everywhere protrude into the spiritual from what the state is able to encompass. In practice, this is all too often forgotten in all areas today, and one could cite institution after institution that would prove how this is forgotten, how one forgets, in addition to the external, modeled on the Imperium Romanum, to establish the kingdom of the spirit that the Christ wanted to bring over the earth. It was very necessary to take this thought in its full seriousness.

You know, where it comes to the concrete, thinking usually does not extend. Think how in recent times everyone has sought to push back the autonomy of scholarly education in such a way that all the things that are associated with learned institutions have been pushed back and the principle of the state has been placed above them. Today, in order to become a medical doctor, one must first pass the state examination, and then one can receive the medical doctorate as a kind of decoration. The autonomy of the medical school as such has been completely suppressed. We could cite many examples where there is a real enthusiasm for moving in this direction. People cannot do enough to nationalize all titles. The word engineer was associated with “ingenium”. Now they no longer strive to do that, but they do strive for the diploma. If it says on it that you are an engineer, then you can call yourself that; otherwise the ingenium is of no use. This is a step away from a spiritual understanding of the world. People do not think about that. On the contrary, they are enthusiastic about this fight against the spirit in all areas. One would have to, in order to make this noticeable, because one likes to swear by words so much today, perhaps invent a new word and say: people are 'beleibert' for de-spiritualization. Then perhaps some would begin to pay a little attention to the direction one is taking! But the fact that people do not pay attention is precisely the proof of the thoughtlessness of life, of the hatred that one has almost against the will to think.

So you see how necessary it is to really introduce spiritual science into the most everyday life. Spiritual science is a serious matter. Therefore, in addition to yesterday's significant matter, the immediate current situation had to be mentioned. For the aims of spiritual science must not be compromised by its becoming philistine and ossified, by the Anthroposophical Society creating obstacle after obstacle for what spiritual science wants. Of course, reasonable people will always understand that the people who come to the Anthroposophical Society are those who have somehow come into conflict with life, and so strongly that they have lost their balance. The question then always arises: Do we want to accommodate these people, or be hard? — Sometimes such people change so much that they lose their balance even more, or they change so much that they tell stories like the ones they are telling now, which are likely to turn a sacred matter into gossip, into slander, into vilification. If what I said yesterday is considered unjust – that basically little is made of what I say – then of course that is the individual's prerogative. I only said: Outside, people speak of 'blind followers'. For the teaching, this is not necessary, because it can be examined. Only for some things that relate to institutions is trust sometimes necessary. But it is just in such matters that the opposite of what I myself mean usually happens. And so what I presented yesterday as a necessary measure may be felt to be unjust. But this measure will be maintained, although on the other hand it will be ensured that anyone who really wants to undergo it can go through the esoteric development. We must give it a little time. How many things will be revealed through the economy of the Anthroposophical Society, how much will be exposed to misunderstanding and calumny in the world! People who are well aware of how long some things have taken will be convinced that books that have not appeared will appear when this measure has been in force for some time. At the time, I was forced to print the cycles, which I cannot review. It was not my will; it was the will of others who want to read them. Certainly, one does not have to insist on one's will; it has been yielded; but you can read the accusations that are made, saying it would be a trick, and that the cycles have a style that one must only criticize. Everything is ultimately distorted by ill will. But, my dear friends, if spiritual science is to have the right relationship to the Anthroposophical Society, then the Anthroposophical Society must also feel connected to the life of spiritual science as such. But how many feel connected only to their own personal life!

There are, of course, and always have been, numerous people in the Anthroposophical Society who have simply said, in one form or another, that they actually only join the Anthroposophical Society in order to discuss this or that esoteric matter with me, and who refuse to trust people whom I myself trust. In this respect, something particularly bad is being experienced. It is of no use at all that I myself trust this or that friend in this or that society; they do not want the person concerned, and they try to ignore him. Now, these things all have their origin in the fact that so much, so much personal is brought into this Anthroposophical Society. Do you know which word I have really heard most often in the so-called esoteric discussions? Do not think that I heard most talk about such matters as freedom, equality, the evolution of humanity, and so on. Most of all I heard the word “I” from each individual. People come there with their most personal matters. This was also gladly taken into account, but it cannot go further, for the reasons given yesterday. And that must be understood.

I know that it will be best understood by those who really work devotedly and understandingly with the anthroposophical development, who are able to see in the anthroposophical development a task for humanity, who do not merely seek to facilitate their family or other personal affairs by belonging to the Anthroposophical Society, who are not merely seeking a back door to avoid the law because they would withdraw if it came to publicly opposing the materialistic medical system; but they are seeking a back door to be cured, apart from this materialistic medical system! There is no other way to counter all the things that have emerged from society to harm the Anthroposophical Society than through these measures, which I spoke of yesterday and which will certainly not be abandoned in the near future. Only in this way will it be possible to truly fight against what has become so terribly entrenched. The Anthroposophical Society will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. And esoteric life too — I will see to that — will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. As for those inventions — and this is what matters — to which I referred yesterday, it may still be possible to somewhat undermine them if only the two-part measure mentioned yesterday is vigorously implemented. Please understand this, because by understanding this you show understanding for the nature and task of the anthroposophical movement. There are enough people outside today who do not feel able to fight anthroposophy, as it is meant here, [objectively]. That is also too uncomfortable for them, since it is necessary to first know anthroposophy. This is an uncomfortable thing for many who want to fight it. But to allow oneself to be slandered and vilified and to spread these things provides a means of fighting anthroposophy without understanding it. For our contemporaries are indeed very susceptible to slander and vilification. Nothing is read with more relish than calumny and vilification. If we take the task of Anthroposophy seriously, if we grasp the seriousness of the situation, then we will also be able to cope with this measure. In this spirit, we want to conclude. Hopefully we will remain, working in the appropriate way with our strengths, together.

[ 1 ] This week something will be given in the communications addressed to members in these columns, which may serve to bring us to a further understanding of the weekly ‘Leading Thoughts.’

[ 2 ] The understanding of anthroposophical truth can be furthered if the relation which exists between man and the world is constantly brought before the human soul.

[ 3 ] When man turns his attention to the world into which he is born and out of which he dies, he is surrounded in the first place by the fullness of his sense-impressions. He forms thoughts about these sense-impressions.

[ 4] In bringing the following to his consciousness: ‘I am forming thoughts about what my senses reveal to me as the world,’ he has already come to the point where he can contemplate himself. He can say to himself: In my thoughts ‘I’ live. The world gives me the opportunity of experiencing myself in thoughts. I find myself in my thoughts when I contemplate the world.

[ 5 ] And continuing to reflect in this way, he ceases to be conscious of the world; he becomes conscious of the ‘I’. He ceases to have the world before him; he begins to experience the self.

[ 6 ] If the experience be reversed, and the attention directed to the inner life in which the world is mirrored, then those events emerge into consciousness which belong to our life's destiny, and in which our human self has flowed along from the point of time to which our memory goes back. In following up the events of his destiny, a man experiences his own existence.

[ 7 ] In bringing this to his consciousness: ‘I with my own self have experienced something that destiny brought to me,’ a man has already come to the point where he will contemplate the world. He can say to himself: I was not alone in my fate; the world played a part in my experience. I willed this or that; the world streamed into my will. I find the world in my will when I experience this will in self-contemplation.

[ 8 ] Continuing thus to enter into his own being, man ceases to be conscious of the self, he becomes conscious of the world; he ceases to experience himself, he becomes feelingly aware of the world.

[ 9 ] ‘I send my thoughts out into the World, there I find myself; I sink into myself, there I find the World.’ If a man experiences this strongly enough he is confronted with the great riddles of the World and Man.

[ 10 ] For to have the feeling: I have taken endless pains to understand the world through thinking, and after all there is but myself in this thinking—this gives rise to the first great riddle.

[ 11 ] And to feel that one's own self is formed through destiny, yet to perceive in this process the onward flow of world-happenings—this presents the second riddle.

[ 12 ] In the experience of this problem of Man and the World germinates the frame of mind in which man can so confront Anthroposophy that he receives from it in his inner being an impression which rouses his attention.

[ 13 ] For Anthroposophy asserts that there is a spiritual experience which does not lose the world when thinking. One can also live in thought. Anthroposophy tells of an inward experience in which one does not lose the sense-world when thinking, but gains the Spirit-world. Instead of penetrating into the ego in which the sense-world is felt to disappear, one penetrates into the Spirit-world in which the ego feels established.

[ 14 ] Anthroposophy shows, further, that there is an experience of destiny in which one does not lose the self. In fate, too, one can still feel oneself to be active. Anthroposophy points out, in the impartial, unegoistic observation of human destiny, an experience in which one learns to love the world and not only one's own existence. Instead of staring into the world which carries the ego on the waves of fortune and misfortune, one finds the ego which shapes its own fate voluntarily. Instead of striking against the world on which the ego is dashed to pieces, one penetrates into the self, which feels itself united with the course of events in the world.

[ 15 ] Man's destiny comes to him from the world that is revealed to him by his senses. If then he finds his own activity in the working of his destiny, his real self rises up before him not only out of his inner being but out of the sense-world too.

[ 16 ] If a person is able to feel, however faintly, how the spiritual part of the world appears in the self, and how the self proves to be working in the outer world of sense, he has already learned to understand Anthroposophy correctly.

[ 17 ] For he will then realise that in Anthroposophy it is possible to describe the Spirit-world which the self can comprehend. And this will enable him to understand that in the sense-world the self can also be found—in a different way than by diving within. Anthroposophy finds the self by showing how the sense-world reveals to man not only sense-perceptions but also the after-effects of his life before birth and his former earthly lives.

[ 18 ] Man can now gaze on the world perceptible to his senses and say: It contains not only colour, sound, warmth; in it are active the experiences passed through by souls before their present earthly life. And he can look into himself and say: I find there not only my ego but, in addition, a spiritual world is revealed.

[ 19 ] In an understanding of this kind, a person who really feels—who is not unmoved by—the great riddles of Man and the World, can meet on a common ground with the Initiate who in accordance with his insight is obliged to speak of the outer world of the senses as manifesting not only sense-perceptions but also the impressions of what human souls have done in their life before birth and in past earthly lives, and who has to say of the world of the inner self that it reveals spiritual events which produce impressions and are as effective as the perceptions of the sense-world.

[ 20 ] The would-be active members should consciously make themselves mediators between what the questioning human soul feels as the problems of Man and the Universe, and what the knowledge of the Initiates has to recount, when it draws forth a past world out of the destiny of human beings, and when by strengthening the soul it opens up the perception of a spiritual world.

[ 21 ] In this way, through the work of the would-be active members, the Anthroposophical Society may become a true preparatory school for the school of Initiates. It was the intention of the Christmas Meeting to indicate this very forcibly; and one who truly understands what that Meeting meant will continue to point this out until sufficient understanding of it can bring the Society fresh tasks and possibilities again.

[ 22] May the Leading Thoughts to be given in this number proceed, therefore, out of this spirit.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 23 ] 62. In our sense-perceptions, the world of the senses bears on to the surface only a portion of the being that lies concealed in the depths of its waves beneath. Penetrative spiritual observation reveals within these depths the after-effects of what was done by souls of men in ages long gone by.

[ 24 ] 63. To ordinary self-observation the inner world of man reveals only a portion of that, in the midst of which it stands. Intensified experience in consciousness shows it to be contained within a living spiritual Reality.

[ 25] 64. The destiny of man reveals the workings, not only of an external world, but of the man's own Self.

[ 26 ] 65. The experiences of the human soul reveal not only a Self but a world of the Spirit, which the Self can know by deeper spiritual knowledge as a world united with its own being.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 27 ] 66. The Beings of the Third Hierarchy reveal themselves in the life which is unfolded as a spiritual background in human Thinking. In the human activity of thought this life is concealed. If it worked on in its own essence in human thought, man could not attain to Freedom. Where cosmic Thought activity ceases, human Thought-activity begins.

[ 28 ] 67. The Beings of the Second Hierarchy manifest themselves in a world-of-soul beyond humanity—a world of cosmic soul-activities, hidden from human Feeling. This cosmic world-of-soul is ever creative in the background of human Feeling. Out of the being of man it first creates the organism of Feeling; only then can it bring Feeling itself to life therein.

[ 29 ] 68. The Beings of the First Hierarchy manifest themselves in spiritual creation beyond humanity—a cosmic world of spiritual Being which indwells the human Willing. This world of cosmic Spirit experiences itself in creative action when man wills. It first creates the connection of man's being with the Universe beyond humanity; only then does man himself become, through his organism of Will, a freely willing being.

This institution cannot come about from abstract considerations from “above”. It must arise from the needs of our membership from “below”. The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society has conceived the plan to form a Youth Section because it corresponds to what young people in our Society are seeking from the depths of their beings. And it will shape it in such a way that these needs can be met as they arise.

The same must be true for the other sections. But for this to happen, the needs that arise within our membership must also flow through the whole society and ultimately unite in what is expected of the executive council at the Goetheanum. We must therefore become more and more aware that the purpose of the Christmas Conference was not to form a mere “administrative council”. Of course, the “administration” must be there, and it should not be forgotten that it is necessary and that it must develop care and accuracy. But the main thing will be that the attitude of the members of the board at the Goetheanum really places it at the center of the spiritual interests of the society. It should bring together all the spiritual interests that exist.

It is not the intention of this board to restrict the initiative of the individual parts of the Society in any way. But it should increasingly be seen as a necessity that everything that arises in the Society be brought to the attention of this board. It can then harmonize what is wanted in one place or by one group of people with what is intended by another. This board will not want to act in a one-sided way like an authority “from above”; it will make it its business to have an open heart and an understanding mind for everything that strives for realization from within the membership. In this respect, he would also like to be able to count on understanding in the sense that he will be met halfway, actively met halfway, when he wants to implement something out of his own initiative, out of the aims of the anthroposophical movement. In this sense, I said at the Christmas Conference: This board should be an initiative board.

If this board is increasingly seen in this light, then it will be able to properly advise on all matters concerning the association. And it wants to be an “advisor”; because it knows that it would fundamentally contradict the spirit of the Anthroposophical Society if it wanted to be a “decider”. In his advice, he will appeal to nothing other than the free insight of the members; but he will only be able to be a true “advisor” if he is placed in the right frame of mind to understand the intentions and aspirations of the members.

The Executive Council at the Goetheanum would like to see a connection established, as far away as possible, in paragraphs and programs, with the work in society; it would like to see the direct human element, which can also work individually in every detail, come into general validity within society. And above all, it would like to achieve this in everything that is to be done for the School of Spiritual Science.

(continued in the next issue.

The Anthroposophical Society will, if the intentions of the Christmas Conference are carried out, in the future have to fulfill the esoteric aspirations of its members as far as possible. This fulfillment should be sought by incorporating three classes of school into the general society.

It is in the nature of spiritual knowledge that it first addresses such results to people who are found by personalities who know the ways to spiritual insight. It is a prejudice to think that such results can only be recognized by those who are able to find them themselves. This prejudice then gives rise to the other, that people who have such an acknowledgment indulge in a blind belief in authority. By asserting this prejudice, one accuses a society like the anthroposophical one of consisting of uncritical worshippers of leading personalities.

But just as you don't need to be a painter to feel the beauty of a picture, you don't need to be a spiritual researcher to understand a great deal of what the spiritual researcher has to say. Through the abilities present in him, the spiritual researcher steps forward before the worlds in which spiritual beings live and spiritual processes occur. He sees these spiritual beings and processes; and he also sees how the beings and processes of the physical world emerge from the spiritual.

He then has the further task of shaping certain areas of his visualizations into ideas that do not depend on special abilities but are accessible to ordinary consciousness. These ideas are self-founded for everyone who brings them to life in his soul. One cannot shape such ideas out of mere intellectual capacity; one can only form them by imprinting spiritual vision upon them. But once they are there through the spiritual researcher, everyone can receive them and find their foundation in them. No one needs to accept them on mere blind faith. If many people believe that what is presented by the spiritual researcher in the form of an idea is not understandable in itself, it is only because they have lost the way to such understanding. They have become accustomed to considering as proved only what is supported by sense perception, and have no sense that ideas can be mutually self-proving. They are like a person who knows that all heavy objects on earth are supported and who therefore believes that the earth itself must also be supported in space.

Now, however, a personality who attains vision in the spirit without first receiving the results of vision in the form of ideas must be specially destined for this by fate. For all others, comprehension of the content of ideas in that region of the spiritual world which can be given expression in this form is the necessary preliminary to arrive at direct vision.

Again, it is only a prejudice if anyone believes that one suggests to oneself the vision of a spiritual world after first having received the picture of such a world in the form of an idea. Just as little as one can speak of suggestion when one sees a person whom one has only heard of before, so little can one do so when one hears the effect of the spiritual world, which appears with all the qualities of reality, after one has first understood it in ideas.

It will therefore generally be the case that people first get to know the spiritual world in the form of ideas. This is how spiritual science is cultivated in the general anthroposophical society.

But there will be personalities who want to participate in the presentations of the spiritual world that arise from the idea form to forms of expression that are borrowed from the spiritual world itself. And there will also be those who want to get to know the paths to the spiritual world in order to travel them with their own soul.

The three classes of the “School” will be there for such personalities. The works will reach an ever higher degree of esotericism in ascending order. The “School” will guide the participant into the realms of the spiritual world that cannot be revealed through the form of ideas. Here it becomes necessary to find means of expression for imaginations, inspirations and intuitions.

Then the fields of artistic, educational, ethical life, etc. will be led into the areas where they can receive illumination and creative impulses from esotericism.

The constitution of the “school” and its division into sections will be discussed in the next issue of the newsletter.

(continued in the next issue).