The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If I have taken the liberty of claiming your interest today for a question that is currently stirring up a great deal of emotion and seems to urgently require an answer, and if I have set myself the goal of putting this question in the light of Goethe's world view, is not intended as a lecture on literary history. Rather, I hope that my remarks will awaken in you the conviction that has been deeply rooted in me for years: that this question can only be properly appreciated from this point of view, from the point of view of Goethe's world view. We Germans have a twofold task in relation to Goethe. One of these was once described by Berthold Auerbach, the much-loved storyteller of village tales, with the witty saying: We must be Goethe-ready. That is to say, we must be able to completely immerse ourselves in the lofty realm of ideas and the incomparably intimate content of feelings of the greatest German genius. We must feel what he felt and think what he thought. But that is only one aspect of our relationship with Goethe. For Goethe marks the beginning of a completely new cultural epoch in the Western world. He has shed new light on all of European culture. He has opened up new senses for us, taught us new ways of looking at things. These senses must soon arise in us, we must rise to these views, in order to continue the cultural work of our people in the direction - of course, as far as this is in the power of each of us - that has been indicated by Goethe. Anyone who does not see in Goethe this beginning of culture, from which everyone must start, who wants to somehow relate to the education of the present, simply does not understand his time. And I must unfortunately confess to you that your brothers in the heart of Europe, especially the younger generation, have by no means grasped their task in relation to Goethe. On the contrary, a certain frivolous way of thinking is asserting itself, one that turns up its nose at Goethe and believes that it has long since progressed beyond him, while in fact it still has a long way to go before it fully grasps him. Goethe is dismissed as an old man who is no longer sufficient for our new times. A new generation believes it has new ideals. Unfortunately, on closer inspection, these ideals usually prove to be quite immature products, which are miles away from the true needs of the time, while they seem to have been born of the time. And this our time, this our living present, is more, than one can believe with superficial observation, a child of Goethe, a child of our classical spirits. Our time is the time in which the individual asserts in every direction the original sovereign rights that divine power has placed in his soul. Man no longer wants to be patronized; no, he wants to be completely dependent on himself, on his insight, on his will. He no longer wants to seek the sacred, the divine self in the outside world, but delves into the depths of his own breast to get the God, to get the strength and courage of life from there.

From this urge of the individual to cast off all fetters and assert his inalienable rights of sovereignty, then also arises the movement that I have placed at the top of my remarks today: the question of the liberation of women from the supposed fetters that, according to the beliefs of certain people, their gender has so far imposed on a prejudiced world. Women no longer want to be tied to the family home, to the house; they want to step out into the open world and be on an equal footing with men in every activity. They want to take on the competition for existence with the male world, they demand a profession like the ones men have. It is an undeniable fact that the German people have so far participated the least in the extensive emancipation efforts of women. While in Russia, Switzerland, England and France, but especially in America, hundreds and hundreds of women have already entered the learned professions, the German people still stubbornly close the doors to higher learned professions to women. Is this just stubbornness or the conservative sense that suits the German so well, which has always been averse to any violent revolution because it did not want to admit that something so unreasonable could arise in history that it had to be overthrown at a stroke? Or is there perhaps a higher realization in this – even if many are completely unaware of it – that full equality for women does not even require complete assimilation, and that the latter contradicts the role and nature of women? That is the big question: are we dealing with a prejudice that must be eradicated over time, or are we dealing with a justified insight that has a right to resist the other peoples of Europe in this movement? Let us now let Goethe be our lodestar! He will guide us safely; for in him, all the depth of the German character is embodied in a single individual. Whatever has emerged in the German people as lofty and great comes to us in a personal unity in Goethe; we are all the more German the more Goethean we are. Wherever we need light, we look up to him with confidence. The turbulent life of the present casts disharmony into our hearts, we are overcome by dark moods, whole crowds of contemporaries fall prey to the gloomy world view of pessimism; we find release from all this only in the blissful calm of Goethe's harmonious world view. And what a deeply satisfying consciousness lies in this absorption in the world of ideas and will of our greatest national poet, when we consider it in the sense of Schiller's saying: And if you yourself cannot be whole, then join yourself to a whole! For man is nothing as an individual, his whole strength is rooted in the nation from which he comes, in the time to which he belongs.

Those who succumb to loneliness soon feel alone,

as Goethe himself says. We can add: They must soon succumb to a spiritual death in their sad, isolated spiritual wasteland. Think with your people, with your time! That is what we must call out to every human being. And we think most harmoniously with our people when we think and feel with Goethe, the full and complete embodiment of all our national and contemporary strength. We have no right to complain that we thereby lose our independence in order to bow completely to a foreign authority; for man can only be free when he rises to the higher ideals of culture, where all the light of education is to be sought. Only then will he consciously participate in the development of his race, only then will he independently determine his goal with great ideals, while otherwise he will only grope blindly below and be dragged along with the others, a serving and certainly unfree member of the body of humanity.

Only by seeking the human perfection of Goethe and, where we find it, joining it, can we work on our great work of liberation. We can only become free with our people and in our time, not individually. To bow down under Goethe's authority when we have recognized its height is not servitude, but the Goethean form of freedom. And it is precisely by taking our lead from Goethe that we can best further this great work of our liberation. For in the great scheme of things, Goethe stands for nothing more than a newer process of purification and liberation from self-imposed fetters. What were these fetters? They were the fetters of unnaturalness, of the desire to imitate what was foreign, of the unfree, over-tender sensitivity from which the Germans languished before his time. He strives back to nature, to direct feeling and thinking. Man has an addiction to remove himself further and further from nature. We know that the only completely naive-natural people in Europe were the Greeks. When Goethe became acquainted with their magnificent works of art in Italy, he fell into a kind of rapture. For these immortal creations had an effect on him like the magnificent works of nature itself. In them, he saw the world spirit at work. The Greeks, as he felt vividly here, had overheard the laws from the creator of the world, according to which he had created the magnificent, sublime works of nature, and had formed their works of art in the manner of men in this Goethean sense. The Romans did not understand how to penetrate into the mysterious portals of the divine world workshop, and they simply imitated the Greeks. This is remoteness from nature, which, as humanity developed further, became ever more pronounced. It may be said that when Goethe appeared on the scene in Germany, very little of what prevailed in poetry, indeed in the emotional and intellectual life of the Germans, bore the stamp of original naive truth. Everything was contrived, everything assumed, everything a cliché. Goethe was the first to seek a direct contact with the spirit of the world. And therein lies the greatness of his mission. But he owes this greatness to a circumstance that we must consider if we want to properly appreciate his relationship to women and his relation to the female nature. This is his deeply ingrained religious trait, a trait that always manifests itself in him through an idealistic belief in the divine in all that is natural and human. From his youth he was dominated by a fundamental trait that is only innate in deeper minds: belief in the supernatural in nature, the presentiment of a higher being, which later became the quest for the idea, for the spirit in all things. The mysterious, this genuine child of science as well as of religion, was what always attracted him. In everything that came his way in life and in history, he sought the point where he could perceive the workings of a higher power. And that is what he always sought in woman, and often found. Man distances himself from nature, from the immediacy of feeling, when he must exhaust his spirit in a one-sided life's work: He becomes dry, pedantic, unnatural. He loses that freshness and naturalness from which all the magic of an unmediated nature emanates. But these are precisely the qualities that women retain, of course only where they remain completely women and do not strive to be like men. For women, it is not one mental or physical quality that comes to the fore, but rather they all develop in beautiful harmony and remain in full force. Thus nature appears purer, fuller, more divine in woman than in man, who has been made one-sided by nature. Thus women are our true messengers from God, in whom man finds what he has lost himself. And herein lies what man seeks; he must seek it with particular longing because he lacks it in himself and can only do without it with difficulty.

And that is what Goethe seeks above all. For him, being with a woman always means a spiritual rejuvenation, a renewed sense of brotherhood with nature, which repeatedly invigorates and fuels his poetic power. Delving into feminine values and female essence always generates renewed artistic ability in him. When he seems to distance himself from nature in a manly way, when the full force of naturalness seems to fade from his heart, then it is always love that envelops him in that mysterious magic that makes him capable of new creativity. In the face of this trait in Goethe's nature, all the reservations that arise again and again against the purity and nobility of Goethe's treatment of female nature must fade. Unfortunately, these reservations are still frequently enough encountered. An unnatural distinction is made between the poet and the man, and only the former is allowed, while so much is desired to attach some human failing to Goethe. But in this mind everything is in undivided unity. Goethe's poetic mission is directly connected with his human mission. And his poems are nothing but direct revelations of his most intimate and purest human nature. Yes, here and there in Goethe's work we can also find individual cynical, seemingly frivolous verses. But this speaks for nothing other than the infinite love of truth that always dominated him. He never wanted to appear as an angel, always as a human being, yes, as a human being with all faults. He preferred an open confession before the whole world. But that is not the point. The main thing is that there is never a frivolous or mean streak in his love, nothing of the bon vivant. It always emanates from the mind, and it is always connected with a deep appreciation of true feminine value. His love never demeans women. He always looks up reverently to feminine value. And that is the very Germanic way. We know from Tacitus that even our ancestors in ancient times revered something in women that foreshadowed the future, and that they honored wise women at springs and in groves. That is the essence of truly religious feeling: it always commands reverence from its bearer. And Goethe worshiped in the dust before the divine in woman. Women, above all, must recognize this. And then the gloomy shadows that still cling to Goethe's lofty personality will dissolve.

It has a powerful effect on Goethe's imagination when a new female figure enters the circles of his activity. His rich inner world then surrounds the revered being with all the magic of which his rich imagination is capable. For him, the beloved is more than another mortal can see in her, because the imagination sees deeper than the mind. It is a kind of halo with which the poet's imagination surrounds her. Then, always, an ideal figure detaches itself from reality. Love becomes a lofty love intoxication, and a new poem struggles from Goethe's breast. This was the case with Friederike in Sesenheim, with Lili in Frankfurt, with Frau von Stein, with Christiane, his wife, and finally with the women who entered his life late in life: Marianne Willemer and Ulrike von Levetzow. In each case, it is the love of a noble, idealistic person, not that of a bon vivant. My esteemed and beloved teacher, Professor Karl Julius Schröer in Vienna, rightly says:

There is a piety in love again, as there was among the Greeks, and thus it is free of frivolity. If that de-divinized love is selfish, then this love, which is based on devotion, is the only passion that is free of selfishness.

To understand the truly spiritual nature of Goethe's love, one need only take a look at his often-challenged relationship with Frau von Stein. How did he see this woman, who led a life of renunciation, who did not want to be taken into account by anyone, who demanded nothing for herself but bestowed benefits on all around her? He writes about her, she appears to him

like a goddess ascending to heaven. In vain that a human being stretches out his arms to her, that his eye craves a glance. She floats, lost in the heavenly radiance that surrounds her, to heaven.

And when we see the calming and blissful effect that this woman has on the young man, who enters Weimar's life full of the most furious passions in his chest, full of high spirits and excessive joy, then we can well understand his devotion to her exalted femininity. Who does not know the follies, the high-spirited pranks that Goethe and his ducal friend played in Weimar, but who does not also know the deep need in both of them to break out of this high-spiritedness and move on to a higher life! It was in such moods that Goethe wrote verses like these:

What is the use of all the pain and pleasure? Sweet peace, come, oh come into my heart!

The sweet peace is brought to him by “the soother”, as he called his wife von Stein. Goethe's relationship with Christiane was also pure and noble. How tender is the following gesture: when he once finds her asleep in the room, he sits down very quietly beside her, lays a fruit and a flower in front of her and is enchanted by the thought that when she wakes up, she will immediately direct her gaze to the things that his loving hand has placed there. And how deeply his words touch our hearts when he speaks them as the one he loves is snatched from him by death: “The only gain of my life now is to mourn her death.” Marianne Willemer is the figure to whom we owe the most magnificent songs in the “Diwan”. Again, we have here the stirring of the poetic mood through the power of love. Even in his eighties, he writes his “Elegy” in the “Trilogy of Passion” out of the glow of passion and the imagination refreshed by the source of holy love, in which, so to speak, an apotheosis of love in the truly Goethean sense is contained. If we understand this magnificent poem, addressed to Ulrike von Levetzow, then we have the key to Goethe's love life in general. Ulrike von Levetzow was a young woman at the time, who was with her mother in Marienbad, where the poet was also staying. He was enchanted by her grace. Once again he was to feel all the bliss and sorrow of love, once again he was to heap the joys and sorrows of the earth on his bosom. The elegy contains the following: The poet has said goodbye; the bliss of the last kiss is still in his heart, and he finds the farewell difficult, he looks up at the sky, from which the star of day, the sun, has also already said goodbye. He sees clouds passing by, and his imagination transforms them into figures, changing figures of his beloved. He wants to hold on to her for a moment; but soon he remembers that the true image of his beloved can only be in his heart. And now he revives this image.

The rift with nature, as it occurs and must occur in man, can lead to bitter degeneration. That which he has lost slumbers in him as an irrepressible yearning, like a homeland that we have lost. Only love can bridge this yearning, only love can balance the conflict of nature that has been touched. If this love does not occur, then man remains for life a renegade, a being who has become estranged from his primal power and wanders a wrong path through life. Blind, selfish passions will then take the place of love. He who at first consumed himself in longing will seek to deaden himself in the frenzy of degrading sensual pleasure. He will never be able to see what is excellent, because, as Schiller said, there is only one power in the face of excellence: love. There you have the necessity of love derived from human nature. If we abolish love, we have done away with the divine self, or, because we cannot do that, we have turned away from the divine. But we carry out this apostasy when we alienate woman from her true nature, when we deprive her of her destiny of being the mediator of the divine, of nature, which appears directly naive. It is no coincidence that the emancipation movement first emerged in those European countries where love in the noble sense, as understood by the Germanic peoples, never took root. Where woman knows that she has her part to play in the whole process of human development in a way that corresponds to her nature rather than to his, and where she knows that she will be recognized and honored by the male world for her work, she does not strive beyond what is allotted to her in the plan of the world. It is a higher vision that seeks satisfaction in the harmony of different forces of action, and a lower one that would like to make everything the same. It is preferably the ideal side of culture that woman is the bearer and propagator of. What can be the reasons that should push woman out of her present position, out of the boundaries that history has drawn for her?

Firstly, the urge not to lag behind man in intellectual education and insight. Secondly, the urge not to be indebted to man for what provides her with the real basis for life.

When I consider that it was so often sensible, imaginative mothers who stood at the cradle of great men, when I look at the old woman Rat herself, Goethe's mother, who first stimulated the poetic sense of young Wolfgang by telling her fairy tales, it seems to me that this can easily be explained by the idea I have just developed about women's nature. If the divine power of nature is more purely and unadulteratedly expressed in women than in men, then it is plausible that the living influence of the mother on a person must be most fruitful at that age where everything is is still nature, everything is still naive, the heart is still whole and the head is not yet at all, the spirit has not yet broken away from its source, from nature, the division between idea and reality has not yet taken place, in a word: in childhood. Here lies a tremendous cultural influence that women have on the development of humanity, an influence that is more valuable than that which they can ever exert as doctors, civil servants or writers.

Yesterday I spoke to you about initiation in the sense of the Rosicrucian spiritual world current, about the stages of knowledge, of feeling, of will impulses, of activities that a person has to undergo if they want to move up the path of knowledge and towards higher levels of humanity. Today let us try to deal with a chapter of this Rosicrucian theosophy ourselves. Not that this Rosicrucian wisdom is anything but the common spiritual wisdom of all peoples and times, as must be emphasized again and again. It is only adapted to our modern way of thinking, to the modern temporal need. It is born out of the realization that our epoch needs a special way of speaking in order to proclaim the eternal truths of all times, so that they can live themselves into the very configuration of today's humanity in Europe and America.

It is perhaps a very distant chapter that is chosen here, yet it is one of the most essential. For nothing shows us man's origin and goal as much as the realization of this chapter and at the same time points us to the forces that we are to unfold in ourselves in order to become co-workers in the service of human evolution. We cannot look at the great evolution of the cosmos any other way than by starting with the human being and his or her essence. And I will say nothing other than what is a common theosophical and Rosicrucian wisdom, what anyone would say who speaks from these sources. There is no contradiction. Many already know what I would like to say here again.

We distinguish seven members of human nature. This morning we heard that one could also take another number as a basis: three times three. It does not matter that I will combine the three middle members into one name today, and if you summarize these three members under what I will call the fourth today, then the explanations will be completely consistent.

We divide the human being in such a way that we say that the human being first has his physical body; it is what hands can touch and eyes can see, what the human being has in common with all of nature and what is subject to physical and chemical laws. The second is the so-called etheric or life body. It is that which the chemical and physical forces and substances call to life and which leaves the connection of physical and chemical substances in death. Occultism says: The human physical body is such a combination of substances and forces that it cannot exist as a physical body by itself; only by having an etheric body inserted into it and as long as it is inserted, it is protected from the disintegration of physical substances and forces. In the moment when the etheric body leaves the physical forces, death occurs, the physical body is a corpse. Therefore, it is also said that the etheric body is what protects us from death at every moment. In every moment, there is a great struggle in the etheric body against that which would otherwise cause our chemical substances to disintegrate. The third link is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, feelings and emotions, which we call the astral body. It is the link of the human being that man has in common with animals, just as he has the ether body in common with the plant and animal world and the mineral body with the whole outer world. The name astral body has been in use since the earliest times. There is no more appropriate name for this part of the human being than astral body. And there is perhaps no better definition of why this body is called the astral body than the one given by the great theosophist Paracelsus. Just as the etheric body leaves the physical body at death, so the astral body leaves the etheric body some time after death. But the astral body also leaves the physical and etheric bodies every night. Then it is outside of us. Where is it then?

Paracelsus rightly asks: Where is it, and what does it do during the night? Does it rest, does it have a task? Yes, it has a task. Although those who do not have clairvoyant powers cannot see into the activity of the astral body during the night. But everyone feels the consequences of this activity. They all go to bed tired in the evening. The fatigue is an expression of disharmony in the composition of our physical and etheric bodies. It must arise if the astral body does not have the power to bring harmony into the other two, the physical and etheric bodies. And as man is today, such disharmony must necessarily arise during the waking hours of the day, were our physical and etheric bodies merely under the control of the astral body - how the forces are to be joined together - then there would always be harmony in our etheric and physical bodies. But as it is, not only does the astral body live in the physical body, but at the level of consciousness that humanity has reached on the Earth, the whole environment of physical, sensually perceptible objects has an effect on the human being. Impressions from the eye and ear and the other senses flow into it from the outside. During the waking hours, disharmony will inevitably arise in every person who has not yet reached a certain higher level of spiritual development. If this astral body could never dwell in any other place than in our physical and etheric bodies, it would itself become disordered. Then its power currents would not remain as they should be if a real etheric and physical body is to be formed. During the day, the inner harmony of the astral body is disturbed, and the expression of this disorder is fatigue. The moment you feel tired, the inner disharmony is there. Where is the astral body during the night?

Paracelsus rightly said: When the lines of force that connect it to the physical body during the day begin to loosen, it then comes into contact with the entire harmonious system of forces that flows through the starry sky. At the moment when a person falls asleep, he rests in the harmony of the spheres, and from there he brings the forces to balance what has been used during the day. Thus, the astral body rests during the night in the world of the stars; that is its true home. And when it returns, it brings with it the powers of the stars to help remove the substances that cause fatigue. That is why sleep is a good doctor, because order and harmony can then be restored when the astral body rests again for some time in the world that contains the laws for the starry sky, and these are the laws for the spiritual world in general. If a person does not sleep, their health will be undermined because the astral body has not rested in the starry world for a while. That is why the astral body has been given this name. In the past, names were not given that did not correspond to the essence of the matter. And before we correct occult names and designations, we must first think about the name, why it was given. Today, when a comet or a minor planet is discovered, one opens a mythology encyclopedia and gives the star a name. The principle of naming in spiritual times was to let the essence of the thing itself resonate in a name: it sounded in the name of the connection with the world.

In the fourth aspect of his being, man has something that makes him the crowning of earthly creation of planetary existence. Follow me for a short time in a subtle observation. In the whole range of the German language, there is a name - and in other languages it is similar - that is fundamentally different from all other names. Each of you can say “table” to the table, “picture” to the picture, and so on. But there is one name which we cannot use in the same sense, and that is the name I. None of them can say “I” to another. Each one is a “you” to every other, and you are a “you” to everyone else. If this name is to describe ourselves, no sound in the external world can embody it; it must resound from within ourselves. This has been felt at all times by those religions that had an impulse from the secret teaching. In the secret teaching, therefore, one says the name for the being, and in the Hebrew secret teaching, the unpronounceable name of God, the name of Yahweh, is nothing other than the name for the ego. In truth, the name of Yahweh is the name for that which begins to hold a monologue in the soul - to live in its self. It was felt that in those worldviews and religions that were built on spiritual foundations, one said: In the I, in the innermost part of the soul, God begins to speak. It is a beginning, but it must be made, and this I - this single central point - is what makes up the most essential distinguishing feature of man from all the beings that surround us on this planet. Sensible people have always felt this. Jean Paul tells us how, as a very young child, he stood in the courtyard of his parents' house and he knew exactly how he first felt: you are a self-being! And he adds that there is no possibility of error and that others have added something to this memory. Because at that time, says Jean Paul, I looked into the hidden holy of holies of my inner being; at that time I knew that I was immortal because I had found the connection with God.

If we now go outwards from the I, we come to the point where we can consider the mutual relationships of the human being. Human evolution consists in the I working on the three bodies, within which it appears like the core of a fruit in its shell. And how does this I work?

If we want to understand this, we must remember primitive peoples. Take a people who today stands at a lower level of culture. You see that this people is ruled by its feelings and instincts, by drives and passions, much like the animal: they devour each other. Now compare this savage with the members of a more highly developed culture, with a Francis of Assisi. What is the difference between the two forms of development?

If we want to answer this question, we must be aware that the human being – through the many incarnations through which he develops – does his work from his I: first on the astral body, then on the etheric body and then also on the physical body. This is human development: this emanation of the I into the three bodies. The savage follows all the instincts and passions that live in him. The cultured man says to himself, “I must not follow certain instincts”; he denies himself certain instincts and passions. The still higher idealist not only denies himself, but out of himself generates ideals that add something new to what the instincts of the astral body constitute at a primitive level of culture. Thus, in the clairvoyant view, we see the astral body as consisting of two parts: what was originally in it and then what the ego itself has made of it. If you look at a highly developed idealist, this part [it is drawn] is larger than in others due to the work of the ego, and in a person like Francis of Assisi you can see how little is left of what the person called his own when he embarked on his first incarnation. In Theosophy, this practically transformed part of the human astral body, over which man has gained control, is called the German word “Geistselbst”, which is otherwise referred to in Theosophical literature as “Manas”; it is a transformed part of the astral body.

But the human being also works on his etheric body from his I. What does it mean to work on the etheric body? Let us make this clear with an example. You can do this in your own development. Remember what you knew as a seven-year-old child in terms of concepts and ideas, and what you know today, what you have learned and changed in your imaginative life. You will find a great deal. But now compare what you have learned with what has changed in other things that are also in you, in temperament, memory, certain basic characteristics of human nature. If you were hot-tempered as an eight-year-old child, this hot temper will still show through at times. If your temperament was melancholy, then perhaps this coloring will remain throughout your life. So that we can say comparatively: what a person actually learns moves forward like the minute hand of a clock; but what a person's basic inclinations are, that moves forward more slowly, like the hour hand. And as slowly as the hour hand of a clock, the etheric body transforms. The etheric body is denser than the astral body; therefore, the work of the ego on the etheric body is essentially more difficult than the work on the astral body. And only when the ego not only works on its intellectual ideas but begins to transform its temperament, then this is accompanied by a transformation of its etheric body. For many, this is only possible during the transition from one incarnation to another. But that is precisely the essence of occult training: everything you can learn is only preparation for occult training, and you have done more if you have tried to get rid of any basic mood, for example, if you have transformed your melancholy temperament into a harmonious one. The moment we begin to change not only our feelings and impulses but our fundamental nature, we begin to work on the etheric body. The part of the human etheric body that has been reshaped by the ego in this way is in turn a new link in human nature. Today, very few people can consciously bring about this transformation of the etheric body, but only those who are in occult training. For example, one of the laws of the Pythagorean school was that the astral body must first be completely purified before work on the etheric body could begin. But one must distinguish between conscious and unconscious schooling of the etheric body. The part that is permeated by the work of the ego is called the “life spirit” in the German language; it is the same in its fundamental essence as what is called “buddhi” in theosophical literature.

The third and most significant thing is when the human being not only begins to become master over the forces of his etheric body, but when he begins to work down into the physical body. It might seem as though the work of the I on the physical body is the basest; but it is in fact the highest. And the work on the physical body is more difficult than the work on the etheric body. When a person consciously begins to work on mastering the forces that work in the physical body through the I, then something else occurs to him. What works in the physical body are the same forces that work in the cosmos. When a person learns to control the forces of his blood and his breathing, he learns the magic of the cosmos. Then what he can do flows out of his physical body and into the universe, and that is a real, true work that can only begin when a person has reached a certain level of work on the etheric body. And because we begin with the regulation of our neighbor, with the regulation of breathing, the name breathing is also taken from 'Atma'. The more a person transforms in his inner physical nature, the more there is of the 'spirit man', of 'Atma'; there is a part of spirit matter in him that has been transformed.

This is not an ascetic escape from the physical world; rather, we have the task of entering the physical world in order to transform it into a spiritual one. That is the great law of redemption. This physical body is a part of the spiritual body that has become what it has become so that we could reach our present stage of development. We now have the task of spiritualizing this physical body again, of redeeming it. This principle lies behind the word redemption. There you have the mutual relationship of the seven members of human nature, as one must have them if one wants to utilize them in practical theosophical work.

Now let us consider the evolution of man. A materialist, who, being acquainted only with the physical body, has only an abstract idea of the evolution of man. But he who realizes how complicated man is, also sees how complicated the evolution of man is. Which of these four members is the oldest and most perfect? Some may be surprised to hear that the oldest and most perfect link in the human being is the physical one; it is the one that took the longest time to develop. The etheric body is younger, and the astral body is even younger. The baby is the I. It is only unfair to call the physical body an imperfect part of the human being. Just consider, for example, the structure of the thigh bone: a wonderful work of art. The beams are laid with such wisdom that no human engineering could achieve it, and they are laid in such a way that the upper body is supported with the least expenditure of energy. Let us now move from this limb to the construction of the human heart. Anyone who delves into what our physiologists teach us about the heart and also about the other organs knows that these limbs are so wisely constructed that no human wisdom can even penetrate these physical forms. The physical body would be good for all people. But now let us look at the astral body, which it does throughout life. Through the activity of its astral body, man continually introduces heart poisons to the physical body, for example to the heart; but the heart is so wisely constructed that it can withstand the attacks of the astral body for quite some time. Only in the future will the astral body be found just as wise as the physical body is today. The physical body is the oldest part of the human nature, which required the longest time to evolve. The parts of the human nature are, however, connected with the whole environment. Just as a single finger can only exist if it is a part of the whole hand, so man is only conceivable in connection with the whole cosmos. If you lift him a few miles above the earth, then he will experience the same fate as the finger if you cut it off. And just because man can walk around on the earth, this dependence is not admitted.

Look back at times long past! And when you look ahead to future times, you see that the shape of its limbs is constantly changing. But they can only change if everything around the person changes. Just because man, despite his advanced science, looks back over such a short span of time, he believes that things have always been as they are. But anyone who looks further knows that our planet must change from form to form if we ourselves want to change. But it is not enough just for the changes that the earth itself is undergoing to happen, but in a certain respect man was already there before the earth could be called “earth” in the cosmos. As man progresses in the cosmos, so do the planets or the beings that inhabit them. Our planet is the reincarnation of another planetary state, and we can trace three preceding incarnations of our Earth and look forward to three subsequent ones. What we call planetary evolution is nothing more than an analogy to our human evolution. The three preceding planetary states through which our Earth had to pass are called in Rosicrucian terms Saturn, Sun, Moon, so that we have to imagine: the Earth was, before it became Earth, Moon, and before it became Moon, it was Sun, and before the Sun it was Saturn; and the later states, which we are looking at, are called Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. What does it mean that the Earth has passed through these states?

We are today in the fourth incarnation of our own planet, and this is intimately connected with human evolution. On the first planetary form - that is, on Saturn - the first structures of the human physical body were already present. At that time, however, the human physical body was such during the entire Saturn development that no independent etheric body was yet incorporated into it. Through the stages of the sun and moon, down to the stage of the earth, this physical body became more and more perfect, so that we can say: the physical human body today stands on the fourth stage of its development, it stands today at the point of the earth's development. It was only in the second incarnation of our earth that an independent ether body was incorporated into this physical body. The physical body became more perfect, as it were, through the working of an etheric body within it. Then the third reincarnation of the earth — the moon — led to the incorporation of the astral body into the two others, so that the inhabitant of the moon, the ancestor of today's earth man, consisted of three bodies — the physical, the etheric and the astral body. And the meaning of evolution on Earth is this: to integrate the I into these three members, the worker, who then begins to transform what has come to him from the past. Thus we see that the physical body is older than the others, and the I is only at the first stage of its development. One can even know from the configuration of the physical body what comes from the state of Saturn in us. The highest part of our physical body is the sensory organs, and the germ of our sensory organs was laid on Saturn. And so limb by limb was built up, becoming more and more perfect in stages with the other limbs of human nature.

What is called Saturn and Sun here is not the present-day Sun and Saturn, but rather denotes phases of development. Nevertheless, what our Earth has gone through in its development is related to present-day Saturn. Present-day Saturn is to the Earth as a boy is to an old man. The same conditions that Saturn is going through today are the same conditions that our Earth went through in the past. This is why in real occultism we do not speak of Saturn, the Sun and so on, but of a Saturn, a Sun and so on. Our Earth is an older Saturn.

Now we must still be clear about the meaning of this whole development. If we look back to that Saturn development, where man was still without etheric body, astral body and I - insofar as they were independent beings -, we get the best difference of those ancient conditions from today's by referring to the “consciousness”. A state of consciousness is connected with every state of development. There are seven states of consciousness. The present human being is in the fourth; no being can have this state that cannot say “I” to itself. Therefore, the human being developed the form of consciousness that he now has only on earth. The purpose of evolution on Earth is to develop the waking consciousness. On the earlier planetary conditions, there were only imperfect states of consciousness for humans. On Saturn, the human ancestor in his primitive form had a consciousness like that of minerals, or rather: the human physical ancestor is that consciousness. We can hardly find words for it easily; we can only hint at it. This consciousness is a very, very dim, deep trance-like, sleepy consciousness, dull and dusky, but which in a way had an advantage: it encompasses a much larger scope, is much more universal; a mineral consciousness knows of the whole solar system.

Then this consciousness was narrowed down to that of the plant. But it is now a somewhat brighter consciousness than that of the mineral. Man was in this consciousness when the earth was in the sun. The third form of consciousness is pictorial consciousness, also called primary psychic consciousness. It differs from the present one in that it works in images, but in such a way that it conveys the psychic of the other. Imagine a being - and the human ancestor on the moon was like that - that does not yet have sensory consciousness and can cover objects with colors when it wakes up: you have a last remnant of such consciousness in the dream world. The dream world is not the astral consciousness. The present dream consciousness is to the moon consciousness what some atrophied limb is to the form it was in when it still had its tasks in the human being; for example, certain muscles that could move the ears have lost their purpose in the human being. The present-day world of dreams has remained as a vestige of the astral pictorial consciousness of the moon; that is why it also works in the same way as the astral imaginative consciousness works. Imagine someone dreaming that he is catching a tree frog. He sees it jump and grabs it. Then the sleeper wakes up and sees that he had the corner of the bed cover in his hand. Or another dream that really happened. A farmer's wife dreams that she is going to church. She listens devoutly. Then the pastor moves his arms violently and, lo and behold, he gets wings. It was not too strange for the pious farmer's wife that a pastor who preaches from heaven occasionally gets wings too. But what happens? The pastor begins to crow loudly in the pulpit. At the same moment, the farmer's wife wakes up and outside in the yard, the cock crows.

What has happened here, where a whole dramatic action is taking place? In the symbolic image, something is expressed that you would have perceived as an external object in the waking day consciousness. Something is formed symbolically that is not present in this way. But if you retain the symbol in form – think that people use it to have perceptions of the real psychic world, then you have what I am talking about now. A symbolic consciousness that is true and real was the consciousness of the moon. Imagine a human being without our present-day object-consciousness. He approached another being. He does not see the limited form in this being, but a color formation appears before him. When there is sympathy, he sees a very definite color, and likewise when there is antipathy. This is something other than color today: it is the expression of sympathy or antipathy for the other being. And someone who has moon consciousness does what corresponds to moon consciousness: he bases his actions on the symbols. If he perceives a certain color, he knows that something hostile is happening, and he will withdraw.

A later stage of development is that which develops under the influence of the ego, where consciousness no longer perceives the psychic phenomenon, but where what has arisen as a coloration is superimposed over the objects. The colors that you see spread over the objects today are the old colors that once arose as psychic phenomena.

If modern man had, in addition to today's consciousness, that of the moon, so that he fully perceives the psychic world as well as the physical, he would have expanded the present consciousness into the imaginative one. A higher form would be if he had added to this the consciousness that plants have today and that humans had dimly and dully during their solar incarnation. And the highest form would be where man would also have the consciousness that the mineral has today, which in turn would enable him to merge into the universal cosmos. This last consciousness hovers before us as the ideal of man, and it is called spiritual consciousness.

The purpose of planetary evolution is therefore that states of consciousness succeed one another; but for this to happen, the planetary arena must also change completely each time. However, we only understand the complete evolution if we know that within each planetary state, seven stages must be traversed. Thus Saturn, Sun, Moon and now Earth had to cover seven stages. These are called “rounds” in Theosophy, “realms” in Christian esotericism. Each of the planets that the Earth passes through has seven smaller cycles; for each consciousness, if it is to ascend, has degrees, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. They are also called states of life. Each of these realms or states of life, however, must in turn pass through seven different states of revelation or seven states of form: arupa, rupa, astral, physical, plastic, intellectual, spiritual (archetypal).

Thus we have 7 times 7 times 7 = 343 states; they describe the 343 planetary incarnations in their entirety. The development of one state of consciousness encompasses 49 of these states. So you can see how we can glimpse into an enormous cosmic development.

When man still lived on the sun and had only developed his etheric and physical bodies, he was still a completely different being. One could not call him a plant, but in a certain figurative sense one could say that he was then in the plant existence. In relation to his position on earth, he was turned around: what today projects freely into the ether, the head, was then directed towards the center of the earth. The development of consciousness is simultaneously linked with the reversal of the entire human form. This is why the sun man is also called a man directed towards the center of the earth, and in the same sense the man of the moon age is called an orbiting man. If one had drawn a tangent to the moon's surface... [gap in the transcript]. And the earth man is the reverse of the sun man.

Thus everything moves forward. When we look back at lunar evolution, we must realize that what we call affects today could only develop on the moon as an astral impact. But at that time the I had not yet developed. Because the ego did not develop until the earth, the moon man did not yet feel pain as his individual pain; it was the pain of the moon. This physical-etheric-astral moon ancestor was not independent. Unindividual passions, affects and pains arose from this. For example, it was so on the moon — one may express it today, even if so few believe it — that at certain seasons of the year the whole world, all living beings, began to scream, to utter sounds, surrounded by an astral body; this was connected with a certain development in animal life. A vestige of this can still be seen in the mating call in the sexual life of certain animals, where cries are associated with it at certain times.

Now the law of evolution is such that in later states certain earlier ones are always repeated. Thus the earth had to go through the repetition of the Saturn, Sun and Moon existence. Now the earth is in its most essential existence. You can get an idea of what was called the sun here if you stir all the beings that are on the sun, moon and earth today into a pulp; all of this once existed on the sun. During the solar age, the sun, moon and earth were one body. Then the sun had developed into the moon's existence and only then were the sun and moon divided. And during the repetition on earth, first the sun and then the moon separated again, and the actual becoming-ego of the human being is linked to the separation of the moon. The moon contains the forces that prevent the other parts of the human being from becoming the carrier of an ego. I can only suggest that the point in time that occurred for our earth's development in the ancient Lemurian period could only occur because first the sun broke away and then the moon. When the earth had become independent, it could only then bring forth the human form from which today's human being has developed.

Thus, human evolution is most intimately connected with cosmic evolution. If you look back to the ancient Atlantean times, the predecessor of our present time, when man lived on Atlantis – which science has at least already discovered for the animal world – you have the human ancestor who does not yet possess the same consciousness as the human being of today, who can calculate and manufacture industrial objects. But another faculty was highly developed. The Atlantean man had an excellent memory, of which one can no longer really imagine today. Something else was connected with this. You would find that physically, too, this old Atlantis differs quite considerably from the configuration of the earth today. What we call air and water today was not yet there. All the air was filled with a fine water vapor. The water was still dissolved. That is why the old German saga has preserved the name 'Nifelheim'. It means that people in those days lived in a kind of water-laden air, and only in such an air could the image consciousness of man at that time live. The myths and legends of Germanic mythology arose out of this consciousness. Anyone who really knows the people knows that they do not create poetry as today's scholarship claims. The myths and legends were the remnants of an ancient ethereal pictorial consciousness, the expression of an ancient, dim clairvoyance, and people have only forgotten their origin after they have advanced to today's bright day consciousness.

So you can see how the development of mankind is tied to the cosmos. On a round earth, where the air is saturated with water, man perceives the world quite differently. For the Atlanteans, the sound of the wind was a language they understood. There were no commandments or laws in those days. There were still times when, if man wanted to know how he should behave, he went out and listened to the spring as it trickled: that told him something. And when he went out to listen, he listened to a fundamental and underlying tone that was present like a musical keynote that the Atlantean understood. It is a simple, multi-syllabic syllable; it lived in the entire environment of the Atlantean; it went through everything, and the Atlantean said to himself: “In this fundamental tone, the god speaks to me.” And when he wanted to address his prayer to his God, it was in this fundamental tone. The wisdom of the ancient Atlanteans had to change into our own in order for man to progress. But in the process of development we will again have to gain the consciousness of the Atlanteans, in addition to our own. Sometimes we have to make the sacrifice that the old must lie dormant for a time.

Thus the evolution of man is connected with the evolution of the cosmos. Just think how far man has strayed from the sources of wisdom that lie in the world itself! How far he has strayed from direct contact with nature! But what we have lost we shall regain in what we have conquered. This consciousness that we have arises from the consciousness of the individual, concrete facts that in the Rosicrucian method were designated as the “wisdom of the world”. It permeates the whole life of man. If we imbibe it, we feel what the teacher wanted, to whom the name “Rosenkreutz” is linked, who, as a leading individuality, guides and directs the spiritual movement through the centuries.

It seems far-removed when we consider the human being in the context of the whole world; but if it penetrates our hearts, it becomes a force within us that will bless us if we want to work on the transformation and transformation of the cosmos. One has the duty to integrate oneself into the cosmos. Just as a single stone does not seek to dispense itself from the house, so man must not dispense himself from the Cosmos. One must recognize that it must be one's duty to serve within the great evolution of the world. Then that which is eternal in us will integrate itself into the world existence. There will be a reflection of it in our most everyday life, so that man can express this wisdom in every movement of his hand. Then the Cosmos will truly partake of the human being, for everything is in the process of transformation. Everything must be transformed again through beings who are placed in the movement of the world. If we work in this way, we will feel vividly how true it is. And truth will be the impulse for our actions. Thus a beautiful saying of a highly inspired poet will be fulfilled:

Time is a blooming meadow,
Nature is one great living being,
And everything is fruit, and everything is seed!

The subject of our lecture today may at first seem surprising. But Theosophy does not just want to bring messages of supersensory research, but wants to let them flow into human life, bringing strength and the joy of working for life. It wants to be a kind of art of living, albeit under certain conditions. It is not something that wants to be quickly established, but rather, Theosophy draws from sources of deep knowledge. Therefore, it cannot seek to win over many people; it is not a doctrine that wants to be promoted with fanaticism to broad circles. [A movement of this kind must keep its distance from fanaticism.] The theosophist must make the opposite of fanaticism his most important quality – [understanding of people should be the theosophist's hallmark.] He must be able to penetrate [into the souls of others], into the souls of opponents [and gain understanding for the justified refutations].

And who would want to deny that there is much to be said against Theosophy in a deeply justified way? After all, Theosophy or spiritual science speaks of the most sacred and dignified matters, and does so more to the heart than to reason. And the heart is easily inclined to surrender to things that might speak of an increase in vitality. To penetrate into the depths of what Theosophy means, a long journey is necessary, which by no means all those who agree with the Theosophical life out of the heart take.

If someone approaches Theosophy in our time, it must be admitted that this is very difficult. One concern after another piles up. Therefore, a scientifically educated person in particular cannot easily find his way around – with a genuine sense of truth. In addition, there are many things today that are called Theosophy, but which are not very useful. Therefore, the elementary principles of what we would like to call Theosophy should be described first, [before moving on to the concerns].

First of all, we must be clear about the structure of the human being. Man does not consist only of the physical body, not only of what we can perceive with our brain-bound mind, but it must be asserted that the physical body is integrated with a sum of higher, supersensible , namely, first of all, the etheric or life body, by which the physical body is permeated throughout. The etheric body ensures that the physical body does not follow the forces of the external physical world. It only follows these forces when it is abandoned by the etheric body at death. Then the physical forces act on the components of the human body and cause them to disintegrate and dissolve. The existence of this etheric body can be determined through clairvoyant research. But it can also be seen that it is necessary, that we need a fighter against the otherwise inevitable physical decay. Other living beings are also endowed with an etheric body as long as they are living beings. Plants also have it.

In addition to this, human beings also have a consciousness soul or an astral body. This we have in common with the animal world. It is the carrier of all the drives, passions and desires we have in our lives. What we no longer have in common with animals is what we call our human sense of self. The fact that we can say “I” to ourselves makes us human beings the pinnacle of creation. From the moment when the child becomes capable of saying “I” to itself, our human consciousness, our memory begins. We therefore distinguish between a physical body, etheric body, astral body and the I.

But that is not the only way in which Theosophy differs from the generally held view. It also considers the inner core of a person's being, the I, to be more than just an earthly existence between birth and death. Theosophy seeks to show that not everything that is expressed through the I in a person has been determined in just one lifetime. Rather, this central core of the human being comes from earlier stages of existence. In a sense, the human being forms his own body before he fully enters it with his sense of self. Then there is the further claim of Theosophy: After death, the human being only discards his physical shell, but the core of his being also lives on after physical death, only to enter into a renewed physical life later on.

The changing fortunes of human beings can only be understood by grasping the repeated lives of the same human being on earth. We see one person living a miserable and unhappy life, while another is happy. Science must ask about the causes of this tremendous inequality of life's destinies. Spiritual science claims that a person has built his own destiny in his previous life; depending on how he lives now, his following destiny in the future life will be shaped.

That it can be so is already evident to a certain degree from the course of his present life. If someone emigrates to America, for example, his fate will essentially be shaped by what he was in Europe. What he has learned here will be very important for his progress and the way he lives over there. Whether he was a shoemaker or a banker here, for example, will have a very significant influence on the way he lives his life over there. But after he has been in America for a while, he will have learned new things and will have become a different person. In order for a person to mature, different destinies are necessary; this cannot possibly all happen in a single life between birth and death. The fruits of our previous lives ripen for us in the present life, and what we learn now will benefit our later life.

Theosophy thus teaches the immortality of the central core of the human being. Between death and a new birth, the soul goes through very different, purely spiritual states of longer duration.

Regarding the state of sleep, Theosophy says that in this state, the physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed; the astral body and the ego, that is, that which is the carrier of consciousness, emerges and lives during sleep in supersensible worlds.

The whole appears as a closed system. We will see in what way theosophy draws its knowledge of this system. This happens through clairvoyant research. How do you acquire this ability? It can be said that these clairvoyant powers can be awakened in man through meditation. In this way, the soul can be made into an instrument of spiritual research, and indeed into a research that is just as exact and methodical as the research that chemists and physicists use physical means for to study matter. In this way, dormant powers are brought to the surface within the human being. We recall Goethe's words about the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears that can be opened in man.

Having said this, we turn to the objections to Theosophy. Of course, we cannot exhaust all the objections to Theosophy. We will only consider a few that may present serious and significant difficulties for an honest conviction. If you are completely under the spell of modern science, you may come to the following conclusion when you first study Theosophy; you can [rightly] say: Yes, I believe that women who are not critically minded [who do not critically examine science but follow the urge of the heart] and have not learned to think logically, can have their world puzzles solved by this spiritual science. And, as far as I am concerned, the same applies to men who do not know science. Just note this: you believe that you need an etheric body as the carrier of the life forces in the body. Do you not know that you are thereby amateurishly reaching back into the time when it was assumed that organically formed substances could not be produced in the laboratory, but only in the living organism? Therefore, in those days, it had to be assumed that special vital forces were at work in all living things. But progressive research [in the nineteenth century] has shown that the simplest of these substances can be produced in the laboratory by purely chemical means, just as they can in a living organism. This dealt a fatal blow to the old doctrine of the life force – vis vitalis – or life ether, because it proved, albeit initially only in the simplest of organisms, that the organic structure of nature is built in the same way as the non-living, inorganic. It is a very serious and worthy thought that once the beginning of the chemical production of the organic has been made, it will continue, even if few substances can be produced in this way at present. This is experimental proof that the same laws apply to the inanimate as to the animate. It is therefore ignorance when Theosophy still speaks of the fact that life in a body can only be explained by a life body. Such a researcher can say: What subtle research had to gradually strive to elucidate, you theosophists simply want to make easy with your fantastic life body. You claim that it is visible to the supersensible faculty of cognition, but the above proves that it is not needed at all, it is not necessary. But it must be a serious first requirement for serious knowledge that it makes no unnecessary assumptions. He who weighs things as theosophists should do, should feel that there is much earnestness and dignity in such an objection.

But let us look further. Theosophy claims that an astral body and an ego are needed to explain the phenomena of consciousness. We can indeed concede what even strict researchers such as Du Bois-Reymond say, that what we experience in us as inner life is not possible from purely material processes within the brain. So let us assume that we have to do without an explanation for the time being and write the famous “Ignorabimus” below it. But is it justified to say that when something different, something supersensory, emerges from matter, that this is an independent entity? An opponent of Theosophy could say this with some justification. He could point to magnetic forces, which do indeed emanate from an inorganic substance, the magnet, and are bound to it. So after all, a supersensible power such as magnetism is produced out of material substance. Furthermore, it is no different with the development of the other forces, for example, with the force of gravity that is bound to the planets. Why should it not be the same with what we scientifically know as states of excitation of the brain, and what takes place in the consciousness and inner life of man? There is absolutely no compulsion to explain the phenomena of consciousness differently. Even what has not yet been researched can be explained in this way. In any case, the hasty assumption of an astral body to explain these processes is amateurish. Even where we are still forced to remain ignorant, we must wait patiently for serious research to say something about it.

What used to be the horror of horrors in science, the so-called theory of potentialities [in psychology], lies behind us. There, a system was built on the premise that if the soul can think, then it has the potential to think. It can feel, so it has the potential to feel. According to this, the soul was a system of nothing but nested concepts of capacity, without realizing that they had not explained anything, but had only put words in the place of something. Now the opponent can say: Isn't your astral and etheric body just as much something nested and unrecognized as the old doctrine of capacity was? Such a thing can rightly be objected.

So Theosophy is not for someone who stands on the ground of in-depth modern scientific knowledge. To such a person, Theosophy appears to be somewhat dilettantish compared to the demands of rigorous research. Furthermore, Theosophy says: During sleep, the astral body and the ego leave the human body with the consciousness. Since they are not present with what remains in bed, they must still be found somewhere. Where else should they be present than in a spiritual world? On the other hand, serious science asks: Is it necessary to invoke a special, supernatural explanation for this state of sleep when the scientifically given explanations are sufficient? It is perfectly possible to explain sleep quite simply. The scientifically applied method views the matter quite differently. It says: When we are awake, the organism wears out. Toxins are formed as a result of the activity carried out by the excited brain during the waking state. When so many toxins have accumulated, they kill consciousness through mechanical or chemical action, which means that sleep sets in. Now it is not the organs that otherwise generate consciousness that are at work, but other organs that continue to work in the human being, which in turn destroy the poisons in the body that the activity of the organs of consciousness has produced, and so on. Such a self-regulatory hypothesis is entirely possible. But if it is possible to explain the alternation of sleep and waking with it, then it is not permissible to say anything else about it. The theosophical theory is at least a daring assumption. The true facts will only be able to be explained gradually, and until then one must stick to the obvious and simplest explanation of these phenomena.

What about the theosophical assertion of the repetition of earthly lives? Theosophy shows how man develops from childhood; this cannot possibly be explained by mere inheritance. Children of the same parents are fundamentally different, and so on. Therefore, something must be added that is not inherited, that is already present in the life germ of the newborn human being, and that can only be explained by repeated lives on earth. For example, twins can be different despite simultaneous inheritance.

The scientific objection to this is as follows: What constitutes the essence of a person is not something that is inherited from a single father or mother, but from a long chain of ancestors. If Theosophy now says: If you attribute everything to heredity, why is there any individuality at all in the development of each person? The objection is as follows: People must therefore be different because so many different influences flow into each individual's life, [which has a transforming effect on people from early childhood on]. Genius is a particularly good example of this. It emerges, endowed with special qualities, which we can, however, already find in the various ancestors. In the case of genius, they are then combined as a grand total. Brentano explains the soul work in geniuses as being able to quickly piece thoughts together, and thus only in a certain increase over ordinary human thought activity. This easier mobility in the brain molecules can only be inherited. The spiritual researcher says, however, This is actually not very logical. The genius is at the end of an inheritance line; it should be at the beginning of the same if it is to be inherited by the descendants. The objection [against this] of the easier excitability in the brain of the genius must apply, and it can therefore be concluded on the part of science: this increased excitability causes the brain to wear down more quickly. Is it any wonder that the reproductive process is affected in a genius, because his brain wears down more quickly? This is a legitimate objection. However, modern science is particularly suspicious of what is referred to as clairvoyant talent. We have to admit that extrasensory experiences do exist. Such perceptions are different from natural perception. This also occurs pathologically in what we usually call hallucinations, for example. It is therefore not surprising when the scientist says: Where is the possibility to recognize the truth and establish objective facts? How do we know that these are not simply subjective experiences? The strict scientist is careful to only call scientifically that which can be objectively verified. But the strict scientific epistemological methods are not applicable to the results of training in the humanities. What supposedly presents itself to the clairvoyant is only a world of images. Even in pathological conditions, it is only reminiscences of reality. It turns out, for example, that clairvoyants have only been able to see a train since trains have existed. In books about clairvoyant experiences, we only ever find what was actually present at the time, combined just a little differently. After all, it is combined from the warmth and cold, light and shade of real life. For example, it is said that the astral body is blue, red, yellow and so on, just like the known physical paints. These are the colors of the physical as they are seen, so nothing new. Such appearances have a pathological background, are only hallucinations and really add nothing new to our knowledge. The mere ability to combine external properties is quite sufficient to explain them.

Theosophists must understand that such objections arise from the deepest, most earnest deliberation of precisely the most serious contemporaries. Those who have grown old in scientific ideas are not easily convinced by theosophical objections.

But Theosophy also comes with religious, moral and ethical ideas and impulses. Can that be right?

The first objection that comes to mind is this: if Theosophy views life in such a way that the present life is seen as the result of past experiences, then interest in life itself wanes. Such a view thus amounts to an education in fatalism. It is a paralysis of life when you can think, “I have time; there are many lives ahead of me.” The objection is actually trivial to take, but it is practically correct, because people are indeed casual by nature.

And the prospect of a supersensible world, how does it express itself ethically? Necessarily in such a way that interest in practical life diminishes. You can see this, for example, in the artist who does not want to devote himself to the practical. Such a view of life makes one ascetic, hostile to life, and paralyzing instead of stimulating. One often sees wonderful people among the Theosophists who live in a kind of cloud-cuckoo-land. Women in particular are easily found to have become self-indulgent and out of touch with reality. This cannot be logically refuted, but only through life itself.

Furthermore, one could say: You have made ethics a result of selfishness. Whoever does good, according to your view, expects a reward in karmic compensation. Whoever does evil, or wants to do evil, refrains from it out of fear of the corresponding evil in the next life. So the doctrine of karma is actually a doctrine of education? A higher form of selfishness! What a person sows, he must reap - [this] is ultimately a selfish principle of life. Thus, Theosophy is also ethically and morally life-threatening.

Furthermore, you transfer divine world justice into the human being himself by letting him work out his destiny in various earthly lives. You thereby transfer that which otherwise lives in the Godhead outside of us as a punishing or rewarding God into the human being himself. Man is thereby deified. Where is the free love of God when the divine is transferred into one's own inner being? Into the inner being of man? - The opponent can say: It is in contradiction to a truly religious world view when one transfers the self-sacrifice of God, the redemption of man out of divine grace, into the inner being of man himself.

Such objections could be multiplied many times over. Devotion to an external God is a fundamental condition of ethics and religion, and this finds no justification in Theosophy. This is how it can be expressed; and we must learn to understand this fully as Theosophists, only then can we keep ourselves free from fanaticism. Only the most important guidelines could be given here. They should also teach us tolerance towards our opponents. We should not try to beat them out of the field, but above all strive to learn to understand them.

Let us now show by way of example how this is to be understood. In 1868, the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann wrote a book called “The Philosophy of the Unconscious”. Although some of it is unmethodical and flawed and not useful to us, it is based on certain spiritual principles and touches on deep existential issues. This book caused quite a stir when it was published. It was, after all, the time of the reign of the most blatant materialism. This book strangely touched the fanatical materialists such as Haeckel and other Darwinists. They found the book extremely amateurish. Many counter-writings against the book were published. But one anonymous refutation caused a particularly great stir. It presented everything that could be objected to Eduard von Hartmann's book in such a methodical and complete way, and with such keen insight, that Oscar Schmidt, for example, said: “It's a shame that the unknown author didn't identify himself.” Haeckel himself said, “He should identify himself, and we will consider him one of our own.” Soon the second edition of this writing was necessary. This time the anonymous author named himself: it was Eduard von Hartmann! This second edition did not have the same success with Hartmann's opponents – [their praise soon died down.]

This is a good example of how one can see beyond one's opponent and judge more correctly in the opponent's interest than the opponent himself.

Much more could be said, but for now we must be satisfied with what has been said. It does not take the worst to be seen sprouting from Theosophy. We must therefore endeavor to learn to understand our opponents.

I have tried to show how Theosophy can be refuted. The day after tomorrow it should become clear whether the refutation is final or whether, nevertheless, reasons can be put forward that will be valid against this fight - which, as we have seen, can be waged with a certain justification.

This lecture is also known as Spiritual Science and Language. It appears as lecture 2 of 9 in the lecture series: Metamorphoses of the Soul, Paths of Experience – 2. The original German is included in: Metamorphosen des Seelenlebens. Pfade der Seelen Erlebnisse. Zweiter Teil (#59 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961.)

It is fascinating to study from the point of view of Spiritual Science the different ways in which the being of man expresses itself,—that is to say Spiritual Science in our sense of the term. We can obtain a general survey of human life in its different phases and aspects by studying them as we have done in the course of these lectures.

To-day we shall consider the expression of the spirit of man in speech, and in the next lecture, under the title of ‘Laughter and Weeping,’ an aspect of man’s power of expression which is indeed bound up with speech and yet fundamentally different from it.

The whole being of man, his whole significance and dignity, is bound up with speech. Our innermost life, all our feelings and will-impulses flow out from us, linking us to our fellow-men through speech which enables us to expand and radiate into our environment. On the other hand, those who dare to penetrate into the inner life of some great individuality may feel that human speech is a kind of tyrant that exercises its power over the inner life. We are indeed aware, if we are only willing to admit it, that word and speech can only inadequately express the feelings, the thoughts, and all the intimate and individual colouring of everything that passes through the soul. We also realise that our own native language compels us to a definite kind of thinking. Do we not all realise how dependent our thinking is upon our speech? In more senses than one our concepts attach themselves to words, and an imperfectly developed man may easily mistake the word, or what the word infuses into him, for the concept. This is why so many people are incapable of building up a conceptual world of their own transcending what is imparted by the words current around them. We must surely realise that the character of a whole people speaking a common language is in a certain sense dependent on that language. Anyone who studies the more intimate connections between the characteristics of race and speech knows to what an extent the way a man is able to express the content of his soul in sound reacts upon the strength and weakness of his character, upon his temperament, indeed upon his whole outlook on life. Those who have knowledge will be able to learn a great deal about the character of a people from the configuration of their particular speech or language. Since, however, a language is common to a whole people, the individual is dependent on the community and on its average level. The individual is subject, as it were, to the tyranny and power of the community. But when we realise how our individual spiritual life on the one hand, and the common spiritual life on the other, are expressed in speech, the so-called ‘Mystery of Speech’ assumes great significance.

It is certainly possible to understand something of the life of the soul by observing how a man expresses himself in words. The mystery of speech and its origin and development through the different epochs has always been a problem in certain domains of Science, but it cannot be said that specialists in our age have been very successful in fathoming this mystery. To-day, therefore, we shall try in a somewhat aphoristic manner, to throw light on the development of speech and its connection with the human being, from the point of view of Spiritual Science.

What at first seems so mysterious when we designate an object or a process by a word, is how the particular sound-combination in the word or sentence is related to what comes forth from us, and how it expresses the phenomenon as a word. External Science has made many attempts to bring the most varied experiences together in different combinations, but this mode of observation has been felt to be unsatisfactory. There is one question which is really so simple, and yet so difficult to answer: how was it that man, confronted with something in the external world, produced, as from out of himself, an echo of the particular object or process in a definite sound?

Some people thought this question quite simple. They imagined, for instance, that speech-formation took its start from the fact that man heard some external sound, either produced by animals, or caused by the impact of one object against another, and that he then imitated the sound through the inner faculty of speech, like a child, who, hearing the ‘bow-wow’ of a dog, imitates this sound and calls the dog ‘bow-wow.’ Word-formation of this kind may be called ‘onomatopoeia,’ an imitation of the sound. This kind of imitation was the basis of the original sound and word formation,—at least so it was stated by those who regarded the matter from this particular point of view. The question is of course still unanswered as to how man comes to give names to dumb entities from which no sound proceeds. How does he ascend from the sound uttered by an animal or caused by an occurrence which can be heard, to one which cannot? Max Müller, the famous Philologist, ridiculed this, calling it the ‘bow-wow’ theory, because he realised what an unsatisfactory piece of speculation it was. He advanced another theory in its place which his opponents in turn called ‘mystical,’ though they used the word in an unjustifiable sense. Max Müller really means that every single thing contains something of the nature of sound within itself; everything has sound in a certain sense, not only a glass we let fall, or a bell we strike, but every single thing. Man’s capacity to set up a relationship between his soul and the inner sound-essence of the object calls forth in the soul the power to express this inner sound-essence; the inner essence of the bell is expressed in some way when we ‘feel again’ its tone in the ‘ding-dong.’ Max Müller's opponents ridiculed him in return by calling his the ‘ding-dong’ theory. However many more combinations of this kind we might care to enumerate,—and they have been evolved with great diligence,—we should find that the attempts to characterise in this external way what man causes to resound like an echo from his soul to meet the essence of things, must always be unsatisfactory. We must, in effect, penetrate more deeply into the whole inner being of man.

According to Spiritual Science man is a highly complex being. As he stands before us he has in the first place his physical body, which contains substances which are also found in the mineral world. As a second, higher member he has the etheric, or life body. Then he has the member which is the vehicle of joy and suffering, pleasure and pain, instinct, desire and passion,—the astral body. This astral body is, to Spiritual Science, as real a part of man's constitution as anything the eyes can see and the hands touch. The fourth member of the human being has been spoken of as the bearer of the Ego, and man's evolution, at its present stage, consists in working, from his Ego outwards, as it were, at the transformation of the other three members of his being. It has also been indicated that in a far-off future the human Ego will have transformed these three members to such an extent that nothing will remain of what Nature, or the spiritual powers existing in Nature, have made of them.

The astral body, the vehicle of pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, of all ebbing and flowing ideas, feelings and perceptions, came into existence in the first place without our co-operation,—that is to say, without the activity of our Ego. The Ego works upon the astral body, purifying and refining it, gaining mastery over its qualities and activities. If the Ego has worked but little on the astral body, man is the slave of his instincts and desires. If, however, the Ego has refined the instincts and desires into virtues, has co-ordinated phantasmal thinking by the guiding threads of logic, a portion of the astral body is transformed. Whereas formerly it was not worked upon by the Ego, it has become a product of the Ego. When the Ego carries out this work consciously,—as it is beginning to do in human evolution to-day,—we call the part of the astral body which has been consciously transformed from out of the Ego, ‘Spirit Self,’ or ‘Manas,’ to use a term of Oriental Philosophy. When the Ego works in a different and more intense way, not only upon the astral body, but also upon the etheric body, we call the part of the etheric body which has been thus transmuted the ‘Life Spirit’ or ‘Budhi’ in Eastern terminology. And finally, although this belongs to the far-off future, when the Ego has become so strong that it transmutes the physical body and regulates its laws,—in such a way that the Ego is everywhere controlling all that lives in the physical body,—we give the name of ‘Spirit Man’ to that part of the physical body thus under the rulership of the Ego; and since this work begins with a regulation of the breathing process, the oriental term is ‘Atman,’ from which the German ‘atmen’ (to breathe) is derived.

In the first place, then, we have man as a fourfold being, consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. And just as we may speak of three of the members of our being as being products of the past, so may we speak of three other members which as a result of the work of the Ego will gradually unfold in the future. Thus we speak of a sevenfold nature of the human being, adding Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man to physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. But although we regard these three higher principles as belonging to a far-off future of human evolution, it must be said that in a certain sense man is preparing for them even to-day. Man will only begin consciously to transform the physical, etheric and astral bodies by means of the Ego in a distant future, but unconsciously, that is to say, without full consciousness, the dim activity of the Ego has already transformed these three members. A certain result has indeed already been achieved.

Those inner members of man's being mentioned in previous lectures could only have come into existence because the work of the Ego upon the astral body has resulted in the development of the sentient soul as a kind of inner reflection of the sentient body. The sentient body conveys what we call ‘enjoyment’ (Genuss) and this is reflected in the inner soul-being as the desires we ascribe to the soul. (Sentient body and astral body are the same thing so far as man is concerned; without the sentient body there could be no ‘enjoyment.’) Thus astral body, and transformed astral body, or sentient soul, belong together in the same sense as enjoyment and desires. The Ego has also worked on the etheric body in the past. What it has unfolded there has brought about the fact that in his inner being man bears the intellectual, or mind-soul. The intellectual soul, which is also the bearer of the memory, is connected with a subconscious process of transformation of the etheric body proceeding from the Ego. And finally, the Ego has in past ages already worked at the transformation of the physical body in order that man may exist in his present form. The product of this is called the consciousness soul, through which man acquires knowledge of the things of the outer world. In this sense too, therefore, we may speak of the sevenfold human being: the three soul members, sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul have arisen as the result of a preparatory, subconscious. Ego activity. But here the Ego has worked unconsciously or subconsciously, upon its sheaths.

Now we must ask: are not these three members, physical body, etheric body and astral body complicated entities? It is a most marvellous structure, this physical body of man! Closer examination would show that it contains far more than the mere portion which has been elaborated by the Ego into the consciousness soul, and which may be called the physical vehicle of the consciousness soul. Again, the etheric body is much more complicated than the vehicle of the intellectual or mind soul, and the astral body more complicated than the vehicle of the sentient soul. These elements are poor in comparison with what was already in existence before man possessed an Ego. Therefore Spiritual Science teaches us that in a primordial past the first germ of man's physical body was brought into existence by Spiritual Beings. To this was added the etheric body, then the astral body, and finally the Ego. The physical body of man has thus passed through four evolutionary stages. First of all the physical body existed in direct correspondence with the spiritual world, then it was elaborated, permeated and interwoven with the etheric body, and grew more complicated. Then it was permeated by the astral body and grew more complicated still. Then the Ego was added, and only when the Ego had worked on the physical body was a portion transformed into the vehicle of so-called ‘human consciousness,’ the faculty by which man acquires a knowledge of the external world. But this physical body has to do a great deal more than create a knowledge of the external world through the senses and brain. It has to carry out a number of activities lying at the basis of consciousness but taking their course entirely outside the region of the brain. And so it is with the etheric and astral bodies.

When we realise that all around us in the external world is Spirit, that Spirit is at the basis of everything material, etheric, astral, we must say: just as the Ego itself, as a spiritual being works from within outwards while man's evolution proceeds in the three members of his being, so must Spiritual Beings, or spiritual activities, if you will, have worked upon his physical, etheric and astral bodies before the Ego asserted itself and elaborated a further fragment of what had already been prepared. Here we look back to past ages when an activity proceeding from without inwards was exercised upon the astral, etheric and physical bodies, just as now the Ego works from within outwards upon these three members. Thus it must be said that spiritual creation, spiritual activity has been at work on our sheaths, imparting form, movement, shape and so on before the Ego was able to take root therein. We must speak of the existence of spiritual activities in human beings preceding the activity of the Ego. We bear within us spiritual activities which are necessary preliminaries to those of the Ego and which were in operation before the Ego could intervene. Let us then for the moment eliminate all that has been elaborated by the Ego from the three members of our being (sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul) and consider the structure, inner movement and activity of the sheaths of the human being. Before the activity of the Ego, a spiritual activity was exercised upon us. Therefore in Spiritual Science we say that in man as he is to-day we have to do with an individual soul, with a soul permeated by an Ego which makes each single human being into an individuality complete in itself. We say that before man became this complete Ego-being, he was the product of a ‘Group-Soul,’ of a soul essence, just as we speak of Group-Souls to-day in the animal world. The individual soul in the human being is, in the animal kingdom, at the basis of a whole family or species. A whole animal species has one common animal Group-Soul. In man, the Soul is individualised.

Thus before man became an individual soul, another soul worked in the three members of his being. This other soul—which we can only learn to know to-day through Spiritual Science—is the predecessor of our own Ego. This predecessor of the Ego, man's Group- or Species-Soul which gave over to the Ego the three members it had already elaborated, physical body, etheric body, astral body, in order that the Ego might further work upon them,—this Group-Soul similarly transformed, developed and regulated the three bodies from its inner centre. And the last activity which worked upon the human being before the bestowal of the Ego, the last influences immediately preceding the birth of the Ego, are to-day expressed in human speech. If, therefore, we take our start from our life of consciousness, intelligence and feeling, and look back to what has preceded this inner life, we are led to a soul activity as yet unpermeated by the Ego, the result of which is to-day expressed in speech.

Now let us consider this fourfold being of ours, and what lies at its foundation. How is it expressed outwardly in the physical body? The physical body of a plant has a different appearance from that of a man. Why is this so? It is because the plant possesses only physical body and etheric body, whereas in the physical body of man astral body and Ego are working as well. And what is inwardly working there correspondingly forms and transforms the physical. What is it, then, that has worked in man's physical body in such a way that it has become permeated by an etheric or life body?

The system of veins and glands is, in the human being and also in the animal, the outer physical expression of the etheric or life body; that is to say, the etheric body is the architect or moulder of the system of veins and glands. The astral body, again, moulds the nervous system. Therefore it is only correct to speak of a nervous system in the case of beings possessing an astral body.

And what is the expression of the Ego in man? It is the blood system, and, in the human being, the blood which is under the influence of the inner, vital warmth. Everything that the Ego brings about in man, if it is to be moulded into the physical body, proceeds by way of the blood. Therefore it is that blood is such ‘a very peculiar fluid.’ When the Ego has elaborated the sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul, all that it is able to shape and fashion can only penetrate to the physical body by way of the blood. The blood is the medium for all the activities of astral body and Ego.

Nobody will doubt, even if he only observes human life superficially, that as man works from his Ego in the consciousness soul, intellectual soul and sentient soul, he is also transforming and changing the physical body. The facial expression is surely an elaboration of what is working and living in the inner being. And is there anyone who would not admit that the inner activity of thought, if it lays hold of the whole soul, has a transforming effect on the brain, throughout the course of human life? Our brain adapts itself to our thinking; it is an instrument that moulds itself according to the requirements of our thinking. But, if we observe to what extent man is to-day able to mould his external being artistically from out of his Ego, we shall see that it is indeed very little. We can accomplish very little through the blood by setting it in movement from the “inner warmth.” The Spiritual Beings, whose activity preceded the activity of the Ego could do much more. They had a more effective medium at their disposal, and under their influence, man's form was so moulded that it has become, on the whole, an expression of what these Spiritual Beings made of him. What was the medium in which they worked? It was the air. Just as we work in the inner warmth, making our blood pulsate and thus bringing it to activity within our own form,—so did these Spiritual Beings work with regard to the air. Our true human form is the result of the work of these Beings upon us through the medium of the air.

It may appear strange to say that spiritual activities worked upon man through the air in a far-off past. I have already said that we should not understand our own inner life of soul and spirit if we were to conceive of it merely as so many concepts and ideas, if we did not know that it has been bestowed by the whole external world. Anyone who stated that concepts and ideas arise within man, even though there may be no ideas in the external world, might just as well say that he can obtain water from an empty glass. Our concepts would be so much froth if they were anything else than what is living in the objects outside us and the laws within them. The elements brought to life in the soul are drawn from the world around us. We may say, therefore, that everything around us in the material world is permeated and woven through by Spiritual Beings. However strange it may appear, the air around us is not merely the substance revealed by Chemistry; spiritual beings, spiritual activities are working within it. Through the blood warmth proceeding from the Ego (for that is the essential point), we can to a very small extent mould our physical body. The spiritual beings preceding the Ego performed mighty things in the outer form of our physical body through the medium of the air. That is the important thing.

It is the form of the larynx, and all that is connected with it, that makes us man. This marvellous organ and its relation to the other instruments of speech has been elaborated artistically out of the spiritual element of the air. Goethe said so beautifully in speaking of the eye: “The eye has formed itself from the light, for the light.” To say in the sense of Schopenhauer that “without an eye sensitive to the light, the impression of the light would not exist for us,” is only half a truth. The other half is that we should have no eyes if the light, in a primordial past, had not plastically elaborated the eye from undifferentiated organs. In the light, therefore, we must not merely see the abstract essence described to-day by Physical Science as light; we have to seek in the light the hidden essence that is able to create an eye.

In another sphere, it is the same thing as if we were to say that the air is permeated and ensouled by a Being who at a certain epoch was able to mould in man the highly artistic organ of the larynx and all that is related to it. All the rest of the human form,—down to the smallest details,—has been so formed and plastically moulded that at the present stage man is, so to speak, a further elaboration of his organs of speech. The organs of speech are fundamental to the human form. Hence, it is speech that raises man above the animal. The Spiritual Being whom we call the “Spirit of the Air,” has indeed worked in and moulded the animal nature, but the activity did not reach the point of development of a speech organism such as is possessed by man. With the exception, for example, of what has been elaborated unconsciously by the Ego in the brain and in the perfecting of the senses,—everything, that is, except the products of Ego activity,—has proceeded from a higher activity preceding that of the human Ego, whose purpose it was to create man's body out of a further elaboration of his organs of speech. There is no time now to explain why the birds, for instance, in spite of their perfection of song, have remained at a stage where their form cannot, be an expression of the organs of speech.

So far, then, as the instruments of speech are concerned, man was already inwardly organised before he arrived at the stage of thinking, feeling and willing as he does to-day. These latter processes are connected with the Ego. We can now understand that the higher Spiritual activities, having created the astral, etheric and physical bodies through the influences of the air, could only so mould the physical body that it ultimately became a kind of appendage of man's instruments of speech. When man had been thus presented with an organ responding to the so-called “Spirit of the Air” (in the same sense as the eye responds to the spiritual essence of the light), his Ego could project into this organ its own functions of intelligence, consciousness and feeling. A threefold subconscious activity,—an activity in the physical, etheric and astral bodies precedes the activity of the Ego. A keystone for the understanding of this is our knowledge that it was due to the “Group-soul,” which has, of course, worked upon the animal also, but imperfectly. This must be taken into consideration in our study of the spiritual activity in the astral body preceding that of the Ego. In such a study, we must eliminate any conception of the Ego itself, but bear in mind all that has been brought about by the Group-Ego from mysterious depths of being. Desire and enjoyment, in an imperfect, chaotic condition, confront each other in the astral body. Desire could become a soul-quality, could be transformed into an inner faculty, because it already had a precursor in the astral body of man.

Similarly, the capacity for the formation of pictures, a symbol-creating faculty, inheres, in the etheric body, confronting outer stimuli. A distinction must be made between this pre-Ego activity of the etheric body and the Ego activity itself. When the Ego is functioning as intellectual soul, it seeks, at the present stage of human development, to present as Truth what is the most faithful image of external objects. Anything that does not correspond to outer objects is said to be ‘untrue.’ The spiritual activities preceding the operations of the Ego did not function in this way; they were more symbolical, picture-like, more or less like a dream. We may dream, for instance, that a shot is fired, and on waking find that a chair beside the bed has fallen down. The outer event and impression (the falling chair) are transformed in the dream into a sense image, the shot. The spiritual beings preceding the Ego “symbolised,” and this is what we ourselves do when we rise to higher spiritual activity through Initiation. At that stage, we try, but with full consciousness, to work our way from the merely abstract outer world into a symbolising, imaginative activity.

These spiritual beings worked yet further on the human physical body, making man into an expression of the correspondence between outer happenings or facts, and imitation. In the child, for instance, we find imitation when the other members of the soul are as yet but little developed. Imitation is a process belonging to the subconscious essence of man's nature. Therefore, early education should be based on imitation, for it exists as a natural impulse in the human being before the Ego begins to regulate the inner activities of soul. The impulse to imitate in presence of outer activities, in the physical body, the symbolising process in the etheric body in response to outer stimuli, and the so-called correspondence between desire and enjoyment in the astral body,—all these things must be thought of as elaborated through the agency of the air. Their plastic, artistic impression has been worked into the larynx and the whole apparatus of speech. The Beings who preceded the Ego, then, formed and moulded man in this threefold sense, and thus the air can come to expression in the human being.

When we study the faculty of speech in the true sense we must ask: is speech the “tone” that we produce? No, it is not. Our Ego sets in movement, and gives form to what has been moulded and incorporated in us through the air. Just as we set the eye in movement in order to receive the light that is working externally (the eye itself is there for the reception of light), so, within ourselves, from out of the Ego, those organs which have been elaborated from the spiritual essence of the air are set in movement; and then we must wait until the spirit of the air itself sounds back to us as the echo of our own “air activity,”—the tone. We do not produce the tone any more than the single parts of a flute produce the tone. We produce from our own being, the activity which the Ego is able to develop by using the organs which have been elaborated from out the spirit of the air. Then it must be left to the spirit of the air to set the air in movement again, by means of the same activity which has produced the organs. Thus the word sounds forth.

Human speech is founded on the threefold correspondence, of which I have spoken. But what is it that must correspond? Upon what has imitation to be based in the physical body? Imitation in the physical body must be based upon the fact that, in the movements of our vocal organs, we imitate the outer activities and objects which we perceive and which make an impression upon us; that we produce the echo of what we have in the first place heard echoing as tone, imitating through the physical body the thing that has made an external impression upon us. The painter imitates a scene which is made up of quite other elements than colour and canvas, light and shade. Just as the painter imitates by manipulating light and shade, so do we imitate what comes to us from outside, by setting our organs in movement, imitatively,—organs which have been elaborated out of the element of the air. What we bring forth in the sound, is therefore an actual imitation of the essential being of things. Our consonants and vowels are nothing but reflections and imitations of impressions from outside.

In the etheric body, we have a picture-forming, symbolising activity. Hence we can understand that although the earliest beginnings of our speech arose through imitation, a development took place in that the process tore itself loose, as it were, from the external impressions, and was then further elaborated. In symbolism,—as in the dream,—the etheric body elaborates something that no longer resembles the outer impressions, and the continued operation of the sound, consists in this. First of all, the etheric body works upon something that is mere imitation; this mere imitation is transformed by it, and becomes an independent process. So that what we have inwardly elaborated, corresponds only in a symbolical sense, as sense-imagery, to the outer impressions. Our activity is no longer merely imitative.

Finally, there is a third element,—desire, emotion, everything that lives inwardly. This expresses itself in the astral body, and works in such a way, that it gives further form to the tone. These inner experiences stream from within outwards into the tone. Sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain, desire, wish,—all these things flow into it, and impart to it a subjective element. First there is the process of mere imitation. This is further developed as speech symbolism in the tone- or word-picture that has become an independent entity, and this is now again transformed by being permeated with man's inner experiences of sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain, horror, fright and so forth. It must always be an outer correspondence that first wrests itself from the soul, in the tone. But when the soul expresses its experiences, and allows them to sound forth, as it were, it has first to seek for the corresponding outer experience. The third element, then, where pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, horror and so on, express themselves inwardly, psychically, in the tone, has first to seek for its correspondence. In imitation there is an after-copy of the external impression; the inner tone-picture, the symbol that has arisen, is the next development; but what man allows to sound forth, merely from inner joy, pain, and so on, would only be a radiation or emanation to which nothing could correspond.

When children learn to speak, we can continually observe the correspondence between outer being and inner experience. The child begins to translate something it feels into sound. When it cries “Mamma,” “Papa,” this is nothing but an inner transfusion of emotion into sound, the externalisation of an inward element. When the child expresses itself thus, its mother comes to it and the child notices that an outer occurrence corresponds to the expression of joy poured into the sound “Mamma.” Naturally, the child does not ask how it happens that in this case its mother comes to it. The inner experience of joy, or pain, associates itself with the outer impression. This is the third way in which speech operates.

It may therefore be said that speech has arisen just as much from without, inwards, through imitation, as through the association of external reality with the expression of the inner being. What has led to the formation of the words “Mamma,” “Papa,” from the expression of the inner being, which feels satisfaction when the mother comes, occurs in innumerable cases. Wherever the human being perceives that something happens as the result of an inner utterance, the expression of the inner being unites itself with the external fact.

All this takes place without the co-operation of the Ego. The Ego only later takes over this activity. Thus we can see how an activity, preceding that of the Ego, worked at the configuration which lies at the basis of man's faculty of expression in speech. And because the Ego makes its entrance after the foundations for speech have already been created, speech, in turn, accommodates itself to the nature of the Ego. As a result, utterances corresponding to the sentient body are permeated with the sentient soul; the pictures and symbols corresponding to the etheric body are permeated with the intellectual soul. Man pours into the sound what he experiences in the intellectual soul, and this was at first, mere imitation. Thus, do those elements of our speech, which are reproductions of inner experiences of the soul, come gradually into existence.

In order, therefore, to understand the essential nature of speech, we must realise that there lives within us, something that was active before the Ego, and any of its activities were there; into this, the Ego afterwards poured what it is able to elaborate. We must not demand that speech shall exactly correspond to what originates in the Ego, to all the spirituality and intimacies of our individual being. Speech can never be the direct expression of the Ego. The activity of the spirit of speech, is of a symbolical nature in the etheric body, imitative in the physical body. All this in conjunction with what is elaborated by the spirit of speech, from out the sentient soul,—for it projects the inner experiences from that domain, in such a way that we have in the sound an emanation of the inner life,—justifies us in saying that speech has not been elaborated by the methods of the conscious Ego, as we know it to-day. The development of speech, is indeed, only comparable to artistic activity. We cannot demand that speech shall be an exact copy of what it intends to present, any more than we can demand that the artist's imitation shall correspond to reality. Speech only reproduces the external, in the sense in which the artist's picture reproduces it. Before man was a self-conscious spirit, in the modern sense, an artist, working as the spirit of speech, was active. This is a somewhat figurative way of speaking, but it expresses the truth. It is a subconscious activity that has produced the speaking human being, as a work of art. By analogy, speech must be conceived of as a work of art, but we must not forget, that each work of art can only be understood within the scope of that particular art. Speech itself, therefore, must necessarily impose certain limits upon us. If this were taken into consideration, a pedantic effort, like Fritz Mauthner's ‘Critique of Speech,’ would have been impossible from the very outset. In that work, the critique of speech is built upon entirely false premises. When we examine human languages, says Mauthner, we find that they by no means, correctly reproduce the objective reality of things. Yes, but are they intended to do so? Is there any possibility of their doing so? No; no more than it is possible for the picture to reproduce external reality by the colours, lights and shades, on the canvas. The spirit of speech underlying this activity of man, must be conceived in an artistic sense.

It has only been possible to speak of these things in bare outline. But when we know that an Artist, who moulds speech, is at work in humanity, we shall understand that however different the single languages may be, artistic power has been at work in them all. When this ‘spirit of speech,’ as we will now call the being working through the air, has manifested at a comparatively low stage in man, its action has been like that of the atomistic spirit, which would build up everything out of the single particles. It is then possible to build up a language where a whole sentence is composed of single sound-pictures.

When in the Chinese language, for instance, we find the sounds ‘Shi’ and ‘King,’ we have two ‘atoms’ of speech formation, the one syllable ‘Shi,’ or song, and ‘King,’ book. Putting the two sound-pictures together—‘Shi-King,’ we should have the German ‘Liederbuch’ (English, Song-Book). This ‘atomising’ process results in something that is conceived of as one whole, ‘Song-Book.’ That is a small example of how the Chinese language gives form to concepts and ideas.

If we elaborate what has been said to-day, we can understand how to study the spirit of so marvelously constructed a language as the Semitic, for instance. The foundation of the Semitic language lies in certain tone-pictures, consisting really, only of consonants. Into these tone-pictures, vowels are inserted. If, for the mere sake of example we take the consonants q—t—l, and insert an ‘ a ’ and again ‘ a ’, we obtain the word ‘qatal’ (German, töten, to kill), whereas the word consisting of consonants only is the mere imitation of an external sound impression.

This is a remarkable permeation, for ‘qatal,’ to kill, has come into existence as a sound picture, through the fact that the outer happening or event has been imitated by the organs of speech; that is the original sound picture. The soul elaborates this, by adding something that can only be an inner experience. The sound picture is further developed and the killing referred to a subject. Fundamentally speaking, the whole Semitic language has been built up in this way. The working together of the different elements of speech-formation is expressed in the whole construction of the Semitic language, in the symbolising element that is pre-eminently active. The activity of the spirit of speech in the etheric body is revealed in the characteristics of the Semitic language, where all the single, imitated sound-pictures are elaborated and transformed into sense images by the insertion of vowels. All words in the Semitic language are fundamentally so formed, that they are related to the external world, as sense images.

In contrast to this, the elements in the Indo-Germanic languages are stimulated more by the inner expression of the astral body, of the inner being. The astral body is already bound up with consciousness. When man confronts the outer world, he distinguishes himself from it. When he confronts the outer world, from the point of view of the etheric body, he mingles, and is one with it. Only when objects are reflected in the consciousness, does he distinguish himself from them. This activity of the astral body, with its wholly inward experience, is wonderfully expressed in the Indo-Germanic languages—in contrast to the Semitic—in that they include the verb ‘to be,’—the affirmation of what is there without our co-operation. This is possible because man distinguishes himself from what causes the outer impression. If, therefore, a Semitic language wants to express ‘God is good,’ it is not directly possible. The word ‘is’, which expresses existence, cannot be rendered, because it is derived from the antithesis of astral body, and external world. The etheric body, simply presents things. Therefore, in the Semitic language, we should have to say ‘God the Good.’ The confronting of subject and object is not expressed. In these Indo-Germanic languages there is differentiation from the outer world; they contain the element of a tapestry of perceptions spread out over the external world. These in turn, react on the human being, strengthening and giving support to the quality of ‘inwardness,’ that is to say, all that may be spoken of as the predisposition to build up strong individuality, a strong Ego.

It may seem to many of you that I have only been able to give unsatisfactory indications, but it would be necessary to speak for a fortnight if a detailed exposition of speech were to be given. Only those who have heard many such lectures, and have entered into the spirit of them, will realise that a stimulus such as has been given to-day is not without justification.

The only intention has been to show that it is possible to acquire a conception of speech and language in the sense of Spiritual Science, and this leads us to realise that speech can only be understood with the artistic sense which must first have been developed. All learning will be shipwrecked if it is not willing to recreate what the ‘artist of speech’ has moulded in man before the Ego was able to work within him. Only the artistic sense can understand the mysteries of speech; the artistic sense alone can recreate. Learned abstractions can never make a work of art intelligible. Only those ideas which are able fruitfully to recreate what the artist has expressed with other media,—colour, tone, and so on,—can shed light on a work of art. Artistic feeling alone can understand the artist; artists of speech alone can understand the creative Spiritual element in the origin of speech. This is one thing that Spiritual Science has to accomplish with regard to the domain of speech.

The other thing has its bearing in practical life itself. When we understand how speech has proceeded from an inner, prehuman artist, we shall also realise that when we want to speak or express through speech, something that claims to be authoritative, this artistic sense must be allowed to come into play. There is not much realisation of this in our modern age, when there is so little living feeling for speech. To-day, if a man can speak at all, he imagines that he is at liberty to express everything. What should be realised is that we must recreate in the soul a direct connection between what we wish to express in speech, and how we express it. The artist of speech, ‘in all domains’ must be reawakened within us. To-day, people are satisfied with any form that is given to what they want to say. How many people realise that the artistic feeling for speech and language is necessary in every description or thesis? This, however, is absolutely essential in the domain of Spiritual Science. Examine any genuine writings in the sphere of Spiritual Science and you will find that a true Spiritual Scientist has tried to mould each sentence artistically; he does not place a verb arbitrarily at the beginning or end. You will find that every sentence is a ‘birth ‘ because it must be experienced, not merely as thought, but inwardly in the soul, as actual form. If you follow the coherence of what is written, you will find that in three consecutive sentences, the middle one is not merely an appendage of the first, and the third of the second. The third sentence is already there in germ, before the second is built up, because the force of the middle sentence must depend on what has remained of the force in the first, and this must in turn pass over to the third. In Spiritual Science, one cannot create without the artistic feeling for language. Nothing else is of any use. The essential point is to free ourselves from being slavishly chained to the words, and this cannot happen if we imagine that any word can express a thought, for our speech formation is then already at fault. Words which are coined wholly for the world of sense, can never adequately express super-sensible facts. Those who ask, ‘how can one describe the etheric or astral body concretely by a word,’ have understood nothing at all of these things. Only that man has understood who says to himself, ‘I will experience what the etheric body really is from the one aspect before I allow myself to write a single page about it, and I will realise that it is a question of artistic imagery. Then I will describe it from the other three aspects.’ In such a case, we have the matter presented from four different aspects, so that the presentations given through language are really artistic imagery. If this is not realised, we shall have nothing but abstractions and an emaciated repetition of what is already known. Hence, development in Spiritual Science will always be bound up with a development of an inner understanding of the plastic forces of speech. In this sense Spiritual Science will work fruitfully upon our present atrocious style of speech which reveals no indication of the nature of artistic power. If it were otherwise, so many people who can really hardly speak or write, would not rush into literary activity. People have long ago lost the realisation that prose writing, for instance, is a much higher activity than writing verse, only, of course, the prose that is written to-day is of a much lower order.

Spiritual Science is there to impart, in every domain, the stimulus connected with the deepest spheres of human life. In this sense, Spiritual Science will fulfil the dreams of the greatest men. It will be able to conquer the super-sensible worlds through thought, and so to pour out the thoughts into sound pictures that speech can again become an instrument for communicating the vision of the soul in super-sensible worlds. Then Spiritual Science will fulfil, in ever-increasing measure, a saying relating to this important region of man's inner being: ‘Immeasurably deep is thought, and its winged instrument is the word.’

Because one has to consider the supersensible human being as the core of the human being, it is quite natural that the knowledge of the supersensible human being is human self-knowledge. However, with this human self-knowledge you face a very strange paradox. On the one side, you face the necessity of understanding the human being as a supersensible being; on the other side, any usual cognitive ability is bound to the sensory appearance. What he grasps with his reason is also bound to the sensory appearance. One could say without thinking, self-knowledge demands the view of the human being with cognitive abilities that are far away from his consciousness at first. In so far as the human being becomes aware of himself as a supersensible being, he has to acknowledge in a certain sense that everything that he performs in life arises from his supersensible being. On the other side, one could say, everything that appears in his consciousness appears sensorily “veiled” in a somewhat improper sense. Hence, one misunderstands spiritual-scientific research and speaking about the supersensible so easily and so often. Since the today's considerations will show that one cannot approach the true nature of the human being with the usual abilities of the everyday consciousness. Yes, one has even to say that that kind of knowledge which has developed so greatly on scientific basis rather misleads concerning the self-knowledge than to lead this self-knowledge in the right way. Since just if the well-schooled scientific way of thinking approaches the human self-knowledge, one notices that it can fail too easily. We want to take an example as starting point.

In the very interesting booklet The Subconscious Self and Its Relation to Education and Health by Louis Waldstein (1853-1915) is talk of various things that also strike the scientist if he gets to know the human life in its development in the different relations. We have spoken in a former talk about the revelations of the unconscious, of the subconscious. The example that I want to bring in is that of a naturalist, and the way in which he speaks about that is completely scientific. The author of this booklet wants to point to a certain place how this subconscious being plays a peculiar, vague role. Waldstein chooses the following example. He says, I stood before the shop-window of a bookstore. Because I am a naturalist, I just looked at a book about mollusks. At this moment when I saw this book, I started smiling to myself, and I was surprised why I did this, because a book about mollusks has nothing humorous.—He continues: I closed my eyes to investigate what maybe proceeded in my surroundings. When I turned the view away from the book, I heard the tones of a barrel organ quite soft in the distance. It played the melody of a song that one played when I danced my first quadrille. At that time, I did not care with which sympathies or antipathies I met this melody; since I was occupied very much to make my dance steps well arranged. At that time, I was not at all especially careful on what entered half my consciousness musically. Still the fact that I must smile standing before the book about mollusks after decades proves that the impression, which at that time that melody had done still, has continuing effects; and if I had not closed my eyes, but had been content with the astonishment, I would not have known then why I smiled standing before the book.

One realises how mysteriously such things have continuing effects in the subsoil of the soul life, how much generally exists in the human being that comes up only quite fantastically in the consciousness; one realises how difficult it is to get to real self-knowledge. Since to which danger do you expose yourself, if you want to practise introspection? To the danger that you have to deal with all possible completely blurred subconscious things which you have maybe taken up decades ago which have a lasting effect which work only in the deepest subsoil of the soul like a mood that comes up then and nuances what you now observe in yourself.

Waldstein and others bring in numerous such examples. You find those also in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. Such examples are very suitable to be rather careful about introspection. Since even some people believe to get with introspection also to a real knowledge of the human being. Some people also believe while bringing up such memories from their subconsciousness that they do all possible clairvoyant discoveries.

Now one has to be careful also in another respect. You can realise, for example, that some who claim to figure this or that out by their supersensible knowledge of their inside express this supersensible knowledge in pictures which are got, for example, from telegraphs or railways or as the case may be. From it, one would see that the supersensible with its pictures had just to wait to appear, until the railways were invented. Someone who does not approach the supersensible research uncritically will also be able to know easily how frivolously one proceeds in this field now and again, and how it is really soothing that thorough scientific thinking points to the fact that such contents which somebody regards as revelation of higher worlds sometimes are nothing but what the person concerned has taken up once in any blurred way at a younger age

• what he regards, however, as a revelation what did not come to his consciousness at that time

• what changed in multiple way

• what he does not recognise again,

• what now, which has come about in supersensible way.

In my book I have pointed out that, actually, everything works on the human being and that sometimes in something that the one regards as an inspiration is nothing but the transformation of a shop sign at which he did not properly look when passing by in the street, but which penetrated only into his subconscious.

With it, one points to an area of human life that one has to consider rather carefully and rather critically just by somebody who seriously wants to expand his research to the supersensible world. However, on the other side, all these memories, these subconscious images point to something else, it is as it were the side effect of something quite different. There I have to return more exactly to something that I have already mentioned here in the course of these talks: the relation between memory and the usual mental pictures. A very usual kind of thinking that has played a big role also in science, in particular in psychology, is that the human being has experiences while facing the outside world. These experiences evoke mental pictures in him. Now he has these mental pictures. After some time he “remembers.” Now one imagines this process very often in such a way, as if these mental pictures, which he had once and which he has somewhere in the subsoil of the soul, come up again as recollections in his consciousness. One thinks very often, more or less consciously or subconsciously, that that which appears in the recollection is nothing but the same mental picture which one had once, and which was down there anyhow and comes up again in the consciousness. However, someone who knows to practise real observation in this field has to regard this way of thinking as something rather childish and dilettantish.

Since if we face an outer phenomenon if we have an experience of the smallest or biggest kind, which evokes perception and mental pictures by the perception in us, this “activity”—I want to call it provisionally so—is accompanied by another activity of which we do not become aware usually. This activity is yet another one; it accompanies the conscious imagining activity and causes something in us that leads to memory. However, you have to observe properly. The most trivial observation in this area is that if you consider the difference of imagining, which can be completely easy, and memorising. Remember only what the young people who have to “cram” for an exam have to do, so that they have not only the mental picture, but also keep it in mind. There quite weird performances are carried out sometimes. Think of the play, which takes place between the human hands and the head if anybody has to cram something. Of course, that is only an outer sign of what I mean. But in truth it is in such a way that during the imagining activity another activity is still there which does not get to our consciousness and exercises an effect on our organism which consists of something quite different than of forming mental pictures. Later if we remember that again which we have imagined once, this mental picture completely originates anew. It originates as it were from the “sign,” from the “engram”—if I am allowed to use this expression—which that activity can exercise which accompanies the imagining activity on our organism. As we face the object of the outside world and form, inwards directed, our mental picture, we face our organs while remembering.

What happens there what is different from our imagining as the outer object is different from our mental picture is changed into the mental picture anew. Somebody who is able to observe the organisation of the human mind and its effectiveness knows that that which forms as a mental picture appears and disappears, while it is imagined. If anything is reminded, the mental picture has not slept down there and appears again, but from something quite different that happens below in the organism the mental picture is anew formed. What I want to show there is that we have to see something in that accompanying activity, which goes along with it, actually, in the subsoil of our conscious life and is connected with something that always emerges with the memories from our subconscious. As well as everything that appears in the world has its concomitants which appear like the caricature of the real now and again, is that which I have mentioned from the writing by Waldstein also such a concomitant of the quite normal regular way how the human being works in the memories. I would like to say, what proceeds subconsciously, so that the human being has a memory, appears in such things if it overflows or if anything remains indistinct or blurred like the sounds of a barrel organ that still generate an effect making Waldstein smile. That which is there rather conceals the things than that it explains them. Since the point is that it is a very normal activity, which is very necessary for the human being, namely that which forms the basis of the human memory. This is something that accompanies our whole conscious life perpetually, but we do not turn our attention upon this accompanying activity in the usual life. The accompanying activity is due to our organisation.

It is a kind of touchstone of the real supersensible research to consider such a thing like this accompanying activity forming memory. Since that which normally works in the subconscious can be changed into something conscious on the first level at first. Changing something unconscious into something conscious is one of the capacities that lead to the real investigation of the supersensible. What remains usually subconscious must be brought up in the consciousness. Thereby it already becomes different. The exercises, which I have described in my book, which one has to go through to put the soul in such a condition that it can face the supersensible, consist of many things. However, one can illustrate something elementary showing that this first elementary is related to a quite normal activity which remains, however, usually subconscious. One has to carry out the activity consciously which is carried out there unconsciously, but quite normally to form the memory. For that, it is necessary that you are able to refrain from that activity which causes the usual mental pictures bound to the senses. You must be able to withdraw as it were from this imagining. However, you are not able to do this if you cannot replace it with another kind of imagining. You attain this, while you focus on self-developed mental pictures that are easily understandable.

I say "easily understandable" mental pictures; this is exceptionally important. Self-chosen, self-developed, easily understandable mental pictures must be because just any subconscious, everything about which one cannot know to which blurred perception it is due must be removed. However, you never are sure—one sees this from this example—that this blurred, subconscious weaving of the soul life is blanked out if you do not focus on a mental picture which you can really figure out at the moment where you yourself have formed it, so that you know, any part of this mental picture has arisen from your immediate will which you have unfolded at this moment. “Self-chosen” does not mean of course “self-made;” you can get such mental pictures from an experienced spiritual researcher, and he is able to know best of all how they can be adapted to the individuality of the human being concerned. However, it matters that you intermingle the mental picture with the thoughts and experience in the soul that you have nothing in the soul but this mental picture. It also matters that these mental pictures occupy our consciousness if possible in very versatile way so that this mental picture is present in every atom, I would like to say. This is particularly fulfilled if you take such mental pictures in your consciousness that stimulate you to make the thoughts versatile.

A growing plant, for example, is a good mental picture; not staring at something resting, but at something that is in motion or that has any relations to each other. Thereby we are protected that our consciousness becomes idle while staring at the mental picture. Since it matters for the investigation of the supersensible world that everything that is done as preparation has to be done completely consciously from start to finish that in no way the consciousness is anyhow darkened. Hence, it belongs to the first requirements of the future spiritual researcher that he eliminates everything from that soul activity which should lead him to spiritual research—of course, not from the remaining life—that can decrease the consciousness anyhow. It is particularly important that in this living in easily understandable mental pictures, in this “meditating,” nothing prevails in the consciousness that may darken it. It is the first requirement that anything dreamy, all thoughts, arising from the inside, which one likes, are eliminated from the preparations of spiritual-scientific research. Furthermore, everything has to disappear that could anyhow darken the consciousness of percipience. What you want to aim at must not deal anyhow, for example, with staring a luminous point by which one could get to a certain hypnotic condition, or with that which some people even feel as a rather nice preparation: looking at a “crystal ball” and the like. The opposite of all suggestive or hypnotic conditions you have to exercise if you prepare yourself for spiritual research. You can learn from that: if you often hear from people who are also “followers” of spiritual science and say that you have to lose yourself if possible eliminating the own being to a dreamy “devotion,” then it is that “spiritual science” which may cause a lot of ease which does not at all lead, however, to the investigation of the supersensible world.

I have to draw attention sometimes to such things; since even people who want to be serious critics of spiritual research confuse it with its opposite. Even a critic (Max Dessoir, 1867-1947, German philosopher) who has made a great stir confuses this spiritual research with its opposite, and he describes them in Beyond the Soul (1917), with those phenomena which belong by no means to the spiritual world according to the methods of spiritual research. However, it is strange that just this critic brings in an example of his own soul life that he continued speaking for a while when he held a lecture and then only realised that he had continued speaking without his thoughts having gone along. You can be quite sure that such a lecturer has not understood any trace of that which I mean here with spiritual research.

Of course, you have to develop that further what I have given now, but it matters to emphasise the essentials. The essentials and important of that what you experience internally this way is the following:

While you evoke such mental pictures more and more in your soul and mind how the soul is active different than with the outer percipience, the big, important fact manifests itself to you from a certain point on that you are now inside such a soul activity which remains usually unaware and leads in the usual life to the formation of memory. You have pushed one level down as it were what you experience, otherwise, in the imagining. You have not considered what you experience, otherwise, in the imagining, and you have considered what accompanies this imagining else. You have pushed your whole ego-consciousness one level down where, otherwise, this is done what leads to memory, and you get to know this way what takes place usually perpetually below in the soul what you do not consider in the usual consciousness. I have repeatedly shown also here what the fact depends on that the human being is able to form memories. Everybody knows what it means to the human being if his memory power is disturbed pathologically for a time. You get to know a level of soul experience which represents something subconscious to the usual life, and which still cannot be denied, because it is there in its effects which, however, is a particular experience if you settle in that which you have woken by meditating.

This experience is a shaking one for someone who generally has a feeling of such things. You experience that you have reached that level where memory lives that you have approached something in your being that proceeds, otherwise, rather unconsciously that normally never enters even approximately in your consciousness by its nature. This memory-forming force is related to the formative force in us in a way. Since while the force of growth is far away from the usual imagining, it is near by the memory-forming force. Always something immediately grows together that is, otherwise, separated: the force of growth and the memory-forming force to a compound thing which you have in yourself and which you get to know this way. We carry this perpetually in ourselves.

The usual consciousness does not suspect at all that the same force which accompanies the human being as force of growth, as formative force is—increased and refined—the same to which you appeal if you form memories. However, it is something compound. If you get to know the thing, it presents itself as something compound. Since you learn to distinguish that which is combined as force of growth and as memory-forming force; it is as it were a duality that co-operates as a unity. While you dwell on the thing, you discover: what you bring up as memory is, actually, subconscious knowledge, a deeper level of consciousness in which our usual ego does not live. However, this consciousness penetrates the force of growth.

The force of growth and the memory-forming force face each other closer than our conscious knowledge and the outer physical world. However, our conscious knowledge of the outer physical world is more distant from each other; we cannot build the bridge from the one to the other. That which we want to get from there, which we bring to mind by meditations, carries its own object in itself, but it is something that is related to our knowledge. We learn to figure a duality out. However, this duality appears, the further you advance in your soul life, very clear to the beholding consciousness. You behold the force of growth this way. You behold it—to use a good old quotation of Troxler (Ignaz Paul Vital T., 1780-1866, Swiss physician and philosopher)—as the true human corporeality compared with the physical corporeality. In our usual consciousness, we perceive the physical corporeality. This subconsciousness perceives this corporeality in us.

Do not misunderstand me, I have called this corporeality the body of formative forces in the magazine Das Reich. I called it the “etheric body” previously. Because certain people take exception to expressions, I have tried to come closer with the term to that which it concerns and I have called that which is closest to the physical body and accompanies our whole life as formative- forces the “body of formative forces.” One can call that which does not live in our usual consciousness which is always closer to this body of formative forces, and to which one gets by meditation the “astral body” for certain reasons; but one can also call it the “soul,” which works a level deeper than the usual consciousness.

As the chemist separates a compound substance into the different elements, or as the physicist splits the white sunlight into different colours, we have the nature of the human being divided into the physical body that one perceives with the outer senses, into the body of formative forces that is the first supersensible member of the human being, and into the astral body or soul that subconsciously knows about the work of the body of formative forces, but shines in the usual consciousness only in the memory pictures . From all that the real ego is separated which swims on this triple human being, which knows nothing about that which the soul knows about the bodily, which separates, however, from the soul and which then forms the usual consciousness, and which is spiritual. The fact that this ego-being must be separated as a particular member from the other members turns out only if you advance further with the recommended exercises. I have described how one puts self-formed, clear mental pictures into the soul. It is advantageous if one takes versatile mental pictures and tries to feel, to experience what can be just experienced resting in such mental pictures.

These are two things. The one is that you become aware that there is such a weaving and living in the human being as it is similar to the memory formation. The other is what you experience if you look internally at this experience. It is as if you proceed in such a way that you form the mental pictures on one side, the thinking on the other side, which becomes memory then. This is a particular experience. Someone who goes through it who trains himself as spiritual researcher in the real sense knows that this is a particular experience. Since an element stops from a certain moment on prevailing in this soul life, which, otherwise, is significant always for our soul life: the spatial element. If you reflect that in the usual consciousness almost only spatial images are available, then you realise how much the usual consciousness is dependent on space. This experience, which attaches itself to such mental pictures, as I have developed, causes gradually to know yourself lifted out of space and being in only temporal processes. This is like a significant progress of the human soul life: to know yourself in the tides of time, because this causes to figure the stream of time out really. I said, the whole results in recognising the relationship of the memory power with the forces of growth. You are put just in this.

Something else is still important. I said, it is a double: to have these mental pictures—and to pay particular attention on what you experience there, how you really experience the mental pictures becoming versatile, the living in time, since then you are with your ego in this imagining life.

You are not only in an imagining life, but also generally in a life, which is mixed with the real forces working in time. Then you have got at an ego-experience that is completely different from the usual ego-experience. Someone who knows the usual ego-experience by appropriate introspection knows how narrowly it is bound to the human corporeality, and I have described last time to which elements of the corporeality the ego is bound at first: that it concerns equilibrium relationships, so spatial relations. However, you cannot stay at this experience, but you properly get into the course of time.

Very few people regard anyhow what I have indicated now. Thus, some philosophers assume that our ego is that ego which remains in any experience from birth to death. However, this weird concept of the permanent usual ego as Bergson (Henri B., 1850-1941) designed it can be easily disproved. Every dreamless sleep disproves this assertion. This is why one is not able to build up something on the usual ego-experience if one wants to recognise the human being. However, one carries the ego--experience into the course of time.

If one carries the ego into the course of time if to the other experience of the mental subconscious and the memory-forming body this new ego-experience appears, then it does not count any more that every sleep interrupts this ego-experience, but then something else counts. Then turns out that with our ego-idea also the following is associated.

I have shown last time from which vague feeling this ego-idea appears. It has to be inspired as it were. It is not there in the dreamless sleep. How is it inspired? It is inspired when we approach our corporeality with our soul again. Our corporeality stimulates our ego in the usual consciousness from without. We collide in the usual consciousness with our body; this stimulates our ego-idea. This ego-idea must not be considered as something permanent. However, with that which I have portrayed as new ego-experience the situation is quite different. This lives in the tides of time, it is lifted out from space. This is just inspired, while the human being inspires the experience at one moment in time and not with the spatial collision with his corporeality, but in the collision with the experience of another moment in time. This ego-experience about which I have spoken now is identical with the fact that if I wake I collide in mysterious way with that moment in time at which I have fallen asleep. This forms the basis of the new ego-experience that we experience ourselves at different, at consecutive moments in time that we bridge the time, even if it is discontinuous if sleep disturbs it.

These are the essentials of this ego-experience. Because we immerse the ego in the soul, as far as this is related with the conditions of growth, thereby we immerse the ego itself in the conditions of growth. We advance to that in the ego, which accompanies us from birth to death; we penetrate into the continual stream of ego-experience. What philosophy only concludes else about which one only judges, this is experienced. One defends himself even against the fact that Eduard von Hartmann talks of the fact that if one wants to observe a feeling it is disturbed and changes.

If Eduard von Hartmann notices this, he just wants to exclude that the ego can live in this stream of time. He wants to prove just with it that for the ego-experience the stream of time gets lost to him. However, it does not get lost, but is just gained with it. Yes, someone who can practise introspection spiritual-scientifically knows that the ego-experience that is there at this moment interrelates with former moments in time.

Do not take it as tomfoolery or as boast, if I tell an own experience which seems to be very simple if it is experienced which shook me again recently. I finished a book in 1894 in which I pointed out wholly philosophically that the human thinking is already something spiritual: my Philosophy of Freedom. At that time, I was a young man of 33 years. Now recently the necessity has arisen to work through this book again, to go through everything again that penetrated my soul at that time and to observe at the same time how the ego-experiences of today relate to the quite same ego--experiences of those days.

If you succeed in realising how something similar appears in time while experiencing again and encountering the revived experiences as usually at awakening, then you can just realise with such an example how the ego is inspired exactly the same way as in the corporeality at awakening, while it meets something of it again that existed in the stream of time. Someone who cannot observe this does not imagine at all what he experiences if he does not have the ego in the stream of space, but if he is forced to think it according to the mental pictures in the Philosophy of Freedom that many people regard as “abstractions.” I call them the most concrete, most living mental pictures because the Philosophy of Freedom develops nothing but living concepts. This is the ego-experience due to the interrelation of the one moment in time with the other moment in time. There begins that what you can pictorially call the transition to the inner musical experience of the world. It is, as if you interrelate a tone of a melody to the other tones of the melody if not only this originates that the tone shakes the air as it were, experiences itself in space, but if a tone interrelates with the other tone. It is impossible actually to look different at the inner weaving and living of this highest member of the human being from to proceed to such a musical experience of the one moment of time through the other.

The whole human being is thereby divided into (1) the physical body, (2) the body of formative forces working in the memory, which spiritualises the body of formative forces like a subconscious knowledge, (3) the actual soul or astral body, and (4) the ego. Then we have tried to look at the supersensible, and with it you have the complete human being. With it, you also have the suggestion how you have to experience, so that you can directly behold the permanent in the human being. There is no interpretation or philosophical analysis of the usual ego useful; you have to carry this ego into another sphere, you have to experience it anew on quite different conditions. That ego which you experience this way is an ego that is independent from the spatial corporeality at the same time, and it can gradually perceive, while you continue your exercises, that in the tides of time which lives in the human being only temporally, not spatially.

If I am allowed to insert something for those who know of such things: one has pointed out in the present philosophy that one does not approach the soul if one wants to grasp it substantially, but only if one grasps it as a passage through a process. In particular, Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, German psychologist and philosopher) pointed to that. However, Wundt pointed to the fact abstractly that one does not approach the soul if one considers it as a substance, but that one has to observe it in the living process.

However, it does not concern to visualise it only in the mental process by abstractions but to submerge with the own ego in the mental process and to experience it. Then one can gradually pursue this mental process also beyond those times in which it is busy in the spatial-physical. If you have learnt to let collide the experience of one moment in time with the other moment, then you can also gradually develop the ability in yourself to let collide the inner experience of the ego generally with the stream of time where the spatial-bodily-has only originated in the stream of heredity. Then the stream of time extends beyond the spatial-bodily, then you behold in the stream of time in which the ego weaves in the life before birth and in the life after death.

To somebody who experiences that which I have described now in principle something occurs internally that one can compare with the experience, which probably Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) might have had when he stood at the beginning of the modern scientific way of thinking and asserted this. The human beings up to Giordano Bruno looked at the cosmic space, saw the blue firmament and regarded it as a real border of space. It was significant that in Giordano Bruno's soul the idea appeared first: there is really nothing at all; only our view, only the conditions of our sense perception cause that we see a blue bowl there; in truth it extends to infinity, the blue firmament is only a border of our view. This also applies to the temporal. Birth or conception and death become the borders of the temporal firmament at which we look which our sense. What we regard as our world in which we live with our ego, with our supersensible human being, this is beyond this temporal firmament beyond death on one side, beyond birth or conception on the other side. Today we face this great leap forward of the human knowledge where in similar way as centuries ago the spatial illusion was removed the illusion is now removed that birth and death are borders beyond which one cannot get.

You have to do this leap. Then it opens the view of the real life of your supersensible being. However, you have to consider particularly: someone who wants to become a spiritual researcher as I have described here has to pursue with the highest critical introspection always what could keep him from coming objectively into this spiritual world. He can be very easily kept from it. It is advantageous not to use mental pictures for meditation, which evoke feelings and emotions. Somebody who uses mental pictures, which excite him very strongly, can deceive himself very easily. Hence, you should avoid for the preparation that religious impulses are brought in the exercises. Strange to say—it will be fine with some people—those mental pictures are the very best which touch us the least concerning our emotional life. If you become engrossed in geometry in such versatile mental pictures where the figures can accept different forms, or in such mental pictures, as I have shown them in the Philosophy of Freedom, then that furthers us in this field. With it, I do not want to say that spiritual-scientific research is not concerned with the religious life. However, it concerns that one gets to that religious internalization and deepening for which just spiritual science can also be the preparation best of all because one does not take it as starting point, but proceeds with very unemotional and incurious mental pictures on the way of research, and if you are in the spiritual world, the view which can already be a mighty help just for the religious deepening comes to you from this spiritual world. Thus, you have to use particular mental pictures, which are not associated with the griefs and concerns of human life and which you can easily understand. However, these never are the mental pictures, which excite us easily, because there everything imaginable appears from the subconscious in the soul. One has to exclude this subconscious above all.

You really penetrate into a spiritual experience this way where you can find that being in the human being only which lives in the freedom of will which lives in the immortal soul being. Every human being bears it in himself. However, you can recognise it only in such ways as I have described.

In the next talk, I want to go on talking from this point about the important questions of the human soul life: about the freedom of will and about the immortality of the soul. I want to show how one advances from the supersensible human being to a real conception of the life of this supersensible human being, of the life in the real perpetuity, and the life in the freedom of will. People have argued so much about freedom of will and immortality because one did not want to get involved with creating the necessary preparations first to enter the field of human experience which you have to enter if you want to gain a view of that from which only freedom of will originates, and in which only that rests which goes through births and deaths in the human being. You have to recognise first how in the human life the temporal runs during this life on earth. Then you also find the ways to get beyond this life on earth.

Such research can become fertile for the most important, most practical fields of life, for example, for education. One does not at all consider this field from the temporal experience of the soul, although one wants to make modern ideas fertile for it today. Someone who can look from one time of human experience to another finds a metamorphosing life in the soul life. He finds, for example: if he has grown old and looks back at former times and then at more distant times, and if he looks not only outwardly, but experiences it internally, then he notices how the inner mental object changes what originates from an object of the soul life at a moment in time.

One notices: what works in the childhood mainly as will what is expressed as wish works in the later life in the experience of life, works in the thinking. What we have later as fifty years old humans as experience of life is a transformed will life of our childhood. As the petal of the plant is a transformed green leaf in the sense of the Goethean metamorphosis outwardly, but as the leaf does not remain green, but becomes red with the rose, that changes which is wish with the child into experiences of life in the later age. And vice versa: what the child thinks changes into willpower in the later life. If you know this coherence, you can imagine how you can work on the child!

If you fulfil every senseless wish of a child and induce it that it atomises its will in all directions, then you make it relatively idiotic early in later age because the atomised will cannot change into experience of life which expresses itself in a quiet life of thought later.—This metamorphosis of the inner life manifests itself to spiritual beholding as usually spatial relations manifest themselves. One also learns to recognise that one has to try to lead the thoughts of the child, so that it does not become a limp, weak human being later, but takes up such mental pictures that lead to a certain willpower. Someone who possibly believes that by suggestion of the will the will, and by suggestion of the life of thought the thoughts are strengthened is on a quite wrong track; he does not know the weaving and living of the supersensible human being. Here is a point—and we could bring in countless ones—where real penetrating into the reality of existence leads immediately to life praxis. Somebody who wants to stop at the outer reality resembles a person who has a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron before himself and says about it, this is a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron. However, another says to him, this is a magnet. The former means, I see nothing of it, I see a horseshoe only, and I want to shoe my horse with it.—He does not see the magnet. What can the other do who can add the invisible to reality!

Thus, the world is interspersed with something invisible. However, everywhere reality is fulfilled with a stream of existence that one only recognises if one gets a relation of the supersensible in the human being to the supersensible in the surrounding existence. The fact that many things make a particularly unreal impression in our time is due to the fact that the human beings believe to face the stream of reality immediately. This should be “a scientific view.” However, they do not realise what lives in the depths of reality. Hence, they cannot acknowledge that which weaves in the human life as something real. Someone who has a recognising sense for that which goes forward in the present who can compare subtler, more intimate events to the catastrophic events which have now become the human misfortune is reminded very much of how necessary it is just in our time that understanding of the supersensible relation of the human being to the world gains ground again in humanity. If you ask yourself how it has happened, actually, that this understanding is not there, then you can characterise it in the following way.

It is not there. Today people are regarded as especially clever, and those who are far away from reality are clever in certain respect. I can call a book in which, actually, from start to finish no tone of reality is included, and which contains the knowledge of the whole world, nevertheless, strictly speaking from its point of view, because it is a dictionary, a philosophical one: that by Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923, German author) which is an idol of knowledge not so much of the experts but of numerous laymen or—if I am not allowed to say this—“journalists.” However, someone who approaches this book with sense of reality can get a peculiar feeling. Start reading any article, read it to the end: you have turned around in a circle.

It is, as if you have looked at something that blinded you; then you turn around and look again. However, you get to nothing at all. You ask yourself with every article why it is written, actually? It is to everybody with sense of reality a torture to read this pretentious book. Nevertheless, it is a very clever book. I could praise the astuteness, the cleverness of this book; but a book has come about which reminds you with every article of the good Munchausen who wanted to pull himself out of a swamp on his own shock of hair. This book is also typical for many things that are thought in the present and are done for a long time, and what removes the human beings from reality, from the supersensible. However, in this supersensible the spiritual, the real is flowing. Why did the human being diverge from reality?

Nothing can face the real Christianity and the real piety more understanding than spiritual science. However, take the reality that is often associated with the development of the last two millennia, there you get stuck into the idea: you have to search the spirit beyond outer nature, have to consider the outer nature as something that you must avoid if you want to get to the spirit. Go back to the older centuries, and you realise that one withdraws from the outer nature and her secrets; one looks for other ways and does not look for the spirit that is spread out in nature. Then natural sciences came; other necessities appeared to the human consciousness concerning the concept of nature. However, the former centuries had made sure not to see the spirit in nature; one wanted to find it apart nature. Now she faced the human beings and she was divested of spirit. Now one investigated that nature which one had divested of spirit. This takes place since four to five centuries. Because one saw everything approaching the human being from this spirit-divested nature with a certain necessity, the human being was also divested of spirit. The spirit-divested nature became the vampire of the human spirit. Nature entered in science and her facts became irrefutable. I have often said that the human beings have to admire the results of natural sciences; but nature must not be considered as spirit-divested, otherwise, it becomes the vampire, and one can no longer find what lives in the human being as spirit. Then you find what the barrel organ plays. That which the barrel organ plays is below in the organic. There one grasps the organic life only, one side of life only, not the other side that we have taken as starting point today that already has the supersensible stream in the memory.

My task of to-day and of tomorrow will be to show you the path into the spiritual worlds which has been followed ever since the 14th and 15th century, particularly in the so-called Occult Training, and which is the most suitable path for modern people. But it will be easier for us to understand the essential points if we first cast a glance over the future development of humanity.

We have already spoken of the course of human development through the Stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. Those who are only accustomed to think in accordance with present-day conceptions will find it difficult to understand that it is possible to know something about the future course of evolution: But you must bear in mind that certain great laws which are now active, will also exercise their activity in the future, and those who know these laws can therefore cast a glance into the future.

In the sphere of physical reality no one doubts that things can be foretold,—for example, lunar and solar eclipses and other astronomical phenomena can be calculated in advance, far into the future. In the sphere of physical reality there is no doubt as to this. And everybody knows that when certain substances are mixed in a retort, scientists can foretell the result. This is a prophecy relating to external sensory facts, and these things can be foretold because the laws which influence the substances are known.

Similarly we learn to know through spiritual science the laws which govern the course of human life, so that it is possible to foretell what will take place in the future.

An objection might now be raised which has been advanced by the thinkers of every epoch: “It is impossible to speak of human freedom if future events can be foreseen!” But here people confuse the capacity of looking into the future with predestination. In every philosophy you will therefore come across the strangest observations, for all philosophers were unable to make this distinction. Jacob Böhme was the only exception!

Let me now give you an example to make things clearer to you. Let me compare time with space. Imagine yourself standing here, and two people in the street, outside. You can see what these two people are doing, for you are watching them from a distance. But are you able to influence their actions, in view of this fact? No, you are simply looking at them, and these two people act in perfect freedom. You can determine nothing in their actions through the fact that you are looking at them. Now imagine a clairvoyant who observes what will take place in the future. He merely sees this, and he does not in any way influence the events. If these events could be influenced, if they were, so to speak, predestined in the present, there would be no pre-vision. But we can only grasp the difference between predestination and prevision if we ponder over this problem for a long tune.

I do not intend to describe to you what the Earth will be like when it shall have reached the Venus and the Jupiter stages; instead, I wish to tell you something which will give you an idea of man's future development; I wish to explain to you something which comes from the oldest Christian Mysteries, which originates from the Christian School of the true Dionysius; it was a teaching which was always taught in the Christian esoteric schools.

The following comparison was taken as a starting point:—I am now speaking to you. Yell can hear my words; you hear the thoughts which were, to begin with, in the depths of my soul; you hear thoughts which would remain concealed to you were I not to express them in sounds. But you could not hear my words, if the air did not exist between us. Whenever I utter a word, the air in the space around us is set into motion; whenever I speak, I cause the whole volume of air around me to vibrate, it vibrates in accordance with the words which I pronounce. Let us now proceed further: Imagine that you were able liquefy the air, and then to render it solid. Air can be liquefied; you know that water can exist in the form of steam and that this air becomes liquid when it cools; and then the liquid can become a solid block of ice. Imagine now that I pronounce the word.“God” into the air; a form would fall down, for instance, the form of a shell; if the sound-vibrations could render the air solid. And another wave of sound would fall down as a solid form if I pronounce the word “World”. A crystallized form of air would correspond to every word I utter, and you would be able to perceive these crystallized forms.

This example was in fact advanced in the Christian schools. First of all we have the spoken word, and then this word becomes a solid form, but before it became solid, it existed as an inner thought. Now the early Christian imagined the following: The creative process in the universe resembles the creative process which takes place in space, when we speak. The creative proceeded from the idea of things and then the Godhead expressed these ideas in the form of words uttered out into space. Everything which appears to us outside in the form of plants, minerals, etc. is the crystallization of God's utterances. It is possible to imagine everything dissolved into tone-vibrations of the Divine Cosmic Word. “Whatever I see before me, is the crystallization Word of God!” said the Christian. And on a certain wy he made a distinction between the “Father in Concealment”, Who had not yet expressed Himself, the “Word” or the Son, Who resounds through space, and the crystallized Word, the “Revelation”.

This enables us to understand in a deeper sense the beginning of the Gospel of St. John:—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the very beginning with God. Everything was made by Him, and except through Him was nothing made that was made.” Everything that was made, was made by the Word! We should take things as literally a possible, then we can easily recognise the creative element of the Word, or the Logos. In the Christian meaning, the Word or the Logos stands in the second place. “Logos” should only be translated with “Word”, for this means that at the foundation of everything which exists in the created world lies the unuttered creative Word; it then resounded as spoken Word, and this is the origin of every existing thing. If we go far back into times we could hear animals, plants, minerals, and men, resound through the cosmic spaces as “Word”—even as you now hear my own words—for in those remote, times, the air had not yet cooled down to such extent as to enable words to take on solid form.

Let us bear this in mind, for then we can say to ourselves: Once upon a time, the Word was ,creative. Men are now beginners in an activity which was once carried out by their ancestors, the Gods, who stood above them. Once upon a time, the Gods created the world by uttering their words into the cosmic spaces, and this creative activity gave rise to the created world round about us. The forces of procreation in the vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms are but, a metamorphosis of the former creative Word of God. We still bear within us a higher and a lower nature. The greatest perfection has been reached by that part within us which is endowed with sex, whereas our larynx contains the first stage of a new procreative power. Whenever we pronounce words, we are at the beginning of an activity which will one day become procreative. At present we are only beginners in an activity which was once carried out by the Gods. A new form of procreation will replace the old one. The larynx is now able to form words but in the future it will become an organ of procreation, a generative organ, which will produce more and more condensed and higher forms. The larynx can now mould forms of air, but in future it will give rise to real beings. When the earth shall have reached the Jupiter stager the Word will have creative power in the mineral kingdom, and during the Venus stage it will be able to produce plants. Thus the course of development will proceed, until man will be able to procreate himself through the Word.

The present form arose, when man first sent the air streaming through his lungs through sounds. But in future stages of the earth's development, the words, the mere words which we now tell each other, will have a lasting form. And finally, the larynx will become man's generative organ, through which he will procreate himself in purity without the intromission of sex.

This shows us the future aspects of human development, and the predisposition of the human larynx. Indeed, an enigmatic phenomenon can show you how intimately the larynx is connected with certain stages of development: When a boy reaches puberty, his voi0e breaks, it undergoes mutation. The human larynx is at the beginning of its development, whereas sexual life is at the end of its development. This shows us the intimate connection of certain things in Nature. In sexual life we are confronted by something which is dying off; the larynx, the word, on the other hand, will in the future become man's generative organ.

We might indicate many other examples showing how the human being will gradually develop organs which now exist in a rudimentary form—for instance, the organs which now constitute his breathing system, but which really form part of the heart system.

The training which was introduced into Europe since the 14th century in fact anticipates future conditions of human evolution and it enables us to follow a speedier course of inner development than the ordinary one. The training which is called the Rosicrucian training is the one most suited to modern men. In a certain sense, Rosicrucianism has not a good reputation among men who have only heard of it now and then. If we could rely on the statements made in books, and on what scientists know about Rosicrucianism, then it would indeed be the swindle which it is reputed to be! But those who judge Rosicrucianism by these sources do not know real Rosicrucianism, but a mere swindle!

But let us now consider Rosicrucianism in it s true form; it arose through an individuality concealed under the name of Christian Rosenkreutz, who gave rise to the Rosicrucian Movement in the year 1459.¹

I expressly remark that what I an telling you now is only to be taken as an example, in the same way in which I spoke to you yesterday of the Christian. training. Let me therefore indicate right away the seven chief points of Rosicrucian training. The sequence of these stages is not the same for all, but let me point them out to you, for they come into consideration for everyone who passes through the Rosicrucian training.

The first thing is what we call Study; the second is what we call the Appropriation of Imaginative Knowledge; the third, the Appropriation of the Occult Writing; the fourth, the Preparation of the Stone of the Wise; the fifth stage is called Conformity of the Small World, the Microcosm, with the Large World, the Macrocosm. ² The sixth stage is the Penetration into the Life of the Macrocosm and the seventh is what we the Divine Blissfulness.

The Rosicrucian path leads in the surest and profoundest way to a knowledge of Christianity. The Christian path of training is more suited for those who can abide in faith and who can awaken their feeling life within them, in the manner described to you yesterday. But the Rosicrucian path is for these people who can connect the truths of Christianity with the truths relating to the external world This above all, will enable them to protect Christianity against every attack from outside. Christianity is a world-conception of such profundity that our wisdom will never suffice to grasp it fully. The path of Rosicrucian training is the most suitable one for modern men.³

If we follow a train of thought which has nothing in common with the sensory world, we pursue study in the Rosicrucian meaning. What is designated as “thinking in free thoughts” is only known to the civilisation of the west, through geometry, the Christian-Gnostic schools therefore used the name “mathesis” for the designation of things connected with the higher truths, with God and the higher world, for such truths had to be grasped independently of everything pertaining to the sensory world, even as mathematics must be grasped independently of all sensory impressions. A circle drawn with chalk is most imperfect, a real circle can only be conceived in thoughts; thought alone is able to grasp everything that can be learned in connection with the circle. Through mathematics we learn to think of the circle independently of the senses; we construct it in thought, with the aid of the triangle built up spiritually, whose angles equal to 180 degrees.

It is somewhat uncomfortable to have to think without the support of external sensory objects, and for the majority of men there is no other field of study in this direction than spiritual science. In my first lecture I told you that the knowledge contained in spiritual science can absolutely be grasped through logic. But clairvoyance is needed if anyone wishes to investigate these truths. Logic suffices, however, for the understanding of the truths contained in spiritual science.

Our materialistic age could only invent the calculating machine, which teaches us to form thoughts which are not independent of the senses: A child, above all, should learn to grasp things independently of sensory impressions. Thee influence of spiritual science will therefore be of greatest value in education: Spiritual science is an excellent training for the development of a thought activity independent of the senses. Everything which I have told you in connection with Saturn, the Sun, and the various members of the human beings relates to things which cannot be, seen; they must be grasped through thought, independently of the senses. No one should, however, believe that he can train himself unless he first grasps these truths theoretically. The advantage of such truths is that they do not exist for the senses, so that they can transmit us a way of thinking which goes beyond sensory life. For many people it is sufficient at first, to penetrate into the truths which theosophy describes in connection with facts which cannot be grasped through the senses. These truths constitute, the kind of thoughts which were always explained to the pupils of the Rosicrucian Schools, and the truths were well impressed upon them.

If we now wish to proceed, we can find a good means of a Training in Thought in my books “Truth and Science” and “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. These books are merely a gymnastic in a form of thinking which is independent of the senses. Generally speaking, you will find that in other books it does not make much difference if the thought- contained in one sentence is transferred to another one. But in the above-mentioned books no thought can be transferred to another place. These books have arisen in such a way that my own person merely, gave this thought-structure the opportunity to take on a sensory form. It was necessary to yield to these thoughts, so that they could arise of their own accord, continue of their own accord. Those who are willing to penetrate more deeply into these thoughts, devoting themselves to this study for, say, half a year (this is not easy, but the effort entailed is the very best way of tackling ) those who can read these books to the very end, have drawn out of their inner being a dormant force.

The second stage is Imagination, or the Imaginative Knowledge, which is entirely under the influence of Goethe's beautiful words: “All transient things are but a symbol”. Only those who have acquired a firm, sure thinking, should enter this second stage. For they might easily fall into delusive fancies without a firm foundation of thought. Consequently, the first condition is to have a clear head; nothing can protect us more against mistakes than a clear way of thinking.

In the widest meaning, imagination might be characterized by observing everything which surrounds us in the following Manner:—Observe the face of a human being; you see upon it creases and wrinkles,which come and go; you do not only describe these lines, but you designate them as smiles or sorrow. A man's smile reveals to you his happy disposition of mind. You do not only deduce an inner truth from something which you see outside, but this outer perception is for you a real symbol of that man's inner life or else you see a tear falling; you are not only a physicist who observes that tear in accordance with the law of gravity, but you know that that falling tear is the expression of the soul's inner sadness. Thus everything which you see outside on a person's countenance becomes for you the expression of the soul's inner mood. The Rosicrucian pupil learns to feel that everything which he sees outside is similarly the expression, let us say, of the Earth-Spirit, a certain plant, for, example the meadow-saffron, really appears to him as the expression of the mourning life of the earth. Even as a smiling countenance reveals to him the soul's happy mood, so the flowers become an expression for the earth's happy or sorrowful mood.

Goethe did not only wish to convey an external image when the Earth-Spirit in “Faust” speaks:

“In Lebensfluten Tatensturm,
Wall ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein glühend Leben,
So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit,
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.”

In the floods of life,
in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and the Grave;
An eternal ocean,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
Thus I work on the whirring loom of Time
And weave the Godhead's living garment.

For Goethe, the Spirit of the Earth gradually becomes something that lives in the earth; he acquires a soul-spiritual connection with the whole surrounding Nature.

Let me now explain to you more in detail one of the moods which can be found in Nature.

We have a Rosicrucian pupil walking across the fields. He sees the tiny pearls of dew upon each plant. This reminds him of the ancient “Neflheim, the “Land of Mists”, where the air was filled with a dewy mist and where the human beings had quite a different connection with Nature than they have now. The Rosicrucian pupil who is thus walking over the meadows and who perceives the pearls of dew upon the plants says to himself: In the ancient Land of Mists this was once dissolved in the atmosphere. And within his soul rose up a deeply concealed memory of the Atlantean age.

Imagination was specially cultivated among the pupils of the medieval Rosicrucian Schools, and als0 among the pupils of the Holy-Grail. Since I cannot express myself in any other way, let me now convey to you in the form of a dialogue some of the truths which were taught in these Schools.

The teacher said to his pupil:—“Behold the plant: see how it springs out of the ground, opening its calyx with the organs of fructification; see how the sun's rays come down upon it and open the blossom, so that the fruit can ripen”. The Rosicrucian pupil, and also the pupil of the Holy Grail, had to conjure up before their soul this image, this idea.

Now there is something very significant, even in materialistic science, whenever a plant is being compared with the human being. You must, in that case, take the plant's root as corresponding to the human head, whereas the flower corresponds to man's generative organs, to the which he shame-facedly conceals. In the plant the root corresponds to the human head. Man is a reversed plant, the animal is a half reversed pant. Rosicrucianism therefore says: Behold the plant: Its root is in the ground and its organs of fructification are chastely turned towards the sun's ray. Behold the animal: Its spine is horizontal ... and then behold man: There you have a complete reverse, a complete transformation. In the cosmic process of evolution the plant, the animal and man are symbolized by the Cross! The Cross is the plant, the animal and man.—Now you will be able to understand Plato's words: The soul of the universe hangs upon the Cross of the universe.—the soul of the universe, the cosmic soul which permeates everything, is stretched out upon the plant, the animal, and man.

Now it was impressed upon the Rosicrucian student: “Behold the plant: In its kind, it is lower than you, for it is not endowed with consciousness and with the power of thinking; but its substance is pure and chaste; it turns its calyx towards the sun; its organ of reproduction is turned without any passion towards the sun's ray, the holy spear of love. But physical substance has become permeated with passion. Now think of the future ideal—a purified substance, producing itself in purest chastity,” And his attention, was drawn towards the larynx, where man shall one day have attained the purity and chastity of the flower's calyx. “Think of the plant's calyx, which is devoid of passion. It develops through passion, but it will become pure again and reproduce itself chastely, by allowing itself to be fructified by the spiritual ray of the sun, by the Holy Spear of Love.” A prototype of this “holy spear of Love” is the spear which pierced the heart of Christ-Jesus upon the Cross.

Yesterday we have seen that this blood which streamed out of the Redeemer's wound banished egoism from the earth. The spear which pierced him is therefore a foreboding of that higher spear, the sun's ray in a spiritual form. And the Holy Grail indicates the chalice of humanity which develops out of the larynx, and which will be the purified generative organ of the future, as is the case to-day in the plant.

This is the deeper meaning of the Holy Grail, which was brought to the knowledge of the Rosicrucian students and of the disciples of the Holy Grail when they had reached the imaginative stage. Now compare the vision which you obtain through these images—the plant's calyx, sex filled with passion, the Holy Grail. the passionless chalice—compare this with the dry, intellectual concept supplied by modern science; this will show you the difference between imagination and mere intellectual thought: the whole cosmic process must be grasped in images! This is important, for the more intellectual concepts which we have to-day are not creative; but if these concepts are added to an image, then the images will become creative. This was felt in past times, and it should be considered in the education of the child.

Let me now discuss an actual problem. To-day people say so easily: What nonsense our elders taught us children, by telling us the story of the stork! Children should be told the truth.

If our descendants will treat us as we treat our forefathers, they will also laugh at us and say: Our forefathers thought that that the human being arises through a physical act!—And they will look back upon the time when this was explained to children in a spiritual way. In ancient times, when the story of the stork arose, also adults believed in it, for they knew that when a human being is born, his soul descend a from the spiritual world; and so they always connected birth with the descent of a winged being. You may even find this again in nursery-rhymes, for instance in the following one:

Flieg, Käfer, flieg!
Dein Vater ist im Krieg!
Deine Mutter ist im Pommerland
Pommerland ist abgebrannt;
Flieg, Käfer, flieg!

Fly, Beetle, fly!
Your father is in the war.
Your mother is in Pommerland,
Pommerland is burnt to ashes!
Fly, Beetle, fly!

This “fly, beetle” is meant as an image for the human soul, because a faint knowledge still existed of the astral world, from where the souls fly down into the physical world. And what is “Pommerland”? “Pommer” is the sane word as “Pommerle” which means a small child, so that “Pommerland”, or “Pommerleland”, is the Land of babies, where the mother goes to-fetch her baby. Such things must simply be explained in the light of the spiritual world. If you bear in mind that the image of the stork bringing babies is really an image for a spiritual process—reincarnation—you will realise how immensely important it is that certain things should first be grasped in the form of pictures; if the child is first taught to look upon the image of the spiritual process, he will develop an entirely different frame of mind enabling him to listen reverently even to the description of the physical process.

If you know that the stork is an image for the descending soul, you, yourself will once more believe in the stork! Your words can wing a child's fancy, if you understand the truth underlying an image; in that case a mysterious fluid will stream out of it and pass over to the child. This applies to every image. Children can thus be taught everything.

How can you deal with the problem of life after death? Lead the child to a butterfly's cocoon and tell him: Even as the butterfly flies out of its cocoon, so the soul flies out of the body when we die, but we cannot see this. If you really believe in this, you will be able to convince the child that when the butterfly leaves its cocoon, this is, upon a lower stage, the same as when the soul leaves the body. If spiritual science enables us to dive down again into the spiritual world, so that living images rise up in human hearts, education will change altogether; then the child will no longer be taught dry intellectual facts which coarsen his soul. We should not pull things down to a grotesque or comic sphere but we should realise instead what important things lie at their foundation.

The third thing which must be acquired for the paving of the “path” is the Learning of the Occult Writing. This does not consist in learning a writing, as is the case in ordinary life. The letters of the alphabet may indeed ba traced back to occult images but they are not by a long way an occult writing. In occult writing we must penetrate into the real great cosmic forces which are active in the universe. And all that we write down, must be so that one process of development passes over into the next. Take a plant: It bears seeds; in the seed you have the starting point for a new plant. But if you could really investigate the process, you would find that nothing of the old plant passes over into the new plant. In reality, the old plant perishes completely in regard to its substance; while the new plant builds up its form from entirely new substances—all that passes over into the new plant is a kind of movement. Here you have some sealing wax and there a seal: you press the seal into the wax. Of the seal itself nothing has gone over into the wax, only the form remains.—This is the case in every process of development. When it perishes the old substance merely supplies the opportunity for a new form to arise in accordance with the old form. This is designated

with two inter-twining spirals which do not meet. Such a transition existed after the Atlantean epoch of culture; this epoch disappears and a new one arises in the Indian epoch of culture; also this must be designated with two spirals. I have already told you that in the year 800 A.D. the sun rose in the sign of Aries; before that in the sign of Taurus; further back in the sign of Gemini and still further back in the sign of Cancer. The Greco-Latin age, containing the seeds of our present epoch, coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Aries; the preceding civilisation; the Chaldean-Assyrian-Egyptian one, coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Taurus; before that we have the Persien culture; when the sun rose in the sign of Gemini; and the ancient Indian culture developed itself when the sun stood in the sign of Cancer. It was then that the sign of Cancer; two inter-twining spirals was first written down.

Thus I might explain to you each sign of the Zodiac according to its true meaning. These signs were formed out of Nature, they are an expression for the forces and laws which are active outside, in Nature. If we learn to know the occult signs we begin to go outside ourselves; we penetrate into the mysterious foundations of Nature.

Thus I have given you some indications 0n the first three stages of the Rosicrucian path: Study, Imaginative Knowledge, and the Acquisition of the Occult Writing.

To-morrow we shall discuss the other stages, beginning with the Preparation of the Stone of the Wise.

• 1. See lecture 5 of Life Between Death and a New Birth.
• 2. See Macrocosm and Microcosm. Soul Problems, Life Problems, Spiritual Problems.
• 3. See The Path of Knowledge and its Stages

Today we intend adding something to round off the many facts and views we have been studying here this winter. We have often emphasised the way in which spiritual science should take hold of human life, and how it can become life, action and deed. Today, however, we want to give a few concluding aspects on the subject of the great evolutionary processes of the cosmos, as these are expressed in man. And to start with I should like to draw your attention to a fact that can tell you a great deal about the nature of cosmic evolution, if only you are prepared to look at it in the right way.

Consider, in a purely external way to begin with, the difference between the evolution of the animal and that of man. You need only say one word and hold one idea before you, and you will soon notice the difference between the concept of animal and human evolution. Think of the word ‘education’. Actual education is impossible in the animal world. To a certain extent you can train the animal to do things that are foreign to its natural instincts and inborn way of life. But only an extremely enthusiastic dog-lover would want to deny that there is a radical difference between the education of a human being and what can be undertaken with animals. We need merely bear one particular anthroposophical insight in mind, and we shall understand the basis for this apparently superficial fact.

We know that man's development is a gradual and very complicated process. We have repeatedly emphasised that in the first seven years of his life, up to the change of teeth, man develops in quite a different way from the later period up to fourteen, and again from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year. We will only touch on this today, for you already know it. According to spiritual science man passes through several births. The human being is born into the physical world when he leaves his mother's body and frees himself of the physical maternal sheath. But we know that when this has happened he is still enclosed in a second maternal sheath, an etheric one. During the first seven years of his life the child's etheric body is completely enveloped in external etheric currents that come from the outer world, just as the physical body is enveloped until birth in a physical maternal sheath. At the change of teeth this etheric sheath is stripped off, and not until now, at the age of seven, is the etheric body born. Then the astral body is still enclosed in the astral maternal sheath that is stripped off at puberty. After this the astral body develops freely until the twenty-first or twenty-second year, which is the time when strictly speaking the actual ego of man is born. Not until then does the human being awaken to his full inner intensity and the ego that has evolved through the course of his earlier incarnations work its way free.

To clairvoyant consciousness a very special fact becomes apparent here. If you watch a very young child for several weeks or months, you will see the child's head surrounded by etheric and astral currents and forces. However, these currents and forces gradually become less distinct and vanish after a while. What is really taking place there? You can actually discover what is happening, even without clairvoyant vision, although clairvoyant vision confirms what we are about to say. Immediately after the birth of a human being his brain is not the same as it will be a few weeks or months later. The child already perceives the outer world, of course, but its brain is not yet an instrument capable of connecting external impressions in a definite way. By means of connecting-nerves running from one part of the brain to another, the human being learns by degrees to link together in thought what he perceives in the external world, but these connecting nerve-strands develop only after birth. A child will hear and see a bell, for instance, but the impression of the sound and the sight of the bell do not immediately combine to form the thought that the bell is ringing. The child learns this only gradually, because the part of the brain that is the instrument for the perception of sound and the part that is the instrument for visual perception become connected only in the course of life. And not until this has happened is it possible for the child to reach the conclusion: ‘What I see is the same thing that is making the sound’. Connecting-cords like this are developed in the brain, and the forces that develop these connecting-cords can be seen by the clairvoyant in the first weeks of the child's development as an extra covering round the brain. But this covering passes into the brain and subsequently lives within it, no longer working from outside but from within. What works from outside during the first weeks of the child's development could not go on working at the whole development of the growing human being were it not protected by the various sheaths. For when that which has been working from outside passes into the brain, it develops under the protecting sheath first of the etheric body then of the astral body and only when the twenty-second year has been reached does that which first worked from outside become active from within. What was outside the human being during the first months of his existence and then slipped inside, is active for the first time independently of sheaths in the twentieth to the twenty-second year; then it becomes free and awakens into intense activity.

Now let us consider the gradual development of the human being and compare it with that of the plant. We know that the plant only has its physical and etheric body here in the physical world, whereas its astral body is outside it; but only the physical and etheric body within it. The plant emerges from the seed, forms its physical body, and then the etheric body gradually develops. And this etheric body is all that the plant has in addition. Now we have seen that man's etheric body is still enveloped in the astral body until puberty, and that man's astral body is not actually born until then. But the plant, after reaching its puberty, cannot give birth to an astral body, for it has none. Therefore the plant has nothing further to develop after puberty. It has accomplished its task in the physical world when puberty occurs, and after it has been fertilised, it withers. You can even observe something similar in certain lower animals. In these lower animals the astral body has quite evidently not penetrated into the physical body to the same extent as in the higher animals. Lower animals are characterised by the very fact that their astral body is not yet entirely within their physical body. Take the may-fly; it comes into being, lives until it is fertilised, and then dies. Why? Because it is a creature which, like a plant, has its astral body for the most part outside it, and therefore it has nothing further to develop when puberty has occurred. In a certain respect man, animal and plant develop in a similar way until puberty. Then the plant has nothing else to develop in the physical world, and so it dies. The animal still has an astral body, but no ego. Therefore after puberty certain possibilities of development remain in the animal. The astral body becomes free, and as long as it develops freely and possibilities of development remain, further development continues in the higher animal after puberty. But the astral body of the animal has no ego within it in the physical world. The animal's ego is a group ego; it embraces a whole group and exists as group ego in the astral world, where its possibilities of development are quite different from those of the single animal here in the physical world. What the animal possesses as astral body has a limited possibility of development, and the animal already has this possibility within it as a natural tendency when it comes into the world. The lion has something in his astral body that expresses itself as a sum of impulses, instincts and passions. And this tendency continues to live itself out to the full until an ego might be born; but the ego is not there, it is on the astral plane. Therefore when the animal has just reached the stage when man attains his twenty-first year, its possibilities of development are all used up. The length of life varies according to circumstances, of course, for animals do not all live to be twenty-one. But up to the age of twenty-one, when the ego is born in man, his development is comparable to that of the animal. This must not lead to the conclusion that human development up to the age of twenty-one is identical to that of an animal, for that is not the case. The ego is already within the human being from the beginning, right from conception, and it now becomes free. Hence, because there is something within man from the beginning that becomes free at the age of twenty-one, he is from the outset no animal being, for the ego, although not free, is nevertheless working in him from the start. And it is essentially this ego that can be educated. For it is this ego, together with what it has accomplished in the astral, etheric and physical bodies, that passes from one incarnation to another. If this ego received nothing new in a further incarnation, man would not be able to take anything with him at his physical death, from his last life between birth and death. And if he were not able to take anything with him, he would be at exactly the same stage in the following life as he was in the previous one. Through the fact that you see man going through a development in life, and acquiring what the animal cannot acquire, because the animal's possibilities of development do not go beyond its inborn capacities, man is constantly enriching his ego, and reaches higher levels from one incarnation to another. It is because man bears within him an ego that has already been at work, although it only becomes free at his twenty-first year, that education is practicable, and something further can be done with him beyond his original possibilities. The lion brings its lion nature with it and lives it out. Man not only brings with him his nature as a member of the general human species, but also what he has attained as an ego in his Previous incarnation. This can be transformed more and more by education and life, and it will have acquired new impetus by the time man passes through the portal of death and has to prepare for a new incarnation. The point is that man acquires new factors of development and is constantly adding to his store.

Now let us ask what actually happens when man adds to his store from outside? To answer this we must reach three very important, rather difficult concepts. But as we have been working for some years in this group, we ought to be able to understand them. Let us start by taking a fully developed plant, for instance a lily of the valley. Here you have the plant before you in another form, as a small seed. Imagine holding the seed; there you have a minute structure. When you lay it in front of you, you can say: Everything that I shall see later on as root, stalk, leaves and blossom is in this seed. So here I have the plant in front of me as a seed and there as a fully grown plant. But I could not have the seed in front of me if it had not been produced by a previous lily of the valley. The case is different for clairvoyant consciousness. When clairvoyant consciousness observes the fully grown lily of the valley, it sees the physical plant filled with an etheric body, a body consisting of streams of light permeating it from top to bottom. In the lily of the valley, however, the etheric body does not extend very far beyond the physical body of the plant and does not differ from it very much. But if you take the small seed of the lily of the valley you will find that although the physical seed is small it is permeated by a wonderfully beautiful etheric body raying out all round in such a way that the seed is situated at one end of the etheric body like a comet with a tail. The physical seed is really only a denser point in the light or etheric body of the lily of the valley. When a spiritual scientist has the fully grown lily of the valley in front of him then, for him, the being that was hidden to begin with is developed. When he has the seed in front of him where the physical part is very small and only the spiritual part is large, he says: the actual being of the lily of the valley is rolled up in the physical seed. So when we look at the lily of the valley we have to distinguish two different states. One state is where the whole being of the lily of the valley is in involution: the seed contains the being rolled up, involved. When it comes forth it passes over to evolution, and then the whole being of the lily of the valley slips more into the newly developing seed. Thus evolution and involution alternate in the successive states of a plant. During evolution the spiritual disappears further and further and the physical grows great, whilst in involution the physical will disappear further and further and the spiritual become greater and greater.

In a certain respect we can speak of evolution and involution alternating in man to an even greater extent. In the human being between birth and death a physical body and an etheric body interpenetrate to form the physical, and the spiritual interpenetrates them too in a certain way, as an earthly being man is in evolution. But when man is seen clairvoyantly passing through the portal of death, he does not leave behind in physical life as much as the lily of the valley leaves in the seed; the physical disappears so completely that you no longer see it, it is all rolled up in the spiritual. Then man passes through Devachan, where he is in involution as regards his earthly being. For this earthly being of man, evolution is between birth and death, involution between death and a new birth. Yet there is a tremendous difference between man and the plant. In the plant we can speak of involution and evolution, but in the case of man we have to speak of yet a third factor. If we were not to speak of a third factor, we should not comprise the whole of human development. Because the plant always passes through involution and evolution, every new plant is an exact repetition of the last one. The being of the lily of the valley is perpetually going into the seed and out again. But what is happening in the case of man?

We have just realised that man receives new possibilities of development during his life between birth and death. He adds to his store. Hence it is not the same with man as it is with the plant. Each evolution of man on the earth is not a mere repetition of the previous one, but a raising of his existence on to a higher level. What he takes into himself between birth and death is added to what was there previously. That is why no mere repetition occurs, for what is evolving appears at a higher stage. Where does this new element actually come from? In what way are we to understand the fact that man receives and takes in something new? I beg you to follow very closely now, for we are coming to a most important and most difficult concept. And not without reason do I say this in one of the last sessions, for you will have the whole summer to ponder over it. We should ponder over such concepts for months if not years, then we gradually begin to realise their depth. Where does all that is constantly being added to man come from? We will make this comprehensible by taking a simple example.

Suppose you see a man standing opposite two other people. Let us take into consideration everything that belongs to evolution. Let us take the one who is observing the other two, and say to ourselves that he has passed through earlier incarnations and has developed what has been planted in him in these previous incarnations. The same applies to the other two people. Then let us suppose that the first man thinks to himself: The one person looks splendid beside the other. He is pleased to see just these two particular people standing together. Another person might not feel this satisfaction. The satisfaction the man feels in seeing the two standing side by side has nothing whatever to do with the possibilities of development in the other two, for they have done nothing that deserves the pleasure their standing together gives him. It is something quite different, and it depends entirely on the fact that it is he in particular that is standing opposite the two people. The point is that the man develops a feeling of joy over the two men in front of him standing together. This feeling is not caused by anything to do with development. There are things like this in the world that arise simply through coincidence. It is not a question of the two men being karmically connected. Our concern is the joy the man feels because he likes seeing the two people standing together.

Let us take a further example. Imagine a man standing here at a certain spot on the earth and looking up at the sky. He sees a particular constellation of stars. If he were to stand five paces away he would see something else. This looking at the sky creates in him a feeling of joy that is something quite new. Man experiences a number of totally new things that have nothing to do with his previous development. Everything that comes forth in the lily of the valley is determined by its previous development; but this is not the case with what works on the human soul from the environment. Man is concerned with a lot of affairs that have nothing to do with any previous development, but which are there because various circumstances bring him into contact with the outer world. Because he feels this joy, however, it has become for him an experience. Something has arisen in the human soul that is not determined by anything preceding it but which has arisen out of nothingness. Such creations out of nothingness are constantly arising in the human soul. These are experiences of the soul not experienced through given circumstances but through the relationships we ourselves create connecting the circumstances one with another. I want you to distinguish between the experiences produced by given circumstances and those produced by the relationships between the various circumstances.

Life really falls into two parts, with no distinguishing line between them: those experiences strictly determined by previous causes, by karma, and those not determined by karma but appearing on our horizon for the first time. There are whole areas in human life that come under these headings. Suppose you hear that somewhere someone has stolen something. What has happened is, of course determined by something karmic. But suppose you only know something about the theft and not the thief—therefore there is a particular person in the objective world who has done the stealing, but you know nothing about him. The thief is not going to come to you, though, and say: ‘Lock me up, I have committed a theft’, on the contrary, it is up to you to line up the facts so as to produce the evidence as to who is the thief. The ideas you put together have nothing to do with the objective facts. They depend on quite different things, even on whether you are clever or not. Your train of argument does not make the person a thief, it is a process taking place entirely within you that gets associated with what is there outside. Strictly speaking, any kind of logic is something added to things from outside. And all opinions of taste, as well as judgments we make about beauty, are additions. Thus man is constantly enriching his life with things that are not determined by previous causes, but which he experiences by bringing himself into a relationship with things.

If we make a rapid survey of human life and visualise man's development through ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon as far as our Earth evolution, we find that on Saturn there could be no question of man being able to relate to things in this way. Everything was pure necessity then. It was the same on old Sun and also on old Moon, and the animals are still in the situation today that man was in on the Moon. The animal experiences only what is determined by preceding causes. Man alone has entirely new experiences, independent of previous causes. Therefore in the truest sense of the word man alone is capable of education; man alone can continually add something new to what is determined by karma. Only on Earth did man attain the possibility of adding something new. On the Moon his development had not reached the point where he would have been capable of adding anything new to his innate capacities. Although not an animal, he was then at the stage of animal development. His actions were determined by external causes. To a certain extent this is still so today, for those experiences that are free experiences are only slowly making their way into man. And they appear to a greater and greater extent the higher the level at which man is. Imagine a dog standing in front of a Raphael painting. It would see what is there in the picture itself, in so far as it is a sense object. But if a man were to stand in front of the picture, he would see something quite different in it; he would see what he is capable of creating through the fact that he has already developed further in previous incarnations. And now imagine a genius like Goethe; he would see even more, and he would know the significance of why one thing is painted like this and the other like that. The more highly developed a man is the more he sees. And the more he has enriched his soul the greater his capacity to add to it the soul experiences from soul relationships. These become the property of his soul and are stored up within it. All this, however, has only been possible for humanity since Earth evolution began. But now the following will take place.

Man will develop in his own way through the subsequent ages. We know that the Earth will be succeeded by Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. During this evolution the sum of man's experiences over and above those resulting from previous causes will become greater and greater, and his inner being become richer and richer. What he has brought with him from ancient causes, from the Saturn, Sun and Moon stages, will have less and less significance. He is developing his way out of previous causes and casting them off. And when, together with the Earth, man will have reached Vulcan, he will have stripped off all he received during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. He will have cast it all off

Now we come to a difficult concept which shall be made clear by an analogy. Imagine you are sitting in a carriage that has been given or bequeathed to you. You are taking a ride in this carriage when a wheel becomes faulty, so you replace it with a new one. Now you have the old carriage but a new wheel. Suppose that after a while a second wheel becomes faulty. You replace that, and you now have the old carriage and two new wheels. Similarly you replace the third and fourth wheels, and so on, until you can easily imagine that one day you will actually have nothing left of the old carriage, but will have replaced it all with new parts. You will have nothing left of what you received as a gift or inheritance; you will still drive about in it, but strictly speaking it will be an entirely new vehicle. And now transfer this idea to human evolution. During the Saturn period man received the rudiments of his physical body, on the Sun his etheric body, on the Moon his astral body and on the Earth his ego, and he has been gradually developing these principles. But within the ego he is increasingly bringing experiences of a new kind into being and stripping off what he inherited, what he was given on Saturn, Sun and Moon. And a time will come—the Venus evolution—when man will have cast off all that the gods gave him during the Moon, Sun and Saturn evolution and the first half of the Earth evolution. He will have discarded all this, Just as in our analogy the single parts of the carriage were discarded. And he will have gradually replaced all this by something he has taken into himself from relationships, something previously nonexistent. Thus on reaching Venus, man will not be able to say: Everything from Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution is still in me—for by then he will have cast it all off. And at the end of his evolution he will bear within him only what he has gained through his own efforts, not what he was given, but what he has created out of nothingness. Here you have the third thing in addition to evolution and involution: creation out of nothingness. Evolution, Involution and creation out of nothingness are what we must have in mind if we are to picture the whole magnitude and majesty of human evolution. Thus we can understand how the gods have first of all given us our three bodies as vehicles, and how they built up these vehicles stage by stage, and then endowed us with the capacity to surmount them again stage by stage. We can understand how we may throw away the parts, piece by piece, because the gods wish to make us member by member into their image, so that we may say: The rudiments of what I am to become were given me, and out of them I have created for myself a new being.

Thus what man sees before him as a great and wonderful ideal in the far distant future, of having not only a consciousness of himself but a consciousness of having created himself, was already developed in earlier times by mighty spirits on a higher level than man. And certain spirits already engaged in the past in our evolution are developing at the present time what man will experience only in a distant future. We have said that during the Saturn evolution the thrones poured forth what we call the substance of mankind, and that into this human substance the spirits of personality poured what we call the forces of personality. But the spirits of personality, who at that time were sufficiently powerful to let the character of their personality flow into this substance poured out by the thrones, have since then ascended higher and higher. Today they have reached the point where they no longer need any physical substance for their further development. On Saturn, in order to be able to live at all, they needed the physical substance of Saturn which was at the same time the rudiment of human substance; on the Sun they needed the etheric substance that poured forth for man's etheric body; on the Moon they needed the astral substance, and here on Earth they need our ego. Henceforth, however, they will need what is formed by the ego itself, man s new creation out of pure relations, which is no longer physical, etheric or astral body or even ego as such, but that which the ego produces out of itself. This the spirits of personality will use, and they are already using it to live in today. On Saturn they lived in what is now our physical body, on the Sun in what is now our etheric body, on the Moon in what is now our astral body. Since the middle of Atlantean times they have begun living in the higher elements that man can bring forth out of his ego.

What are these higher elements man produces from out of his ego? They are of three kinds. First, what we call thinking in accordance with law, our logical thinking. This is something that man adds to things. If man does not merely look at the external world or merely observe it, or merely chase after the thief to find him, but observes in such a way that he sees the law inherent in the observation, availing himself of thoughts that have nothing to do with the thief and yet they catch him, then man is living in logic, pure logic. This logic is something that is added to things by man. When man devotes himself to this pure logic, the ego creates something beyond itself.

Secondly, the ego creates beyond itself when it develops pleasure or displeasure in the beautiful, the exalted, the humorous, the comic; in short, in everything that man himself produces. Let us say you see something in the world that strikes you as silly, and you laugh at it. This laughter has nothing whatever to do with your karma. A stupid person might come along, and the very thing you are laughing at could strike him as clever. That is something that arises out of yourself in that particular situation. Or, let us say, you see people attacking a brave man who for a time holds his own but eventually comes to a tragic end. What you witness was determined by karma, but the feeling of tragedy you have about it is something new.

Though necessity is the first thing, pleasure and displeasure are the second, and the third is the way you feel the urge to act under the influences of relationships. Even the way you feel compelled to act is not determined solely by karma, but by your relationship to the matter. Supposing two people are on the one hand so situated with regard to their relationship with one another that they are karmically destined to pay off something together, but at the same time one is further advanced in his development than the other. The more advanced one will pay up, the other will hold it back for later payment. The one will develop kindness of heart, the other's feelings will not be touched. That is something new coming into evolution. You must not look on everything as determined, rather it depends on whether or not we allow our actions to be guided by the laws of justice and fairness. New things are constantly being added to our morality, to the way we do our duty and to our moral judgment. Particularly in our moral judgment there lies the third element by means of which man goes beyond himself and then advances further and further. The ego puts this into our world, and what is thus put into the world does not perish. What men have introduced into the world from epoch to epoch, from age to age, as the result of logical thought, aesthetic judgment or the fulfillment of duty, forms a continuous stream, and provides the substance in which, in their phase of evolution, the spirits of personality take up their abode.

That is the way you live and evolve. And whilst you are evolving, the spirits of personality look down upon you, asking continually: Will you give me something, too, that I can use for my development? And the more man develops his thought content, his treasures of thought, the more he tries to refine his aesthetic judgment, and carry out his duty beyond the requirements of karma, the more nourishment there is for the spirits of personality; the more we offer up to them, the more substantial these spirits of personality become. What do these spirits of personality represent? Something which from the point of view of our human world conception we call an abstraction: the spirit of the age, the spirit of the various epochs. To anthroposophists this spirit of the age is a real being. The spirits of the age, who are actually the spirits of personality, move through the ages. When we look back into ancient times, the Indian, Persian, Chaldean-Babylonian, Greco-Latin times and right into our own time, we find that apart from the nations and apart from all the other differences among men, what we call the spirit of the age is always changing. People thought and felt quite differently five thousand years ago than they did three thousand years ago and from the way they do today. And it is the spirits of the age or, according to spiritual science, the spirits of personality who change. These spirits of personality are going through their evolution in the super-sensible world just as the human race is going through its evolution in the sense world. But all that the human race develops of a super-sensible nature is food and drink for these spirits of personality, and they benefit from it. If there were an age in which men were to spend their lives without developing any treasures of thought, without pleasure or displeasure, nor any feeling for duty beyond the limits of karma—in such an age the spirits of personality would have no nourishment and they would become emaciated. Such is our connection with the beings who are invisibly interwoven with our life.

As I told you, man adds something new to development, creates as it were something out of nothingness in addition to involution and evolution. He could not create anything out of nothingness, however, had he not previously received the causes into which he has placed himself as in a vehicle. This vehicle was given him during the Saturn evolution, and bit by bit he is discarding it and developing on into the future. He had to receive the foundation for this, however, and if the gods had not provided this foundation for him in the first place, he would not have been able to perform any action that can be created out of nothingness. That relationships in the surrounding world affect us in such a way that they really help our further development is due to this laying of a good foundation.

For what has become possible through the fact that man can create something new out of relationships, and that he can make use of the connections into which he is placed so as to form the foundation for something new that he himself creates? And what does it mean that man has become capable of extending his thoughts beyond the things he experiences in the surrounding world, and feeling more than what is objectively there in front of him? What has come about as a result of man being able to work beyond the dictates of karma, and live in duty towards truth, fairness and kindness of heart?

By becoming capable of logical thinking, of developing thought in accordance with its necessity, the possibility of error has been created. Because of the pleasure man can take in what is beautiful, the possibility has also been created for him to introduce the element of ugliness and impurity into world evolution. Because man is capable of both setting himself the concept of duty and of fulfilling it beyond the extent of karma, the possibility of evil and of resistance to duty has been created. So it is this very possibility of being able to create solely out of relationships that has placed man in a world in which he can also work on his own spiritual part, so that it becomes full of error, ugliness and evil. And not only had the possibility to be provided for man altogether to create out of these relationships, but the possibility had to be given for him by dint of struggle and striving gradually to create out of these relationships what is right, what is beautiful and those virtues that really further his evolution.

Creating out of relationships is called in Christian esotericism ‘creating out of the spirit’. And creating out of right, beautiful and virtuous relationships is called in Christian esotericism ‘The Holy Spirit’. When a man is able to create out of nothingness the right or true, the beautiful and the good, the Holy Spirit fills him with bliss. But for a man to be able to create in the sense of the Holy Spirit, he had first to be given the foundation, as is the case for all creation out of nothingness. This foundation was given him through the coming of Christ into our evolution. Through experiencing the Christ Event on earth, man was able to ascend to creating in the Holy Spirit. Thus it is Christ Himself Who creates the greatest, most profound foundation. If man becomes such that he stands firmly on the basis of the Christ experience, and the Christ experience is the carriage he joins for his evolutionary progress, then the Christ sends him the Holy Spirit, and man becomes capable of creating the right, beautiful and good in the course of his further evolution.

So we see the coming of the Christ to the Earth as a fulfillment as it were of all that had been put into man through Saturn, Sun and Moon. And the Christ Event has given man the greatest thing possible, the power that makes him capable of living on into the perspectives of the future and of increasingly creating out of relationships, out of all that is not predetermined, but depends on how man relates to the facts of the world around him, which is in the widest sense the Holy Spirit. This again is an aspect of Christian esotericism. Christian esotericism is connected with the profoundest thought in the whole of our evolution, the thought of creation out of nothingness.

Therefore no true theory of evolution will ever be able to leave out the thought of creation out of nothingness. Supposing there were only evolution and involution, there would be eternal repetition like there is with the plant, and on Vulcan there would be only what originated on Saturn. But in the middle of our development creation out of nothingness was added to evolution and involution. After Saturn, Sun and Moon had passed away, Christ came to Earth as the enriching leaven which ensures that something quite new will be there on Vulcan, something not yet present on Saturn. Whoever speaks of evolution and involution only, will speak of development as though everything were merely to repeat itself in circles. But such circles can never really explain world evolution. Only when we add to evolution and involution this creation out of nothingness, that adds something new to existing relationships, do we arrive at a real understanding of the world.

Beings of a lower order show no more than a trace of what we called creation out of nothingness. A lily of the valley will always be a lily of the valley; at most the gardener could add something to it from outside to which the lily of the valley would never have attained of itself. Then there would be something which with regard to the nature of the lily of the valley would be a creation out of nothingness. Man, however, is himself capable of including in his being this creation out of nothingness. Yet man only becomes capable of doing so, and advancing to the freedom of individual creativity through the greatest of all free deeds, and one which can serve him as an example. What is this greatest deed of freedom? It is that the creative and wise Word of our solar system Himself resolved to enter into a human body and to take part in Earth evolution through a deed unconnected with any previous karma. There was no preceding karma forcing the Christ to His resolution to enter a human body; He undertook to do it as a free deed entirely based upon foreseeing mankind's future evolution. This deed had no precedent, having its origin in Him as a thought out of nothingness, out of His pre-vision. This is a difficult concept, but it will always be included in Christian esotericism, and everything depends on our being able to add the thought of creation out of nothingness to those of evolution and involution.

When we are able to do this we shall acquire great ideals which, although they may not extend to what may be called cosmic dimensions, are essentially connected with the question: Why, for instance, do we join an anthroposophical society? To understand the purpose of an anthroposophical society we must return to the thought that we are working for the spirits of personality, for the spirits of the age. When a human being comes into the world at birth, to start with he is educated by all manner of circumstances; these influence him and form the first step of his own creative activity. If only it could be clearly understood that the place where a man is born is only the first step, and that the prevailing circumstances work upon him with overwhelming suggestive power. Let us try to imagine how different a man's circumstances would be were he to be born in Rome or Frankfurt instead of in Constantinople. Through his birth he would be placed in different circumstances, into different religious affiliations. Under these influences a certain fanaticism could develop in him for Catholicism or Protestantism. If, through a slight turn of the wheel in karmic connections, he had been born in Constantinople, might he not also have turned out to be quite a good Turk? Here you have an illustration of the suggestive force with which environmental conditions affect man. But man is able to extricate himself from the purely suggestive nature of conditions and unite with other people in accordance with principles he himself chooses and acknowledges. Then he can say: “Now I know why I am working with other people”. In this way there arise out of human consciousness those social groups in which material is created for the spirits of the age, the spirits of personality. And the anthroposophical society is a group of this kind in which this connection is created on a basis of brotherhood. This means nothing else than that each individual is active in the group in such a way that he acquires in himself all the good qualities that make him an image of the whole society. Thus all the thoughts, wealth of feeling and virtues he develops through the society he bestows as nourishment upon the spirits of personality. Hence in a society like this all that creates communal life is inseparable from the principle of individuality. Each single member becomes capable through such a society of offering what he himself produces as a sacrifice to the spirits of personality. And each individual prepares himself to reach the level of those who are the most advanced, and who, as the result of spiritual training have progressed to the point where they have the following ideal: “When I think, I do not do so for my own satisfaction, but in order to create nourishment for the spirits of personality. I lay upon the altar of the spirits of personality my highest and most beautiful thoughts; and what I feel is not prompted by egoism, I feel it because it is to be nourishment for the spirits of personality. And what I can practise in the way of virtue, I do not practise for the sake of gaining influence for myself, but in order to bring it as a sacrifice to provide food for the spirits of personality.” Here we have placed before us as our ideal those whom we call the masters of wisdom and the masters of harmony and feeling. For thus do they think and prepare for the development which will bring man nearer and nearer to the point where he will always be creating what is new until he will finally develop a world from which the workings of the old causes will have disappeared, and out of which new light will stream forth into the future. The world is not subject to perpetual metamorphosis into different forms, but the old is perfected and becomes the vehicle of the new. Then even this will be thrown off and will disappear into nothingness, so that out of this nothingness something new may arise. This is the tremendous idea of progress, that new things can perpetually arise.

But the worlds are complete in themselves, and you will have seen in the example given that we cannot speak of anything actually coming to an end. It has been shown how on the one hand the spirits of personality lose their influence over man, but on the other hand how they again pursue their own evolution. Thus ours is a world that is constantly being rejuvenated by new creations, yet it is also true that what is stripped off would hinder progress, and it is passed on so that others for their part can progress. Nobody should believe that he must allow something to sink into nothingness, for we have been given the possibility of creating out of nothingness. What on Vulcan will prove itself to be something new, will continually build new forms and discard the old, and what is thrown off will seek its own path.

Evolution, involution and creation out of nothingness are the three concepts we have to apply in order to understand the evolution of world phenomena as it really is. Only by this means shall we arrive at accurate concepts that both enlighten man about the world and engender in him inner warmth of feeling. If man had to admit his incapacity to do anything except create in accordance with impulses implanted into him, this would not steel his will nor kindle his hopes to the same extent as being able to say: “I can create my own life values and constantly add something new to what has been given me as a foundation. My ancient heritage will in no way hinder me from creating new blossoms and fruits which will live on into the future.” This, however, is part of what we can describe by saying that the anthroposophical conception of the world gives man strength, hope and confidence in life, for it shows him that he can, in the future, have a share in working at creations which, today, not only lie in the womb of causality but in nothingness. It shows him the prospect that, through his own efforts, he is working his way in the true sense of the word from being a ‘creature’ to being a ‘creator’.

When we try to advance along the path of supersensible knowledge to a perception of man's real being, the opposing nature of the activities of thinking and willing becomes more and more apparent. This contrast cannot escape an adequate introspection of even ordinary consciousness, but what is merely indicated in such observation, becomes clearly evident to spiritual-scientific observation. The thinking that is active in ordinary life and is usually applied in scientific research, shows itself to be closely bound up with the processes of the bodily organisation; while all that is of the nature of will reveals ever more strikingly its independence of the body the further its essential nature is penetrated by supersensible cognition.

Since introspection never finds the activities of thinking and willing separated in the everyday course of the soul's life, it is impossible for ordinary consciousness to learn to know them in their real, essential nature. It is always confronted by a thinking in which the will also is active, and a willing, shot through with the activity of thought. Hence it can never decide the shares of thought and will in a state of soul. A consciousness that has been prepared for the supersensible can be so focussed that thinking and willing enter its field of view separately. Only then do we know how closely bound to the bodily organisation is the thinking that is active in the world of sense.

One cannot investigate this connection without directing one's attention to the changing characteristics of man's life in successive periods. When our observation has been sharpened by spiritual-scientific training we perceive the constitution of a child's soul from birth to the change of teeth to be quite different from that between the change of teeth and puberty. And the period from puberty to the early twenties shows again other characteristics. The subsequent course of life also resolves itself into clearly distinguishable periods. The fourth closes with the end of the twenties, the fifth at the middle of the thirties, the sixth at the beginning, and the seventh at the end, of the forties. At the beginning of the fifties that period of life commences in which a division into sections can no longer be carried out in a completely definite way.

The whole range of the soul's constitution in its transformation through the various life periods is revealed with special clearness to the observer of the supersensible, when he directs his attention to the close dependence of thinking on the bodily organisation. To perceive here correctly he must keep strictly to the activity of thought, and separate from it everything that arises through the influence of the will. He then finds that in the first four periods of life the activity of thought, in so far as it develops out of man's own being and is dependent on his bodily organisation, is completely incapable of apprehending the real being of man. In the first three decades of life man could attain to no consciousness of himself that he could grasp by thought if, in his soul life, he were solely dependent on those powers of thought which develop on the basis of the bodily organisation. At the end of the twenties, thinking takes on a totally different character. It becomes capable of placing those thoughts which have been developed in dependence on his bodily organisation in the service of human self-knowledge. This self-knowledge, however, can only have reference to inner experiences falling within this period of life, not to those of earlier periods. Not till the middle of the thirties does man develop an understanding for his inner life by means of the activity of thought which he unfolds on the basis of his bodily organisation. This takes place in a definitely regular way. In the middle of the fourth decade there appears a power of thought capable of grasping the fourth period; at the beginning of the forties one which can grasp the third; at the end of the forties one which can grasp the second, and not till the middle of the forties one that can penetrate the experience of childhood from birth till the change of teeth. This evolution of thought throughout the course of a man's life remains quite unknown to ordinary consciousness. It runs its course quite beneath the threshold of this consciousness, and only with those who have tuned their inner life to a finer self-knowledge does it emerge out of the so-called subconscious into the daily experiences of the soul. The supersensible mode of cognition however raises the subconscious into the field of consciousness. It thus perceives that the self-knowledge acquired by man before the second half of life is not mediated by the activity of thinking, which develops out of his own bodily organisation, but by spiritual forces which enter thinking by way of the will, and which are independent of the human physical organisation. Not before the second half of life can the human organism become the basis for a thought activity which comprehends its own being.

The transformation and maturing of thought here described remain hidden from the ordinary life of the soul. Nevertheless the innermost being of man undergoes such a development. In the second half of life there arises from the bodily organisation a consciousness of the inner experiences of the first half of life. These remain unconscious during the first three decades, unless a force for self-perception, independent of the body, is given to thinking by way of the will.

To one who has attained by supersensible knowledge the insight here described there is also revealed in the course of his investigation a perception of the processes which are independent of the body, and by means of which self-perception by way of the will is made possible in the first half of life. His spiritual gaze is directed to the experiences of the soul in a supersensible world before birth (or conception). These experiences result from a totally different co-operation of thought and will from that existing in the life of the senses. This co-operation develops on the basis of a totally different constitution of the activities of thinking and of willing from that existing in sense life. These thoughts are active in themselves and partake of the nature of will, and will is, by its own nature, permeated by thought. In life pertaining to the senses, thoughts are only as shadows of what they reveal themselves to be in the supersensible; and the will activity in the sense world is like a radiating force deprived of light, compared with its true nature as it can be known in the supersensible. The co-operation of thought endowed with will, and will laden with thought, cannot take place on the basis of the bodily organisation. Now what takes place in the soul through the co-operation of thought and will before her entrance into the sense life, does not cease to work on her entrance. It continues to work. Beside the stream of soul life which runs its course in dependence on the bodily organisation there flows another, which is a continuation of soul and spiritual experiences free from the body. This stream gives to man in the first half of sense life the power of self-perception. It dries up in middle life. In its stead there develops for self-perception a power of thought on the basis of the bodily organisation.

An essentially different view presents itself to the consciousness trained in supersensible knowledge when it is directed, not to thought activity, but to will activity in the course of sense life. For such perception everything dependent on will is seen more and more free of the bodily organisation. To supersensible consciousness it becomes clear that the true nature of will cannot become apparent in the sense world. That man, even when he has not consciously developed supersensible insight, experiences will, rests on the fact that in everything pertaining to will something supersensible is woven into ordinary consciousness. Into every human consciousness the will intrudes as an immediately perceptible element, even when this consciousness, by its own constitution of soul, darkens insight into the supersensible world. Man would never even form a word for will, if he had not in his soul-life a perceptible supersensible element. For the powers which develop in the sense world, and for the sense world, the will would be something completely unknown. One who speaks of the development of super-sensible cognition maintains in truth nothing else than that those soul capacities which are already active in the perception of will experiences, can be expanded, concentrated and heightened, so that they are capable of attaining to a perception of another world-content in the same way as they perceive will.

Every science of the soul that seeks to investigate only by the means of cognition of ordinary consciousness must confront perceptions which, it must confess if it understands itself—are impenetrable for ordinary consciousness. For the life of the soul may be compared to a knot which is entangled with various threads at the point where they meet. Its essential nature can only be understood when one is willing to follow the threads outside the knot to their origin and destination. The above exposition speaks of an experience within the soul communicated by the bodily organisation, and of one interwoven with it, which is only to be apprehended by supersensible means of cognition. If this latter experience is, on account of its essential nature, hidden from ordinary consciousness, the other remains still more unknowable, because, in order to become known, it must be disentangled from that part which can only be grasped supersensibly.

Viewed in their detachment, these two elements of the soul life show that this is no steady forward flow; rather it is a striving for equilibrium between two movements. An activity more of the nature of thought and bound to the body would force it into the one, while an activity more of the nature of will and purely supersensible would force it into the other. If one perceives how the soul stands in the struggle between these two streams, then, through this observation, one gains a deeper insight into something else working into the life of the soul.

This observation shows that in the middle of sense life a minimum of that force is present which does not develop on a bodily basis, but which is given to man out of the supersensible world by way of the will. In this period of life the soul develops a strong subconscious inclination towards identification with the physical organisation. This inclination, though subconscious, works instinctively into consciousness. The soul then strives through the forces of her own being to turn away, to a certain extent, from the spiritual world in which she lived before her entrance into sense existence. Now against this striving there works another force which is not originally related in its own being to the forces of man's soul, but which, during the course of the world, attains an influence over the soul. This force is not only active in the middle period of man's life but through his whole life. Only in middle life it makes itself especially noticeable by hindering the turning away from the spiritual world. In general this force comes to expression in the constitution of the soul in a certain tendency toward what may be described as unjustified pride. It is active when a man considers himself more highly endowed than corresponds to his stage of evolution. And it is also active when, for example, man is impelled to an action that is, in its moral aspect, contrary to his nature as man. It may seem strange that a force which prevents man from turning away from the spiritual world can at the same time be a source of deviation from the good. But supersensible knowledge shows, just as sense knowledge does, that there are forces in the world whose effect, in one direction necessary and beneficial, can in another direction turn into the contrary. According to the use of the word in earlier views of the world the force here described can be called the “Luciferic.” But one must not attach to this idea only those feelings of antipathy which have been rightly linked to it on account of one aspect of the Luciferic nature. In a certain sense the justification for the appearance in the course of the world of such a force, whose activity has also evil consequences, must be sought in its necessity for the evolution of man.

In contrast to this force there stands another, which though not originally inherent in man's nature, is likewise active in it in the course of the world. If the Luciferic element were fully active without such opposition, it would, on the entrance of the soul into sense life, overcome the attraction of man's being for this life, and man would not enter it at all. In that moment when this turning away of the human soul from sense life is possible, the Luciferic is overcome by another force which draws the soul towards sense life more strongly than its own being would. For the same reason that we give the opposing force the name “Luciferic” we can call this other the “Ahrimanic.” And, like the Luciferic, the Ahrimanic has also its dark side. In it lies the origin of the aberrations of thought, as in the Luciferic the erring of will. For the Ahrimanic, too, is active in man's soul not only in the beginning but through the whole course of life.

An idea of the relation in which man as a cognitive and active being stands to the world, can only be gained if it is sought for on the basis of insight into the above forces working within his life. Knowledge of the world of nature is mediated entirely by the bodily organisation. The processes of nature are extended through the activity of the senses and the contiguous nervous system, into the interior of the body. The behaviour of the body as a whole towards the natural processes running into it may be compared to a mirroring. The body produces images of the events and the soul confronts these images as one who stands before a mirror and observes the image he produces. A science of the soul which rejects supersensible knowledge must always encounter an epistemological difficulty when it tries to comprehend how bodily processes produced by nerve and sense stimulation are transposed into soul experiences. This difficulty cannot be overcome by philosophic considerations which only take account of the manifestations of ordinary consciousness. For it arises from this: between the bodily processes perceptible to ordinary consciousness and the soul-being of which this consciousness can gain a knowledge, there exists no connection. Neither can anything in the bodily processes reveal itself to ordinary consciousness which would render these processes capable of producing mirror-images which could be grasped spiritually; nor can it perceive how the soul cognises such images. To supersensible perception, however, it is revealed that these same Ahrimanic forces which draw the soul towards the bodily organisation, are also active spiritually in the world of nature outside man. They are active as spiritual forces in the bodily organisation in the mirroring process described above, which is therefore a spiritual process within the material of the body; and they, through their activity in the soul, make her capable of experiencing images. All knowledge of Nature is mediated by Ahrimanic activity.

In his actions man experiences free will. This is a fact of consciousness. It can only be repudiated by one who closes his eyes to a patent fact. It cannot be understood by one who desires to comprehend everything according to the pattern of scientific ideas, for free will does not belong to the realm of Nature. Thinkers who would only admit the laws of Nature in the world decide against the acceptance of free will, not because they do not perceive it, but because they do not comprehend it. The essence of free will—like all that partakes of the nature of will—can only be grasped by supersensible perception. In relation to the sense world the human soul can only receive free will and make it part of her own being by being held back in the spiritual sphere by the Luciferic forces, even while she sojourns in the sense world with a part of her being. The same force which in the middle period of man's life saves him from becoming identified with the bodily organisation, fashions his free will. Through this force his life is lifted out of the realms of purely natural connections in which his bodily organisation places him. Supersensible perceptions of what is Ahrimanic and Luciferic show us clearly that man, according to his supersensible being, belongs to a different realm of the spiritual world from these two forces. It is further apparent that each of these two forces is opposed to the direction man's being should take in the world order; that, however, the pursuit of this direction through the state of equilibrium possible between these two kinds of forces, is the condition of man's evolution to ever higher stages of existence. From the foregoing exposition it may be seen that assimilating natural knowledge and making it one's own, and the development of free will, are results of the passage through this state of equilibrium.

A spiritual-scientific survey of the historical life of man shows that this life is also influenced in two opposing directions by both these forces, and is a striving for equilibrium between them. But in successive epochs there is an alternating preponderance of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic impulses. After a period in which humanity is exposed predominantly to the Luciferic force, and in which it strives out of its own soul life to withstand this force, there always follows an epoch in which the working of the Ahrimanic has to be striven against. Such an Ahrimanic epoch holds sway in recent times. We owe to it a considerable extension of natural knowledge, and a mode of life by which man attains an especial perfection in the control of natural forces. But through a one-sided leaning in that direction he has withdrawn himself from the forces which accord with his own true being. And if he made no opposition to his inclination towards the Ahrimanic, the Luciferic impulses would take the place of man's own essential forces and cause a deviation of the historical stream in their direction. In the earlier ages in the evolution of mankind, the balance between the two impulses was kept by a kind of spiritual instinct. In modern times the place of this instinct must be taken by a conscious seizing hold of the forces which work on the soul. Progress in the historical development of mankind can be perceived in just this: the older instinctive spiritual life becomes transformed into a constitution of soul ever more ruled by consciousness. This transformation of the unconscious—half conscious—into conscious soul-life proceeds according to laws inherent in historical evolution. To prevent the result of this transformation from being deviated in an Ahrimanic direction the supersensible world must be grasped by man in a free act of will. For while outside man's soul the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic are forces opposing one another, within the soul a too strong influence of the conscious life by the Ahrimanic, prepares the ground for the attacks of the Luciferic. And if man is permeated by the Luciferic he develops a special tendency to allow his conscious soul-life to be pervaded by the Ahrimanic also. At the commencement of the fully conscious soul life of modern times man was in an epoch in which the Ahrimanic impulses were powerful. In consequence of this, it is necessary by the cultivation of a proper attitude of soul to withdraw oneself from the Luciferic tendencies thus introduced. This can only take place when a striving for supersensible cognition prevents the soul forces, which can serve this striving, from being gripped by Luciferic forces.

It is insight into all these relations which causes one who fully grasps them to regard supersensible cognition in the present time as a necessity in the course of human evolution. But one with this insight also understands that misunderstanding and opposition can arise in face of this knowledge. These arise directly from the duality of the human personality which becomes very evident through this insight. The Ahrimanic impulse of modern times seizes the conscious soul-life. Then, through this, in the unconscious part of soul-life, certain impulses stir which resist the inclination to supersensible knowledge. An unconscious fear of the supersensible arises. It is none the less active because it is unconscious. But for the conscious soul life it disguises itself in all sorts of self-deceptions which it produces in man. In this soul-life thoughts appear purporting to be logical reasons against the possibility—even against the blessings—of supersensible knowledge, thoughts to which man only gives his consent on account of his unconscious fear of this knowledge. He sees reasons which are in truth no reasons, and knows nothing of the fear which in reality governs him. Moreover, through the Ahrimanic impulse which forces man to sense existence, a certain want of interest in the supersensible as well as fear, makes itself felt. This prevents man from following up the deeper spiritual connections in the realm of Nature which, through their own being, lead away from mere sense perception towards the supersensible. Man would limit himself to the purely material and external side of natural facts. He would order his life according to this outer side. He does not notice that it is only his want of interest that drives him away from the perception of spirit in nature. He surrenders himself to the belief, caused by this want of interest, that the supersensible is either to be denied altogether or must only be thought of as beyond the bounds of human cognition. To counteract this unconscious fear and lack of interest, he who applies himself to supersensible knowledge has to develop the forces of his soul, while his opponents believe that they are fighting on the side of logical reason and that man should remain modestly within the bounds of cognition.

In addition to this there is the misunderstanding which arises because, owing to the contradictory nature of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, wrong inferences are drawn concerning the behaviour of these impulses towards the nature of man. People think—many only pretend to think—that by consciously opposing by supersensible cognition the Ahrimanic character of a mere natural knowledge, man must be led into the Luciferic. Whoever maintains this, lacks the understanding that the super-sensible knowledge which man develops out of his own innermost being cannot only never lead into the Luciferic element, but directly prevents such a downfall, which would inevitably take place if a one-sided Ahrimanic impulse usurped the place of consciousness. For this would deliver over to the Luciferic the strivings after the supersensible which are not seized by man's own being. With these indications we have pointed out the obstacles which oppose man's turning towards supersensible cognition. These arise from a certain self-deception and intentional, or half-intentional, misunderstanding of human nature. If attention is directed to these obstacles by a calm and collected soul life, the possibility of such cognition will easily be found, for this knowledge reveals its truth through itself when its revelations are not opposed by the human soul in the way indicated.

I have been asked to speak to-day on the subject: Paths leading to higher, that is to super-sensible knowledge. As not all of you were present at my last lecture, it will be necessary to weave into this lecture some of the more important things explained yesterday.

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy strives above all towards a full harmony with the scientific truths which have emerged in the course of the past centuries. Anthroposophy is in no way directed against the efforts of natural science, as so many people believe; on the contrary, those who honestly and earnestly stand within our anthroposophical movement appreciate most of all such men as can fully judge the achievement of our modern times, resulting from scientific conscientiousness, from inner scientific feeling. It is however true that one cannot penetrate into the super-sensible worlds with the aid of the generally accepted science, and in regard to this point Anthroposophy in a certain way shares the views of the officially recognised scientists.

Anthroposophy clearly recognises that people are quite right when in regard to natural science they speak of boundaries to human knowledge. Anthroposophy also recognises that one cannot step beyond these boundaries with the ordinary forces of human understanding. Consequently Anthroposophy does not even attempt to discover paths to super-sensible knowledge by applying the forces of ordinary consciousness and ordinary knowledge, but it strives not only as regards the results of scientific investigation to begin where ordinary science must come to an end, but through its methods Anthroposophy also strives to begin where the generally accepted science must come to a final point in regard to a knowledge of external Nature and also of the physical nature of the human being.

Consequently Anthroposophy must not only speak of different subjects, but it must also speak in a different way. Nevertheless it is in full harmony with scientific conscientiousness and scientific discipline. Its starting point is to draw out of man’s inner being latent forces, to rouse slumbering forces of knowledge enabling the human being to penetrate into the super-sensible worlds.

Anthroposophy does not say that special qualities and capacities are needed for a knowledge of the super-sensible worlds, it does not declare that such a knowledge is based on qualities which can only be possessed by a few people, but it takes as its foundation forces which can be drawn out of every human soul, forces which transcend those which we inherit, as it were, from childhood onwards and which also transcend those which we gain through ordinary education, through an ordinary schooling.

A person who wishes to become a spiritual investigator, in the anthroposophical sense of this word, must set out from the point where he stands in ordinary life and in ordinary science; from there he must guide his development of his own accord. The forces which should be developed first of all are the forces of thinking. This is a first step in such a development, and we shall see that this does not imply the development of one-sided intellectual forces of thought, but the unfolding of the whole human being. But a beginning must be made with a particular exercise in thinking.

The kind of thinking to which we are accustomed in ordinary life and also in ordinary science is given up to external observation and follows, as it were, the thread of external observation. We direct our senses towards the external world and link our thoughts with perceptions transmitted by the senses. The observation of the external world provides a firm support, enabling us to connect our experiences with the contents of our soul.

It has been the endeavour of science, and rightly so, to develop more and more the support given by external observation. Observation has been enhanced by the use of scientific experimental research, where every single condition leading to different manifestations can be clearly surveyed, so that the processes become, as it were, quite transparent.

For the attainment of its task, the spiritual science of Anthroposophy must deviate from this way of thinking which is entirely directed towards the objective reality outside. Anthroposophy must above all strengthen and intensify thought within the human being. In the public lecture which I gave yesterday I remarked that a muscle grows stronger if it does a certain work and that the same applies to the forces of the soul. When certain definite concepts which can easily be surveyed are again and again set at the centre of our consciousness by systematic practice, so that we completely surrender to such concepts, our thinking power grows stronger.

This intensification of the forces of thinking must of course be reached in such a way as to maintain throughout our clear and complete willpower. A person who wishes to become a spiritual investigator in the anthroposophical sense, may therefore take mathematics above all as an excellent example for the scientific mentality of modern times.

Though it may sound strange and paradoxical it must be said that an anthroposophical spiritual investigator who wishes to transcend the stage of dilettantism, must in the first place observe a rule which already existed in the old Platonic school: That no one can penetrate into real spiritual-scientific knowledge unless he has a certain mathematical culture.

What particular result can the human soul gain through mathematics? The result that everything which confronts the soul through mathematics can be inwardly surveyed, is inwardly transparent, and that mathematics contains, as it were, nothing to which we submit unconsciously, without the application of our will.

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy is naturally not mathematics. But a significant example may be found in the way in which one penetrates into mathematical thought. It is not mathematics in itself which constitutes this example, but — if I may coin this expression, — “mathematizing,” the activity of mathematical thinking. If such a “mathematizing” culture shows us how to transcend any illusionary or suggestive element, we shall be particularly successful in concentrating upon concepts which can be surveyed and which are quite new to us.

Such concepts can be obtained from an experienced spiritual-scientific investigator, or in some other way we may seek to develop concepts which do not live in our memory. They are set in the centre of consciousness, and we then concentrate upon them with the whole life of our soul, with all our power of concentration. Our attention is turned away from everything else, and for a certain space of time which must not be too long, we try to concentrate ourselves upon such a concept, or complex of concepts.

Why must such a concept or complex of concepts be something quite new? When we draw reminiscences out of memory, we can never be quite sure of what takes place within our organism, where processes may lead to certain experiences coming from the unconscious spheres outside the soul. Our cognitive power can only act freely when we confront a sense-perception, for it can be envisaged at any moment and because we are quite sure that a sense-perception is not drawn in some fantastic way out of the reminiscences of our life.

The same applies to that which we now allow to fill our consciousness with the exclusion of all sense-perceptions and to which we yield completely. Though we have no sensory perceptions, we are inwardly just as living as is ordinarily the case with external sense perception. The first thing which should be borne in mind when treading the path to higher knowledge, is that our thinking, which is free from sense impressions, acquires an inner activity which completely claims the attention of our soul, in the same way in which this attention is ordinarily claimed only by an external sense perception. One might say: What we ordinarily experience in connection with an external sense impression, we should learn to experience in connection with that intensified thought-activity which is completely permeated by a clear, conscious will.

This in itself sets up a strong barrier against anything which seeks to enter human consciousness in the form of suggestions, illusions, visions or hallucinations. Spiritual-scientific knowledge, in our meaning of the word, is not understood in the right way if people say: By his exercises, a spiritual investigator might after all be led to hallucinations or to similar results, he may be led into all kinds of pathological conditions of the soul. But those who earnestly consider the way in which Anthroposophy describes the path leading to higher knowledge, will see that this kind of spiritual investigation reveals most clearly of all the true nature of illusions, hallucinations or mediumistic phenomena. It rejects all this severely, as pathological elements; in fact, the results obtained by real spiritual research, clearly enable us to perceive the worthlessness of such phenomena.

Then one comes to quite a new way of thinking. The old way of thinking which is used in ordinary life and in ordinary science, remains. But a new way of thinking is added to it, if we do the exercises principally characterised as thought-exercises (you will find them in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, or in my Outline of an Occult Science) and if we constantly practise them in a systematic way. (One person will need longer time for the attainment of results, and another person a shorter time). These thoughts, constituting a systematic practice, should be carried out in our consciousness as an inner soul-development.

I might describe this new way of thinking which is added to the old way of thinking in the following way.

Perhaps you will allow me to make a personal remark; which, however, is not meant personally, but, as you will readily admit, it belongs to the objective part of my descriptions. In the early nineties of the nineteenth century, I wrote my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in order to show that freedom really lives in man’s ethical, moral life. There it has its roots. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity called forth many misunderstandings, because people simply cannot penetrate into the way of thinking which is employed in this book.

My Philosophy of Spiritual Activity already employs that form of thinking which must be gained by systematic practice in order to reach a knowledge of the higher worlds. It is a first beginning in this direction, a first step which anyone can make in ordinary life. Yet it is at the same time a first step leading to a knowledge of the higher worlds.

Ordinary thinking (it suffices to bear in mind the true nature of the ordinary way of thinking, in order to see that my remarks are justified)—ordinary thinking really consists of spatial perceptions. In our ordinary thinking everything is arranged spatially. Consider that even time is led back to space! For time is expressed by the movements of the clock. The same process in fact is also contained in our physical formulae. In short, we finally must come to the conclusion that ordinary thinking is a combining way of thinking, one that collects scattered elements. We use this way of thinking in our ordinary sound conditions of life, and in ordinary science.

But the kind of thinking which should be used for the cognition of higher worlds and which is gained with the aid of the exercises I have described, is one which I might call morphological thinking, one in which we think in forms.

This way of thinking is not limited to space; it lives within the medium of time, in the same way thinking lives within the medium of space. This thinking does not link up one thought with the other; it sets before the soul a kind of thought-organism. When we have a conception, an idea or a thought, we cannot pass over at will to another. Even as in the human organism we cannot pass over at will from the head to any other form, but must first pass over to the neck, then the shoulders, the thorax, etc., even as in an organism everything has a definite structure which must be considered as a whole, so the thinking which I characterised as morphological thinking must be inwardly mobile. As stated, it lives within the medium of time, not of space. But it is inwardly so mobile that it produces one form out of another, by constantly growing and producing an organic structure.

It is this morphological way of thinking which should be added to the ordinary way of thinking. It can be attained through exercises of meditation which are described in principle in some of my books. These exercises strengthen and intensify thinking. The morphological way of thinking, the thinking activity which takes its course in forms and pictures, enables us to reach the first stage in the knowledge of super-sensible worlds, namely the stage described in my books as imaginative knowledge.

Imaginative knowledge does not as yet supply anything pertaining to an external world. To begin with, it leads only to man’s self-knowledge, but it is a far deeper knowledge of self than the one which is ordinarily reached by self-contemplation. This imaginative knowledge brings forms into our consciousness, forms which are experienced just as livingly as any sense-perception. But they have a peculiar quality of their own.

Our ordinary thoughts could not live within our consciousness in a sound way if we were unable to remember them. In regard to spiritual health and a sound development of soul-life, a very great deal depends upon our remembering capacity, upon our memory. Only those who have a continuous memory in their waking-life condition, a memory which goes back to a certain moment in childhood, can be said to be of sound mind.

Perhaps you will also have heard of the terrible condition of certain psychopathic people due to the fact that certain memories are blotted out. Psychiatry knows this state in which memories are blotted out, and it shows us the great importance of a continuous memory if the human soul is to live in a sound condition. This applies to the ordinary development of thought.

But it does not apply to the way of thinking just characterised as morphological or imaginative thinking. When our eye, or some other sense-organ is turned to some external object, the perception can be experienced only as long as our sense-organ is exposed to it. In the same way morphological thinking, or imaginative thinking, only exists while we experience it, and what thus arises within imaginative thinking cannot in the ordinary sense be impressed upon our memory. It must be called forth every time afresh, if it is to be experienced.

Those who reach such an organic-morphological way of thinking which develops as it were into a living process of growth, cannot retain the results of this thinking in their ordinary memory. Freedom, too, can only be characterised by ascending to such growing, constantly developing way of thinking. This is why my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity gave rise to so many misunderstandings. But it had to be transmitted through this method of thinking, because freedom is a spiritual experience and it is impossible to come to it with ordinary combining thinking.

Beginners in the method of spiritual science generally think that an imaginative experience can be impressed on the soul like any other thought. But this is not the case. An imaginative thought vanishes from our consciousness. The only thing which can be retained is the way in which the imaginative experience was reached. The conditions can be reconstructed, thus giving rise to the experience. If we wish to see again a flower which we have already seen, we must return to it and look at it; in the same way, the inner processes leading to an imaginative experience must be recalled, if we wish to have this experience again.

A spiritual-scientific content cannot be remembered without further ado. This even applies to the most elementary things in honest spiritual-scientific investigation. Here again, allow me to mention something personal, but which is also an objective fact.

You see, what an anthroposophical investigator of spiritual science has to say, cannot, as it were, be transmitted day by day in the form of lectures, in the same way in which natural-scientific facts are generally advanced. Scientific facts can be remembered, they live in our memory and can be set forth with the aid of memory. But the facts which a spiritual-scientific investigator has to advance, must come from his inner living experience. He cannot prepare himself in the same way in which one generally prepares lectures based on memory. The only thing he can do is to reconstruct the conditions enabling him to experience the most elementary facts of spiritual science.

We should realise that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy leads in its very first steps to a development of otherwise dormant forces of the human soul, and we should not think that any results can be reached in regard to higher worlds through ordinary philosophical speculations.

The imaginative knowledge described to you just now, leads, as already stated, to a kind of self-knowledge. Finally it leads us to a great tableau in which we simultaneously survey all the organic elements that have built up our whole life from our earthly birth onwards. Inwardly we perceive the creative formative forces which build up the human being and we first perceive them in connection with our own self.

We can see this tableau in the same way in which certain people in danger of death (even natural-scientific thinkers admit this), for instance, when they are drowning, see before them a weaving, living picture of their past life; we do not however, see it as a memory-picture, we do not look upon the small details of life, but we survey its chief facts, the forces which made us progress. We see, as it were, a deeper memory-tableau. At the same time, this tableau does not merely set before us the ordinary thinking life of the soul, but that inner life which works upon the physical organism from the soul.

This conception leads to a standpoint that makes it appear childish that even in the first decades of the 19th century people should have spoken in a speculative way of vital forces, of vitalism. Anthroposophy does not speak of such a vital force. It speaks instead of the conception of life, of what I call the etheric body, or body of formative forces, which represents on the one hand a soul-element, and on the other, a condensed, intensified soul-element which works upon the physical organism.

We are thus led to a deeper knowledge of the soul and also to a deeper knowledge of the way in which the soul-element works within the organism. Let me now give you an example, an elementary but characteristic example:

You know that recognised modern psychology does not go beyond certain speculative ideas in regard to the connections which exist between the soul and the body. The soul is described as if it were the body’s motive force, and scientists with a more materialistic mentality consider the body as a plus, which as it were, produces the soul. Most frequently of all modern psycho-physicists speak of parallelism, viz., that psychic phenomena and bodily phenomena follow a parallel course, and so forth. But all these things are mere speculations, simply based on the fact that people are unwilling to penetrate with the scientific spirit that prevails elsewhere into the psychical-bodily life of man.

You are all acquainted with the physical concept of latent heat contained in every object, but which does not manifest itself as heat. But this heat can be freed, it is said, if certain conditions are created, and in that case it manifests itself. But before the heat appeared, it existed in the objects as a latent force, where it gives rise to something which does not reveal itself outwardly through heat-processes. We therefore speak of latent heat and of heat which is set free.

This conception — of course, duly modified and extended — should be applied to the soul-life, by observing it in a concrete way, and not speculatively. We can observe the child’s growth until the time of its second dentition around the seventh year. Far more than one generally thinks is connected with this second dentition. If we observe the soul-bodily processes in an unprejudiced way, we can see that after the second dentition the child’s whole way of thinking, its whole life of representation and feeling, in fact the whole life of the soul, undergoes a complete change.

When the child changes its teeth, it reaches a final point in regard to a certain direction of life. After the second dentition, the human being no longer requires certain forces for the development of his physical organism which he formerly required. The forces which push out (if I may use this trivial expression) the second teeth are not merely localised in the human head, but they are forces which work in the whole body and manifest themselves locally when the second teeth appear. They exist however in the whole physical organism.

Those who observe this whole process as objectively as natural scientists are accustomed to observe and think in natural science, reach the point of recognising that the forces which push out the second teeth were latent forces, bound up with the physical organism. They gave the child’s physical body its structure, but with the second dentition they were set free, so that they can now appear in the child as soul-spiritual forces.

Here we may see concretely how the soul-spiritual forces and the bodily organisation are inter-related. This is not seen speculatively, but in a real, concrete way. Those who only wish to observe the soul at one moment and then the body, may speculate or experiment for a long time, yet they will only come to quite abstract results in regard to the connection which exists between the soul and the body. But those who observe the processes in the sequence of time, will find that after the second dentition certain soul-forces appear in the child revealing a more sharply outlined concept of memory, more sharply outlined feelings, and they will know that these are forces in the soul which were set free and which now manifest, whereas formerly they were submerged in the physical organism. Observations, not mere speculative thought, shows them the connection between the body and the soul.

This example shows us how we should investigate the inter-activity of soul and body with the aid of imaginative thought. We gain insight into the activity of the soul-spiritual forces in the physical-bodily organisation. This is what is presented in the tableau which I have described.

If we have reached the point of developing this imaginative way of thinking, we must proceed further with the strength thus gained. Even as a muscle grows stronger through practice, so the thinking power grows stronger if we do these exercises which are described in greater detail in the books mentioned. If we develop within us an intensified thinking endowed with plastic forces which lives in time, other forces of our soul may be developed and intensified.

The ordinary thoughts of life come and go, or we try to get rid of them either by discarding them from our soul, or the organism sees to it that we forget them, and so forth. But the thoughts of the kind described, which are called up in our consciousness for the sake of gaining higher knowledge, cannot be blotted out as easily as ordinary thoughts. A great effort must be made to forget them. This is a second kind of exercise: an artificial forgetting, as it were, an artificial suppression of thought.

If we have practised this artificial suppression of thought for a sufficiently long time, corresponding to our individual development and predispositions, we become able to suppress the whole tableau of which I have spoken, so that our consciousness is quite empty. The only thing which should remain to us is our calm thinking power, permeated by the will. But this thinking now appears in a new form.

I have now described to you two ways of thinking: the ordinary way of thinking which is connected with space, and a way of thinking which has a growth of its own, in which one thought always grows out of the other, even as in a living organism one limb is connected with the other.

If this morphological way of thinking is practised for a certain time, we gradually develop a third way of thinking, which we need in order to ascend to a higher stage of super-sensible knowledge. We need this kind of thinking when we rise to a stage which is higher than that in which we merely survey our own organisation.

Imaginative knowledge leads us to a survey of our own organisation, so that we say to ourselves: Here on earth, the soul-spiritual element, which is super-sensible, works upon the physical body. We must use this morphological way of thinking, for otherwise it is not possible to understand what takes place in the medium of time and works upon the physical body out of a super-sensible sphere, for this is something which undergoes continual metamorphoses. Our thinking must become mobile and our thoughts must be inwardly connected with each other. Mere combining thought cannot grasp the life which proceeds from the spirit, this can only be grasped by an inwardly living thinking.

But still another way of thinking must be developed if we wish to rise up to the next stage of super-sensible knowledge. Let me use an example in order to explain this to you. Even this example is difficult to penetrate, but I think you will be able to grasp what I mean.

Let us bear in mind the fact that Goethe tried to interpret the single cranial bones as metamorphoses of the vertebrae. In the single bones of the skull Goethe perceived transformations of the vertebra. Though somewhat modified, modern science also adopts this view, but it is no longer entirely in keeping with Goethe’s conception; nevertheless this view is valid to-day.

It does not suffice, however, to consider the purely morphological derivation of the cranial bones. We must go further if we wish to understand the relationship of the human head to the remaining human organism (we will restrict ourselves to the skeleton). We must not only envisage a transformation, but something very different. Let us ask, for instance: What relation exists between the bony system of the arms or legs and the bony system of the cranial bones, of the bones of the head? Here it is the case that the metamorphoses through which one form gives rise to the other can only be grasped if we bear in mind that this is not only a spatial metamorphosis taking place within the medium of time, but that quite another process takes place which is very difficult to understand, namely, a kind of turning over, a reversal.

If you wish to grasp the mutual relation between the bones of the leg and the bones of the skull, you must compare the external surface of the skull with the inner surface of a hollow bone, let us say of the upper thigh bone. This means that the inner side of the thigh bone must be turned inside out, so that also its elasticity would change; its inner surface would in that case be turned outwards and correspond to the external surface of a cranial bone; and vice versa, the outer surface of the thigh bone would not correspond to the outer surface of the cranium, but to its inner surface.

Imagine this process of metamorphosis like a glove which is turned inside out, but at the same time the elasticity of the glove undergoes a change. A new form arises. It is as if the glove is not only turned inside out, but takes on quite a different shape through the new elasticity.

You see, as a first indication of this third kind of thinking I must bring before you a very complicated process. This kind of thinking does not only live in constantly changing forms, but it is able to reverse the inner structure, so as to change its form.

This can only be achieved through the fact that now our thinking no longer lives in the medium of time, for in this process of reversion the subject of our thoughts transcends space and time and penetrates into a reality which lies beyond space and time.

I know that we cannot immediately become familiar with this third kind of thinking, which differs so greatly from the combining and the plastic ways of thinking. It is not easy to penetrate into this third kind of thinking, which dives down, as it were, into spacelessness and timelessness; it is not easy to understand that it reappears in a changed form turned inside out.

Anthroposophy does not wish to speak of the higher worlds in the amateurish way adopted by so many people, but because Anthroposophy is as honest as any other honest science it must point out that it is not only necessary to abandon the sphere of higher science, but that it is even necessary to acquire a completely new way of thinking.

If we wish to advance to a qualitative thinking man’s inner forces must be held together in an entirely different way, for the whole quality of our thinking undergoes a change during this process of reversal, when the inner is turned into the outer.

When we succeed in submerging our thought into a qualitative element, it is possible to ascend to that stage of knowledge of the super-sensible worlds which follows the stage of imaginative thought.

If the tableau of which I have spoken has been suppressed, so that an empty consciousness is established, then we have an empty consciousness for a certain time; this can be achieved if we suppress merely a concept. But when such a reality is suppressed, when we suppress forces which are constantly at the service of growth and nutrition during our earthly existence, we dive down into a completely new world. We then really are in the higher worlds and the ordinary physical world lies behind us like a memory. We must have it as a memory, for otherwise we should not be of sound mind; without memory we should be psychopaths, subjected to hallucinations and to illusions.

If we proceed in the right way along the path of spiritual investigation, we maintain our calm thoughtful consciousness permeated by the will even when we ascend to the highest worlds and there can be no question of falling a prey to hallucinations or suggestions.

When we are subjected to hallucinations or suggestions, the ordinary consciousness is entirely supplanted by a pathological consciousness. In the state of consciousness which Anthroposophy strives to reach for the attainment of knowledge of higher worlds, the essential thing is to maintain our ordinary consciousness in its full extent, so that we keep our sound common sense and our calm state of mind while ascending to the higher worlds. Even the thinking strengthened with the reversion of thought already mentioned, or the super-morphological thought, even this exists only for the sake of penetrating in full consciousness into the higher worlds. We then really experience the higher worlds and their spiritual contents.

Through the imaginative consciousness which enables us to gain a conception of the forces working in us from birth onwards, a conception of super-sensible forces working upon the physical body, we gain knowledge of that part of our being which existed before our birth, or before we were conceived within the physical world, when we still lived in a soul-spiritual world surrounded by soul-spiritual beings, even as here on earth, during the time between birth and death, we are surrounded by physical beings.

In short, we experience the eternal kernel of man’s being, when we look behind birth into that stage of existence through which we passed before the earth received us into the physical stream of heredity; we experience man’s eternal being in his spiritual environment.

Thus it is neither speculation, nor a system of thought that has led us to a knowledge of the higher worlds; it is a beholding. Even as the development of the body, from the embryonic stage onwards, gives us a conception of the external physical world, so the steps described to you in principle (details can be found in the books I have mentioned) lead us to a knowledge of soul-processes and enable us to live in a spiritual world in which we existed before birth and into which we enter when we pass through the portal of death. Objective vision leads to a knowledge of the higher worlds.

I have now described to you in the first place a path of knowledge. But this is incompletely described if it is merely described as a path of knowledge, for the experiences which we gain call for something besides a mere activity of thought. Though it may be difficult to acquire these two higher forms of thinking, there is something else which presents far greater difficulties.

If here in the physical world we preferably cling to observation and experiments, it is because in a certain way this sets our mind at rest in regard to the reality of our knowledge. From the standpoint of a theory of knowledge one may dispute about the true nature of sense-perceptions and their relation to reality, etc., but this is not the point just now; the point is that sense-perception gives us a guarantee for the truth of our soul’s experience, the reflected images of our sense-perceptions which arise in the soul; we set our minds at rest by leaning upon the external reality.

The disease of spiritism has arisen in recent times; which in just such a way seeks to establish the reality of the spiritual by external observation. One cannot of course be a stronger materialist than by being a spiritist. Spiritism is but the enhanced form of materialism, for in spiritism people not only wish to establish the reality of physical substance, which they perhaps consider as the only reality, but they even wish to show that the spirit appears in the same form as matter, i.e. that the spirit itself is nothing but matter. What arises in the form of spiritism is the last phase of materialism and draws out of it the last consequences. [See Rudolf Steiner: “Geschichte des Spiritismus” and “Geschichte des Hypnotismus and Sonnambulismus.”]

Real spiritual science seeks for an ascent into the spiritual worlds and not a drawing down of the spiritual worlds into material processes.

But when we ascend to the spiritual world in the manner described we no longer have the support which the external world provides, as it were, for our soul-experiences. We need something which gives the certainty that we are not floating in emptiness, that our soul-experiences in the higher worlds are not mere fancies; we need a support in the same way in which the external sense perceptions give us a support in our ordinary life. This again can only be reached through the development of inner forces.

Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that the forces which we already have in ordinary life (one has to speak in terms taken from ordinary life) suffice. We must develop forces even in spheres which are not the spheres of thought, in order to reach not only vision, but vision rooted in reality.

The assurance which our sense-perceptions provide from outside, consists in the fact that one sense supports the other. When we have an impression of sound or of sight, we do not immediately know whether this is a hallucination or not. We can only be sure of the impression gained, when we are supported — I might say — by the sense of gravitation, when another sense comes to our aid, when an impression which is not sufficiently guaranteed by the sense of sight or hearing can be supported by some other sense.

What is it that gives us the right to speak of reality in the physical world? Several things may be taken into consideration. I should have to speak for hours from the standpoint of a theory of knowledge (of course, I cannot do this now) in order to prove the fact which I now briefly wish to summarize. But if you follow the corresponding train of thought you will see that the following fact can be accepted: In the physical world we designate a fact as “real” when it influences us in such a way that we should be obliged to deny our own existence were we to deny the existence of that thing. If you not only hear the sound of a bell, but if you can touch it and discover its connection with other things, you would have to blot out your own self if you were not able to say that the external object is real, when you experience its reality within your soul. An external object can be called real, if we should have to deny our own reality in denying the reality of the object.

What we describe as reality is therefore intimately related with our own reality. That is why forces must also be drawn out of our own reality, which is a soul-spiritual reality, and these moral forces may be compared with an object which I grasp and which shows itself to be heavy. Within our own being we must seek supporting forces for the reality of the spiritual worlds into which we penetrate in the way I have described.

This can only be done if we develop certain moral qualities which we already have in our ordinary ethical attitude in life; the moral forces must be strengthened in the same way in which we strengthen the force of thought. These moral forces should not only be developed for the sake of our ethical life, they must be further strengthened.

Let me now speak to you only of two kinds. The first is what we call moral courage, or courage in general; this should be intensified in the same way in which the forces of thinking are intensified. The forces of courage within us may be intensified if the retrospective tableau arising through imagination is placed before the soul and we then look upon it and experience it in the right way. We then discover a higher kind of courage in our own life; when diving down into this tableau we discover inner forces of courage which are greater than those which we generally use in our external life, which is more or less passive. This courage should be intensified.

There is another moral force which should be intensified. Whereas courage is generally connected with the life of feeling and resembles an inner sense of sureness, a certain inner power, it is necessary to unfold certain forces which are connected with the will and which consist, for example, in the fact that at certain given moments we determine to do something, which we set about to do at some later time, by establishing with an iron will the conditions which enable us to carry out our resolution. An Anthroposophical spiritual investigator should carry out these exercises quite systematically. He should inwardly connect his present will-impulses with impulses that were in him at a former time.

In our ordinary life we give ourselves up to the present. But in the life which is to bring us into higher worlds we must visualise with an inner continuity of the will. Throughout many years we should be able to hold a purpose in mind and carry out at some later time things which we once resolved to do. This unfolds strong forces which support the will; it develops a strong current of volition which we ourselves establish within us.

This a special form of self-discipline. We are then no longer dependent on external circumstances or on ideals which induce us to do certain things, but by the will-impulse we inwardly connect in a soul-spiritual manner a later moment of our soul-life with an earlier moment. If a higher form of courage unfolds within our soul, if we develop the continuity of our will-impulses so that our will-impulses endure over the gulfs of time then we come to the point of ascending into the higher worlds, we shall be able to verify the reality of what we then perceive in the same way in which we do this in regard to the external physical world. The reality which we perceive there must be verified with the aid of inwardly intensified forces.

Hence the path leading to the spiritual worlds is not the development of a one-sided cognitive force, but the development of the whole human being in the direction of thinking, feeling and will, which implies a striving after knowledge, an aesthetic striving and an ethical striving. This path leading to the higher worlds is at the same time a religious immersion, a religious deepening of the human being.

There is one essential point which should be borne in mind: In modern times, even as through science to a great extent doubts have arisen in regard to the spiritual worlds, so through science these spiritual worlds must be conquered again. It is shortsighted to believe that the religious life must suffer through the fact that it is possible to ascend to the spiritual worlds with the same clear consciousness that we have in the physical world.

Those who advance criticism in this respect, generally do so because they think that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy remains within the limits of the intellect and rationalism. This is not the case. The whole human being, with his feeling and his will, flows into the development of thought, which is acquired in the manner I have described. The path leading to higher worlds indicated by the spiritual science of Anthro­posophy is the unfolding and the development of the whole human being. Even as in ordinary physical life thinking grows out of the organism like a flower, so higher knowledge grows out of the fully developed human being, who unfolds all his forces harmoniously and intensively along the path leading to the higher worlds.

Through the development of mere thinking we only come to a world of images. If reality is to be perceived within this world of images, we must develop in the way I have indicated the courage contained in moral forces, the will contained in our character, our own individual will which we maintain throughout periods of time.

These two forces, and others, which you will find described in the books already mentioned before, should be intensified. The human being as a whole must be led in a soul-spiritual way into those other worlds in which he lives before he is conceived by physical forces and enters physical life on earth or in which he lives after passing through the portal of death.

If we wish to ascend to this life with knowledge, if we wish to acquire the vision of the super-sensible worlds, the whole soul-spiritual being of man must be led towards them — not only some vague part of him which desires to become acquainted with these worlds theoretically.

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy can therefore fructify the whole life of man. Anthroposophy does not seek in some abstruse mystical way to estrange us from the world, but strives on the contrary to lead us into practical life, into a life which is truly practical. That is why it can be so fruitful for science and art, social and religious life—in short, for the most different spheres of life.

I can only give a few indications in this connection.

If we can see the life-tableau of retrospective vision of which I have spoken, a tableau which is in reality a structure of formative forces moving in the stream of time, if we can recognise this structure, we can also see how the human body arises out of this system of forces and how it develops. For it is only an external illusion to speak of the heart, the lungs, etc.; in reality, the heart is a process, and the external spatial form of the heart is merely the process which is held fast for a time. This applies to every organ. What is retained for a moment within a certain shape, can be perceived. But we cannot perceive the incessant life-process giving rise to health and illness unless we attain to a knowledge of the super-sensible formative forces of the body.

Medicine, and therapy in particular, can be essentially fructified by spiritual science, and we have already opened Clinical-therapeutic Institutes in Stuttgart and Dornach where the sickness of humanity can benefit from knowledge derived from Anthroposophy.

Spiritual science can fructify life in many other directions. When a School for Spiritual Science was opened at Dornach it was not possible to give it any ordinary kind of frame. What the friends of our anthroposophical world-conception had in mind when they wished to erect a building for a school of spiritual science was something quite special. Let me explain this by a comparison.

Take a nut with its shell. An unprejudiced person will think that the nut’s shell must have the form which it has, because the nut itself has a definite form. The shell forms part of the nut. When a spiritual world-conception, such as that contained in the Anthroposophical movement, is called into life, the members may find themselves in the position to erect a building and they may think: Let us go to an architect who will draw us a plan in this or in that style, in accordance with traditional customs, or something thought out which would not in any way be connected with the things which are to be cultivated within it — just as if the nut’s shell were not to fit the nut!

Since Anthroposophy is not a mere theory, and does not merely live in words, the Anthroposophical Movement can therefore not proceed in this way, not even in regard to its frame. At Dornach, the words which resound from the speaker’s platform, the scenes on the stage, whatever art is presented through word or movement from the stage, must have exactly the same inner essential style as that which is expressed in the walls, in the external architecture of the Building. Even as the shell of the nut is formed by the same forces which formed the nut, so the Anthroposophical realities which come to expression in the world must have an artistic frame and call into being a new style of architecture.

It was therefore an organic necessity for a new style of architecture to arise in Dornach. This new style is simply the externally visible part of the reality which lives soul-spiritually in the world. One will be able to see what is the intention of Anthroposophy to-day just through the fructifying influence which it exercises also upon the artistic spheres of life.

In Eurhythmy, which is only a beginning, we called into life a human art of movement in which the single artists or the groups of artists do not dance or pantomime, but in which the forms of movement constitute a speech based on laws just as strict as those of spoken language, or a visible song, similar to that which one ordinarily hears in the form of sound. Eurhythmy is entirely drawn out of the law of man, in spirit, soul and body.

Through Anthroposophy we have thus been able to exercise a fructifying influence on many different spheres of art.

In my Threefold State the attempt has been made to face the great social problems of the present time from the anthroposophical standpoint. Those who bear in mind that from the anthroposophical standpoint the whole human being has to be taken into account in the social question, and not only that part which is accessible to a rationalistic science, to Marxism and similar directions of thought, must admit that forces which penetrate into the higher spiritual worlds can also penetrate into the social laws of human life, for these in fact are soul-spiritual laws pertaining to the higher worlds; they can also lead us to laws which are able to call into existence satisfactory social conditions in human life. For it is a spiritual element which unites human beings in their life in common, and physical links are simply formed out of the spiritual.

The terrible catastrophe of the present time and the decadent forces which now hold sway are largely due to the fact that people forget this spiritual foundation. Humanity must again permeate itself with the spirit.

Anthroposophy has also had a fructifying influence on education, pedagogy. At the Waldorf School at Stuttgart, founded by Emil Molt, the results of anthroposophical research in the direction of a true knowledge of man are applied to the developing human being, to the child. The paths which lead us to the higher worlds also enable us to observe the child year by year and week by week, as it develops from birth to puberty; it enables us to see in the child the forces which it brought with it from the spiritual worlds and which the teacher or the educator must conjure forth.

I can only give a few indications in this direction, for at the Waldorf School we have tried to develop all these things in detail into an art of education. These are a few examples showing how Anthroposophy can influence different spheres of life.

I already told you that Anthroposophy can also fructify religious life, because it leads in a scientific way to the higher worlds and because it shows us the true nature of man’s eternal being which he bears in his transient earthly existence as an ever-developing spiritual element not accessible to the ordinary forces of cognition. It shows this eternal essence in its own element, in the super-sensible worlds. Higher vision can discover it there. Here it is concealed, because when it enters earthly life through birth it becomes absorbed by the physical form. But this fact does not deprive the spirit of its living forces, for the physical substance only conceals it. The spiritual can however be perceived in physical substance, in matter. An aid to such an insight is provided by the paths leading to the super-sensible worlds, which Anthroposophy seeks to indicate.

Anthroposophy does not wish on this account to lead us away from the ordinary world into asceticism, but it opens out the paths to the spirit, to the super-sensible worlds in such a way that with the aid of the spirit we can once more form and shape material, practical life.

The essential thing is to recognise a creative power in the spirit. The spiritual world would be weak indeed were we to experience it only as an uncreative element transcending matter. There are many people who say: The physical aspect of the world is something low, let us rise above it; let us abandon matter in order to reach high spiritual spheres.

Many things assuredly must be overcome in order to attain a knowledge of this spirit, but when we have reached it through love (and it can only be reached through love, through religious devotion and warmth, for the development of the moral capacities mentioned above lead us, through love, into the super-sensible worlds) then we take hold of the spiritual, super-sensible essence as we approach matter. For the strong spiritual element is not one which flees matter, but one which forms matter, which can be spiritually active within matter. This is one aspect.

On the other hand let me tell you one other thing which should be borne in mind, my dear fellow-students, namely that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy, as it is meant here, treads the paths leading to the super-sensible worlds in such a way that the results obtained along these paths do not stand outside the ordinary natural-scientific facts and their operations, but penetrate them as a soul-spiritual force.

Even as a person is a full human being in the true meaning of the word because here on earth he lives in a physical body which bears within it a soul-spiritual element, so science can only be science in the full meaning of the word if it is not a mere knowledge of the external, physical reality, but if this knowledge can be permeated by the knowledge of the spiritual worlds. For this reason the spiritual science of Anthroposophy wishes to set itself within the other science by meeting the demands of the being and nature both of man and of the universe. Even as in his physical life man must bear within him spirit and soul, so a real spiritual science which opens up true reliable ways into the super-sensible spiritual worlds, must become the spirit and soul of ordinary science dealing with the physical world. And even as the spirit and the soul in man do not fight or rebel against the body, but should harmonise with it fully, so the spiritual science of Anthroposophy should be in full harmony with real, genuine knowledge of nature and history.

I shall now continue, in a certain direction, the more elementary considerations recently begun. In the first lecture of this series I drew your attention to the heart's real, inner need of finding, or at least seeking, the paths of the soul to the spiritual world. I spoke of this need meeting man from two directions: from the side of Nature, and from the side of inner experience.

Today we will again place these two aspects of human life before us in a quite elementary way. We shall then see that impulses from the subconscious are really active in all man's striving for knowledge in response to the needs of life, in his artistic aims and religious aspirations.

You can quite easily study the opposition, to which I here refer, in yourselves at any moment.

Take one quite simple fact. You are looking, let us say, at some part of your body—your hand, for example. In so far as the act of cognition itself is concerned you look at your hand exactly as at a crystal, or plant, or any other natural object. But when you look at this part of your body and go through life with this perception, you encounter that seriously disturbing fact which intrudes on all human experience and of which I spoke. You find that what you see will one day be a corpse; external Nature, on receiving it, has not the power to do anything else than destroy it. The moment man has become a corpse within the physical world and has been handed over to the elements in any form, there is no longer any possibility that the human form, which has been impressed on all the substances visible in his body, will be able to maintain itself.

All the forces of Nature which you can make the subject of any scientific study are only able to destroy man, never to build him up. Every unprejudiced study that is not guided by theory but controlled by life itself, leads us to say: We look at Nature around us in so far it is intelligible. (We will not speak, for the present, of what external cognition cannot grasp.) As civilised people of today we feel we have advanced very far indeed, for we have discovered so many laws of Nature. This talk of progress is, indeed, perfectly justified. Nevertheless, it is a fact that all these laws of Nature are, by their mode of operation, only able to destroy man, never to build him up. Human insight is unable, at first, to discover anything in the external world except laws of Nature which destroy man.

Let us now look at our inner life. We experience what we call our psychical life, i.e. our thinking, which can confront us fairly clearly, our feeling, which is less clearly experienced, and our willing, which is quite hidden from us. For, with ordinary consciousness, no one can claim insight into the way an intention—to pick up an object, let us say—works down into this very complicated organism of muscle and nerve in order to move, at length, arms and legs. What it is that here works down into the organism, between the formation of the thought and the perception of the lifted object, is hidden in complete darkness. But an indefinite impulse takes place in us, saying: I will this. So we ascribe will to ourselves and, on surveying our inner life, speak of thinking, feeling and willing.

But there is another side, and this introduces us again—in a certain sense—to what is deeply disturbing. We see that all this soul life of man is submerged whenever he sleeps and arises anew when he wakes. If we want to use a comparison we may well say: The soul life is like a flame which I kindle and extinguish again. But we see more. We see this soul life destroyed when certain organs are destroyed. Moreover, it is dependent on bodily development; being dreamlike in a little child and becoming gradually clearer and clearer, more and more awake. This increase in clarity and awareness goes hand in hand with the development of the body; and when we grow old our soul life becomes weaker again. The life of the soul thus keeps step with the growth and decay of the body. We see it light up and die away.

But, however sure we may be that our soul, though dependent in its manifestations on the physical organism, has its own life, its own existence, this is not all we can say about it. It contains an element man must value above all else in life, for his whole manhood—his human dignity—depends on this. I refer to the moral element.

We cannot deduce moral laws from Nature however far we may explore it. They have to be experienced entirely within the soul; there, too, we must be able to obey them. The conflict and settlement must therefore take place entirely within the soul. And we must regard it as a kind of ideal for the moral life to be able, as human beings, to obey moral principles which are not forced upon us. Yet man cannot become an ‘abstract being’ only obeying laws. The moral life does not begin until emotions, impulses, instincts, passions, outbursts of temperament, etc., are subordinated to the settlement, reached entirely within the soul, between moral laws grasped in a purely spiritual way and the soul itself.

The moment we become truly conscious of our human dignity and feel we cannot be like beings driven by necessity, we rise to a world quite different from the world of Nature.

Now the disturbing element that, as long as there has been human evolution at all, has led men to strive beyond the life immediately visible, really springs from these two laws—however many subconscious and unconscious factors may be involved: We see, on the one hand, man's bodily being, but it belongs to Nature that can only destroy it; and, on the other hand, we are inwardly aware of ourselves as soul beings who light up and fade away, yet are bound up with what is most valuable in us—the moral element.

It can only be ascribed to a fundamental insincerity of our civilisation that people deceive themselves so terribly, turning a blind eye to this direct opposition between outer perception and inner experience. If we understand ourselves, if we refuse to be confined and constricted by the shackles which our education, with a definite aim in view, imposes upon us, if we free ourselves a little from these constraints we say at once: Man! you bear within you your soul life—your thinking, feeling and willing. All this is connected with the moral world which you must value above all else—perhaps with the religious source of all existence on which this moral world itself depends. But where is this inner life of moral adjustments when you sleep?

Of course, one can spin philosophic fantasies or fantastic philosophies about these things. One may then say: Man has a secure basis in his ego (i.e. in his ordinary ego-consciousness). The ego begins to think in St. Augustine, continues through Descartes, and attains a somewhat coquettish expression in Bergsonism today. But every sleep refutes this. For, from the moment we fall asleep to the moment of waking, a certain time elapses; and when, in the waking state, we look back on this interval of time, we do not find the ego qua experience. It was extinguished. And yet it is connected with what is most valuable in our lives—the moral element!

Thus we must say: Our body, whose existence we are rudely forced to admit, is certainly not a product of Nature, which has only the power to destroy and disintegrate it. On the other hand, our own soul life eludes us when we sleep, and is dependent on every rising and falling tide of our bodily life. As soon as we free ourselves a little from the constraints imposed on civilised man by his education today, we see at once that every religious or artistic aspiration—in fact, any higher striving—no matter how many subconscious and unconscious elements be involved, depends, throughout all human evolution, on these antitheses.

Of course, millions and millions of people do not realise this clearly. But is it necessary that what becomes a riddle of life for a man be clearly recognised as such? If people had to live by what they are clear about they would soon die. It is really the contributions to the general mood from unclear, subconscious depths that compose the main stream of our life. We should not say that he alone feels the riddles of life who can formulate them in an intellectually clear way and lay them before us: first riddle, second riddle, etc. Indeed, such people are the shallowest.

Someone may come who has this or that to talk over with us. Perhaps it is some quite ordinary matter. He speaks with a definite aim in view, but is not quite happy about it. He wants something, and yet does not want it; he cannot come to a decision. He is not quite happy about his own thoughts. To what is this due? It comes from the feeling of uncertainty, in the subconscious depths of his being, about the real basis of man's true being and worth. He feels life's riddles because of the polar antithesis I have described.

Thus we can find support neither in the corporeal, nor in the spiritual as we experience it. For the spiritual always reveals itself as something that lights up and dies down, and the body is recognised as coming from Nature which can, however, only destroy it.

So man stands between two riddles. He looks outwards and perceives his physical body, but this is a perpetual riddle to him. He is aware of his psycho-spiritual life, but this, too, is a perpetual riddle. But the greatest riddle is this: If I really experience a moral impulse and have to set my legs in motion to do something towards its realisation, it means—of course—I must move my body. Let us say the impulse is one of goodwill. At first this is really experienced entirely within the soul, i.e. purely psychically. How, now, does this impulse of goodwill shoot down into the body? How does a moral impulse come to move bones by muscles? Ordinary consciousness cannot comprehend this. One may regard such a discussion as theoretical, and say: We leave that to philosophers; they will think about it. Our civilisation usually leaves this question to its thinkers, and then despises—or, at least, values but little—what they say. Well; this satisfies the head only, not the heart. The human heart feels a nervous unrest and finds no joy in life, no firm foundation, no security. With the form man's thinking has taken since the first third of the fifteenth century magnificent results in the domain of external science have been achieved, but nothing has or can be contributed towards a solution of these two riddles—that of man's physical body and that of his psychical life. It is just from a clear insight into these things that Anthroposophy comes forward, saying: True; man's thinking, in the form it has so far actually taken, is powerless in the face of Reality. However much we think, we cannot in the very least influence an external process of nature by our thinking.

Moreover, we cannot, by mere thinking, influence our own ‘will-organism’. To feel deeply the powerlessness of this thinking is to receive the impulse to transcend it.

But one cannot transcend it by spinning fantasies. There is no starting point but thought; you cannot begin to think about the world except by thinking. Our thinking, however, is not fitted for this. So we are unavoidably led by life itself to find—from this starting point in thought—a way by which our thinking may penetrate more deeply into existence—into Reality. This way is only to be found in what is described as meditation—for example, in my book: Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

Today we will only describe this path in bare outline, for we intend to give the skeleton of a whole anthroposophical structure. We will begin again where we began twenty years ago.

Meditation, we may say, consists in experiencing thinking in another way than usual. Today one allows oneself to be stimulated from without; one surrenders to external reality. And in seeing, hearing, grasping, etc., one notices that the reception of external impressions is continued—to a certain extent—in thoughts. One's attitude is passive—one surrenders to the world and the thoughts come. We never get further in this way. We must begin to experience thinking. One does this by taking a thought that is easily comprehended, letting it stay in one's consciousness, and concentrating one's whole consciousness upon it.

Now it does not matter at all what the thought may signify for the external world. The point is simply that we concentrate our consciousness on this one thought, ignoring every other experience. I say it must be a comprehensible thought—a simple thought, that can be ‘seen’ from all sides [überschaubar]. A very, very learned man once asked me how one meditates. I gave him an exceedingly simple thought. I told him it did not matter whether the thought referred to any external reality. I told him to think: Wisdom is in the light. He was to apply the whole force of his soul again and again to the thought: Wisdom is in the light. Whether this be true or false is not the point. It matters just as little whether an object that I set in motion, again and again, by exerting my arm, be of far-reaching importance or a game; I strengthen the muscles of my arm thereby. So, too, we strengthen our thinking when we exert ourselves, again and again, to per-form the above activity, irrespective of what the thought may signify. If we strenuously endeavour, again and again, to make it present in our consciousness and concentrate our whole soul life upon it, we strengthen our soul life just as we strengthen the muscular force of our arm if we apply it again and again to the same action. But we must choose a thought that is easily surveyed; otherwise we are exposed to all possible tricks of our own organisation. People do not believe how strong is the suggestive power of unconscious echoes of past experiences and the like. The moment we entertain a more complicated thought demonic powers approach from all sides, suggesting this or that to our consciousness. One can only be sure that one is living in one's meditation in the full awareness of normal, conscious life, if one really takes a completely surveyable thought that can contain nothing but what one is actually thinking.

If we contrive to meditate in this way, all manner of people may say we are succumbing to auto-suggestion or the like, but they will be talking nonsense. It all turns on our success in holding a ‘transparent’ thought—not one that works in us through sub-conscious impulses in some way or other. By such concentration one strengthens and intensifies his soul life—in so far as this is a life in thought. Of course, it will depend on a man's capacities, as I have often said; in the case of one man it will take a long time, in the case of another it will happen quickly. But, after a certain time, the result will be that he no longer experiences his thinking as in ordinary consciousness. In ordinary consciousness our thoughts stand there powerless; they are ‘just thoughts’. But through such concentration one really comes to experience thoughts as inner being [Sein], just as one experiences the tension of a muscle—the act of reaching out to grasp an object. Thinking becomes a reality in us; we experience, on developing ourselves further and further, a second man within us of whom we knew nothing before.

The moment now arrives when you say to yourself: True, I am this human being who, to begin with, can look at himself externally as one looks at the things of nature; I feel inwardly, but very dimly, the tensions of my muscles, but I do not really know how my thoughts shoot down into them. But after strengthening your thinking in the way described, you feel your strengthened thinking flowing, streaming, pulsating within you; you feel the second man. This is, to begin with, an abstract characterisation. The main thing is that the moment you feel this second man within you, supra-terrestrial things begin to concern you in the way only terrestrial things did before. In this moment, when you feel your thought take on inner life—when you feel its flow as you feel the flow of your breath when you pay heed to it—you become aware of something new in your whole being. Formerly you felt for example: I am standing on my legs. The ground is below and supports me. If it were not there, if the earth did not offer me this support, I would sink into bottomless space. I am standing on something. After you have intensified your thinking and come to feel the second man within, your earthly environment begins to interest you less than before. This only holds, however, for the moments in which you give special attention to the second man. One does not become a dreamer if one advances to these stages of knowledge in a sincere and fully conscious way. One can quite easily return, with all one's wonted skill, to the world of ordinary life. One does not become a visionary and say: Oh! I have learnt to know the spiritual world; the earthly is unreal and of less value. From now on I shall only concern myself with the spiritual world. On a true, spiritual path one does not become like that, but learns to value external life more than ever when one returns to it. Apart from this, the moments in which one transcends external life in the way described and fixes attention on the second man one has discovered cannot be maintained for long. To fix one's attention in this way and with inner sincerity demands great effort, and this can only be sustained for a certain time which is usually not very long.

Now, in turning our attention to the second man, we find at the same time, that we begin to value the spatial environment of the earth as much as what is on the earth itself. We know that the crust of the earth supports us, and the various kingdoms of Nature provide the substances we must eat if our body is to receive through food the repeated stimulus it needs. We know that we are connected with terrestrial Nature in this way. We must go into the garden to pick cabbages, cook and eat them; and we know that we need what is out there in the garden and that it is connected with our ‘first’ or physical man. In just the same way we learn to know what the rays of the sun, the light of the moon and the twinkling of the stars around the earth are to us. Gradually we attain one possible way of thinking of the spatial environment of the earth in relation to our ‘second man’, as we formerly thought of our first (physical) body in relation to its physical environment.

And now we say to ourselves: What you bear within you as muscles, bones, lung, liver, etc., is connected with the cabbage, the pheasant, etc., out there in the world. But the ‘second man’ of whom you have become conscious through strengthening your thinking, is connected with the sun and the moon and all the twinkling stars—with the spatial environment of the earth. We become more familiar with this environment than we usually are with our terrestrial environment—unless we happen to be food-specialists. We really gain a second world which, to begin with, is spatial.

We learn to esteem ourselves inhabitants of the world of stars as we formerly considered ourselves inhabitants of the earth. Hitherto we did not realise that we dwell in the world of stars; for a science which does not go as far to strengthen man's thinking cannot make him conscious of his connection, through a second man, with the spatial environment of the earth—a connection similar to that between his physical body and the physical earth. Such a science does not know this. It engages in calculations; but even the calculations of Astrophysics, etc., only reveal things which do not really concern man at all, or—at most—only satisfy his curiosity. After all, what does it mean to a man, or his inner life, to know how the spiral nebular in Canes venatici may be thought of as having originated, or as still evolving? Moreover, it is not even true! Such things do not really concern us. Man's attitude towards the world of stars is like that of some disembodied spirit towards the earth—if such a spirit be thought of as coming from some region or other to visit the earth, requiring neither ground to stand on, nor nourishment, etc. But, in actual fact, from a mere citizen of the earth man becomes a citizen of the universe when he strengthens his thinking in the above way.

We now become conscious of something quite definite, which can be described in the following way. We say to ourselves: It is good that there are cabbages, corn, etc., out there; they build up our physical body (if I may use this somewhat incorrect expression in accordance with the general, but very superficial, view). I am able to discover a certain connection between my physical body and what is there outside in the various kingdoms of Nature. But with strengthened thinking I begin to discover a similar connection between the ‘second man’ who lives in me and what surrounds me in supra-terrestrial space. At length one comes to say: If I go out at night and only use my ordinary eyes, I see nothing; by day the sunlight from beyond the earth makes all objects visible. To begin with, I know nothing. If I restrict myself to the earth alone, I know: there is a cabbage, there a quartz crystal. I see both by the light of the sun, but on earth I am only interested in the difference between them.

But now I begin to know that I myself, as the second man, am made of that which makes cabbage and crystal visible. It is a most significant leap in consciousness that one takes here—a complete metamorphosis. From this point one says to oneself: If you stand on the earth you see what is physical and connected with your physical man. If you strengthen your thinking the supra-terrestrial spatial world begins to concern you and the second man you have discovered just as the earthly, physical world concerned you before. And, as you ascribe the origin of your physical body to the physical earth, you now ascribe your ‘second existence’ to the cosmic ether through whose activities earthly things become visible. From your own experience you can now speak of having a physical body and an etheric body. You see, merely to systematise and think of man as composed of various members gives no real knowledge. We only attain real insight into these things by regarding the complete metamorphosis of consciousness that results from really discovering such a second man within.

I stretch out my physical arm and my physical hand takes hold of an object. I feel, in a sense, the flowing force in this action. Through strengthening my thought I come to feel that it is inwardly mobile and now induces a kind of ‘touching’ within me—a touching that also takes place in an organism; this is the etheric organism; that finer, super-sensible organism which exists no less than the physical organism, though it is connected with the supra-terrestrial, not the terrestrial.

The moment now arrives when one is obliged to descend another step, if I may put it so. Through such ‘imaginative’ thinking as I have described we come, at first, to feel this inward touching of the second man within us; we come, too, to see this in connection with the far spaces of the universal ether. By this term you are to understand nothing but what I have just spoken of; do not read into it a meaning from some other quarter. Now, however, we must return again to ordinary consciousness if we are to get further.

You see, if we are thinking of man's physical body in the way described, we readily ask how it is really related to its environment. It is doubtless related to our physical, terrestrial environment; but how?

If we take a corpse, which is, indeed, a faithful representation of physical man—even of the living physical man—we see, in sharp contours, liver, spleen, kidney, heart, lung, bones, muscles and nerve strands. These can be drawn; they have sharp contours and resemble in this everything that occurs in solid forms. Yet there is a curious thing about this sharply outlined part of the human organism. Strictly speaking, there is nothing more deceptive than our handbooks of anatomy or physiology, for they lead people to think: there is a liver, there a heart, etc. They see all this in sharp contours and imagine this sharpness to be essential. The human organism is looked upon as a conglomeration of solid things. But it is not so at all. Ten per cent., at most, is solid; the other ninety per cent. is fluid or even gaseous. At least ninety per cent. of man, while he lives, is a column of water.

Thus we can say: In his physical body man belongs, it is true, to the solid earth—to what the ancient thinkers in particular called the ‘earth’. Then we come to what is fluid in man; and even in external science one will never gain a reasonable idea of man until one learns to distinguish the solid man from the fluid man this inner surging and weaving element which really resembles a small ocean.

But what is terrestrial can only really affect man through the solid part of him. For even in external Nature you can see, where the fluid element begins, an inner formative force working with very great uniformity. Take the whole fluid element of our earth—its water; it is a great drop. Wherever water is free to take its own form, it takes that of a drop. The fluid element tends everywhere to be drop-like.

What is earthly—or solid, as we say today—occurs in definite, individual forms, which we can recognise. What is fluid, however, tends always to take on spherical form.

Why is this? Well, if you study a drop, be it small or as large as the earth itself, you find it is an image of the whole universe. Of course, this is wrong according to the ordinary conceptions of today; nevertheless it appears so, to begin with, and we shall soon see that this appearance is justified. The universe really appears to us as a hollow sphere into which we look.

Every drop, whether small or large, appears as a reflection of the universe itself. Whether you take a drop of rain, or the waters of the earth as a whole, the surface gives you a picture of the universe. Thus, as soon as you come to what is fluid, you cannot explain it by earthly forces. If you study closely the enormous efforts that have been made to explain the spherical form of the oceans by terrestrial forces, you will realise how vain such efforts are. The spherical form of the oceans cannot be explained by terrestrial gravitational attraction and the like, but by pressure from without. Here, even in external Nature, we find we must look beyond the terrestrial. And, in doing this, we come to grasp how it is with man himself.

As long as you restrict yourself to the solid part of man, you need not look beyond the terrestrial in understanding his form. The moment you come to his fluid part, you require the second man discovered by strengthened thinking. He works in what is fluid.

We are now back again at what is terrestrial. We find in man a solid constituent; this we can explain with our ordinary thoughts. But we cannot understand the form of his fluid components unless we think of the second man as active within him—the second man whom we contact within ourselves in our strengthened thinking as the human etheric body.

Thus we can say: The physical man works in what is solid, the etheric man in what is fluid. Of course, the etheric man still remains an independent entity, but he works through the fluid medium.

We must now proceed further. Imagine we have actually got so far as to experience inwardly this strengthened thinking and, therefore, the etheric—the second—man. This means, that we are developing great inner force. Now, as you know, one can—with a little effort—not only let oneself be stimulated to think, but can even refrain from all thinking. One can stop thinking; and our physical organisation does this for us when we are tired and fall asleep. But it becomes more difficult to extinguish again, of our own accord, the strengthened thinking which results from meditation and which we have acquired by great effort. It is comparatively easy to extinguish an ordinary, powerless thought; to put away—or ‘suggest away’—the strengthened thinking one has developed demands a stronger force, for one cleaves in a more inward way to what one has thus acquired. If we succeed, however, something special occurs.

You see, our ordinary thinking is stimulated by our environment, or memories of our environment. When you follow a train of thought the world is still there; when you fall asleep the world is still there. But it is out of this very world of visible things that you have raised yourself in your strengthened thinking. You have contacted the supra-terrestrial spatial environment, and now study your relationship to the stars as you formerly studied the relation between the natural objects around you. You have now brought yourself into relation with all this, but can suppress it again. In suppressing it, however, the external world, too, is no longer there—for you have just directed all your interest to this strengthened consciousness. The outer world is not there; and you come to what one can call ‘empty consciousness’. Ordinary consciousness only knows emptiness in sleep, and then in the form of unconsciousness.

What one now attains is just this: one remains fully awake, receiving no outer sense impressions, yet not sleeping—merely ‘waking’. Yet one does not remain merely awake. For now, on exposing one's empty consciousness to the indefinite on all sides, the spiritual world proper enters. One says: the spiritual world approaches me. Whereas previously one only looked out into the supra-terrestrial physical environment—which is really an etheric environment—and saw what is spatial, something new, the actual spiritual world, now approaches through this cosmic space from all sides as from indefinite distances. At first the spiritual approaches you from the outermost part of the cosmos when you traverse the path I have described.

A third thing is now added to the former metamorphosis of consciousness. One now says: I bear with me my physical body (inner circle), my etheric body (blue) which I apprehended in my strengthened thinking, and something more that comes from the undefined—from beyond space. I ask you to notice that I am talking of the world of appearance; we shall see in the course of the next few days how far one is justified in speaking of the etheric as coming from the spatial world, and of what lies beyond us (red) coming from the Undefined. We are no longer conscious of this third component as coming from the spatial world. It streams to us through the cosmic ether and permeates us as a ‘third man’. We have now a right to speak, from our own experience, of a first or physical man, a second or etheric man, and a third or ‘astral man’. (You realise, of course, that you must not be put off by words.) We bear within us an astral or third man, who comes from the spiritual, not merely from the etheric. We can speak of the astral body or astral man.

Now we can go further. I will only indicate this in conclusion so that I can elaborate it tomorrow. We now say to ourselves: I breathe in, use my breath for my inner organisation and breathe out. But is it really true that what people think of as a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen enters and leaves us in breathing?

Well, according to the views of present day civilisation, what enters and leaves is composed of oxygen and nitrogen and some other things. But one who attains ‘empty consciousness’ and then experiences this onrush—as I might call it—of the spiritual through the ether, experiences in the breath he draws something not formed out of the ether alone, but out of the spiritual beyond it. He gradually learns to know the spiritual that plays into man in respiration. He learns to say to himself: You have a physical body; this works into what is solid—that is its medium. You have your etheric body; this works into what is fluid. But, in being a man—not merely a solid man or fluid man, but a man who bears his ‘air man’ within him—your third or astral man can work into what is airy or gaseous. It is through this material substance on the earth that your astral man operates.

Man's fluid organisation with its regular but ever changing life will never be grasped by ordinary thinking. It can only be grasped by strengthened thinking. With ordinary thinking we can only apprehend the definite contours of the physical man. And, since our anatomy and physiology merely take account of the body, they only describe ten per cent of man. But the ‘fluid man’ is in constant movement and never presents a fixed contour. At one moment it is like this, at another, like that—now long, now short. What is in constant movement cannot be grasped with the closed concepts suitable for calculations; you require concepts mobile in themselves—‘pictures’. The etheric man within the fluid man is apprehended in pictures.

The third or astral man who works in the ‘airy’ man, is apprehended not merely in pictures but in yet another way. If you advance further and further in meditation—I am here describing the Western process—you notice, after reaching a certain stage in your exercises, that your breath has become something palpably musical. You experience it as inner music; you feel as if inner music were weaving and surging through you. The third man—who is physically the airy man, spiritually the astral man—is experienced as an inner musical element. In this way you take hold of your breathing.

The oriental meditator did this directly by concentrating on his breathing, making it irregular in order to experience how it lives and weaves in man. He strove to take hold of this third man directly.

Thus we discover the nature of the third man, and are now at the stage when we can say: By deepening and strengthening our insight we learn, at first, to distinguish in man:

the physical body which lives in solid forms on the earth and is also connected with the terrestrial kingdoms,

the fluid man in whom an ever mobile, etheric element lives and which can only be apprehended in images (Bilder)—in moving, plastic images,

the astral man who has his physical copy or image (Abbild) in all that constitutes the stream of inspired air.

This stream enters and takes hold of our inner organisation, expands, works, is transformed and streams out again. That is a wonderful process of becoming. We cannot draw it; we might do so symbolically, at most, but not as it really is. You could no more draw this process than you could draw the tones of a violin. You might do this symbolically; nevertheless you must direct your musical sense to hearing inwardly—i.e. you must attend with your inner, musical ear and not merely listen to the external tones. In this inward way you must hear the weaving of your breath—must hear the human astral body. This is the third man. We apprehend him when we attain to ‘empty consciousness’ and allow this to be filled with ‘inspirations’ from without.

Now language is really cleverer than men, for it comes to us from primeval worlds. There is a deep reason why breathing was once called inspiration. In general, the words of our language say much more than we, in our abstract consciousness, feel them to contain.

These are the considerations that can lead us to the three members of man—the physical, the etheric and the astral bodies—which find expression in the solid, fluid and airy ‘men’ and have their physical counterparts in the forms of the solid man, in the changing shapes of the fluid man and in that which permeates man as an inner music, experienced through feeling. The nervous system is indeed the most beautiful representation of this inner music. It is built from out of the astral body—from out of this inner music; and for this reason it has, at a definite part, the wonderful configuration of the spinal cord with its attached nerve-strands. All this together is a wonderful, musical structure that is continually working upwards into man's head.

A primeval wisdom that was still alive in Ancient Greece, felt the presence of this wonderful instrument in man. For the air assimilated through breathing ascends through the whole spinal cord. The air we breathe in ‘enters’ the cerebro-spinal canal and pulsates upwards towards the brain. This music is actually per-formed, but it remains unconscious; only the upper rebound is in consciousness. This is the lyre of Apollo, the inner musical instrument that the instinctive, primeval wisdom still recognised in man. I have referred to these things before, but it is my present intention to give a resume of what has been developed within our society in the course of twenty-one years.

Tomorrow I shall go further and consider the fourth member of man, the ego organisation proper. I shall then show the connection between these various members of man and his life on earth and beyond it—i.e. his so-called eternal life.