The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday I was speaking to you of how man is subject to what natural science generally calls heredity, and also of how he is subject to the influences of the external world and adaptation to it. I also said that everything relating to heredity is connected with the Ahrimanic forces, and adaptation, in the widest sense, with the Luciferic forces. But I also told you how in the realm of the spiritual Beings belonging to the Cosmos, provision has been made to enable the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces to play a lawful part in human life. Something shall now be added to what has been said, recalling the content of the lecture given the day before yesterday.

We turned our minds then to how memory and everything akin to it give man his configuration as a being of soul. To a far greater extent than we imagine our configuration as beings of soul originates from our memories. Our soul has been shaped by the process whereby our experiences have become memories; we are the product of our life of memories to a greater extent than we think. Anyone who is capable of exercising even enough self-observation to enable him to penetrate into the store of memories, will realise how particularly important a part is played throughout earthly life by the impressions of childhood. The kind of life we spent in childhood—which really does not loom large in our consciousness—the period during which we learned to speak or walk, or got our first, inherited, teeth, the impressions made on us during these periods of development—all these play an important part in the fife of soul throughout our existence on Earth. All freely arising thoughts in which impressions from outside have played no part are connected with memories and are usually accompanied by faint nuances of joy or sadness—all this constitutes our memory and is carried with it by the astral body when we pass into the state of sleep. If with Imaginative vision we are able to observe man as a being of soul-and-spirit during sleep, the following picture presents itself. During sleep the etheric body and the physical body are still enclosed within the skin and the astral body is outside—I will speak of the Ego later on. This astral body is seen virtually to consist of the man’s memories. But these memories in the astral body now outside the physical body are seen to be swirling in and through one another in a kind of eddy. Experiences that were widely separated in time and space are now in juxtaposition; parts of the content of certain experiences are eliminated, so that the whole life of memory during sleep is transformed. Hence when a person dreams it is this transformed life of memory that is presented to his consciousness. And in the character and make-up of the dream he can be inwardly aware of the swirling eddy of memories which Imaginative clairvoyance can perceive from outside.

But there is another aspect as well. These memories, which from the time of going to sleep until waking form the main content of man’s astral life, unite during sleep with the forces behind the phenomena of Nature. It may therefore be said that the astral element in the memories enters into a connection with the forces which lie behind, or rather lie within, the minerals, within the plants, behind the clouds, and so on.

Those who can recognise this to be truth will be horrified to hear it said that material atoms are behind the phenomena of Nature. The fact is that our memories during sleep do not unite with material atoms but with the spiritual forces behind the phenomena of Nature. This is where our memories reside during sleep. We can therefore say with truth that during sleep our soul dips down with its memories into the inner being of Nature, and we say nothing untrue or unreal when we assert; When I go to sleep I give over my memories to the Powers that are spiritually active in the crystal, in the plants, in all the phenomena of Nature.

During a walk you may see by the wayside blue or yellow flowers, green grass, gleaming ears of corn, and say to them: When I pass by you during the day I see you only from outside. But while I sleep, I shall sink my memories into your own spiritual core of being. While I sleep you receive and harbour the memories into which I have transformed the experiences I had in life.—There is perhaps no more beautiful feeling for Nature than to have to a rose-tree not merely an external relation but to realise that you love it because a rose-tree harbours the first memories of childhood. Space plays no part at all. However far away the rose-tree may be, during sleep we find the way to it. The reason why people love roses—only they do not know it—is that roses receive and harbour the very first memories of childhood.

When we were children, the love shown us by other human beings made us happy. We may have forgotten all about it, but it remains within our soul, and during our sleep at night the rose-tree receives into and harbours within itself the memory we have ourselves forgotten. We are more closely united than we realise with the world of outer Nature, that is to say with the spirit reigning there. Memory of our earliest childhood is particularly remarkable in connection with sleep because up to the time of the change of teeth, up to about the seventh year, it is only the element of soul that is received and harboured during sleep. It is a fact in our life as human beings that the inner, spiritual core of Nature harbours the element of soul belonging to our childhood. There is, of course, another aspect: the element of soul we developed in childhood when, for example, we may have been cruel, that too remains in us; the thistles harbour it! All this is said by way of analogy but it points to a significant reality. The following will make it clear what it is that is not taken from childhood into the innermost core of Nature.

In the first seven years of life the child’s whole bodily make-up is inherited, including, therefore, the first teeth; all the material substance we have within us during this period is, in essence, inherited. But after approximately seven years all the material substance has been thrust out, has fallen away and is renewed. The human being himself remains as a spirit-form. His material components are thrown out and after seven or eight years everything that was previously there, has gone. And so when we have reached the age of nine our whole bodily make-up has been renewed. We then shape it in accordance with external impressions.

It is very important indeed that in the early epochs of life the child should be in a position to build his new body—not the inherited body, but the one developed from within himself—in accordance with good impressions from the environment and by a healthy process of adaptation. Whereas the body the child has when he comes into the world depends upon whether the forces of heredity are good or not so good, the later body he bears is very dependent indeed upon the impressions he receives from his environment. Invariably, however, after seven years the body is renewed.

Now it is the ‘I’, the Ego, that is responsible for this. Although it is true the Ego is not yet born in the seven-yearold child as far as the external world is concerned—for it is born at a later age—nevertheless it is at work, since it is naturally connected with the body and is responsible for its formation. It is the Ego that is responsible for the development of what then appears as physiognomy and gesture, as the outer, material manifestation of man’s soul-and-spirit. It is a fact that someone who takes an active share in affairs of the world, who has wide interests and assimilates their substance and content will reveal this in his gestures and his very facial expression. In the later life of such a man, every wrinkle on his face will be indicative of his inner activity and it will be possible to read a great deal here, because the Ego comes to expression in a man’s gestures and physiognomy. The countenance of someone whose attitude to the world is one of boredom and lack of interest will retain the same facial expression all through life. There have been no intimate experiences which might have imprinted themselves in his physiognomy and gestures. In many a countenance you can read a whole biography; in another there is not much more to read than that the individual was once a child—and that is of little account.

It is extremely significant that through the change of bodily substance after every seven or eight years, a man shapes his own outer appearance. And the result of this work on his outward appearance as revealed in physiognomy and gesture, is again something that is carried, while he sleeps, into the innermost being of Nature.

If, then, you look at a man with Imaginative clairvoyance, and observe the Ego as it appears while he is asleep, you will find that the Ego is fully expressed by physiognomy and gesture. Hence those human beings who are able to convey a great deal of their inner nature to their facial expression or to their gestures, have gleaming, radiant Egos. This activity in the shaping of gestures and physiognomy again unites with certain forces in Nature. If we had many opportunities in life of showing friendliness and kindness, Nature is inclined, as soon as this kindliness has been expressed in the countenance, to receive it into her own essential being. Nature takes our memories into her forces, our gestures into her very being. Man is so intimately connected with external Nature that there is immense significance for the latter in the memories he experiences in his soul and also in the way in which he expresses his inner life of soul in physiognomy and gesture.

As you know, I have often quoted words of Goethe which were really a criticism of a saying by Haller: ‘Into the inner being of Nature no created Spirit can enter. Happy he to whom she reveals only her outer shell.’ Goethe retorted: ‘O you Philistine! We are everywhere within her being: nothing is within, nothing without; what is within is without, what is without is within. Ask yourself first of all whether you are kernel or husk.’ Goethe said he had heard the remark in the sixties and had secretly cursed it. He felt—naturally he could not then know anything of Spiritual Science—that if a man whom he could only regard as a philistine, says: ‘Into the inner being of Nature no created Spirit can enter,’ he knows nothing of the fact that man, simply because he is a being of memories, a being of physiognomy and gestures, continually penetrates into the inmost essence of Nature. We are not creatures who stand at the door of Nature and knock in vain. Through our own core of being we are connected by intimate ties with the inmost essence of Nature. But because the child until his seventh year has a body that is wholly inherited, nothing of his Ego, nothing of his physiognomy and gestures, pass over into Nature. It is only at the time of the change of teeth that we begin to approach these realities. Hence it is only then—after the change of teeth— that we are mature enough gradually to begin to reflect about any phenomenon of Nature. Until that time it is only arbitrary thoughts that arise in a child, thoughts which really have not very much to do with Nature, and for that very reason are so full of charm. The best way to make contact with a child is to be poetical when we are talking to him, calling the stars the eyes of heaven and so on, when the things of which we speak are as remote as possible from the outer physical reality.

It is only after the change of teeth that the child gradually ‘grows into’ Nature in such a way that his thoughts can gradually comprehend thoughts of Nature. Fundamentally speaking, the child’s life from the seventh to the fourteenth year is a period during which he ‘grows into Nature’. During this period, in addition to his memories he also carries into the realm of Nature his gestures and physiognomy. And this then continues through the whole of life. It is not until the change of teeth that we have any relationship with the inner core of Nature as single human individuals.

For this reason the beings I have called Elementals— Gnomes and Undines—listen so eagerly when a man narrates something about childhood as it was before the age of seven. It is only at the time of the change of teeth that a man is really born as far as these elemental beings are concerned. This is an extremely interesting fact. Before that time man is to the Gnomes and Undines a being ‘on the other side’; it is for them something of an enigma that man should appear at this age almost as a completed being. It would be immensely stimulating for pedagogical imagination if, through imbibing spiritual knowledge, an individual could really participate in a dialogue with the Nature Spirits, if he could transport himself into the soul of the Nature Spirits in order to ascertain their views about what he can tell them about children. In this way the most beautiful fairy-tale imagination takes shape. And if in olden times fairy-tales were so wonderfully vivid and rich in content it was because the narrators could actually converse with Gnomes and Undines and not merely hear something from them. These Nature Spirits are sometimes very egoistic. They become silent if they are not told things about which they are curious. Their favourite stories are those which tell about the doings of babies. Then one learns from them many things that can create the atmosphere of a fairy story. What seems utterly fantastic to people today can be very important for the practical application of spiritual life. It is an actual fact that because of the circumstances of which I have told you, these dialogues with the Nature Spirits may be extremely instructive for both sides.

On the other hand, what I have said may give rise to a certain anxiety, for during sleep man is continually creating pictures of his inmost being. Behind the phenomena of Nature, behind the flowers of the field, and extending into the etheric world, there are reproductions of our memories, good and futile alike. The Earth teems with what is contained in human souls. Human life is intimately connected with these things.

First of all, then, we encounter Nature Spirits as beings into whom we can penetrate through our gestures. But we also find the world of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. We penetrate into those Beings too. Our memories carry us into the activities of the world of the Angeloi; our physiognomy and gestures—for which we ourselves are responsible—carry us into the Beings themselves of that world. This following sketch will give some indication of what happens when, during sleep, we penetrate into Nature. Let this (lowest) curve represent our skin; as we move outwards in the radial direction, we pass from the regions of the Angeloi into those of the Archangeloi and Archai. We are now in the sphere of the Third Hierarchy. And when, during sleep, we sink down with our memories and gestures into the flowing sea of Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, weaving and intertwining, then from one side there comes another stream of spiritual Beings. This is the Second Hierarchy: Exousiai, Kyriotetes and Dynamis. If we want to find something in the physical world to which this can be related, we can say that the daily course of the Sun from East to West expresses how the Second Hierarchy crosses the realm of the Third Hierarchy. The Third Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, glide upwards and downwards, handing to each other the ‘golden vessels’. According to this picture we think of the Second Hierarchy following the path taken by the Sun from East to West—not the apparent but the actual daily path of the Sun, for the Copernican theory does not hold good here. Provided a man has the necessary vision, he sees how during sleep he passes into the world of the Third Hierarchy. But this world of the Third Hierarchy is permeated ceaselessly by the Second Hierarchy. The Second Hierarchy also makes its influence felt in our life of soul.

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In the lecture the day before yesterday I pointed out to you the significance of vividly re-living experiences of youth. You may be deeply impressed if you turn again to the Mystery Plays and now, perhaps with greater understanding than before, read the passages about the appearance of the Spirit of Johannes’ Youth.¹ It is an indubitable fact that a man’s own inner being can become vividly perceptible to him if with an active effort of will he relives his younger days. I told you that you may, for instance, pick up old school textbooks and steep yourself in what you either learnt or failed to learn from them. It does not matter whether you learnt anything or not; what matters is that you should re-live what happened at the time. In my own case it was vitally important for me a year or two ago, when I needed to strengthen my powers of spiritual understanding, to re-live a situation of my youth. I was eleven years old at the time and had just been given a new school-book. The first thing that happened was that through carelessness, the ink pot upset and blotted two pages of the book so badly that they were illegible. A few years ago I relived the event many times—the textbook with the ruined pages and what I had to suffer in consequence. For the book had to be replaced by a family with very little money. One suffered dreadfully on account of this book with its enormous inkblot! As I said, it is not a matter of having behaved well in circumstances recalled in later years but of experiencing them with real intensity. If you recall such happenings as vividly as you possibly can, you will experience something else as well. More clearly than in a dream, in actual perception, you will experience a situation while you rest in bed, shut off from the day’s impressions. If during the day you have vividly recalled a scene once inwardly experienced, when everything around you is dark and you are all by yourself at night you will see, as though displayed in space, a scene in which you once participated. Suppose you have recalled a scene at which you were once present, let us say at eleven o’clock. Afterwards you went somewhere else and found yourself sitting among a number of people. You have now summoned up something you experienced inwardly. What was around you outwardly at that time was entirely a spatial spectacle. If attention is paid to circumstances such as this, very significant discoveries can be made. Let us suppose that as a youngster of seventeen, you were accustomed to have your midday meal at a Pension where the guests were continually changing. Now you recall some such scene which you had inwardly experienced; you recall it vividly. Then, in the night, you have this experience: you are sitting at a table with other people whom you saw only seldom because the guests in a Pension were perpetually changing. The face of one of these people makes you realise: that is something I actually lived through all those years ago. The external spatial element is added to the inner soul-experience when you activate memories in this way.

This means that you are actually living in the stream which flows from East to West (see diagram). More and more the feeling grows in you that you are not wholly absorbed by the spiritual world into which you pass in sleep, but that in this spiritual world something is happening that is reflected outwardly in the moment when again you see the people sitting around the table in the Pension. You had forgotten about the episode long ago but it is still there. You see it as things can often be seen inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle. The moment you have this before you, you have made contact with the stream that flows from East to West: the stream of the Second Hierarchy. In this stream of the Second Hierarchy there is contained something that is reflected outwardly as the day.

Now the day varies in length throughout the year. In spring it gets longer, in autumn, shorter; it is longest in summer, shortest in winter. During the course of the year the day undergoes metamorphosis. This is caused by a stream running from West to East, countering the East-West stream (diagram). It is the stream of the First Hierarchy, of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Hence if you follow how the day changes in the course of the year, if you pass from the day to the year, you come into contact with the stream which flows in the opposite direction and meets you in sleep.

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It is really the case that in sleep we grow into the spiritual world, radially from West to East and from East to West. And when we recall some experience vividly the picture before our souls must be of Winter in the world of space.

And it is the same when we become conscious of our will. It is the effect of this that passes into the gestures and physiognomy. What I am now going to say will have a certain significance for Eurythmists, although naturally it is not the purpose of Eurythmy to vindicate what I am saying. It is a fact that when a man becomes increasingly able to shape his external form too from within himself, so that his Ego is expressed with greater and greater definition in his physiognomy and gestures, he does not receive an impression only of the day. An impression of the day results from passing over from a vivid, inner experience of memory to a perception of things in the external world of space. To take the example already given. Suppose you re-experience what happened to you at the age of seventeen, and see the human beings who sat at table with you in the Pension, in pictures, as in the Akasha Chronicle—that is the Day-experience.

But the Year can also be experienced. This is possible if we pay attention to the working of the will, if we notice that it is comparatively easy to assert the will when one is warm, whereas it is difficult to let the will stream through the body when one is very cold. Those who can inwardly experience a connection between the will and being warm or cold, will gradually be able, when this faculty develops, to speak of a Winter Will and a Summer Will in themselves.

We find that the best way to define this will is to relate it to the seasons. Let us observe, for example, the kind of will which seems to carry our thoughts out into the Cosmos and makes it easy to manipulate the body so that in its whole bearing and in its gestures the thoughts seem to be borne out into the Universe; they seem to glide away through the finger-tips. We feel that it is easy to activate the will. We may be standing in front of a tree and something at the top of it gladdens our eye. If our will is warm within us, our thoughts are carried to the treetop—indeed sometimes to the very stars of heaven when in summer nights we feel endowed with this warmth of will.

On the other hand, if the will is inwardly cold, it is as if all thoughts were being carried only in our head and could not make their way into our arms or legs. Everything goes to the head. The head endures the coldness of the will, and if the cold is not so overwhelming as to give rise to a feeling of iciness, the head will become warm as a result of its own inner reaction, and then it unfolds thoughts.

Hence we can say that Summer Will leads us out into the wide expanse of the Cosmos. Summer Will, Warm Will, carries our thoughts here, there and everywhere. Winter Will carries thoughts into our head. The will can indeed be differentiated in this way. And then we shall feel that the will which carried us out into the Cosmos is related to the course of the Summer and the Will which carries thoughts into the head, to the Winter. Through the will we experience the Year.

It is possible to experience as a reality what I am now going to write on the blackboard for you. Your experience of Winter through the medium of the will can be expressed in these words:

World-All pictures!
From widths of Space
Ye are alighting,
Tending towards me,
Entering bounteously
Into my Head,
Into its thinking powers.

These words have no merely abstract meaning. If you can feel your own will united with Nature you will also feel, when Winter comes, as though your own experiences, handed over to Nature, were being brought to you from the expanse of Space. You can be aware of your own experiences which had already been taken into Nature. This is the feeling of Winter Will.

But you can also feel the Summer Will which bears your thoughts out into the Cosmos:

Ye, of my Head
The formative forces, forming in soul,
Filling my inner life!

which means that the thoughts which are at first experienced in the head, pass over into and fill the whole body, but then stream forth from it:

Now reaching outward
Into World-distances,
Weld my own being
With World-creative powers.

These words express the nature of the Summer Will, the will in us which is related to Summer. And when we feel that we have called up from within the active memory of something experienced long ago, then the day with its following night bears it back to us again, supplemented by the spatial picture. This is connected with the stream flowing from East to West. Thus we may say: Winter Will changes in us into Summer Will, Summer Will into Winter Will. We find ourselves no longer related to the Day with its alternating light and darkness, but through our will we are related to the Year, and therewith to the stream flowing from West to East, the stream of the First Hierarchy: the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

As we proceed we shall see how man may be hindered or helped through heredity or adaptation to the external world through this association with the inmost life of Nature. What I have just been telling you refers to the fact that man, when hindered as little as possible by Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces, grows by means of ideation (Vorstellung) and will into the inmost life of Nature and is received by the Time-forces, the Day-forces and the Year-forces; Third Hierarchy, Second Hierarchy, First Hierarchy. But the Ahrimanic forces as they manifest themselves in heredity, and the Luciferic forces as they manifest themselves in adaptation, exert very deep influences. These great problems will occupy our minds in the next lecture.

Winter Will
World-All pictures,
From widths of Space
Ye are alighting,
Tending towards me,
Entering bounteously
Into my Head,
Into its thinking powers.

Summer Will
Ye, of my Head
The formative forces, forming in soul,
Filling my inner life.
Now reaching outward
Into World-distances,
Weld my own being With World-creative powers.

• 1. The Soul’s Awakening. Scene 2.

for the inauguration of the Vidar branch.

A number of friends from out of town have come to visit our friends in Bochum to see the branch of our spiritual endeavor that has been established here under the Christmas tree. And there is no doubt that all those who have come from out of town to celebrate the opening of this branch with our Bochum friends feel the beauty and spiritual significance of our Bochum friends' decision to found this place of spiritual endeavor and feeling here in this city, in the middle of a field of material activity, in the middle of a field that, so to speak, mainly belongs to the outer life. And in many ways, each of our dear branches, here in this area more than anywhere else, can be a symbol for us of the significance of our kind of anthroposophical spiritual life in the present day and for the future development of human souls.

We are truly not in a situation where we can look critically or disparagingly at what is going on around us when we are in the midst of a field of the most modern material activity, because we are rather in a field that shows us how it must become more and more in later outer life on earth. We would only show ourselves to be foolish if we wanted to say: ancient times, when one was more surrounded by forests and meadows and the original life of nature than by the chimneys of the present, should come back again. One would only show oneself to be unintelligent, for one would prove that one has no insight into what the sages of all times have called “the eternal necessities in which man must find himself.” In the face of the material life that covers the earth, as the 19th century in particular has brought about and which later times will bring to mankind in an even more comprehensive way, in the face of this life there is no justified criticism based on sympathy with the old, but there is only and alone the insight that this is the fate of our earth planet. From a certain point of view, one may call the old times beautiful, one may look upon them as a spring or summer time for the earth, but to rage against the fact that other times are coming would be just as foolish as it would be foolish to be dissatisfied with the fact that autumn and winter follow spring and summer. Therefore, we must appreciate and love it when, out of an inwardly courageous decision, our friends create a place for our spiritual life in the midst of the most modern life and activity. And it will be right if all those who have only come to visit our branch for the sake of today leave with a grateful heart for the beautiful activity of our Bochum friends, which is carried out in a truly spiritual scientific way.

What is so endearing about what we have been calling our “branch initiations” for years is that on such occasions, friends from outside the circle that has come together in a particular place often come from far and wide. As a result, these friends from afar can ignite the inner fire of gratitude that we must have for all those who found such branches, and that, on the other hand, these friends from afar can take with them a vivid impression of what they have experienced, which keeps the thoughts alive, which we then turn to the work of such a branch from everywhere, so that this work can be fruitful from all sides through the creative thoughts. We know that the spiritual life is a reality, we know that thoughts are not just what materialism believes, but that thoughts are living forces that, when we unite them in love, for example over any place of our work, there they unfold, there they are help.

And I would like to be convinced that those who have brought their visit here will also take with them the impulse from today's get-together to think often and often of the place of our work, so that our friends here can feel when they sit together in silence, into that which, by the grace of the hierarchies, becomes spiritual knowledge for us, so that our friends, when they sit together in silence again, may cherish the feeling that creative thoughts are coming from all sides into their working space, their spiritual working space.

Looking at what is, and not practicing an unjustified criticism of existence, is something we are gradually learning through our anthroposophical worldview. There is no doubt that the earth is undergoing a development. And when we, equipped with our anthroposophical knowledge, yes, when we look back with understanding, with what we can know outside of anthroposophical knowledge, to earlier times in the development of the earth, then earlier times appear to us in relation to the earth, which is is riddled with telegraph wires and swept by those electric currents, these times of the earth appear to us like spring and summer time, and the times we are entering appear to us like the autumn and winter time of the earth. But it is not for us to complain about this, but for us to call this a necessity. Nor is it for us to complain, just as it is not for a person to complain when summer comes to an end and autumn and winter arrive.

But when autumn and winter come, the human soul has been preparing for centuries to erect the sign for the living word to enter into the evolution of the earth in the depths of the winter night. And in this way the human heart, the human soul, showed that what is created from the outside by summer without human intervention must be created by human intervention from within.

When we rejoice in the sprouting, sprouting forces of spring, which are replaced by gentle summer forces from the outside, without our intervention, winter, with its blanket of snow, covers what would otherwise, without our intervention, please us during the summer and always brings new proof that divine-spiritual forces prevail throughout the world, so we receive during the cold, dark winter time, we receive what is placed in winter as the summer hope for the future, which tells us that just as spring and summer come after every winter, so too, once the earth has reached its goal in the cosmos, a new spiritual spring and summer will come, which our creative powers help shape. Thus the human heart erects the sign of eternal life.

In this very sign of eternal spiritual life, we feel united today with our friends in Bochum, who some time ago founded their branch here. It is wonderful that we can inaugurate it just before Christmas.

Perhaps to some who at first glance look at it superficially, all that has been discovered about Christ Jesus through our spiritual science, and all that has been revealed to it about Christ Jesus, will look at it superficially, it may seem as if we are replacing the former simplicity and childlikeness of the Christmas festival, with its memories of the beautiful scenes from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, with something tremendously complicated. We must draw people's attention to the fact that at the beginning of our era two Jesus-children entered into earthly evolution; we must speak of how the ego of one Jesus-child moved into the bodies of the other Jesus-child; we must speak of how, in the thirtieth year of Jesus' life, the Christ-being descended and lived for three years in the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. It might easily appear as though all the love and devotion which men through the centuries have been able to summon up for their own salvation, when they were shown the Christ Child in the manger, surrounded by the shepherds, when the wonderfully moving Christmas carol sounded to their ears, when the Christmas plays were celebrated here and there, when the lights appeared on the Christmas tree, delighting the most childlike hearts, it might appear that in the face of all what so immediately kindles the human heart to intimacy, to devotion, to love, when the warm feeling, the warm sensation, should fade away when one has yet to take in the complicated ideas of the two Jesus children, of the passing over of the one ego into the body of the other, of the descent of a divine spiritual being into the bodily shell of Jesus of Nazareth. But we must not indulge in such thoughts, for it would be a bad thing if we did not want to submit to the law of necessity in this area.

Yes, my dear friends, in the places that lay outside the forest or in the middle of the fields and meadows, the snow-capped mountains and distances or the wide plains and lakes spoke down and into them. In those places that were not traversed by railroad tracks and telegraph wires, hearts could dwell there that were immediately ignited when the manger was built and when one was reminded of what the Gospels of Matthew and Luke told of the birth of the wonderful child. What is contained in these narratives, what has happened on earth in such a way that these narratives bear witness to it, lives and will continue to live. It just takes time, which occurs, we may say, in the “earthly winter”, a time of railways and telegraph wires and meals, stronger forces in the soul, to ignite warmth and intimacy in the heart in the face of the external mechanism, in the face of the external materiality. The soul must grow strong in order to be so inwardly convinced of the truth of what has happened in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha that it lives firmly in the heart, however outwardly the mechanical natural order may intervene in earthly existence. The knowledge of the child in Bethlehem must penetrate differently into the souls of those who are allowed to live on the edge of the forest, on mountain slopes, by the lakes and in the midst of fields and meadows; the knowledge of the same being must penetrate differently to those who must have grown to the newer conditions of existence.

For this reason, for our own time, those whom we call the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings tell us of those higher contexts that we must consider when speaking of the Child of Bethlehem. With our newer insights, we stand no less soul-filled before the Christmas tree because we must know something different from what earlier times knew. On the contrary, we come to a better understanding of those earlier times, we come to understand why the hope and joy of the future spoke from the eyes of young and old at the Christmas tree and at the manger. We learn to understand how they lived in a way that went beyond what could be seen immediately, when we explain to ourselves, in our own terms, the reasons why we feel such deep, heartfelt love for the Child of Bethlehem. We may call the Jesus child, the one from the Nathanic line of the House of David, in the most beautiful sense, in the most beautiful sense, “the child of humanity, the child of man”. For what do we feel when we look at this child, whose essential nature shines through even in the descriptions of Luke's Gospel?

Humanity took its origin with the origin of the earth. But much has passed humanity in the course of the Lemurian, Atlantean and post-Atlantean times. And we know that this was a descent, that in primeval times there was an original knowledge and original looking, an original connection with the divine-spiritual powers, an old inheritance of a knowledge of the connection with the gods. What lived in the souls of human beings from divine beings has increasingly become less and less. Over time, people have come to feel their connection with the divine spiritual source less and less through their direct knowledge. They were increasingly thrown out into the field of mere material observation, of sensuality. Only in the early years of life, in childhood, did people know how to revere and love innocence, the innocence of the human being who has not yet taken up the descending forces of the earth.

But how, now that we know that with the Jesus child an entity came to earth that had not previously been on earth as such, that was a soul that had not gone through the rest of the evolution of mankind on earth — which I have indeed presented in my “Occult Science Outline», was held back, as it were, in the innocent state before the Luciferic temptation, that such a soul, a childlike human soul in a much, much higher sense than is usually meant, came to earth, how can one not recognize this human soul as the «child of humanity»? What we human beings, even in the most tender childhood, may no longer have in us, because we carry within us the results of our previous incarnations, which we cannot recognize in any of us, even in the moment when we first open our eyes on the field of the earth, is presented in the child who entered the earth as the St. Luke's Boy Jesus. For in this child there was a soul that had not previously been born on earth out of a human body, that had remained behind when the evolution of humanity began anew on earth, and that appeared on earth at the very beginning of our era, in the infancy of humanity. Hence the marvelous event that the Akasha Chronicle reveals to us: that this child, the Nathanic Jesus-child, immediately after his birth, uttered intelligible sounds to his mother only, sounds that were not similar to any of the spoken languages of that time or of any time, but from which sounded for the mother something like a message from worlds that are not the earthly worlds, a message from higher worlds. That this child Jesus could speak, could speak immediately at his birth, that is the miracle!

Then it grew up as if it were to contain, concentrated in its own being, all the love and loving ability that all human souls together could muster. And the great genius of love, that was what lived in the child. He could not learn much of what human culture has achieved in earthly life. The Nathanian Jesus Child was able to experience little of what had been achieved by people over the course of thousands of years until he was twelve years old. Because he could not, the other ego passed into him in his twelfth year. But everything he touched from the earliest, most tender childhood was touched by perfected love. All the qualities of the mind, all the qualities of feeling, they worked as if heaven had sent love to earth, so that a light could be brought into the winter time of the earth, a light that shines into the darkness of the human soul when the sun does not unfold its full external power during this winter time. When later the Christ moved into this human shell, we must bear in mind that this Christ-being could only make itself understood on earth by working through these shells.

The Christ-Being is not a human being. The Christ-Being is an Entity of the higher Hierarchies. On earth It had to live for three years as a human being among human beings. For this purpose, a human being had to be born to It in the way I have often described for the Nathanian Jesus child. And because this human child could not have received — since it had not previously set foot on earth, had no previous education from earlier incarnations — because it could not have received what external culture had worked for on earth, so a soul entered this child that had, in the highest sense, worked for what external culture can bring: the Zarathustra soul.

And so we see the most wonderful connection when Jesus Christ stands before us. We see the interaction of this human child, who had saved the best human aspiration, love, from the times when man had not yet fallen into Luciferic temptation, until the beginning of our era, when it appeared on earth for the first time, embodied, with the most developed human prophet Zarathustra, and with that spiritual essence which, until the Mystery of Golgotha, had its actual home within the realms of the higher hierarchies, and which then had to take its scene on earth by entering through the gate of the body of Jesus of Nazareth into its earthly existence. That which is the highest on earth, and which we can only glimpse in its purity in the still innocent gaze of the human being, in the eye of the child, that is what the human child brought with him to the highest degree. That which can be achieved on earth as the highest, that is what Zarathustra contributed to this human child. And that which the heavens could give to the earth, so that the earth might receive spiritually, which it receives anew each summer through the intensified power of the sun, that the earth received through the Christ-being.

We will just have to learn to understand what has happened to the earth. And in the times to come, the soul will be able to swell with intimacy, the soul will be able to strengthen itself through a power that will be stronger than all the powers that have so far been connected to the Mystery of Golgotha, in a time that can offer little outward support to the strengthening of those forces that tend towards man's true source of power, towards man's innermost being, towards an understanding of how this being flows from the spiritual-cosmic. But in order to fully understand such, we must first understand ourselves as one once understood the Christ Child on Christmas Day; we must first rise to the knowledge of the spirit. Times will come when, as it were, one will look at earthly events with the eye of the soul. Then one will be able to say many a thing to oneself that one cannot yet say to oneself in the broadest circles today, for which only spiritual science enables us today, so that we can already say many a thing to ourselves that one cannot yet say to oneself in the broadest circles today.

We see spring approaching. During the approaching spring, we see the plants sprouting and sprouting from the earth. We feel our joy igniting in what comes out of the earth. We feel the power of the sun growing stronger and stronger to the point where it makes our bodies rejoice, to the point of the Midsummer sun, which was celebrated in the Nordic mysteries. The initiates of these mysteries knew that the Midsummer Sun pours itself over the earth with its warmth and light to reveal the workings of the cosmos in the earth's orbit. We see and feel all this.

We also see and feel other things during this time. Sometimes lightning and thunder crash into the rays of the spring sun when clouds cover these rays. Irregular downpours pour over the surface of the earth. And then we feel the infinite, uninfluenced, harmonious regularity of the sun's course, and the — well, we need the word — changeable effectiveness of the entities that work on earth as rain and sunshine, as thunderstorms, and other phenomena that depend on all kinds of irregular activity, in contrast to the regular, harmonious activity of the sun's path through space and its consequences for the development of plants and everything that lives on earth, which cannot be influenced by anything. We feel the infinite regular harmony of the sun's activity and the changeable and fickle nature of what is going on in our atmosphere like a duality.

But then, when autumn approaches, we feel the dying of the living, the withering of that which delights us. And if we have compassion for nature, our souls may become sad at the dying of nature. The awakening, loving power of the sun, that which regularly and harmoniously permeates the universe, becomes invisible, as it were, and that which we have described as the changeable weather then prevails. It is true what earlier times knew, but what has faded from our consciousness due to our materiality: that in winter, the egoism of the earth triumphs over the forces that permeate our atmosphere, flowing down from the vast cosmic being to our earth and awakening life on our earth.

And so the whole of nature appears to us as a duality. The activity of spring and summer is quite different from that of autumn and winter. It is as if the earth becomes selfless and gives itself up to the embrace of the universe, from which the sun sends light and warmth and awakens life. The earth in spring and summer appears to us as showing its selflessness. The earth in autumn and winter appears to us as showing its selfishness, conjuring forth from itself all that it can contain and produce in its own atmosphere. Defeating the working of the sun, the working of the universe through the selfishness of earthly activity, the winter earth appears to us.

And when we look away from the earth and at ourselves with the eye that spiritual research can open for us, when we look beyond the material and see the spiritual, then we see something else. We know that, yes, in the elemental forces of the earth's atmosphere, which appear to be at work only in the unfolding of the sun's forces, in the spring and summer struggles that take place around us, the elemental spirits live, innumerable spiritual entities live in the elemental realm that swirl around the earth, lower spirits, higher spirits. Lower spirits, which are earthbound in the elemental realm, have to endure during the spring and summer season that the higher spirits, which stream down from the cosmos, exercise greater dominion, making them servants of the spirit that streams down from the sun, making them servants of the demonic forces that rule the earth in selfishness. During the spring and summer season of the earth, we see how the spirits of earth, air, water and fire become servants of the cosmic spirits that send their forces down to earth. And when we understand the whole spiritual context of the earth and the cosmos, then during spring and summer these relationships open up to our souls and we say to ourselves: You, earth, show yourself to us by making the spirits, which are servants of egoism, servants of the cosmos, of the cosmic spirits, who conjure up life out of your womb, which you yourself could not conjure up!

Then we move towards autumn and winter time. And then we feel the egoism of the earth, feel how powerful those spirits of the earth become, which are bound to this earth itself, which have detached themselves from the universe since Saturn, Sun and Moon time, feel how they close themselves off from the working that flows in from the cosmos. We feel ourselves in the egoistically experiencing earth. And then we may look within ourselves. We examine our soul with its thinking, feeling and willing, examine it seriously and ask ourselves: How do thoughts emerge from the depths of our soul? How do our feelings, affects and sensations emerge first? Do they have the same regularity with which the sun moves through the universe and lends the earth the life forces that emerge from its womb? They do not. The forces that reveal themselves in our thinking, feeling and willing in everyday life are similar to the changeable activity in our atmosphere. Just as lightning and thunder break in, so human passions break into the soul. Just as no law governs rain and sunshine, so human thoughts break out of the depths of the soul. We must compare our soul life with the changing wind and weather, not with the regularity with which the sun rules our earth. Out there it is the spirits of air and water, fire and earth, that work in the elemental realm and that actually represent the egoism of the earth. Within ourselves, these are the elemental forces. But these changing forces within us, which regulate our everyday life, are embryos, germinal beings, which, only as germs, but as germs, resemble the elemental beings that are found outside in all the vicissitudes of the weather. We carry the forces of the same world within us as we think, feel and will, which live as demonic beings in the elemental realm in the wind and weather outside.

When the times approached in which people, who were at the turning point of the old and the new times, felt: there will come a time reminiscent of the wintertime on Earth. Indeed, there were teachers and sages among these people who understood how to interpret the signs of the times and who pointed out: Even if our inner life resembles the changeable activity of the outer world, and just as man knows that behind the activity of the outer world, especially in autumn and winter, the sun still shines, the sun lives and moves in the universe, it will come again - so man may also hold fast to the thought that, in the face of his own fickleness, which lives in his soul, there is a sun, deep, deep in those depths where the source of our soul gushes forth from the source of the world itself. At the turn of the ages, the sages pointed out that just as the sun must reappear and regain its strength in the face of the earth's selfishness, so too must understanding develop from those depths of our soul for that which can reach this soul from the sources, where this soul is connected in its life itself with the spiritual sun of the world, just as earthly life is connected with the physical sun of the world.

At first this was expressed as a hope, pointing to the great symbol that nature itself offered. It was expressed in such a way that the winter solstice was set as the celebration for the days when the sun regains its strength, the time when it was said: however the selfishness of the earth may unfold, the sun is victorious over the selfishness of the earth. As if through the darkness of a Christmas in the world of elemental spirits, which represent the egoism of the earth, the spirits that come from the sun and show us how they make the egoistic spirits of the earth their servants.

At first it felt like a glimmer of hope. And when the great turning point had come, when nothing but desolation and despair should have been felt in human souls, the Mystery of Golgotha was preparing itself. It showed in the spiritual realm that, yes, there are forces at work within the human being that can only be compared to the changeable forces of the earth's atmosphere, to earthly egoism. They manifested themselves in ancient times, when people still carried within them the legacy of the ancient powers of the gods, like the forces that show themselves in spring and summer: they were servants of the old hierarchies of the gods. But in the time when it was heading towards the Mystery of Golgotha, the inner forces of human souls became more and more like the outer demonic elemental spirits in autumn and winter. These forces within us were to break away from the old currents and workings of the gods, just as the changeable forces of our earth withdraw from the activity of the sun in winter. And then, for man in his evolution on earth, what had always been symbolically depicted in the hope that it would come about in the victory of the sun over the winter forces, the winter solstice of the world began, in which the spiritual sun underwent for the whole evolution of the earth what the physical sun always undergoes at the winter solstice. These are the times in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

We must really distinguish between two periods on earth. A time before the Mystery of Golgotha, when the earth is heading towards autumn through its summer, when the inner forces of human beings become more and more similar to the changeable forces of the earth, and the great Christmas festival of the earth, the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, when breaks over the earth, which is indeed winter time for the earth, but where out of the darkness the victorious spirit of the sun, the Christ, approaches the earth, bringing the souls within what the sun brings to the earth externally in the way of growth forces.

So we feel our whole human earthly destiny, our innermost human being, when we stand at the Christmas tree. So we feel intimately connected with the human child, who brought message from that time, where humanity had not yet fallen into temptation and thus the disposition to decline, brought the message that an ascent will begin again, as in the winter solstice the rise begins. On this day in particular, we feel the intimate relationship of the spiritual within the soul with the spirit that permeates and flows through everything, that expresses itself externally in wind and weather, but also in the regular, harmonious course of the sun, and inwardly in the course of humanity across the earth, in the great festival of Golgotha.

Should humanity not develop a new piety out of these thoughts, a piety that is not meant to remain a mere thought but can become a feeling and an intuition, a piety that cannot become dulled even by the most extreme mechanism, as it must unfold more and more on earth? Should not Christmas prayers and Christmas songs be possible again, even in the abstract, telegraph-wired and smoke-filled earth's atmosphere, when humanity will learn to feel how it is connected with the divine spiritual powers in its depths, by intuiting in its depths the great Christmas festival of the earth with the birth of the boy Jesus?

It is true, on the one hand, what resounds through all human history on earth: that the great Christmas festival of the earth, which prepared the Easter festival of Golgotha, had to come one day. It is true that this unique event had to occur as the victory of the spirit of the sun over the fickle earth spirits. On the other hand, it is true what Angelus Silesius said: “A thousand times Christ may be born at Bethlehem, and not in thee, thou art still lost forever.” It is true that we must find within us, in the depths of our soul, that through which we understand the Christ Jesus.

But it is also true that in the places at the edge of the forest, on the lakeshore, surrounded by mountains, people, after a summer spent in the fields and pastures, were able to look forward to the symbol of the Christ Child , that they felt something else in their souls than we do, who must also feel the power to sense the Christmas message in the face of our smoky, dry, abstract and mechanical times. If these strong thoughts, which spiritual science can give us, can take root in our hearts, then a solar power will emerge from our hearts that will be able to shine into the bleakest external surroundings, to shine with the power that will be like when in 'our inner being itself light kindled light on the tree of our soul life, which we, because its roots are the roots of our soul itself, are to transform more and more into a Christmas tree in this winter time. We can do it if we absorb, not just as theory, but as direct life, what the message of the spirit, what true anthroposophy can be for us. So I wanted to bring the thoughts of Christmas from our spiritual science into the space that we want to consecrate today for the work that our dear friends here have been doing for a long time.

In the name of that deity who is regarded in the north as the deity who is supposed to bring back rejuvenating powers, spiritual childhood powers of aging humanity, to which Nordic souls in particular tend when they want to speak of what, flowing from the Christ Jesus being, can bring our humanity a new message of rejuvenation, to this name our friends here want to consecrate their work and their branch. They want to call it the “Vidar Branch”. May this name be as auspicious as it is auspicious for us, who want to understand the work that is being done here, what has already been achieved and is intended by loving, spirit-loving souls here. Let us truly appreciate what our Bochum friends are attempting here, and let us give their branch and their work the consecration that is also intended to be a consecration for Christ today, by unfolding our most beautiful and loving thoughts here for the blessing, for the strength and for the genuine, true, spiritual love for this work. If we can feel this way, then we will celebrate today's festival of the naming of the “Vidar” branch in the right spirit with our friends in Bochum.

And let us let our feelings reach up to those whom we are naming as the leaders and guides of our spiritual life, to the Masters of the Wisdom and the Harmony of Feelings, and let us implore their blessing for the work that is to unfold here in this city through our friends:

You who guide the spiritual life, give people
what they need according to the times,
you work with us when our friends devotedly serve the spiritual life
here in this city.

We would like to send this up as a prayer to the spiritual leaders, the higher hierarchies, at this moment, which is solemn in two respects. And we may hope that what has been promised will prevail over this branch, despite all the resistance that is piling up more and more, despite all the obstacles and opposition, what has been promised for our work: that through it the mystery of Christ will be incorporated anew into humanity in the way it must happen.

That this may prevail, that may be our Christmas gift today: that this branch too may become a living witness to what flows as strength into the evolution of humanity from higher worlds and can ever more and more give human souls the consciousness of the truth of the words:

The senses speak
The things in the vastness of space,
They change in the stream of time;
Recognizing, the human soul,
From the vastness of space,
And unreachable by the stream of time,
Into the realm of eternity.

Our dear friends in Bochum will return to their work here imbued with this feeling. Those who, through their meeting with them, are now aware of their work will think of it often and with great intensity. These thoughts can unfold their special power all the more because we were able to consecrate the work immediately before Christmas this year, before the festival that can always be a symbol for us of all that the spirit has achieved in victory over the material, over all the obstacles that it can and must face in the world.

[ 1 ] What we have seen to be true of the supersensible way of cognition in general, becomes immediately evident when we set out to study Man from this standpoint. For the essential thing will be to recognize the ‘manifest secret’ of our own human nature. What is accessible to the senses, and to the intellect that rests on sense-perception, is but a part of human nature as known to supersensible cognition. It is the physical body of man.

To reach a clear and accurate idea of the ‘physical body,’ our attention must first be directed to the phenomenon of death—the great riddle that confronts us wherever we turn to observe life. And in connection with death, we have to think of lifeless Nature so-called—the kingdom of the mineral, which carries death perpetually within it. All these are facts of which the full explanation is only possible with the help of supersensible knowledge, and an important section of this work must be devoted to them. We will begin by suggesting certain ideas and lines of thought with a view to clearer understanding.

[ 2 ] Within the manifest world it is the physical body in which man is of like nature with the mineral creation. Anything that distinguishes man from the mineral cannot properly be regarded as ‘physical body.’ To clear and open-minded reflection the important fact will be that death lays bare the part of the human being which—after death—is of like nature with the mineral world. We can point to the corpse as to that part of man, which, after death, is subject to processes such as are also found in the mineral kingdom. We can emphasize that in this member of man's nature, which we now call the corpse, the same substances and forces are at work as in the mineral world. Equal stress must however be laid upon the fact that for the physical body of man, disintegration sets in the moment death occurs. Moreover we shall be justified in saying: while the same substances and forces are indeed at work in the physical body of man and in the mineral, during man's lie their activity is made to serve a higher function. It is only when death has taken place that they work identically with the mineral world. Then they appear, as indeed they must in accordance with their own nature, as the destroyer of the form and structure of man's physical body.

[ 3 ] Thus we are able clearly to distinguish what is manifest from what is hidden in the human being. Throughout the life of man something that is hidden must perpetually be battling with the mineral substances and forces in the physical body. The moment the battle ceases, the mineral form of activity makes its appearance. This is the point where the science of the supersensible must enter in; it has to discover what is it that maintains the battle. For this is hidden from the outer senses; it is accessible only to supersensible observation. The way man can attain such observation, so that the ‘hidden reality’ becomes as manifest to him as are the phenomena of the sense-world to his ordinary vision, will be dealt with in a later chapter. Here, the results of supersensible observation must first be described. As has already been pointed out, information about the path to the attainment of higher faculties of cognition can only be of value to a man when he has first made himself acquainted, through simple narrative, with that which supersensible research reveals. In this domain it is indeed possible to comprehend what one cannot yet observe. Nay more, the right path to seership is one that takes its start from such comprehension.

Although the hidden something which battles against the disintegration of the physical body can be observed by seership alone, in its effects it is plainly evident even to the kind of judgment which is restricted to the outwardly manifest. For its effects are expressed in the form and shape into which the substances and forces of the physical body are combined during life. When death has taken lace, this form gradually disappears and the physical body becomes part of the mineral kingdom pure and simple. Supersensible perception can observe, as an independent member of the human being, what it is that prevents the physical substances and forces during life from going their own way, which would, as we have seen, lead to the disintegration of the physical body. We will call this independent member of man's being the Etheric Body or Life-Body.

[ 4 ] If misunderstandings are not to creep in at the outset, two things must be borne in mind when these terms are used. In the first place, the word ‘ether’ is here applied in a different sense from that of modern Physics, which denotes as ether, for example, the supposed carrier of light—the ‘luminiferous either.’¹ Here the word ‘ether’ will be strictly limited to the meaning above indicated. It will be applied to the reality, accessible to higher perception, which makes itself known to sense-observation only by its effects, namely by its power to give definite form and configuration to the mineral substances and forces present in the physical body. Nor, in the second place, must the word ‘body’ be misunderstood. To designate these more spiritual entities there is no avoiding the use of words taken from ordinary language, which to begin with apply to material, sense-perceptible things. The etheric body is of course nothing ‘bodily’ in the sensual meaning of the term, in however refined a way we might conceive it.²

[ 6 ] With the mention of the etheric body or life-body, our description of supersensible realities is already bound to come into conflict with contemporary opinions. As an outcome of the development of human thought hitherto, the mention of a ‘life-body’ as an essential principle of human nature can at the present time scarcely fail to be regarded as unscientific. Materialistic thought has reached a point where it see no more in the living organism than a combination of physical substances and forces such as are also found in the so-called lifeless body, or in the mineral. The combination is only supposed to be far more complex.

Yet it is not so very long since other views were held, even by official science. If we study the writings of many serious thinkers of the first half of the nineteenth century, we realize how at that time even ‘genuine scientists’ were aware that something more is present in the living body than in the mineral. They spoke of a vital force or life-force. True, they did not conceive it as a ‘life-body’ in the sense above described, but there was in their minds a dim underlying feeling that something of the sort exists. To their way of thinking, it was as though the life-force were present in the living body over and above the physical substances and forces, in much the same way as in the magnet the magnetic force is present over and above the mere iron. Then the time came when the idea of a life-force was eliminated form the accepted scientific teachings. It was claimed that physical and chemical causes alone are a sufficient explanation. Latterly, there has again been a reaction. Some scientific thinkers are disposed to admit that something like a vital force is, after all, not entirely out of the question. But even scientists who admit this much will hardly be disposed to make common cause with the conception here put forward of the life-body.

Generally speaking, to enter into a discussion of these scientific theories from the standpoint of supersensible knowledge will be of little value. Rather should it be recognized that the materialistic conception is an inevitable concomitant of the great progress of Natural Science in our time. This progress has been due to an extreme refinement in the methods of observation by the external senses. And it is characteristic of human nature: again and again in the course of his evolution man brings certain faculties to a high degree of perfection at the expense of others. The faculty of precise sensory observation, which has evolved so significantly with the rise of Natural Science, was bound to eclipse the cultivation of those human faculties which lead into the hidden worlds. But the time has come round again when their cultivation is urgently needed. The recognition of the hidden worlds will not be furthered by combating judgments which are only the logical outcome of its denial; rather, by putting forward the hidden reality itself in a true light. Then those for whom the time has come will recognize it.

[ 7 ] Yet it was necessary to say this much, lest mere ignorance of scientific viewpoints should be presumed when mention is made of an etheric body, which, we are well aware, will widely be regarded as a mere figment of the imagination.

[ 8 ] The etheric body, then, constitutes a second member of the human being. For supersensible perception it has indeed a higher degree of reality than the physical. A description of how supersensible perception sees it can only be given in the later sections of this book, when the way of understanding such descriptions will have been made clear. For the present it will suffice to say that the etheric body completely permeates the physical, of which it may be regarded as a kind of architect. All the organs of the physical body are maintained in their form and structure by the currents and movements of the etheric body. Underlying the physical heart there is an etheric heart, underlying the physical brain as etheric brain, and so on. The etheric body is in effect a differentiated body like the physical, only far more complicated. And whereas in the physical body there are relatively separated parts, in the etheric all is in living interflow and movement.

[ 10 ] Man has the etheric body, the science of the supersensible advances to a further member of human nature. And as in leading up to the etheric body attention had to be drawn to death, so, to form a conception of this further member of man's nature, supersensible science points to the phenomenon of sleep. All the creative work of man depends—so far as the manifest world is concerned—on his activity in waking life. But this activity is only possible if he again and again derives from sleep a strengthening of his exhausted forces. In sleep, action and thought disappear; pain and joy vanish from conscious life. On awakening, man's conscious powers well up from the unconsciousness of sleep as if from mysteries and hidden springs. It is the same consciousness which sinks into dark depths when man falls asleep, and then arises again when he awakens. To the science of the supersensible, what rouses life again and again from the unconscious state is the third member of the human being. It may be called the Astral Body.

As the physical body cannot maintain its form through the mineral substances and forces it contains, but needs to be permeated by the etheric body, so too the forces of the etheric body cannot of themselves become illumined with the light of consciousness. Left to itself, an etheric body would of necessity be in a perpetual state of sleep—or, we may also say, could only maintain in the physical body a vegetable form of life. An etheric body that is awake is illumined by an astral body. For outer observation the effect of the astral body disappears when man falls asleep. For supersensible observation however, the astral body still remains, but it is now seen to be separated from the etheric body, or lifted out of it. Sensory observation is in fact concerned, not with the astral body itself, but only with its effects within the manifest world, and these are not immediately present during sleep.

Man has his physical body in common with the minerals and his etheric body with the plants. In the same sense he is of like nature with the animals in respect of the astral body. The plant is in a perpetual state of sleep. Anyone who does not judge accurately in these matters may easily fall into the error of attributing to plants too a kind of consciousness such as the animals and man have in their waking state. But this mistake is only possible when one's idea of consciousness is inexact. One may then aver that a plant too, when subjected to an outer stimulus, will perform movements, just an animal will do. One will refer to the ‘sensitiveness’ of many plants, which for example contract their leaves when certain outer things affect them. But the criterion of consciousness does not lie in the fact that to a given action a being shows a definite reaction. It lies in this, that the being has an inner experience, and this is a new factor, over and above the mere reaction. Otherwise we might as well speak of consciousness when a piece of iron expands under the influence of heat. Consciousness is only there when for example, through the effect of heat, the being inwardly experiences pain.

[ 11 ] The fourth member³ which supersensible science attributes to the human being, is one he no longer has in common with any of the manifest world around him. Indeed it is this fourth member which distinguishes him from all his fellow-creatures and marks him as the crown of the creation—or of that realm of the creation to which man belongs. Supersensible science arrives at an idea of this fourth member of the human being by pointing to an essential differentiation between the kinds of experience we have even within waking life.

This difference becomes directly evident when man observes that in the waking state he is on the one hand in the midst of experiences which must come and go, while on the other hand he also has experiences of which this cannot be said. It comes out most distinctly when we compare the conscious experiences of man with those of the animal. The animal experiences the influences of the outer world with great regularity. Under the influences of heat and cold it becomes conscious of pain or pleasure, and its experience of thirst and hunger is subject to bodily processes which take a regular and periodic course. Man's life is not exhausted by experiences such as these. He can develop wishes and cravings transcending all these things. For the animal, could we but pursue the matter far enough, we should always be able to indicate—within the body or outside it—the precise cause for any given action or sensation. With man it is not so. He can give birth to wishes and desires for whose origin no external cause—whether in the body or outside it—is sufficient. Everything that belongs to this domain must be attributed to a special source, which the science of the supersensible recognizes to be the I or Ego of man. The I may therefore be described as the fourth member of the human being.

If the astral body were left to itself, pleasure and pain, feelings of hunger or of thirst would come and go in it, but one thing would never come about—namely, the sense of something permanent in all these things. Not the permanent itself, but that which has conscious experience of the permanent, is here called the I. (We must form our concepts with great precision if misunderstandings are not to arise in this domain.) With the awareness of something permanent and lasting in the changing flow of inner experiences, the feeling of ‘I’ of inner selfhood begins to dawn. The mere fact that a creature experiences hunger, for example, cannot give it the feeling of ‘I.’ On every new occasion when the causes of hunger make themselves felt, hunger arises. The creature falls upon its food simply because the causes of hunger are there anew. The feeling of ‘I’ comes in when the creature is not merely impelled to take food by the renewed causes of hunger, but when a previous satisfaction gave rise to a sense of pleasure and the consciousness of the pleasure has remained. Here it is not only the present experience of hunger but the past experience of satisfaction which provides the impulse.

The physical body disintegrates when it is not held together by the etheric; the etheric body falls into unconsciousness when it is not irradiated by the astral body. In the like manner the astral body would ever and again have to let the past sink into oblivion if the I did not preserve the past and carry it over into the present. Forgetting is for the astral body what death is for the physical body and sleep for the etheric. Or, as we may also express it: life is proper to the etheric body, consciousness to the astral body, and memory to the Ego.

[ 12 ] To attribute memory to animals is an error still easier to fall into than the mistake of ascribing consciousness to plants. It is natural enough to think of memory when a dog recognizes its master, whom it may not have seen for some time past. Yet in reality the recognition depends not on memory, but on something else. The attraction proceeds from the master's nature, which give pleasure to the dog when in his presence. Every time the master's presence is renewed this causes a renewal of the pleasure. Now memory is only there when a being not only feels the experiences of the present moment but preserves those of the past. Even when this is granted, it is however still possible of make the mistake of attributing memory to the dog. Surely, one might rejoin, since the dog grieves when its master goes away, it must retain some memory of him. This too, however, is a wrong conclusion. By living with him, the master's presence has become a need to the dog; it feels his absence just as it experiences hunger. If we are not ready to make clear distinctions of this kind, insight into the true relationships of life remains impaired.

[ 13 ] Prevalent misconceptions may even now lead to the retort that we surely cannot know whether anything like human memory is present in the animal or not. This difficulty is due to untrained observation. Anyone who can observe in a really sensible way how the animal behaves in the whole nexus of its experiences, will notice an essential difference between the behavior of the animal and that of man. He will realize that the animal's behavior implies the absence of all memory. To supersensible perception this is directly evident; but in these matters what the supersensible observer is aware of directly, can also be recognized in its effects by sense-perception and the penetration of sense-perception with clear thinking.

If we say that man is aware of his memory by looking into his own inner life—a method he obviously cannot apply to the animal—we make a fatal mistake. Man is of course aware of his own faculty of memory, but he can not derive this knowledge from mere introspection. He derives it from what he experiences with himself in relation to the things and events of the external world. This kind of experience he has with himself, with his fellow-man, and with the animals too, in precisely the same way. It is an illusion to imagine that we judge of the presence of memory simply on the strength of introspection. The power underlying memory may indeed by called an inner one; the judgment about it is acquired, even for one's own person, by the tests of the external world—by observing the whole sequence and continuity of life. Of this we can form a judgment in the case of the animal no less than in our own. In such matters the psychology of our time suffers greatly from crude and inexact conceptions—conceptions based on faulty observation and therefore highly misleading.

[ 14 ] The significance for the Ego of remembering and forgetting is like that of waking and sleeping for the astral body. As sleep lets the cares and troubles of the day vanish into nothingness, so does forgetting spread a veil over the unhappy experiences of life, thus extinguishing a portion of the past. And as sleep is necessary to refresh the exhausted powers of life, so must the human being blot out from memory certain portions of his past if he is to meet new experiences openly and freely. From the very forgetting he gains strength for perception of the new. Think for instance of how we learn to write. The many details which a child must live through as he learns to write are afterwards forgotten. It is only the faculty of writing that remains. How would a man ever manage to write, if every time he put pen to paper there rose up in his soul the memory of all the experiences he had to undergo as a child during his writing lessons!

[ 15 ] Now memory appears in different stages and degrees. We have it in its simplest form when a man perceives an object and, having turned away, is able still to recall an image of it to his mind. It was while he was perceiving the object that he formed the mental image. A process was then taking place between his astral body and his Ego. The astral body brought the external impression of the object to his consciousness. But his awareness of the object would have lasted no longer than it was actually there before him, if it were not for the Ego receiving this awareness into itself and making it its own.

It is this point that the science of the supersensible distinguishes ‘body’ from ‘soul.’ We speak of the ‘astral body’ so long as we have in mind how the knowledge or awareness of an actually present object comes about, while we designate as ‘soul’ what give the knowledge performance, duration. From this it will be evident how close is the connection of the astral body with the part of the soul which gives permanence to knowledge. In a sense, they may even be said to be united—to constitute a single member of the human being. Hence it is also possible to refer to them jointly as the astral body. Or, if we desire a more exact description, we may call the astral body of man the ‘Soul-Body’ and the soul, is so far as it is united with the astral body, the ‘Sentient Soul.’

[ 16 ] The Ego rises to a higher stage of being when it directs its activity to what it has received and has made its own by taking cognizance of external objects. In this activity it liberates itself increasingly from the external objects of perception., to work within its own sphere and property. The part of the soul to which this faculty belongs may be described as the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.

It is characteristic both of the sentient and of the intellectual soul that they work with what is received through the impressions of sense-perceived objects and with what memory retains of these impressions. The soul is here entirely given up to things external to it. For even what it has made its own through memory,--even this was received originally from outside. But it is able to transcend all this; the soul is not only sentient and intelligent. Supersensible perception can most readily form an idea of this transcendent faculty by pointing to a simple fact, the far-reaching significance of which needs only to be rightly valued,--the fact that in the whole domain of language there is one name which differs in its essence from all other names. It is the name ‘I.’ Every other name can be given by every man to the thing or being to which it belongs. ‘I,’ on the other hand, as the designation of a being, only has meaning when the being gives itself this name. The name ‘I’ can never reach a man from without as a designation of himself. It is only to himself that any being can apply this name. ‘I’ am an I only to myself; to every other being I am a you, and every other being is a you to me.’

This is the outer expression of a deeply significant truth. The real being of the I is independent of all external things and for this very reason no external thing or person can call it by its name. Hence those religious faiths which have consciously maintained their connection with the supersensible wisdom speak of the I as the Unutterable Name of God. For this is what they mean to indicate. Nothing external has access to the part of the human soul which is here envisaged. Here is the ‘hidden Holy of Holies’ of the soul, to which no entry is possible save for a Being with whom the soul is of like kind and essence. ‘The God who dwells in man,—He it is who speaks when the soul perceives and knows itself as ‘I.’ As the sentient soul and intellectual soul live in the outer world, so does a third member of the soul immerse itself in the Divine when the soul comes to a perception of its own essence and nature.

[ 17 ] One may all too easily be misunderstood at this point—as though one were asserting that the human I and God were one and the same. Yet it is not said that the I is God, but only that it is of like kind and essence with the Divine. When we say that a drop of water taken from the ocean is of the same essence or substance as the ocean, are we thereby stating that the drop is the ocean? If we must use a comparison, we may put it thus: as the drop is to the ocean, so is the I to the Divine. Man can find a Divine within himself, because his own and most essential being springs from the Divine.

In this way man reaches up to a third member of his soul—to an inner knowledge and awareness of himself, even as through the astral body he gains knowledge and awareness of the outer world. Hence too, Occult Science calls this third member of the soul, the Consciousness-Soul or Spiritual Soul.⁴ Thus Occult Science sees the soul as consisting of three members: Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Spiritual Soul; just as the bodily nature consists of the three members: Physical Body, Etheric Body and Astral Body.

[ 18 ] Errors in psychological observation, not unlike those already discussed with reference to memory, give rise to difficulties once again when seeking insight into the nature of the I. Much that people think they see may easily be taken by them for a refutation of what has here been said, whereas in truth it serves only to confirm it. Such is the case, for instance, with Eduard von Hartmann's remarks on page 55 of his Outline of Psychology.⁵ ‘To begin with,’ says von Hartmann, ‘self-consciousness is older than that word ‘I.’ The personal pronouns are a comparatively late product in the evolution of language, and have for language merely the value of abbreviation. The word ‘I’ is a short substitute for the proper name of the speaker—with this peculiarity, that every speaker applies it to himself, no matter by what proper name the others call him. In animals and in the untrained deaf and dumb, self-consciousness may evolve to a high degree, even without the initial connection with a proper name. Also the consciousness of the proper name may completely replace the use of the word ‘I’ when this is absent. The recognition of this fact will suffice to remove the magic halo with which the little word ‘I’ is invested for so many people. The word contributes nothing to the concept of self-consciousness; it receives its own content purely from this concept.’

We need not quarrel with such a point of view. We may well agree that the little word ‘I’ should not be invested with a magic halo—such as could, after all, only blur the thoughtful perception of the truth. But the essence of a matter is not decided by the way in which the word, the designation for it, has evolved. That the real essence and nature of the I in self-consciousness is ‘older than the word ‘I’—this is precisely the point. The point is, moreover, that the human being needs this word, with its unique properties, to express what he experiences in relation to the outer world in a different way from an animal. Nothing is ascertained about the nature of the triangle by showing how the word ‘triangle’ evolved. No more can the nature of the I or Ego be determined by anything that we may know as to how the use of the word ‘I’ arose from other usages of words in the evolution of language.

[ 19 ] In the spiritual soul the real nature of the I first becomes revealed. For while in sentient and intellectual activity the soul is given up to other things, qua spiritual soul it seizes hold of its own being. Hence too, the spiritual soul can only perceive the I by dint of a certain inner activity. The mental images and representations of external objects are formed as these objects come and go; in the intellect they go on working by their own impetus. But if the I is to perceive itself, it can no longer passively devote itself to other things. To become conscious of its own essence and being, it must first call it forth—by dint of inner activity—out of the depths of its own nature. With the perception of the ‘I’—with self-contemplation—an inner activity of the I itself begins. By virtue of this activity, the perception of the I in the spiritual soul has a fundamentally different significance for man from the observation of what comes to him through the three bodily members and the other two members of the soul.

The power which brings the I to manifestations in the spiritual soul is indeed the self-same power which reveals itself throughout the world. In the body however, and in the lower members of the soul, it does not come forth directly but is revealed stage by stage in its effects. The lowest revelation of it is through the physical body; thence it arises, step by step, up to the content of the intellectual soul. We might say that with each step in the ascent one of the veils by which the Unmanifest is shrouded falls away. In the experience and content of the spiritual soul, the Unmanifest in its own essence enters unveiled into the inmost temple of the soul Admittedly it shows itself as a mere drop out of the ocean of the all-pervading spiritual essence. Yet it is here that man must first seize the spiritual essence. He must know it by discovering it within himself; then he can also find it in all other revelations.

What penetrates in this way like a drop into the spiritual soul is what Occult Science calls the Spirit. Thus the spiritual soul is connected with the universal Spirit which is the hidden reality within all things manifest. If man would apprehend the hidden Spirit in all the other manifestations of the World, he must needs do so in the same way in which he apprehends the Ego in the ‘Consciousness-Soul’—the spiritual soul. He must apply to the manifest world the same activity which has led him to a perception of the I within himself. By this means he evolves to higher stages of his being. To the bodily members and the members of the soul he now adds something new.

The first step along this path consists in his conquering and making his own all that lies hidden in the lower members of his soul He does this by working upon his soul—working upon it out of the inmost resources of the Ego. We have a vivid picture of the way the human being is engaged upon this work when we compare a man still given up to lower ravings and so-called sensual pleasures with a high-minded idealist. The former evolves into the latter in that he withdraws from lower inclinations and turns to higher ones. In so doing, he works from the Ego upon his soul, ennobling and spiritualizing it. The Ego becomes master in the soul's life.

This process can go so far that no desires or enjoyments can gain access to the soul without the I itself being the power which makes possible their entry. And in this way the soul in its entirety becomes at length a revelation of the I, as was hitherto the spiritual soul alone . This is the meaning of all civilization, of all the spiritual strivings and aspirations of mankind. There is this constant endeavor for the mastery of the Ego. Every human being living at the present time is engaged in this great work—whether he will or no, whether he is conscious of the fact or not.

[ 20 ] This work leads on to ever higher levels of human nature. Through it man evolves new members of his being, which lie—as yet unmanifest—behind what is manifest in him. Moreover, it is not only the soul over which a man can attain mastery by working upon it from the Ego, till from the manifest within the soul the unmanifest springs forth. He can extend this work still further, carrying it over to the astral body. As he does so, the Ego gains power over the astral body, entering into union with its hidden nature. The astral body thus mastered and transformed by the I may be called the ‘Spirit-Self.’ (This is identical with what is called, in connection with Oriental wisdom, ‘Manas.’) In the Spirit-Self we have therefore a higher member of man's nature, one which is already present in him—germinally, as it were—and comes forth ever more and more as he continues to work upon himself.

[ 21 ] As man gains mastery over his astral body by penetrating to the hidden forces that underlie it, so in the course of evolution does he gain mastery over the etheric body too. The work upon the etheric body is however more intense and more exacting. For what lies hidden in the etheric body is shrouded beneath a double-veil; the hidden in the astral body beneath a single veil only. We can get some idea of the difference in the work upon the two bodies by noticing the changes which take place in a human being in the course of his life. Think of the qualities that are developed when the Ego works upon the soul. How very different a man's pleasures and desires, his joys and sufferings become! A man need only look back to the time of his childhood. What was it that he then delighted in, or that caused him pain? And what has he not learned and added to the faculties he had in childhood? These changes are but an expression of the way the Ego has been gaining mastery over the astral body. For the astral body is the bearer of pleasure and pain, of joy and suffering. And now compare with this the small extent to which certain other qualities of man will change in course of time: his temperament, for instance, his deeper traits of character. One who as a child is given to sudden fits of anger will often show signs of violent temper right on into later life. This is indeed so evident a fact that some thinkers tend altogether to dismiss the possibility of change in the basic character of any man. They assume it to be something that persists throughout is life, though it may be revealed in varying directions. Such a judgment rests however on insufficient observation. One who has sensitive perception will realize that even the character and temperament of man can change under the influence of his Ego, although the change is comparatively slow. We might even say that the two types of change are to one another as the movement of the hour hand to that of the minute hand of a clock.

[ 1 ] Now the forces that affect these changes in character or temperament belong to the hidden domain of the etheric body. They are alike in kind with the forces that govern the kingdom of life—the forces of growth and nourishment and those that serve the reproductive process. All this will appear in the proper light in the further course of this book.

It is not when man is merely given up to pleasure or suffering, to joy or pain, that the Ego works upon the astral body; rather, when these proclivities are actually being changed. In like manner, the work of the Ego works upon the astral body; rather, when these proclivities are actually being changed. In like manner, the work of the Ego extends to the etheric body when it applies itself to changing the qualities of character, temperament and so forth. And at this transformation too, every man is working, whether or no he be aware of it. The impulses that work most strongly in this direction are those of religion. When the Ego lays itself open to these influences again and again, they work within it as a power which reaches down to the etheric body and transforms it, just as the lesser incentives of life will bring about the changing of the astral body. These lesser incentives, which come to man through learning, through thoughtful reflection, through the refinement of his feelings and so on, are subject to many variations; the religious emotions, on the other hand, impress a kind of unity on all his thinking, feeling and willing. They pour out as it were a common light, a light that is ‘single,’ over the whole life of the soul. A man thinks and feels one thing to-day, another to-morrow. Many and varied circumstances provide occasion for his thoughts and feelings. But one who is aware through his religious life, of whatsoever kind it be, of something that outlasts all changes, will refer to the same underlying emotion his thoughts and feelings of to-day and his experiences of to-morrow. A man's religious faith thus has a penetrating influence in his soul's life—an influence which grows as time goes on through constant repetition. It thereby gains the power to work on the etheric body. So do the influences of true art affect the human being. When through the outer form, color or sound of a work of art man penetrates with thought and feeling to the spiritual sources that underlie it, the impulses the Ego thus receives do in effect reach the etheric body. Thinking this through to its conclusion, we may gain some idea of the immense significance of art in human evolution.

We have thus indicated some of the incentives enabling the Ego to work at the etheric body. There are other such influences in human life, though outwardly less evident than the ones here mentioned. From these, however, it can already be seen that there lies hidden in man a further member of human nature, which, once again, the Ego is progressively elaborating. It is the second member of man's spiritual being, and may be called the ‘Life-Spirit.’ (It is identical with what is named ‘Budhi’ in connection with Oriental wisdom.’ The term Life-Spirit is right and proper because the same forces are working in it as in the life-body. Where they reveal themselves as life-body the I of man is not yet active in them; when they come to expression as Life-Spirit they are penetrated through and through by its activity.

[ 22 ] Man's intellectual development, the purification and refinement of his feelings and of the manifestations of his will, are the measure of his transmutation of the astral body into Spirit-Self. His religious experiences, and other experiences too which life affords, become engraved in his etheric body, changing it into Life-Spirit. In the ordinary course of life all this goes on more or less unconsciously. There is, on the other hand, what is called the Initiation of man Initiation consists in his being shown, through supersensible knowledge, the means whereby he may take in hand with full consciousness this work upon the Spirit-Self and the Life-Spirit. This will be spoken of in subsequent chapters. For the moment, the point was to show that in addition to the Soul and Body the Spirit too is at work in man. In contrast to the transitory body, the Spirit belongs to the Eternal in man. This too will emerge more clearly in further course.

[ 23 ] Now the activity of the Ego is not exhausted with the work upon the astral and etheric bodies. It extends also to the physical. We see a faint suggestion of the influence of the ego on the physical body when, for example, a human being blushes or grows pale. For the I is here the underlying motive power of a process taking place in the physical body. If now, through the Ego's own activity and initiative, its influence upon the physical body undergoes essential changes, the Ego will then be working in unison with the hidden forces of the physical body. It will be united, in effect, with the same forces which bring about the physical processes in this body. The Ego itself may then be said to be working upon the physical body to transform it. But this expression must not be misunderstood. It must not be supposed that the work is of a crude material kind. For what appears crudely material in the physical body is merely what is manifest in it. Behind this manifest there lie the hidden forces of its being, and these are of a spiritual kind. Here we are speaking, not of a working upon the material appearance of the physical body, but of a spiritual working—a working upon the invisible forces to which the coming-into-being and also the decay of the physical body are due. In ordinary life man can at most become very dimly conscious of this work of the Ego upon the physical body. Full clarity is only reached when under the influence of spiritual knowledge he takes the work consciously in hand. It then becomes manifest that there is yet a third spiritual member in the human being. It may be called, in contrast to the physical man, the ‘Spirit-Man.’ (In Oriental wisdom it is called ‘Atma.’)

[ 24 ] With regard to Spirit-Man it is easy to be led astray by the fact that the physical appears to be the lowest member of the human being. One finds difficulty in conceiving that work upon the physical body should culminate in the highest member of man's nature. But for the very reason that the physical body conceals beneath a threefold veil the Spirit that is active in it, the highest form of human activity is needed to unite the Ego with this hidden Spirit.

[ 25 ] Thus in the light of Occult Science man appears as a being composed of several members. Those of a bodily nature are: physical body, etheric body and astral body. Those of the soul are: sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. In the soul the Ego sheds its light. Lastly we have the spiritual members: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man.

From the above explanations it will be seen that the sentient soul and the astral body are intimately united, forming in one respect a single whole. The same is true of the spiritual soul and the Spirit-Self. For in the spiritual soul the light of the Spirit arises, to radiate from thence throughout the other members of man's nature. Taking this into account, the constitution of the human being may also be described as follows: The astral body and the sentient soul can be taken together as a single member; likewise the spiritual soul and the Spirit-Self. Lastly the intellectual soul, since it partakes of the nature of the I—since in a certain respect it is the I, though not yet conscious of its spiritual being—may be designated simply as the I or Ego. We thus obtain the following seven members of the human being:

1. Physical body
2. Etheric body or life-body
3. Astral body
4. I, Ego
5. Spirit-Self
6. Life-Spirit
7. Spirit-Man

[ 26 ] Even for those accustomed to materialistic notions, this organization of the human being according to the number seven would not have the vaguely magical and superstitious quality often attributed to it, if they could simply follow the given explanations, and not themselves bring in the ‘magical’ significance which they presume. We speak of the seven colors of the rainbow, or of the seven notes of the scale (treating the octave as a repetition of the keynote.) In no other sense—only from the standpoint of a higher kind of observation—do we refer to the seven members of man's being. As light appears in seven colors and the musical scale in seven notes, so does human nature—for all its singleness and unity—appear in the seven members here described. In sound and color the number seven does not imply any kind of superstition; nor does it in the constitution of the human being. (On one occasion when this was mentioned in a lecture, it was objected that the number seven does not apply to color, since there are other ‘colors’ beyond the red and violet, only the human eye cannot perceive them. But even taking this into account, the comparison is still valid; for the human being too reaches beyond the physical body on the one hand and beyond Spirit-Man on the other. Only these extensions of man's being are ‘spiritually invisible’ to the available methods of spiritual observation, just as the colors beyond red and violet are invisible to the physical eye. This remark was necessary because it is too easily concluded that supersensible vision and the ideas to which it leads are scientifically inexact. If one really enters into what is here intended, it will in no case be found inconsistent with genuine Science. There is no contradiction—neither when scientific facts are cited by way of illustration, nor when a direct relation to the discoveries of natural Science is pointed out.)

• 1. Note by Translators. At the time these words were written, the hypothetical ‘luminiferous ether’ was still part of the accepted teachings of Physics; hence it was necessary to guard against a possible misunderstanding.
• 2. That the terms ‘etheric body’ and ‘life-body’ are not intended as a mere revival of the long since discarded idea of a ‘vital force’ was pointed out by the author in his earlier work, Theosophy.
• 3. In rendering Rudolf Steiner's chosen term das Ich for the fourth and central member of the sevenfold being of Man, it is desirable also to use the direct English equivalent ‘ the I’ and not be restricted to the Latin alternative, ‘the Ego’. In this and other translated works, we have adopted the convention of leaving a little extra space on either side of the word I when used as a noun in this hitherto unfamiliar way. (Note by Translators.)
• 4. Note by Translators. ‘Consciousness-Soul’ is the literal translation of the original German word Bewusstseins-Seele, and will be found in the earlier English editions of this and other works. In later years Rudolf Steiner – who often did not favor a merely literal translation – suggested ‘Spiritual Soul’ as the best English equivalent. ‘ Spiritual Soul’ will therefore be used throughout this book, the alternative ‘ Consciousness-Soul’ being occasionally added where it would seem to throw light on a particular context.
• 5. E. von Hartmann: System der Philosophie im Grundriss. Vol. III: Grundriss der Psychologie.

A number of things make it seem precarious to speak about fairy tales in the light of spiritual investigation. One of them is the difficulty of the subject itself, since the sources of a genuine and true fairy tale mood have in fact to be sought at deep levels of the human soul. The methods of spiritual research often described by me must follow convoluted paths before these sources can be discovered. Genuine fairy tales originate from sources lying at greater depths of the human soul than is generally supposed, speaking to us magically out of every epoch of humanity's development.

A second difficulty is that, in regard to what is magical in fairy tales, one has to a considerable extent the feeling that the original, elementary impression, indeed the essential nature of the fairy tale itself is destroyed through intellectual observations and a conceptual penetration of the fairy tale. If one has the justified conviction in regard to explanations and commentaries that they destroy the immediate living impression the fairy tale ought to make in simply letting it work on one, then one would far rather not accept explanations in place of their subtle and enchanting qualities. These well up from seemingly unfathomable sources of the folk-spirit or of the individual human soul-disposition. It is really as though one were to destroy the blossom of a plant, if one intrudes with one's power of judgment in what wells up so pristinely from the human soul as do these fairy tale compositions.

Even so, with the methods of spiritual science it proves possible nonetheless to illumine at least to some extent those regions of the soul-life from which fairy tale moods arise. Actual experience would seem to gainsay the second reservation as well. Just because the origin of fairy tales has to be sought at such profound depths of the human soul, one arrives as a matter of course at the conviction that what may be offered as a kind of spiritual scientific explanation remains something that touches the source so slightly after all as not to harm it by such investigation. Far from being impoverished, one has the feeling that everything of profound significance in those regions of the human soul remains so new, unique and original that one would like best of all to bring it to expression oneself in the form of a fairy tale of some kind. One senses how impossible any other approach is in speaking out of these hidden sources.

It may be regarded as entirely natural that someone like Goethe who attempted, alongside his artistic activity, to penetrate deeply into the background, into the sources of existence, in having something to communicate of the soul's profoundest experiences, did not resort to theoretical discussion. Instead, having gained insight into the underlying sources, he makes use of the fairy tale once again for the soul's most noteworthy experiences. This is what Goethe did in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, wanting, in his fashion, to bring to expression those profound experiences of the human soul that Schiller set forth in a more philosophical-abstract form in his Letters Concerning the Aesthetic Education of the Human Race. It lies in the nature of what is magical in fairy tales that explanations cannot ultimately destroy their productive mood. For, whoever is able to arrive at the aforementioned sources from the standpoint of spiritual investigation, discovers a peculiar fact. (If I were to say all that I should like to say about the nature of fairy tales, I would have to hold many lectures. Hence, it will only be possible today to put forward a few indications and results of investigation.)

That is to say, whoever seeks to come to the aforementioned sources from the standpoint of spiritual research finds that these fairy tale sources lie far deeper down in the human soul than do the sources of creativity and artistic appreciation otherwise. This applies even with regard to the most compelling works of art—the most moving tragedies for instance. Tragedy depicts what the human soul can experience in connection with powers the poet tells us derive from the tremendous destiny uplifting it, while overwhelming the individual. The shock-waves of tragedy derive from this destiny, but such that we can say: The entanglements, the threads spun in the course of the tragedy and unraveled again are inherent in definite experiences of the human soul in the external world. These are in many respects hard to foresee, since for the most part we penetrate only with difficulty into the particular make up of the individual. Still, they can be surmised and fathomed in sensing what takes place in the human soul in consequence of its relation to life. In experiencing something tragic, one has the feeling, in one way or another, a particular soul is entangled in a particular destiny, as this is presented to us.

The sources of fairy tales and of the moods out of which they arise lie deeper than these entanglements of tragedy. The tragic, as well as other forms of artistic expression, results for us, we may feel, in seeing the human being—for instance at a particular age, a particular period of life—at the mercy of certain blows of destiny. In being affected by a tragedy, we necessarily assume that the human being is led to the corresponding involvements of destiny as a result of particular inner experiences. We sense the need to understand the specific human beings presented to us in the tragedy with their particular sets of experiences. A certain circumscribed range of what is human comes to meet us in the tragedy, as in other works of art.

In approaching fairy tales with sympathetic understanding, we have a different feeling than the one just described, since the effect of the fairy tale on the human soul is an original and elemental one, belonging to effects that are hence unconscious. In sensing what comes to meet us in fairy tales we find something altogether different from what a human being in a particular life situation may become involved in. It is not a matter of a narrowly circumscribed range of human experience, but of something lying so deep, and so integral to the soul, as to be “generally human.” We cannot say, a particular human soul at a particular age of life, in a certain situation, encounters something of the kind. Rather, what comes to expression in the fairy tale is so deeply rooted in the soul that we identify with it no matter whether as a child in the first years of life, whether in our middle years, or whether in having grown old.

What comes to expression in the fairy tale accompanies us throughout our lives in the deepest recesses of the soul. Only, the fairy tale is often a quite freewheeling and playful, pictorial expression of underlying experiences. The aesthetic, artistic enjoyment of the fairy tale may be as far removed for the soul from the corresponding inner experience—the comparison can be ventured—as say, the experience of taste on the tongue when we partake of food is removed from the complicated, hidden processes this food undergoes in the total organism in contributing to building up the organism. What the food undergoes initially evades human observation and knowledge. All the human being has is the enjoyment in tasting. The two things have seemingly little to do with each other in the first instance, and from how a particular food tastes, no one is capable of determining what purpose this food has in the whole life-process of the human organism. What we experience in the aesthetic enjoyment of the fairy tale is likewise far removed from what takes place deep down in the unconscious, where what the fairy tale radiates and pours forth out of itself joins forces with the human soul. The soul has a deep-rooted need to let the substance of the fairy tale run through its spiritual “veins,” just as the organism has a need to allow the nutrients to circulate through it.

Applying the methods of spiritual research that have been described for penetrating the spiritual worlds, at a certain stage one acquires knowledge of spiritual processes that continually take place quite unconsciously in the depths of the human soul. In normal everyday life, such spiritual processes unfolding in the soul's depths surface only occasionally in faint dream experiences caught by day-consciousness. Awakening from sleep under especially favorable circumstances, one may have the feeling: You are emerging out of a spiritual world in which thinking, in which a kind of pondering has taken place, in which something has happened in the deep, unfathomable background of existence. Though apparently similar to daytime experiences, and intimately connected with one's whole being, this remains profoundly concealed for conscious daily life.

For the spiritual researcher who has made some progress and is capable of initial experiences in the world of spiritual beings and spiritual facts, things often proceed in much the same way. As far as one advances, one still arrives again and again, so to speak, only at the boundary of a world in which spiritual processes approach one out of the deep unconscious. These processes, it must be said, are connected with one's own being. They can be apprehended almost the same way as a fata morgana appearing to one's spiritual gaze, not revealing themselves in their totality.

That is one of the strangest experiences—this peering into the unfathomable spiritual connections within which the human soul stands. In attentively following up these intimate soul occurrences, it turns out that conflicts experienced in the depths of the soul and portrayed in works of art, in tragedies, are relatively easy to survey, as compared to the generally-human soul conflicts of which we have no presentiment in daily life. Every person does nonetheless undergo these conflicts at every age of life.

Such a soul conflict discovered by means of spiritual investigation takes place for example, without ordinary consciousness knowing anything of it, every day on awakening, when the soul emerges from the world in which it unconsciously resides during sleep and immerses itself once again in the physical body. As already mentioned, ordinary consciousness has no notion of this, and yet a battle takes place every day in the soul's foundations, glimpsed only in spiritual investigation. This can be designated the battle of the solitary soul seeking its spiritual path, with the stupendous forces of natural existence, such as we face in external life in being helplessly subjected to thunder and lightning—in experiencing how the elements vent themselves upon the defenseless human being.

Though arising with stupendous force, even such rare occurrences of Nature experienced by the human being are a trifling matter as compared with the inner battle taking place unconsciously upon awakening. Experiencing itself existentially, the soul has now to unite itself with the forces and substances of the physical body in which it immerses itself, so as to make use of the senses and of the limbs once again, these being ruled by natural forces. The human soul has something like a yearning to submerge itself in the purely natural, a longing that fulfils itself with every awakening. There is at the same time, as though a shrinking back, a sense of helplessness as against what stands in perpetual contrast to the human soul—the purely natural, manifesting in the external corporeality into which it awakens. Strange as it may sound that such a battle takes place daily in the soul's foundations, it is nonetheless an experience that does transpire unconsciously. The soul cannot know precisely what happens, but it experiences this battle every morning, and each and every soul stands under the impression of this battle despite knowing nothing of it—through all that the soul inherently is, the whole way it is attuned to existence.

Something else that takes place in the depths of the soul and can be apprehended by means of spiritual investigation presents itself at the moment of falling asleep. Having withdrawn itself from the senses and from the limbs, having in a sense left the external body behind in the physical sense-world, what then approaches the human soul may be called a feeling of its own “inwardness.” Only then does it go through the inner battles that arise unconsciously by virtue of its being bound to external matter in life—and having to act in accordance with this entanglement. It feels the attachment to the sense world with which it is burdened as a hindrance, holding it back morally. Other moral moods can give us no conception of what thus transpires unconsciously after falling asleep, when the human soul is alone with itself. And all sorts of further moods then take their course in the soul when free of the body, in leading a purely spiritual existence between falling asleep and waking up.

However, it should not be supposed that these events taking place in the soul's depths are not there in the waking state. Spiritual investigation reveals one very interesting fact in particular, namely that people not only dream when they think they do, but all day long. The soul is in truth always full of dreams, only the human being does not notice this, since day consciousness is stronger as compared to dream consciousness. Just as a weaker light is drowned out by a stronger one, so what continually takes place in the course of waking consciousness as an ongoing dream-experience is drowned out by day consciousness. Though not generally aware of it, we dream all the time. And out of the abundance of dream experiences, of dreams that remain unconscious, presenting themselves as boundless in relation to the experiences of day consciousness, those dreams of which the human being does actually become conscious, separate themselves off. They do so much as a single drop of water might separate itself from a vast lake. But this dreaming activity that remains unconscious is a soul-spiritual experience. Things take place there in the soul's depths. Such spiritual experiences of the soul located in unconscious regions take their course much as chemical processes, of which we are unconscious, take place in the body.

Connecting this with a further fact arising from these lectures, additional light may be shed on hidden aspects of the soul-life spoken of here. We have often stressed—this was emphasized again in the previous lecture—that in the course of humanity's development on the earth, the soul-life of human beings has changed. Looking back far enough, we find that primeval human beings had quite different experiences from those of the human soul today. We have already spoken of the fact—and will do so again in coming lectures—that the primeval human being in early periods of evolution had a certain original clairvoyance. In the manner of looking at the world normal today in the waking state, we receive sense impressions from an external stimulus. We connect them by means of our understanding, our reason, feeling and will. This is merely the consciousness belonging to the present, having developed out of older forms of human consciousness. Applying the word in the positive sense, these were clairvoyant states. In an entirely normal way, in certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, human beings were able to experience something of spiritual worlds. Thus, even if not yet fully self-conscious, human beings were by no means as unfamiliar in their normal consciousness with experiences taking place in the depths of the soul, such as those we have spoken of today.

In ancient times human beings perceived more fully their connection with the spiritual world around them. They saw what takes place in the soul, the events occurring deep within the soul, as connected with the spiritual in the universe. They saw spiritual realities passing through the soul and felt themselves much more related to the soul-spiritual beings and facts of the universe. This was characteristic of the original clairvoyant state of humanity. Just as it is possible today to come to a feeling such as the following only under quite exceptional conditions, in ancient times it occurred frequently—not only in artistic, but also in quite primitive human beings.

An experience of a quite vague and indefinite nature may lie buried in the depths of the soul, not rising into consciousness—an experience such as we have described. Nothing of this experience enters the conscious life of day. Something is nonetheless there in the soul, just as hunger is present in the bodily organism. And just as one needs something to satisfy hunger, so one needs something to satisfy this indefinite mood deriving from the experience lying deep within the soul. One then feels the urge to reach either for an existing fairy tale, for a saga, or if one is of an artistic disposition, perhaps to elaborate something of the kind oneself. Here it is as though all theoretical words one might make use of amount to stammering; and that is how fairy tales arise. Filling the soul with fairy tale pictures in this way constitutes nourishment for the soul as regards the “hunger” referred to.

In past ages of humanity's development every human being still stood closer to a clairvoyant perception of these inner spiritual experiences of the soul, and with their simpler constitution people were able—in sensing the hunger described here far more directly than is the case today—to seek nourishment from the pictures we possess today in the fairy tale traditions of various peoples. The human soul felt a kinship with spiritual existence. Without understanding them, it sensed more or less consciously the inner battles it had to undergo, giving pictorial form to them in pictures bearing only a distant similarity to what had taken place in the soul's substrata. Yet there is a palpable connection between what expresses itself in fairy tales and these unfathomable experiences of the human soul.

Ordinary experience shows us that a childlike soul disposition frequently creates something for itself inwardly, such as a simple “companion”—a companion really only there for this childlike mind, accompanying it nonetheless and taking part in the various occurrences of life. Who does not know, for instance, of children who take certain invisible friends along with them through life? You have to imagine that these “friends” are there when something happens that pleases the child, participating as invisible spirit companions, soul companions, when the child experiences this or that. Quite often one can witness how badly it affects the child's soul disposition when a “sensible” person comes, hears the child has such a soul companion, and now wants to talk it out of this soul companion, even perhaps considering it salutary for the child to be talked out of it. The child grieves for its soul companion. And if the child is receptive for soul-spiritual moods, this grieving signifies still more. It can mean the child begins to ail, becoming constitutionally infirm. This is an altogether real experience connected with profound inner occurrences of the human soul.

Without dispersing the “aroma” of the fairy tale, we can sense this simple experience in the fairy tale which tells of the child and the toad, related by the Brothers Grimm.¹ They tell us of the girl who always has a toad accompany her while eating. The toad, however, only likes the milk. The child talks to the animal as though with a human being. One day she wants the toad to eat some of her bread as well. The mother overhears this; she comes and strikes the animal dead. The child ails, sickens, and dies.

In fairy tales we feel soul moods reverberate that do absolutely in fact take place in the depths of the soul, such that the human soul is actually not only cognizant of them in certain periods of life, but simply by virtue of being human, irrespective of being a child or an adult. Thus, every human soul can sense something re-echo of what it experiences without comprehending it—not even raising it into consciousness—connected with what in the fairy tale works on the soul as food works on the taste buds. For the soul, the fairy tale then becomes something similar to the nutritional substance as applied to the organism. It is fascinating to seek out in deep soul experiences what re-echoes in various fairy tales. It would of course be quite a major undertaking actually to examine individual fairy tales in this regard, collected as they are in such numbers. This would require a lot of time. But what can perhaps be illustrated with a few fairy tales can be applied to all of them, in so far as they are genuine.

Let us take another fairy tale also collected by the Brothers Grimm, the fairy tale of “Rumpelstiltskin.” A miller asserts to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold and is requested to have her come to the castle, so the king can ascertain her art for himself. The daughter goes to the castle. She is locked in a room and given a bundle of straw with which to demonstrate her art. In the room she is quite helpless. And while she is in this helpless state, a manikin appears before her. He says to her: “What will you give me, if I spin the straw into gold for you?” The miller's daughter gives him her necklace and the little man thereupon spins the straw into gold for her. The king is quite amazed, but he wants still more, and she is to spin straw into gold once again. The miller's daughter is again locked in a room, and as she sits in front of all the straw, the little man appears and says, “What will you give me, if I spin the straw to gold for you?” She gives him a little ring, and the straw is once more spun into gold by the little man. But the king wants still more. And when she now sits for the third time in the room and the little man again appears, she has nothing further to give him. At that the little man says, if she becomes queen one day, she is to grant him the first child she gives birth to. She promises to do so. And when the child is there, and the little man comes and reminds her of her promise, the miller's daughter wants a postponement. The little man then says to her: “If you can tell me what my name is, you can be free of your promise.” The miller's daughter sends everywhere, inquiring after every name. In learning every name, she wants to find out what the little man's name is. Finally, after a number of vain attempts, she actually succeeds in discovering his name—Rumpelstiltskin.

With really no work of art other than fairy tales does one have such a sense of joy over the immediate picture presented, while yet knowing of the profound inner soul-experience out of which the fairy tale is born. Though the comparison may be trivial, it is perhaps still apt: Just as a person can be aware of the chemistry of food and still find a bite to eat flavorful, so it is possible to know something of the profound inner experiences of soul that are only experienced, not “known,” and that come to expression in fairy tale pictures in the manner indicated. In fact, unknowingly the solitary human soul—it is after all alone with itself during sleep, as also in the rest of life even when united with the body—feels and experiences, albeit unconsciously, the whole disparate relation in which it finds itself in regard to its own immense tasks, its place within the divine order of the world.

The human soul does indeed feel how little it is capable of in comparing its ability with what external Nature can do, in transforming one thing into another. Nature is really a great magician, such as the human soul itself would like to be. In conscious life it may light-heartedly look past this gulf between the human soul and the wise omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit of Nature. But at deeper levels of soul experience, the matter is not done away with so easily. There, the human soul would necessarily go to rack and ruin if it were not after all to feel within it a more profound being inside the initially perceptible one, a being it can rely on, of which it can say to itself: As imperfect as you now still are—this being within you is cleverer. It is at work within you; it can carry you to the point of attaining the greatest skill. It can grant you wings, enabling you to see an endless perspective spread out before you, leading into a limitless future. You will be capable of accomplishing what you cannot as yet accomplish, for within you there is something that is infinitely more than your “knowing” self. It is your loyal helper. You must only gain a relation to it. You have really only to be able to form a conception of this cleverer, wiser, more skillful being than you yourself are, residing within you.

In calling to mind this discourse of the human soul with itself, this unconscious discourse with the more adroit part of the soul, we may feel reverberating in this fairy tale of “Rumpelstiltskin” what the soul experiences in the miller's daughter who cannot spin straw into gold, but finds in the little man a skillful, loyal helper. There, deep in the substrata of the soul—in pictures, the distinctive aura of which is not destroyed through knowing their origin—the profound inner life of soul is given.

Or, let us take another fairy tale.—Please do not take it amiss, however, if I connect this with matters having an apparently personal tinge, though not at all meant in a personal sense. The essential point will become clear in adding a few observations.

In my Esoteric Science you will find a description of world evolution. It is not my intention to talk specifically about this now—that can be left for another occasion. In this world evolution our earth is spoken of as having gone through certain stages as a planet in the cosmos, comparable to human lives that follow one upon the other. Just as the individual human being goes through lives that follow each other sequentially, so our earth has gone through various planetary life-stages, various incarnations. In spiritual science, we speak, for certain reasons, of the earth as having gone through a kind of “Moon” existence before beginning its “Earth” existence, and prior to this a kind of “Sun” existence. Thus, we may speak of a Sun-existence, a planetary predecessor existence of our Earth-existence, as having been present in a primeval past—an ancient Sun, with which the earth was still united. Then, in the course of evolution a splitting off of Sun and earth took place. From what had originally been “Sun,” the moon separated itself off as well, and our sun of today, which is not the original Sun, but only a piece of it, so to speak. Thus, we may speak, as it were, of the original Sun and of its successor, the sun of today. And we may also refer to the moon of today as a product of the old Sun. If spiritual scientific investigation follows the evolution of the earth retrospectively to where the second sun, the sun of today, developed as an independent cosmic body, it has to be said that at that time, of the creatures that might have been externally perceptible to the senses, among the animals, only those existed that had developed to the stage of the fishes.

These things can all be looked up more precisely in Esoteric Science. They can be discovered only by means of spiritual scientific investigation. At the time they had been discovered and written down by me in EsotericScience, the fairy tale in question was quite unknown to me. That is the personal factor I should like to add here. I am able to establish with certainty that it was quite unknown to me, since I only later came across it in Wilhelm Wundt's Ethnic Psychology,² whose sources I only then followed up further.

Before briefly outlining the fairy tale, I should like to say one thing in advance: Everything the spiritual researcher is able to investigate in this way in the spiritual world—and the things just referred to do have to be investigated in the spiritual world, since they are otherwise no longer extant—everything investigated in this way presents a world with which the human soul is united even so. We are connected with this world in the deepest recesses of our souls. It is always present, indeed we unconsciously enter this spiritual world in normal life upon falling asleep. Our soul is united with it and has within it not only the soul's experiences during sleep, but also those relating to the whole of evolution referred to here. Were it not paradoxical, one would like to say: in the unconscious state, the soul knows of this and experiences itself in the ongoing stream issuing from the original Sun and subsequently from the daughter sun we now see shining in the sky, as well as from the moon, also a descendant of the original Sun. And in addition, the soul experiences the fact that it has undergone an existence, soul-spiritually, in which it was not yet connected with earthly matter, in which it could look down on earthly processes; for instance, on the time in which the fish species were the highest animal organisms, where the present sun, the present moon, arose and split off from the Earth. In unconscious regions, the soul is linked to these events.

We shall now briefly follow the outline of a fairy tale found among primitive peoples, who tell us: There was once a man. As a human being, he was, however, actually of the nature of tree resin and could only perform his work during the night, since, had he carried out his work by day, he would have been melted by the Sun. One day, however, it happened that he did go out by day, in order to catch fish. And behold, the man who actually consisted of tree resin, melted away. His sons decided to avenge him. And they shot arrows. They shot arrows that formed certain figures, towering one over the other, so that a ladder arose reaching up to heaven. They climbed up this ladder, one of them during the day, the other during the night. One of them became the sun, and the other became the moon.

It is not my habit to interpret such things in an abstract way and to introduce intellectual concepts. But it is a different matter to have a feeling for the results of investigation—that the human soul in its depths is united with what happens in the world, to be grasped only spiritually, that the human soul is connected with all this and has a hunger to savor its deepest unconscious experiences in pictures. In citing the fairy tale just outlined, one feels a reverberation of what the human soul experienced as the original Sun, and as the arising of sun and moon during the fish epoch of the Earth. It was in some respects a quite momentous experience for me—this is once more the personal note—when I came across this fairy tale, long after the facts I have mentioned stood printed in my Esoteric Science. Though the notion of interpreting the whole matter abstractly still does not occur to me, a certain kindred feeling arises when I consider world evolution in the context of another, parallel portrayal—when I give myself up to the wonderful pictures of this fairy tale.

Or, as a further example, let us take a peculiar Melanesian fairy tale. Before speaking of this fairy tale, let us remind ourselves that, as shown by spiritual investigation, the human soul is also closely linked to prevailing occurrences and facts of the universe. Even if stated rather too graphically, it is still nonetheless true in a certain respect, from a spiritual scientific point of view, if we say: When the human soul leaves the physical body in sleep, it leads an existence in direct connection with the entire cosmos, feeling itself related to the entire cosmos. We may remind ourselves of the relationship of the human soul, or for example, of the human “I” with the cosmos—at least with something of significance in the cosmos. We direct our gaze to the plant world and tell ourselves: The plant grows, but it can only do so under the influence of the sun's light and warmth. We have before us the plant rooted in the earth. In spiritual science we say: the plant consists of its physical body and of the life-body which permeates it. But that does not suffice for the plant to grow and unfold itself. For that, the forces are required that work on the plant from the sun.

If we now contemplate the human body while the human being sleeps, this sleeping human body is in a sense equivalent to a plant. As a sleeping body it is comparable to the plant in having the same potential to grow as the plant. However, the human being is emancipated from the cosmic order which envelops the plant. The plant has to wait for the sun to exert its influence on it, for the rising and setting of the sun. It is bound to the external cosmic order. The human being is not so bound. Why not? Because what spiritual science points out is in fact true: the human being exerts an influence from the “I”—outside the physical body in sleep—upon the plant-like physical body, equivalent to what the sun exerts on the plant. Just as the sun pours its light out over the plants, so does the human “I” pour its light over the now plant-like physical body when the human being sleeps. As the sun “reigns” over the plants, so the human “I” reigns, spiritually, over the plant-like sleeping physical body. The “I” of the human being is thus related to the sun-existence. Indeed, the “I” of the human being is itself a kind of “sun” for the sleeping human body, and brings about its enlivening during sleep, brings it about that those forces are replenished that have been used up in the waking state. If we have a feeling for this, then we recognize how the human “I” is related to the sun. Spiritual science shows us in addition that, just as the sun traverses the arc of heaven—I am of course speaking of the apparent movement of the sun—and in a certain respect the effect of its rays differs according to whether it stands in this or that constellation of the zodiac, so the human “I” also goes through various phases in its experience. Thus, from one phase it works in one way, from a different phase it works in another way on the physical body. In spiritual science one acquires a feeling for how the sun works differently onto the earth according to whether it does so, for example, from the constellation of Aries, or from the constellation of Taurus, and so on. For that reason, one does not speak of the sun in general, but of its effect in connection with the twelve signs of the zodiac—indicating the correspondence of the changing “I” with the changing activity of the sun.

Let us now take everything that could only be sketched here, but which is developed further in Esoteric Science, as something to be gained as soul-spiritual knowledge. Let us regard it as what takes place in the depths of the soul and remains unconscious but takes place in such a way that it signifies an inner participation in the spiritual forces of the cosmos that manifest themselves in the fixed stars and planets. And let us compare all this, proclaimed by spiritual science as the secrets of the universe, with a Melanesian fairy tale, that I shall again outline only briefly:

On a country road lies a stone. This stone is the mother of Quatl. And Quatl has eleven brothers. After the eleven brothers and Quatl have been created, Quatl begins to create the present world. In this world he created, a difference between day and night was still unknown. Quatl then learns that there is an island somewhere, on which there is a difference between day and night. He travels to this island and brings a few inhabitants from this island back to his country. And, by virtue of their influence on those in his country, they too come to experience the alternating states of sleeping and waking, and the rising and setting of the sun takes place for them as a soul experience.

It is remarkable what reverberates once again in this fairy tale. Considering the fairy tale as a whole there re-echoes, with every sentence, so to speak, something of world secrets, something of what, in the sense of spiritual science, the soul experiences in its depths. One then has to say: The sources of fairy tale moods, of fairy tales generally, lie in hidden depths of the human soul. These fairy tales are presented in the form of pictures, since external happenings have to be made use of in order to provide what is to be spiritual nourishment for the hunger that wells up as an outcome of the soul's experiences. Though we are far removed from the actual experiences in question, we can sense how they reverberate in the fairy tale pictures.

With this in mind, we need not wonder that the finest, most characteristic fairy tales are those handed down from former ages when people still had a certain clairvoyant consciousness and found easier access to the sources of these fairy tale moods. Further, it need not surprise us that in regions of the world where human beings stand closer to spirituality than do the souls of the Occident, for example in India, in the Orient in general, fairy tales can have a much more distinctive character.

Neither need we be surprised that in the German fairy tales that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected in the form told them by relatives and others, often simple people, we come upon accounts reminiscent of the periods of European life in which the great heroic sagas arose. Fairy tales contain attributes found in the great heroic sagas. It need not surprise us to hear that it belatedly came to light that the most significant fairy tales are even older than the heroic sagas. Heroic sagas after all show human beings only at a particular age of life and in particular situations, while what lives in fairy tales is of a generally-human nature, accompanying human beings at every age, from their first to their last breath. It need not surprise us if the fairy tale also insistently depicts, for example, what we have referred to as a profound experience of the soul, the feeling of the soul's inadequacy on awakening in regard to the forces of Nature it helplessly faces and is only a match for, if it has the consolation of knowing at the same time: Within you, there is something that transcends your personal self, and makes you in a certain respect the victor once again over the forces of Nature.

In sensing this mood, one has a feeling for why human beings so often find themselves up against giants in fairy tales. Why do these giants appear? Well, as an image, these giants arise as a matter of course from the whole tone of the soul in wanting to make its way into the body again in the morning, seeing itself confronted by the “giant” forces of Nature occupying the body. What the soul senses there as a battle, what it then feels is altogether real—not in rational terms, but as corresponds to depictions of the manifold battles of the human being with giants. When all this comes to meet it, it clearly senses how it possesses only one thing, its shrewdness, in this whole battle—in its stand in confronting giants. For, this entails the feeling: You could now reenter your body, but what are you, as against the immense forces of the universe! However, you do have something not there in these giants, and that is cunning—reason! This does in fact stand unconsciously before the soul, even if it has also to say to itself, that it can do nothing against the immense forces of the universe. We see how the soul transposes this literally into a picture in giving expression to the mood in question:

A man goes along a country road and comes to an inn. In the inn he asks for milk-soup (blancmange). Flies enter the soup. He finishes eating the milk-soup, leaving the flies. Then he strikes the plate, counts the flies he has killed, and brags: “A hundred at one blow!” The innkeeper hangs a sign around his neck: “He has killed a hundred at one blow.” Continuing along the country road, this man comes to a different region. There a king looks out the window of his castle. He sees the man with the sign around his neck and says to himself: I could well use him. He takes him into his service and assigns him a definite task. He says to him: “You see, the problem is, whole packs of bears always come into my kingdom. If you have struck a hundred dead, then you can certainly also strike the bears dead for me.” The man says: “I am willing to do it!” But, until the bears are there, he wants a good wage and proper meals, for, having thought about it, he says to himself: If I can't do it, I shall at least have lived well until then.—When the time came, and the bears were approaching, he collected all kinds of food and various good things bears like to eat. Then he approached them and laid these things out. When the bears got there, they ate until they were full to excess, finally lying there as though paralyzed; and now he struck them dead one after the other. The king arrived and saw what he had accomplished. However, the man told him: “I simply had the bears jump over a stick and chopped off their heads at the same time!” Delighted, the king assigns him another task. He says to him: “Now the giants will soon also be coming into my land, and you must help me against them as well.” The man promised to do so. And when the time approached, he again took a quantity of provisions with him, including a lark and a piece of cheese. On actually encountering the giants, he first entered into a conversation with them about his strength. One of the giants said: “We shall certainly show you that we are stronger,” taking a stone and crushing it in his hand. Then he said to the man: “That is how strong we are! What can you do as compared to us?” Another giant took an arrow, shooting it so high that only after a long time did the arrow come down again and said: “That's how strong we are! What can you do as compared to us?” At this, the man who had killed a hundred at one blow said: “I can do all that and more!” He took a small piece of cheese and a stone, spreading the stone with cheese, and said to the giants: “I can squeeze water out of a stone!” And he squashed the cheese so that water squirted out of it. The giants were astonished at his strength in being able to squeeze water from a stone. Then the man took the lark and let it fly off, saying to the giants: “Your arrow came back down again, the one I have shot, however, goes up so high that it does not come back down at all!” For the lark did not return at all. At that, the giants were so amazed, they agreed among themselves that they would only be able to overcome him with cunning. They no longer thought of being able to overcome him with the strength of giants. Nonetheless, they did not succeed in outwitting him; on the contrary, he outwitted them. While they all slept, he put an inflated pig's bladder over his head, inside which there was some blood. The giants had said to themselves: Awake, we shall not be able to get the better of him, so we shall do it while he sleeps. They struck him while he slept, smashing the pig's bladder. Seeing the blood that spurted out, they thought they had finished him off. And they soon fell asleep. In the peaceful quiet that overcame them, they slept so soundly that he was able to put an end to them.

Even though, like some dreams, the fairy tale ends here somewhat indefinitely and on an unsatisfactory note, we nonetheless have before us a portrayal of the battle of the human soul against the forces of Nature—first against the “bears,” then against the “giants.” But something else becomes evident in this fairy tale. We have the man who has “killed a hundred at one blow.” We have an echo of what lives at the deepest unconscious levels of the soul: the consolation in becoming aware of its own shrewdness over against these stronger, overwhelming forces. It is not a good thing when what has been presented artistically in pictures is interpreted abstractly. That is not at all what matters. On the other hand, nothing of the artistic form of the fairy tale is diminished if one has a feeling for the fact that the fairy tale is an after-echo of events taking place deep within the soul. These events are such that we can know a great deal about them, as much as one can come to know by means of spiritual investigation—yet, in immersing ourselves in fairy tales and experiencing them, they still remain original and elementary.

In researching them, it is certainly agreeable to know that fairy tales present what the soul needs on account of its deepest experiences, as we have indicated. At the same time, no fairy tale mood is destroyed in arriving at a deeper recognition of the sources of subconscious life. Presented only abstractly, we find these sources are impoverished for our consciousness, whereas the fairy tale form is really the more comprehensive one for expressing the deepest experiences of the soul.

It is then comprehensible that Goethe expressed in the significant and evocative pictures of the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily what he was abundantly able to experience, and which Schiller chose to express in abstract-philosophical concepts. Thus, despite having thought a great deal, Goethe wanted to say in pictures what he felt concerning the deepest underlying strata of human soul-life. And because the fairy tale relates in this way to the innermost soul, it is precisely the form most suited to the child. For it may be said of fairy tales that they have brought it about that what is most profound in spiritual life is expressed in the simplest possible form. In fact, one gradually comes to feel that in all conscious artistic life there is no greater art than that which completes the path from the uncomprehended depths of soul-life to the delightful, often playful pictures of the fairy tale.

An art capable of expressing in the most self-evident form what is hard to comprehend is the greatest and most natural art, an art intimately related to the human being. And just because, in the case of the child, the essential human being is still united in an unspoilt way with the whole of existence, with the whole of life, the child especially needs the fairy tale as nourishment for its soul. What depicts spiritual powers can come alive more fully in the child. The childlike soul may not be enmeshed in abstract theoretical concepts if it is not to be obliterated. It has to remain connected with what is rooted in the depths of existence.

Hence, we can do nothing of greater benefit for the soul of the child than in allowing what unites the human being with the roots of existence to act upon it. As the child still has to work creatively on its own physical formation, summoning the formative forces for its own growth, for the unfolding of its natural abilities, it senses wonderful soul nourishment in fairy tale pictures that connect it with the roots of existence. Since, even in giving themselves over to what is rational and intellectual, human beings can still never be wholly torn away from the roots of existence, they gladly turn again at every age to the fairy tale, provided they are of a sufficiently healthy and straightforward soul disposition. For there is no stage of life and no human situation that can estrange us altogether from what flows from fairy tales—in consequence of which we could cease having anything more to do with what is most profound in human nature or have no sense for what is so incomprehensible for the intellect, expressed in the self-evident, simple, primitive fairy tale and fairy tale mood.

Hence, those who have concerned themselves for a long time with restoring to humanity the fairy tales that had been rather glossed over by civilization, individuals such as the Brothers Grimm, understandably had the feeling—even if they did not adopt a spiritual scientific view—that they were renewing something that belongs intimately to human nature. After an intellectual culture had done its part over a period of centuries to estrange the human soul, including the soul of the child, such collections of fairy tales as those of the Brothers Grimm have quite properly found their way again to all human beings receptive for such things. In this way they have become once more the common heritage of children's souls, indeed of all human souls. They will do so increasingly, the more spiritual science is not just taken as theory, but becomes an underlying mood of the soul, uniting it more and more in feeling with the spiritual roots of its existence.³

In this way, by means of the dissemination of spiritual science, what genuine fairy tale collectors, those truly receptive for fairy tales as well as those who present them have declared, will prove well-founded. This is what a certain individual, a true friend of fairy tales, often said in lectures I was able to hear.⁴ It is a wonderfully poetic utterance which at the same time summarizes what results from such spiritual scientific considerations as we have presented today. It may be formulated in words this man spoke—knowing as he did how to love fairy tales, collecting them, and appreciating them. He always liked to add the saying:

“Fairy tales and sagas are comparable to a good angel, granted human beings as a companion from birth on their life's wanderings, to be a trustworthy comrade throughout—offering comradeship, and making life inwardly into a truly ensouled fairy tale!”⁵

• 1. in “Tales About Toads”
• 2. published in 10 volumes, 1900-1920
• 3. In 1856 Wilhelm Grimm wrote: “Common to all fairy tales is a residual faith reaching back into ancient times, expressing itself in a pictorial grasp of supersensible things.”
• 4. This is in all probability a reference to Rudolf Steiner's friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900), professor of literature at the Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Vienna, discoverer of the Oberufer Christmas Plays, and described by Rudolf Steiner as “a researcher in the style of the Brothers Grimm.” (Document of Barr, Sept. 1907.)
• 5. Schröer was in turn quoting Wilhelm Grimm

The different incarnations of the human individuality are a kind of swinging of the pendulum to and fro until the rhythm is brought to rest and the higher part of man has found in the physical a fitting expression, a suitable instrument. Approximately ever since human beings have reincarnated, the position of sun, moon and earth has existed as it is now. We must understand that man belongs to the great cosmic organism. In the times in which great changes take place in the life of humanity, mighty changes also occur in the cosmos. Earlier than this, before there was reincarnation, sun, moon and earth were not yet separated as now. Kant and Laplace made their observation from the physical plane only, and to this extent their theory is quite correct, but they did not know the connection with spiritual forces. When out of the primal fire-vapour sun, moon and earth came into existence as separate bodies, man also began to incarnate. When human incarnations will have come to an end, the sun also will be re-united with the earth. On the large scale as in the single details, one must bear in mind these relationships of man to the universe.

You will often have heard that man usually incarnates after a period of about two thousand years. One can investigate when people who are alive today had their earlier incarnation. The souls who are now incarnated, one finds as a rule about 300 to 400 years after the birth of Christ. In addition, however, one finds others who are incarnated at various times, some earlier, some later. But there is another way to determine incarnations, a way which leads more certainly to the goal. One can say: Were the human beings who die today to return in a short time they would meet almost the same conditions as now. But man ought to learn as much as possible on the Earth. This can only happen when in the next incarnation he finds something new which is essentially different from the earlier conditions.

Let us for instance imagine ourselves back into the time about 600 to 800 years before Christ; that is about the time of the Iliad and the Odyssey. With the advanced peoples of that time the conditions of life were quite different from what they are now. One would for instance be astonished to see with what curious implements people ate. At that time also people had not yet learnt to write. The great poems were transmitted by word of mouth. When a person of those times is reincarnated today he must as a child learn quite other things. As a child he must learn to write. The stream of culture has meanwhile progressed. One must distinguish between the stream of culture and the development of the individual soul. As a child one must catch up with the civilisation and for this reason one must be born again as a child.

Now we must ask: What causes such utterly different conditions on earth? This is connected with the progression of the spring equinox. About 800 years before Christ the sun in spring entered the constellation of Aries, of the Ram. Every year at the vernal point it shifts a little. Because of this the conditions on the earth are always slightly changing. Eight hundred years before Christ the sun stood in the constellation of Aries. Earlier it stood in the constellation of Taurus, still earlier in Gemini and still earlier in Cancer. Now already for some hundred of years it rises in the constellation of Pisces. After this comes Aquarius. The advance of civilisations is also connected with the progression of the sun from one constellation to the other.

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At the time when the sun rose in the constellation of Cancer the ancient Vedic culture of the Indians, the culture of the Rishis reached its highest point. The Rishis, those still half-divine beings, were the teachers of men. The Atlantean civilisation had met its destruction; a new impulse broke in. In occultism this is called a ‘vortex’ (wirbel). This is also why, in the age in which the sun stood in the constellation of Cancer, the sign was made in this way:

Cancer signifies a breaking in of something new, a ‘vortex’ (a double spiral).

The second cultural epoch is named the constellation of the Twins. At that time the dual nature of the world was understood, the opposing forces of the world, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Good and Evil. Thus the Persians also speak of the Twins.

The third cultural epoch is that of the Sumerians in Asia Minor and of the Egyptians. The constellation of the Bull corresponds to this epoch. This is why in Asia the Bull was venerated and in Egypt, Apis. At that time in Babylon and Assyria the Sumerian language was the language of wisdom. Then the Bull fell into decadence and the Ram came into the ascendant. The first indication of this is the Saga of the Golden Fleece.

The fourth culture is that of the Ram, or Lamb; Christ stands in the sign of the Ram, or Lamb; hence he calls himself the Lamb of God.

As fifth culture the external materialistic civilisation follows, in the constellation of the Fishes. This developed principally from the 12th century onwards and reached its climax about the year 1800. This is the culture of the Fifth sub-race, the present time.

In the constellation of the Water-Man in the future, the new Christianity will be proclaimed. ‘Water-Man’ is also the one who will bring it, he who has already been here: John the Baptist. Later he will again be the forerunner of Christ, when the Sixth, the spiritual sub-race will be founded. The Theosophical Movement should be the preparation for that time.

In the New Testament the expression ‘on the mountain’ is used on various occasions. ‘On the mountain’ means: in the mystery, in the innermost, in the intimate. Even the Sermon on the Mount is not to be understood as a sermon for the people, but as an intimate teaching for the disciples. The Transfiguration on the Mountain has also to be understood in this sense. Jesus went up into the mountain with the three disciples, Peter, James and John. There, we are told, the disciples were caught up out of themselves; then Moses and Elias appeared on either side of Jesus. For a moment space and time were extinguished and the disciples found themselves with their consciousness on the mental plane. Those who were no longer physically present, Moses and Elias, appeared. In direct revelation they had before them: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.’ The way = Elias, Moses = the truth, Christ = the life. This appeared here to the disciples in actual form. Jesus once said to them: ‘Elias has come again;²⁹ John was Elias, he has only not been recognised.’ But he said further: ‘Tell it to no man until I come again.’ Christianity was not to teach reincarnation for two thousand years, not for any arbitrary reason, but on educational grounds. People were to know nothing of it for two thousand years. In the gospel of St. John there is an indication of this in the miracle of the wedding at Cana where water is turned into wine. In the old Mysteries only water was distributed, but in the Christian Mysteries wine. For in the priesthood, through the partaking of wine, knowledge of reincarnation was blotted out. Whoever partakes of wine cannot attain to any true knowledge of Manas, Buddhi and Atma. He can never comprehend reincarnation. By his coming again Christ means his reappearance in the Sixth sub-race when he will be proclaimed by the ‘Water-Man’. Theosophy actually carries out the testament of Christianity and works towards this epoch of time.

Every time the sun progresses from one sign of the Zodiac to another incisive changes take place in civilisation. In between there elapses a period of about two thousand six hundred years.³⁰ If we take the moment of time when the sun entered the sign of the Ram or Lamb, about 800 years before Christ and 1800 years after Christ, then we have two thousand six hundred years. About the year 1800 we entered the sign of the Fishes. This is the time when materialistic culture reached its highest point. It was prepared for in the Middle Ages and has now begun to decline. About the year 4,400 mankind enters the sign of spiritual culture, that of the Water-Man. Preparation has also to be made for this.

Thus conditions change also with the constellation. With the progression from one sign to another new conditions also arise, so that rebirth has meaning. The human being is reborn approximately every two thousand six hundred years, but the experiences he makes as man and as woman are so radically different that two such incarnations, as man and as woman, are reckoned as one. About one thousand three hundred years elapse between two incarnations as man or as woman, and about two thousand six hundred years between such double incarnations if one reckons both as one. The human being is only man or woman in regard to the physical body. When the physical body is masculine the etheric body is feminine; and vice versa, when the physical body is feminine the etheric body is masculine. Only the astral body is at the same time masculine and feminine. The human being bears within him the opposite sex as etheric body. Thus in the etheric the man is feminine and in the etheric the woman masculine. The physical woman has therefore many concealed masculine qualities; the physical incarnation is present only exoterically. The human being therefore goes through a constellation every time as man and as woman. This is why the Master said to Sinnett that the human being is incarnated about twice in a sub-race. Occultly both incarnations are reckoned together as one. There must come a time in which the woman actually approaches the culture dominated by the man. The present woman's movement is to be recognized as the preparation for another later and quite different woman's movement. In the future, sex differentiation will be totally overcome.

There was a special reason why, for about two thousand years, the teaching of reincarnation was completely suppressed. The human being was to learn to know and value the importance of the one life. Every slave in Ancient Egypt was still convinced of the fact that he would return, that one day he would be master instead of slave, but that he had to pay his karmic debts. The single life was therefore not so important to him. But the lesson people now had to learn was to gain firm ground under their feet; thus during one life, reincarnation was to remain unknown. Christ therefore expressly forbade any teaching about reincarnation. But from 800 years before Christ until about 1800 years after Christ, the time had elapsed during which nearly everyone had gone through the one life without experiencing anything of reincarnation. The great Masters³¹ have the task not always to impart the whole truth at any one time, but only that part needed by man. This withholding of the consciousness of reincarnation came to poetic expression in this epoch in Dante's Divine Comedy. In monastic esotericism on the other hand, reincarnation was definitely taught when the occasion arose. The Trappists³² had to remain silent throughout one incarnation, so that in the next they might become eloquent speakers. They were intentionally trained in this way to become eloquent speakers, for of these the Church can make good use. When St. Augustine put forward the doctrine of predestination he was entirely consistent.³³ Because in the age of materialism reincarnation was not to be taught, the Augustinian doctrine of predestination had to make its appearance. Only in this way could the differences in people's circumstances be explained.

Connected with this is the deeply materialistic character of traditional Christianity, which lies in the fact that the Beyond is made dependent on one physical existence. This materialistic teaching of Christianity has, so to say, borne its fruit. Today there is no longer any consciousness of the Beyond. Social democracy is the ultimate consequence of traditional Christianity. But now a new impulse must come into the world. When one epoch comes to an end something new breaks in. Christianity worked towards the gradual dawning of the materialistic age. In order to bring about the materialistic civilisation, human beings for a period of one thousand three hundred years had to have such a teaching as was brought by Christianity; namely, that man should make the whole of eternity dependent upon one earthly life. Urban bourgeoisie then became the actual founder of the age of materialism. Already at the time of Christ the spiritual had to be betrayed by the purely material. Judas Iscariot had to betray Christ. One can however say: had there been no Judas there would also have been no Christianity. Judas is the first to attach prime importance to money, that is to say, to materialism. In Judas was incarnated the entire materialistic age. This materialistic age has obscured and darkened the spiritual. Through his death Christ becomes the Redeemer of materialism.

• 29. Matthew, Chapter 17. 12 – 13
• 30. Later Rudolf Steiner indicated these epochs more precisely. According to this the point at which the sun rises on the vernal equinox moves backwards through the 12 constellations of the Zodiac in 12 x 2160 = 25,920 years—the Platonic World Year—generally speaking, re-embodiments are connected with these epochs of 2160 years (though there are exceptions). See: Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, Rhythms in the Cosmos and in the Human Being (Typescript) 20.25.28.7.1923
• 31. According to Rudolf Steiner these are beings of great significance for the evolution of mankind. ‘These lofty beings have already left behind them the path that the rest of mankind has yet to tread. They work now as the great Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feeling.’ (Letter to a member 2.1.1905.) See also lecture 13.10.1904.
• 32. Order founded in 1140 in the Cistercian monastery of La Trappe in France. The reform in 1665 imposed strict ascetic practices and silence.
• 33. The teaching of God's eternal decree which results in only a part of humanity being chosen for salvation while the other part is doomed to perdition. Compare lecture 7.10.1917 ‘The Crumbling of the Earth and the Souls and Bodies of Men’ Anthroposophical Quarterly Volume 19 No. 1.

[ 1 ] My dear friends! I agree with Licentiate Bock who suggested it would be best to take up yesterday's reflections plus those of the afternoon and orientate ourselves toward questions that had arisen.

[ 2 ] Yesterday I tried to present a kind of overview of the seven sacraments. I tried to show how the sacraments either determine a kind of value of involution to an evolution value, or the reverse. In the questions which have been asked, there is a wish for something to be said about the sacrament of priest ordination. We have looked at how five sacraments essentially are arranged along the developmental line of each individual human being, how this line connects from birth up to death. We have seen how both the sacraments of priest ordination and marriage in the Christian sense fall away from the other (five) sacraments, and how the priest ordination ceremony points out the evolutionary element which is present in each human being as an involutionary process, namely the mysterious connection each individual human being has with the Divine.

[ 3 ] Now let us first of all try to place the concept of this sacrament of ordination in front of us according to its development, how its Christian content has gone over into Christian ceremonies and gradually crystallized life in Catholicism as the culmination of all ceremonies.

[ 4 ] We must very clearly understand that the connection of human beings with the Divine in the sense of the epoch in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, was such that it certainly existed way back, behind the consciousness of modern man today. If we go back far into the cultural development of humanity, we discover another kind of selection for the priesthood than what was later the case, and of the kind we actually want to talk about here. You must clearly understand that ceremonies, rituals and sacraments only become comprehensible within the entire relationship of human evolution, because the Christian sacraments are a kind of transformation of older sacraments. So, regarding priesthood, the relationship is different compared to olden times. In earlier times the one who was taken up into the mysteries by leaders of the mysteries was elected according to his soul characteristics; his entire human development was regarded as being worthy—if today we could select an apt term we would say: 'to be chosen'. This is a concept which has so much more meaning, the further we look back in human evolution. The point of view that people are equal is a modern-day opinion; it is actually essentially something that only emerged from the consciousness of the epoch around the Mystery of Golgotha. By contrast they believed that in fact, in olden times, one person was more worthy of being chosen than another, so that those who were worthy to be inducted into the Mysteries—or to be initiated, as one can clearly impress the imagination with other expressions—was to be discovered within the masses of people. When these individuals were in this or that way discovered, which was believed as predestination for a priestly calling, he had to go through with the initiation. This process of initiation meant that the person was brought into a situation where he had to manage another state of consciousness other than merely the one he experienced in the outer world. In olden times another state of consciousness prevailed, quite different from what it is today. Today quite a different state of consciousness is needed to be able to manage Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. So when I take today's second kind of consciousness as a start, perhaps it can lead to greater understanding, in such a way that the usual daily consciousness still remains complete. A person should not for a moment—without falling sick—be somehow impaired by exercises or the like, as I have described in my book "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds"; a person should not be impaired in the management of his daily consciousness, it must be present. The other consciousness which lacks real freedom which consist in managing Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition must be there as something which can always change quickly, in an instant change to ordinary daily consciousness, like sleep can be changed into the waking state, only that this changing between seeing consciousness and ordinary day consciousness would be completely situated within human capriciousness. This is certainly something which can only be attained after practice and needs to be examined in all its being, in order to talk about this at all.

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[ 5 ] It is precisely this other consciousness which presents a completely different world compared with the world developed out of the senses and understood with the mind, aspects which feed back into the being of the human I, to stick to the human ego. The human I is present in the other consciousness with great power, one doesn't have something which is merely permeated with a single imagination or feeling, but one has an image. One has the possibility of looking at it and knows, this I is something in which one not merely lives, but it is present as an objectivity. The other thing about this higher consciousness is that one doesn't gain any insight into the mineral kingdom—the mineral kingdom belongs only to ordinary human daily consciousness—by contrast it is fully aware towards anything plant-like, animal-like and the human self. One really lives in another world. What is between these two worlds is called the threshold; it must be crossed over but can only be crossed over after preparations have been achieved, after one has really faithfully practiced the exercises which I have presented in my book "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment." If one has not really prepared for this crossing, one could, through the acquisition of this new consciousness, slip down into physicality. (During the following presentation a central drawing is made on the blackboard.)

I would like to sketch it in the following way. Let's accept that this daily consciousness is connected to human physicality. This higher consciousness is now lifted from it and one sees a completely new world. However, now one has to retain this higher consciousness; it must be purely soul-spiritual. It can't happen however, if one has not previously developed the strength through exercises—it can't happen if not accomplished in a lively way; what I'm implying is more of a hypothesis—so, when one has not acquired the strength through exercises, it can all collapse into physicality. This means one is not living in a free soul-spiritual consciousness but the processes in human organs will reveal what this consciousness observes; then one has to do with dreams, one does not really have actual objective imaginations full of content. The objective, content-filled imagination exists as a result of, what one experiences, not being impregnated with bodily processes, but processes of the supersensible world. This must be achieved through exercises and by having achieved this, being able to step over the boundary between the sensual and supersensible which is designated as the threshold. This is the case today. Today our ordinary consciousness contains content known to everyone, but we have another content—which of course can be described as I have done now again from a certain point of view - which is certainly described as the content of a higher world as opposed to that of the ordinary world.

If we now go back to the times of human earthly development which I want to speak to you about here, in which the chosen ones were inaugurated, then we find they also sought another condition of consciousness but it was different to that of today in as far as the condition of consciousness which we regard as the normal human consciousness, was most extraordinary in each mystery pupil, and a certain image-rich imagination, observing the Divine in all the individual things, was the norm. So, what at that time in the old Mysteries was indicated as the threshold lay in quite a different place to where the threshold is situated for us today. We can even see this in outer things. [ 6 ] You see, today there is something which a child already learns at school, and that is the heliocentric world system. The heliocentric world system—you can find this actually historically handed down—has passed into literature through a kind of betrayal. The heliocentric world system already existed in Greek times, it was already clearly present earlier; it was taught in the Mysteries. What an ordinary child learns today at school, which forms their attitude towards the view of the world, this was taught in olden times only in the Mysteries. In outer normal consciousness people of that time had an image-rich consciousness. We can really say: in comparison to olden times, today every human being who has gone through school, has gone beyond the threshold. Those in the old Mysteries would regard it quite dangerous for people who have not gone through a regular initiation but through some or other elementary experience, to have gone over the threshold, for example by not adhering to the geocentric system—that the earth remains stationary and the sun and stars move—but believe in the immobility of the sun as the initiated students believed in olden times. People said you had to be prepared to tolerate what lies, for example, in the heliocentric world system or what lies, for example, in our current biology or psychology, and so on. This seems like a paradox to people today, yet it was so. One can say that historically human kind as such in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha crossed over the threshold which in earlier epochs in the Mysteries had to be artificially crossed in order to reach initiation. At that time those to be initiated learnt what every child learns today. Today we again learn to gain insight into Higher Worlds which later would be the norm. So it is with the evolution of humanity. It is not recognised through examples from olden writings that it was a given—for human consciousness was image-rich—in such a way that things were not seen outwardly but that all things were perceived for their inner spirituality. One must be aware that the words of these ancient writers are to be read in a different way to the way today's ancient language researchers or cultural historians or anthropologists and their equivalents read, because the consciousness at that time was image-rich. We could therefore say, in olden times the initiate was led towards the world we know today.

[ 7 ] I would like to still add one more detail. When we go back to olden Greek times, we find people couldn't clearly perceive the colour blue as we can today. They had no sensual experience of the colour blue, they had much more of a sense developed towards the other side, towards vital colours, red and so on, so that for the Greeks blue appeared more green than it is for us today. From this point of view, one must understand everything as the ancients did. We must clearly understand that active thinking is connected to humankind's development towards an experience of blue. If blue is mentioned in ancient scriptures it is always in error, because those people didn't have the experience of blue as we have in today's active experience of understanding. Those people, upon looking at blue, didn't have the ability to be objective, for the out-flowing of the I as an objective, they had far more the experience of what stirred in red, which goes from the objective towards the subjective, which is outwardly active and touches and is sensed, where the awareness of the Divine lay in the objects.

[ 8 ] So this initiation was already something quite definite, it involved the initiation being carried out in these olden times by the fact that man himself had to do things which he had to endure physically which to a certain extent formed a kind of inner sacrament. The sacraments in olden times were more inward. Take for instance some outer events which throw a person into a state of fear, caused by these external actions. For example, in Greece there existed Mysteries in which one of the most important processes consisted in a person being placed in total darkness, where he has to live into this darkness, and then suddenly the room was lit up completely—this is the perception he would have been given. What it meant at that time was the transformation of the state of consciousness from being in the darkness, in the blackness, to going into the light. Something happened in a person, fine processes took place inside. These fine processes which were happening in people, I can describe in the following manner.

When a human being, after he has for some time experienced this transformation out of the darkness into the light, salt is separated in him—depending on his individual nature - which is deposited. Salt deposits actually took place as a result of the transfer of going from a dark state to a light state, taking place during the change. These processes became something of which a person became completely aware as being accompanied by the feeling very similar to fear. These salt deposits were observed by a person; he was inwardly observing an interrelation taking place inside himself. At that moment when it happened in him through an external action, man had gone through an initiation process because in olden times initiation consisted in a person experiencing such processes out of himself. What is important now however, was what accompanied such a process of salt deposits within him. Such a salt depositing process within was accompanied by the person's consciousness being impregnated by the process of light perception, not merely of the light perception but from the inner light containing spirituality; he was thus taking in the light which contained spirituality. By the salt coagulating in his inner being, a person felt this coagulation of salts as a penetration of the Divine. To make these conditions conscious was the art of initiation in ancient times. A person could speak quite differently, in them the life of light was not a mere observation by the senses but it was a penetration of light, so that he could say: 'By me living in the light, matter coagulates in me'. With that which is contained in ordinary matter, in a certain sense he directly perceived the effect of that which lies above the substance of ordinary matter.

[ 9 ] Now we will not understand these things, my dear friends, if we don't know that the entire constitution of people in older times was different to what it became later. Such a process, which I have sketched for you, you can observe today when waking up or going to sleep. When physical development reaches puberty, the conditions are such that you won't be able to do these things any longer. The influence on the human being is no longer possible in this intense way; people have hardened more in themselves. Today it doesn't happen for these fine spiritual processes which are taking place there, to be observed just like that. In this respect it will even change the human race. As a result, it has happened that what had taken place within, during earlier times, now is to be looked for outwardly. To a certain extent the opposite of the inner process is performed as a ceremony.

The old process of initiation, the process through which a person allows the spirit to reign, this process is now performed outwardly. The priest ordination was in olden times not at all the weakened process of today, but a process, despite it being performed outwardly, still making a deep impression on people. In later times, still in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and afterwards, the act of baptism, for example, was at least performed as a deed which still accomplished something in people themselves. Those being baptised were immersed in water and thus brought in the same situation as someone being drowned, who sees the retrograde perspective of their life processes flash through them in a spiritual vision. This was part of baptism in earlier times; a person's past life was brought before his soul, so that he learned to see spiritually in a certain way. Later on the sacrament of baptism was temporarily postponed and so it could not be performed in this way, but only symbolically. It is the same with the priest ordination.

The priest ordination in itself is to a certain extent an outer process for that which earlier was evoked inwardly in those going through initiation, through the inversion of outer processes; it is what in fact places the human being in another world. A person is then made aware—I can depict this even more precisely—of certain interrelationships in the cosmos, which can't be studied in the outer world. A person is made aware that physical processes are taking place which do not coincide with the usual outer sensually perceptible processes and he becomes attentive to what is actually sacramental. He learns to see for instance, in dissolving salt in water, that something is happening which isn't created in a physical-chemical process of dissolution, but what happens in salt dissolving in water is actually something inward, I could call it, something radiant. He learns to recognise how processes happen which are only conceivable through the spirit in man. This becoming transported into the world of such revelations which can't be seen with the outer senses or understood with ordinary minds, essentially belongs to the priest consecration. Therefore, through the priest ordination the person will as much be penetrated by this world of the Divine, as the person in olden times was initiated through not merely sensing the penetration of his physicality with light, but that he feels permeated also with the soul-spiritual of the light.

[ 10 ] So, I can put it like this: through priest ordination human consciousness is brought into such a condition that a person can with total inner conviction say: the world around us is actually only a fragment of the world; it is there to hide many things from us, namely hiding spiritual processes, from us. We see spiritually in the processes when we are prepared in the appropriate way to do so. Priest ordination involves such preparation which would allow for spiritual perception, to see, everywhere, the sense perceptible as well as the spiritual processes. Let's take a concrete example.

We can look at the development of leaves on a plant, the development of the flowers, the ovary, the stamens and see the ovary mature. (He draws on the blackboard, left.) We then observe how the pollen flies around, how it fertilises the flowers. If you only observe outwardly then you will evaluate according to the sense perceptible outer processes which you then combine in your mind. Someone who has become mature in spiritual seeing, must see a supersensible weaving which expands as a kind of wavering transmission over plant growth and all that is involved in plant fertilization. Through this however, the earth in which the plants have their roots, is brought into a reciprocal relationship with the spiritual environment of the earth.

[ 11 ] A renewed way of looking must be introduced through priest ordination. Only then, when you have been introduced to this spiritual observing through the priest ordination, will you learn to recognise how the human word evolves in the world, how the human word is not a mere material movement of air but that the word carries spirit on physical air movement, how this spirit permeates certain substances which are fleeting, like for instance the smoke. So being a priest means: seeing how the expressed word grip the smoke, how the smoke weaves the matter, the words, and how through this, that it penetrates the words, how the words tinged with smoke envelops the matter in the words, changing the words themselves, just like in fact evolution continues, how a real, a spiritual reality is there in what happens in the outer world, in phenomena of the world. So being consecrated also means: to be able to perform actions which, besides their physical meaning, also have a spiritual meaning.

[ 12 ] This is of course something—I always must stress this—which lies extraordinarily far from modern consciousness, but unbelievably close to that consciousness which was available at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. During that time people stood in the middle, between the old and the new, they still knew about seeing the Divine-spiritual in everything natural, either through tradition or through atavistic vision, and they lived in fear of the conditions which would arrive when what is natural would no longer be regarded as natural and as a result the Divine-spiritual would be only be understood as a derived abstraction. At that time people still understood the weaving of the spiritual with the sense perceptible. The disciples of Christ Jesus simply knew that this being-in-his-presence meant something different than being in the presence of one another. They knew that he was the carrier of a supersensible being, they felt moved by this supersensible being, and this togetherness with him was for them without doubt the glow of supersensible consciousness.

[ 13 ] Let's think about this. We see a number of people around Christ Jesus in a world, who say: When one is in his presence, one is brought into a world where one can see the Divine-spiritual.—Now, in connection with this, I want to call your attention to important concepts necessary for the understanding of the earliest Christian times. Those individuals who could still call themselves the apostles of the Lord, who, for the affirmation of their mission, did not only refer to the fact that they had heard his words. Having heard his words didn't really carry as much weight as we would experience today when we listen to some or other speech, or a teaching. The teaching of Christ Jesus was something that was felt to be completely charitable in his environment, but it wasn't the first thing you would consider as the most important. It was far more important for them to stress the results: we have lain our hands in his wounds, we have participated in looking at his Being.—The direct togetherness with Christ Jesus is something in particular which I ask you to please consider seriously.

[ 14 ] You see, you will reach a conclusion of what actually is at a soul foundation when I say to you: you need to first sense the difference between what you experience when you place your one hand on an outer object, or on your own hand, or when you place it on some part of your body. You must come to the conclusion that you sense a difference, that there is a difference. You must also be able to feel something else; you must be able to feel you possess two eyes with two lines of vision which meet and cross. (He draws on the blackboard, right.) These two lines of sight which cross at what we are looking at—it is quite like when I hug myself with my two arms encircling myself. Just think about the difference between man and animal. An animal has, to a much reduced degree, the possibility to experience what we for instance experience when our one hand touches the other. Just look at the position of particular animal eyes; you can clearly distinguish how strong the egoism of an animal is, according to its eye positions. Animals which have eye positions with eye axes which can't cross are unable to develop egoism, because the experience, the sense of having an I, depends on a person being able to "grasp" his I, and that the right gaze of the eye can meet the left gaze by crossing. On this the sense of the I is dependant.

[ 15 ] The disciples knew themselves to be so connected to the Christ that in a certain sense it was as similar as feeling their own hands, when they touched his wounds. So this direct connection with the Christ was something which gave them the awareness that they lived with him in a higher world. This was actually what the disciples felt, it was as if a spiritual island surrounded them and their Lord, and when they felt that their Lord had gone away and they had now become the teachers, they called themselves teachers, training for this how-to-be-together-with-him.

Then again, the disciples of the Apostles in turn depended on the imagery which they had experienced; you can even read this in individual letters. When some or other apostolic disciple, Polycarp of Smyrna for instance, could describe what some or other person who had taught him, looked like, the description was unbelievably more important than the communication of mere words. What is most essential here, was recalling the feeling of being-together-with everything in connection with the Christ, so that one can say the Apostles sensed the succession, but they could no longer inwardly experience every transformation which had been experienced in the old initiation mysteries. Don't misunderstand me, I don't suggest that the apostles or apostle disciples have made such deliberations, but their soul constitution was so that they could make such deliberations and it was characteristic of their soul constitution to formulate such deliberations. When they were asked to formulate their soul constitution, they would have said: Yes, we couldn't go through with it in the same way as was still possible in the earlier Mysteries, for instance experiencing the transformation of light to darkness; we can no longer experience how one is anointed with oil and so on, and we can no longer experience the inner pain through recalling; but here a God has incarnated in the form of Jesus who was here, and with whom we have relations and when we really in our consciousness take it up, not merely with intellectual grasping but when in all concreteness we live in it, then something lifts us up into the supersensible world.

[ 16 ] With the apostles it was the direct living-in-community with the Christ, with the apostle disciples it was the community living-with-him, being carried over to them, who had laid their hands on those who had still been touched by the Lord, and transmitted to those in the third generation who had again laid their hands on someone who had had the Lord touch them. They would get a sense of apostolic succession when they would recall what I've just said, and they would also get a feeling for what it meant to stand inside a world which is spiritually, as it were, like standing in a physical line of ancestors. The physical line of ancestors flows through from birth. The spiritual ancestral line however, must go up to the spiritual father ancestor, the Christ Jesus, it flows through the ongoing, continuous fulfilment of consecrated ceremonies, which lead to the Christ, which certainly must always become more and more outward, because it must ever more make an intensive impression on people. As a result, besides the laying on of hands, other ceremonies were recorded in the next centuries, to make the outer impressions even stronger. A process of internalisation existed with those surrounding Christ Jesus: here Christ Jesus was performing a ritual himself. My dear friends, why was this necessary?

The life of Christ Jesus was the ritual for that which was around him, that which was accomplished in reality, that was the ritual/cult: the great offering of mass was fulfilled on Golgotha. Here we are led back to the first fulfilment of the ritual: at least this is what lives in Christian consciousness. This was followed by outward signs: it required the necessity for an outward imprint of activity, like remembrance, to show the eyes and to impress it on the soul in prayer, which could not be as alive as it had been with the apostles and the apostle disciples.

[ 17 ] I know that many people who hear such things with today's consciousness say: Why don't you simply express it in a short and sweet answer, shaped in sharply outlined terms, this or that is apostolic succession?—If someone wants such sharply outlined concepts, his argument is inwardly untruthful. One only speaks truth when it introduces the view of something that has been experienced. Such a thing can't be understood in sharply outlined concepts.

[ 18 ] Apostolic succession is something experienced first and then one knows that actually something is being experienced in a spiritual line of ancestors leading back to Christ, just like the ancestral line flowing through the blood links to the natural ancestral line, to any of the ancestors. This spiritual blood lies in the continuous fulfilment of the priestly ordination ceremony. It forms therefore the direct connection, for those who become priests, to the spiritual world. It is consecrated by someone who have themselves received such a consecration, and these, to those, and so on, up to the point where the supersensible descended into a human body and in this way for the first time brought a new, substantial fructification in the earth, which had become old.

[ 19 ] We will want to develop the particular format of the priest ordination, into a ritual form. I would like, still today, to point out that you could eventually find something which remains incomprehensible in the priest ordination. Now, by me saying something like this you will understand, also in connection with the regular previous lectures up to this morning, that in fact a complete break had to take place regarding the understanding of such things, when the changed consciousness appeared from the middle of the 15th century. In me expressing these things, I'm using words, which actually for the general consciousness could only have been fully understood before the middle of the 15th century. Then people actually stopped having a real sense for the meaning of these words. It is basically only through the trust you have been able to put in me, that you can hear something here in the manner and way it happened in former times when the soul constitution experienced things in quite a different way. Then came the time when less importance was attached to a concrete connection, when people who still knew how to attach importance to this concrete connection, became rare. Now, the most importance was attributed to the comprehensible content of the Gospels, to the comprehensible content of religion as such. Thus, gradually it took on particular importance to discuss the content of the Gospels, to discuss the content of the sacraments and to a certain extent particularly look into the teaching material, at the teaching content. The teaching content gradually became the most important. Not actually the concrete, but the abstract, became the most important, that is the essential thing. While for the catholic consciousness—I don't mean merely the roman catholic, but the catholic Christian consciousness—the priest ordination placed the chosen one in a spiritual ancestry up to Christ, which actually for the modern person made everything quite comprehensible, from definitions to declarations which places nothing into a reality. However, we must be very clear about it, that we live again in a time where we need deepening again in that direction.

[ 20 ] Well, the catholic consciousness has basically always acted quite consistently according to these prerequisites; quite consistently. In order not to be misunderstood regarding what follows, I would like to introduce it like this. When today we want to prepare someone—in fact, I mean for something which we see as a new ritual—when we, today, want to prepare someone to perform ceremonial actions, then we would for those who stand outside Catholicism in the world, no longer with full inner devotion be able to integrate a person into the apostolic succession. As I've mentioned to you, there have been remarkable Theosophists like Leadbeater and similar ones, who have likewise tried to place themselves in the apostolic succession, but that's going to resist any man who's honest with the world, if he is not imbued with Catholic consciousness.

[ 21 ] We need to look for something else. We need to fully understand that a reality is not something which is spoken about, something abstract. We must also learn to understand the sacramental. We must learn to understand, throughout, that the content of the teaching does not contain the essential but that something must be added from real processes and in such a way that these actual processes are carried on the waves of reality as the weaving of the Divine. There have only been single individuals, like Novalis, who understood this—do read his Aphorisms, then you'll see. He spoke about magical idealism; he knew this wasn't alive in outer sensory worlds, but within people, there lived the soul—spiritual. Then there was Schelling—in his old age, that's why he was hardly understood—for whom it was quite absurd to believe that the essence of Christianity consisted in the acceptance of what Christ taught; rather, Schelling recognised the essential much more according to the account of Jesus going through the process of the entire Golgotha drama, in the description of actions which took place around Golgotha. However, there are individuals who tend towards the reality, who in turn want to enter into actual experiences connected to the spiritual. In totality one could say that the way Catholicism experiences it, is something quite antiquated which can't be introduced into modern consciousness any longer. For this reason we mustn't only search for a renewal of old rituals but we must search for a ritual which we can create out of ourselves, but created in such a way that it creates the Divine in us in the sense we have spoken about, so that the words of Paul become the truth—in Gospel interpretation, and in all religious activities: Not I, but Christ in me.

[ 22 ] Catholicism, as Roman Catholicism, has actually always known how to act consistently. To a certain extent it has turned out, lifted out, from general humanity, all those who were descendants of Christ Jesus himself and so a sharp awareness has come about, separating the priestly spiritual generation, meaning those people connected to consecration, from all other people who had not attended consecration. Like a member of the nobility who for instance connects his bloodline back to the 18th ancestor and knows who carry this blood in their veins, their ancestral connection differs from that of the rest of humanity, in the same way there's a difference from those consecrated into the apostolic succession up to Christ himself, who have continuously and consistently received consecration, right down to those who had not received it. They felt themselves placed in this connection and felt others were different; that's why it was quite necessary during a certain time period that certain things were presented to people. A person gradually absorbed what had more or less consciously existed in his awareness and allowed this to be expressed in his actions. After this, because of the ever-increasing sharper awareness related to the Christ developed, came the necessity for greater withdrawal for the uninitiated: celibacy. The celibate already had his inner foundation and there where the celibate was dogmatised it was found throughout that the priest had to withdraw from connecting to all others, was a human personality who found it far more important to practice the priest consecration as a conscious inheritance of the father of his ancestors and because he was placed in this ancestral blood of a spiritual ancestry, he could not be in contact with that world from which he was taken out by the consecration ceremony. The moment a person strongly experienced this particular situation of priesthood in relation to the world, the necessity for celibacy was added, and of course there's no denying that one could also feel the political usefulness for Rome, and so on. However, you can be quite certain that during the time when celibacy was introduced—it was a time when the celibate person came from the monk priesthood—in the unconscious impulses was the urge for a certain honesty and truthfulness. It was certainly the case that the creation of celibacy was understood in the way I have presented it now. Just as in the 19th century, in a kind of natural way—as I said—the consequential process living in the Catholic consciousness resulted in the dogma of immaculate conception and how this resulted in the infallibility dogma, so at a certain time causes led to the consequences of celibacy.

[ 23 ] Well, if you take all of this in then we already come to what is of particular importance today. Of particular importance today for us is to again return to the ritual, to ceremonies. You are experiencing, at least many of you have said you experience it like this: you are actually experiencing necessities based on what has come out of, and is given by, this time. Of course we can't undo events, we can't go back to untruths for instance, we can't reverse an untruth, such as taking something which no longer feels alive were to be changed externally, like being ordained by an olden-time Catholic priest. That would be contradictory to those who have already ignited the Protestant consciousness too strongly in themselves because for the Protestant consciousness this possibility doesn't exist; in their experience one can't oppose something which has been created out of quite other circumstances.

[ 24 ] What you need to arrive at, if reality is at all part of your striving, is what can flow out of the spiritual world itself, which can be seen as flowing directly from Christ Jesus. We must strengthen ourselves in the words of Jesus: I am with you until the end of earthly days.—

These words out of the Gospels also announce such a process of the Christ impulse will be found on the earth for so long, that it will last until the end of the earth comes about. For this reason, one must firstly announce this as a postulate to a certain extent, that it must be possible—as a reality—to come to Christ, like with the Catholic consciousness, through the apostolic succession historically the spiritual family tree is searched for, reaching right to Christ. It must be able to find Him again, in a moment in the present; a connection to the Divine, a connection to the Christianized Divine as it was historically found by the Catholics in the apostolic succession right up to the Christian ancestors of this apostolic succession. That is why it must take place this way, that we find the spiritual again, not only in words about the Christian aspect, but so that we actually connect with what is real in the Christian aspect. Then we can create the ritual out of this, like the ritual was created within the apostolic succession. However, we need to penetrate it with an understanding which goes far beyond the understanding of the time.

[ 25 ] We must indeed move towards an understanding that can be expressed—I want to first formulate it as follows: In the world and in ordinary human thinking we experience the phenomenal: we however want to experience the nominal, we want to try and enter into the essential and out of this essence find the ritual. If you really want to find the ritual, then it must finally be so that this ritual is discovered as it had been during the second century, where gradually, what used to exist in simpler forms—only a few of which have been recorded—has now been transferred to the forms of later rituals. [ 26 ] How was the ritual experienced? A person was caught up in it, just like a person who smokes knows what he is doing by smoking; he knows he can express what he wants to, only by smoking. So you must again learn to feel that you, when you perform some or other ceremony, know for yourself: the ceremony must be performed in this way. A person knows what he has to say today when he turns to other people, he knows how to clothe his inner life with words. My dear friends, there is a moment in life, where one inwardly experiences that it is impossible to continue using words, where what you want to say no longer translates into words, where you have to stop with words or at most continue with words by carrying out the sacred act by starting to not merely letting the word sound out but where, for instance, the development of smoke must take place, where in particular one of the other actions must be carried out imaginatively. Where the words connect with a particular action, by coming into the original consciousness, where also, like your soul content, being enlivened by the Divine, pours into the words, now your soul content will no longer be merely a phenomenal one but a nominal one, then you will be lifted out of what the outer world comprises, there you will gradually enter into the sacramental.

[ 27 ] Somewhat in this way, I've tried to clarify how one must enter into the sacramental. It actually makes no sense, let's say, in simply transforming holy water as is often done today by subordinate clerics. There is simply no point in performing the transubstantiation in this way, as is done by many subordinate clerics today, who are left in the dark in relation to the esoteric consecration of the Catholic Church. Regarding the old soul constitutions, it had made sense to be fully aware of one's actions when a certain word was spoken over the salt substance, and that they knew the salt substance had changed as a result.

Today experiments have already been done to make the gentle sensitivity of a flame visible, by placing a flame somewhere and a person speaking rhythmically at a distance from it, to see the flame copy the rhythm. Here a rhythm is being copied by something inorganic. If I know the right words in the right word correlation over the salt substance, then the salt substance will change. If I now allow this salt substance which has been permeated, to enter into water, then I have kindled a process, which, if I understand it, when I have performed it in spirit, is a sacramental act. We must be able, once again, to look at the nominal as such. This we will address tomorrow. [ 28 ] I think, in any case, my dear friends, that many questions could be conjured out of the soul by me speaking about these things, and I would love it if the questions, while you are all here, not in general, could also be formulated concretely so that no doubt remains. I completely understand that with earnestness your small circle has turned to me with the clear intention to really work toward a renewal of the religious life. It is not possible to do so by merely changing the teaching content; it is only possible when you enter with a changed soul constitution. We are now entering more deeply into things and, triggered through your questions we will become ever more acquainted with these things so that you're actually going to understand what I mean to convey.

There are several reasons why it would seem a somewhat risky enterprise to speak about fairy tales in the light of spiritual science.

First of all, the subject is indeed difficult, for the source of what one can call the true fairy tale mood lies deep down within the human soul. The methods of spiritual science that I have often described must take their way along extremely convoluted and lengthy paths in order to find this source. We little suspect how deeply hidden lie the springs that have given rise through centuries of human history to all the enchantment of genuine fairy tale poetry.

In the second place, it is just this poetic enchantment that causes one to feel strongly about fairy tales; studying them or trying to explain them with one's own ideas must surely destroy their fresh spontaneity, yes, even the whole effect of the tales. We often hear it said quite rightly that explanations and commentaries of poetry spoil the immediate, lively, artistic impression that a poem should give us; we want it to affect us simply on its own. All the more should this apply to the infinitely subtle and bewitching quality of the poetic tales arising from the deep, almost bottomless springs of the folk soul or from single human hearts. They flow out in such an original way that intruding our own strong judgment would seem like tearing a flower to pieces.

Nevertheless, spiritual research does find it possible to throw some light into those regions of soul that give rise to the poetic mood of the fairy tale. In doing this, the second doubt will be allayed. Simply by searching out the sources and wellsprings from which fairy tales flow, deep down in human soul nature, we can be completely sure that the explanations of spiritual science will touch those depths so gently that they are not harmed. Just the opposite: the wonder of everything lying down there in the human soul is so new, so original, so individual that one has oneself to resort to a kind of fairy tale in speaking about it all; nothing else will do to describe these hidden springs.

Goethe, for one, moving beyond his work as an artist in order to plunge fully into the wellsprings and sources of life, would not take to theoretical discussion nor destroy the fairy tale's living water with his scrutiny when he wanted to reveal one of the most profound insights into the human soul. No, as soon as he had won these insights, it seemed natural to use the fairy tale itself to describe what lives and comes to expression in the soul at its deepest level. In his Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Goethe tried to express in his own way the extraordinary soul experiences that Schiller brought forward in a more abstract, philosophical style in the Aesthetic Education of Man.

The very nature of fairy tale enchantment leads us to believe that explaining and trying to understand it will probably never destroy the creative mood; to dig down into those wellsprings with the resources of spiritual research is to discover something quite remarkable. If I were to talk about fairy tales as much as I'd like to do, I would have to give many lectures. Today it will be possible to bring only a few hints regarding the results of research.

A person who attempts the spiritual exploration of the fairy tale sources will find that they lie in far more profound depths of the soul than those from which other works of art emerge, even for instance, the most awe-inspiring tragic drama. In a tragedy, the poet shows us how the human soul experiences the gigantic powers of fate that exalt as well as crush their victim. Fate is the cause of the ordeals and shocks of tragedy. We find that the tangled threads woven together and then unraveled in tragic drama belong more or less to what an individual has to suffer from the outside world. However difficult this may be to discern, requiring as it does our finding the way into the uniqueness of a human soul, it is nevertheless quite possible for anyone sensitive to the impact of life itself upon the soul. A tragedy, we feel, shows us how an individual is entangled in this or that fateful life-situation.

However, the source of fairy tale mood and fairy tale poetry lies still deeper than the complexities of tragedy. For one thing, we can feel that tragedy concerns itself—as do other artistic creations—with an individual who in a certain period of life, at a certain age, is exposed to some kind of misfortune. We take it for granted that when tragic drama affects us, it is because a human being is brought through his own unique experiences to what is happening; we realize that it is one single person with his own special destiny that we must come to understand. Here, as in other works of art, we meet a particular, circumscribed sphere of life.

It is altogether different, we feel, when we come knowingly to fairy tale poetry and its mood. The effect of a fairy tale on our soul is spontaneous, elementary, and therefore remains unconscious. When we try to get a feeling for it, however, we can find that what a fairy tale expresses is not about one person in a particular situation in life, is not a limited portion of life, but rather something so integrated in human experience that it has to do with the comprehensive truth of all mankind. It is not about some special individual who finds himself at a certain time of life in a singular dilemma; what the fairy tale describes lies so completely in everyone's soul nature that it represents actual experience to children in their early years to persons of middle age and even to old men and women.

Throughout our whole lifetime the fairy tale happenings picture our most profound experiences of soul, even though the style is light, playful and picturesque. The artistic enjoyment of a fairy tale, in its correspondence to inner soul experiences, can be compared—a rather bold comparison—to the relationship of an enjoyable taste on the tongue to the hidden, complex proceedings in the rest of the body, where the food takes up its task of nourishing the organism. What lies in that further process, after our pleasure in its taste, is not at all evident to our observation or understanding. Both things seem at first to have little to do with each other; no one is able to say, from savoring a food, what its particular use will be in the life processes of the body. And so it is with our joy in the art of the fairy tale. It is far, far removed from what is happening at the same time, all unconsciously, deep in the soul. There the essence of the fairy tale is pouring forth, satisfying the soul's persistent hunger for it. Just as our body has to have nutritive substances circulating through the organism, the soul needs fairy tale substance flowing through its spiritual veins.

Using the methods of research described in my books as a way to approach the higher worlds, you will discover, at a certain level of spiritual knowledge, the spiritual processes working unconsciously in the depths of the soul. In our ordinary life we are aware of these spirit impulses within our soul only when they surface as gentle dreams, caught at rare times by our waking consciousness. Now and then we may have such a special waking up that we realize: You are emerging out of a spiritual world where there is thinking and where there are intentions, and where something was happening down in the unapproachable grounds of your existence that was somehow akin to daily happenings; this something seems an intimate part of your own being but is completely hidden from your waking, everyday life.

It is often the same story with the spiritual researcher, even when he has progressed as far as experiencing a world of spiritual beings and spiritual deeds. However much further he then advances, he nonetheless reaches again and again the same edge of a world out of whose deep unconsciousness there come towards him spiritual impulses, impulses connected with himself. They appear to his spiritual gaze like a Fata Morgana but they do not yield themselves up to him completely.

This very peculiar experience is what awaits one on looking into the unfathomable spiritual relationships belonging to the human soul. It is fairly easy to follow attentively and understand certain intimate soul happenings, for example, the emotional conflicts that also lie there within the soul and that are revealed in art, in tragic drama. But far more difficult are the quite common human conflicts, which in our daily life we simply cannot imagine are there, and yet every one of us undergoes them at every period of our life.

One such soul conflict discovered by spiritual research takes place without the ordinary consciousness being aware of it: our waking up every day, when the soul leaves the world it has been in during sleep and slips down into the physical body. As I said, we have normally not the slightest knowledge of this, yet every morning our soul is engaged in a battle that the spiritual researcher can catch only to a slight degree: it is the battle of the single, lonely human soul meeting the gigantic powers of nature. Thunder and lightning and everything else in the elements that we have to confront out in the world unload their great strengths on us as we stand there more or less helplessly. All that tremendous power, however, even when we meet it head on, is a small thing compared to the unconscious battle at the moment of waking up, when our soul—alive only to itself up to then—has to unite with the pressures and substances of a purely physical body. The soul needs this organism in order to use the bodily senses that are governed by the laws of nature and to use also the bodily limbs in which the powers of nature prevail. There is something like a yearning in the soul to dip down into this sheer natural state, a yearning satisfied each time by waking up, and yet at this very moment there is a shrinking back, a feeling of utter helplessness in the face of the eternal opposition existing between the soul and the nature-related physical body, into which one awakens. It may sound strange that this daily battle takes place in the depths of our soul—but then it takes place in complete unconsciousness. The soul knows nothing of what it has to undergo every single morning, but nevertheless it is burdened by the conflict, which affects its very nature and its individual character.

There is something else happening in these depths, which can be caught on the wing by spiritual research; it occurs at the moment of falling asleep. The human soul withdraws from the sense world and from the bodily limbs and has more or less left behind the physical body in the physical-sense world. Then there comes to the soul what one may describe as an awareness of its inwardness. At that moment it begins to experience unconsciously the inner battles caused by its constraint in a physical body in the waking state, where it has to act in consequence of its entanglement in matter. It is aware of its bent toward the burdensome sense-world, which, however, represses its morality. In falling asleep and during sleep, the soul is alone with itself and pervaded unconsciously by so moral an atmosphere that it can hardly be compared to the morality we know in ordinary life. Besides other impressions, it is this that the soul experiences when it is outside the physical body and living a purely spiritual existence between falling asleep and waking up.

We should not imagine that all these occurrences in our soul are simply absent when we are awake. Spiritual research can show one very interesting effect as an example: we do not dream only when we believe we are dreaming but we actually dream the whole day long. In truth, our soul is full of dreams all the time, even though we don't notice it, for our waking consciousness is more forceful than the dream consciousness. As a somewhat weak light is extinguished altogether in the presence of a stronger one, our day-consciousness extinguishes what is continually running parallel to it, the dream experience in the depths of our soul. We dream all the time, but we are seldom conscious of it. Out of those abundant and unconscious dream experiences—an infinitely greater number than our waking perceptions—a few rise up like single drops of water shaken out of an immense lake; these are the dreams we become conscious of. But the dreaming that stays unconscious is perceived by the soul spiritually. In its depths many things are being experienced. Just as chemical processes that we are unaware of take place in the body, there are spiritual experiences taking place within us in unconscious regions of the soul.

We can throw more light into these hidden depths of soul life by adding something else to the facts we have mentioned. It has often been emphasized, and especially so in my last lecture, [Raphaels Mission im Lichte der Wissenschaft vom Geiste (January 30, 1913); The Mission of Raphael (unpublished MS).] that in the course of evolution on earth, human soul life has undergone a complete change. When we look far, far back into the past of humankind, we find the soul of ancient man having totally different experiences from those today. In earlier lectures we spoke about early mankind's primitive clairvoyance; we will speak further about it in the future. We look out at the world today in the wide-awake condition of soul that is normal, taking in sense impressions from outer stimuli, working on them with our intelligence, reason, emotions, and will forces—but this form of consciousness is merely the one that holds good for the present day. This modern consciousness has developed out of the earlier forms in ancient days that we can call—in the best sense of the word—clairvoyant; people were able in certain intermediate conditions between waking and sleeping quite normally to experience something of the spiritual worlds. At that time a person, even though he could not become really conscious of himself, would not find the experiences we have been describing as taking place in the depths of the soul at all unfamiliar or strange.

In ancient times the human being could more fully perceive his union with the spiritual world outside himself. He saw how everything going on in his soul, the happenings deep in his soul, were related to certain spiritual realities alive in the universe. He saw these realities moving through his soul, felt closely related to the spirit-soul beings and realities of the universe. This was a characteristic of mankind's primeval clairvoyance. In ancient times, not only artists but quite primitive people frequently had a feeling that I am going to describe, which today we arrive at only in quite special moods.

It can really happen that, living gently in the depths of the soul, as gently as anything can be, there is an experience of the spiritual realities mentioned above, one that does not come to consciousness. Nothing of it is perceived in the wide-awake life of the day. But something is there in the soul, just as hunger often is there in the physical organism, and just as we have a need for something to satisfy our hunger, we have also a need for something to satisfy this delicate need in our soul.

It is at this moment that one feels urged either to come to a fairy tale or a legend that one knows, or else, perhaps, if one has an artistic nature, to create something of the kind oneself, even though one senses that all the words one could theoretically use would only reach a kind of stammering about such experiences. This is how the fairy tale images arise. The nourishment that satisfies the hunger we spoke of is just this conscious filling of the soul with fairy tale pictures. In the earlier times of mankind's evolution, the human soul was closer to a clairvoyant perception of its inner spiritual experiences; often, therefore, the simple country folk felt this hunger more distinctly than we do today, and this led them to search for nourishing pictures arising out of their creative soul life; we find these today in the fairy tales coming down to us as folk traditions in various parts of the world. In those earlier times the human soul felt its connection to spiritual existence and felt more or less consciously the inner battles it had to undergo, even without understanding them. The soul formed these into pictures and images which had only a distant resemblance to what was happening in its depths. But still one can feel that there is a connection between the happenings of a fairy tale and the unfathomable, profound experiences of the soul.

It is evident—many can confirm this—that the heart of a child often succeeds in creating for itself a comrade or “friend” who is present only for that child and who stays at its side through all its coming and going. Probably everyone knows children with such invisible spirit-friends. These unseen playmates you have to imagine as being with the child wherever he is, sharing all his joys and sorrows. And then you see someone coming along, a so-called “intelligent” person, who hears about this invisible playmate and tries to talk the child out of it, even believes it's a healthy thing he's doing—but it has a bad effect on the child's feeling-life. A child will grieve for his soul-comrade and if he is susceptible to spiritual-soul moods, the grief will be weighty and can develop into a pining away or sickliness. This is actual experience, related to deep, inward happenings of the human soul.

We can take to heart, without dispelling the fragrance of such a tale, the Grimms' story of the child and the paddock (a small frog). A little girl lets the paddock eat with her out of her bowl of bread and milk; the paddock only drinks the milk. The child talks to the little creature as to another human being, saying one day, “Eat the bread crumbs as well, little thing.” The mother hears this, comes out to the yard, and kills the paddock. And now the child loses her rosy cheeks, wastes away and dies.

In this tale we can feel an echo of certain moods that really and truly are present in the depths of our soul. They are there not only at certain periods of our life, but whether we are children or adults, we recognize such moods because we are human beings.

Every one of us can feel reverberating in us how this something we experience but don't understand, something we don't even bring to consciousness, is connected with the effect of the fairy tale on our soul like the taste of food on our tongue. And then the fairy tale becomes for the soul very much like nutritious food when it is put to use by the whole organism. It is tempting to search in these deep-lying soul experiences for what reverberates in each different tale. Of course it would be a tremendous task over a long time, given the great collections of fairy tales from everywhere in the world, to probe into them just for this. However, what can be looked at in a few tales can be used in a general way for all of them, if the few are genuine fairy tales.

Take one of the stories that the brothers Grimm collected, “Rumpelstiltskin”. When a miller claims that his daughter can spin straw into gold, the king has him bring her to the castle in order to test her art. She comes to the king, is locked in a room with a bundle of straw and “there sat the poor miller's daughter and for the life of her could not tell what to do”. As she begins to weep, there appears a little man who says, “What will you give me if I spin the straw into gold for you?” The girl gives him her necklace and the little man spins the straw into gold. The king next morning is astonished and delighted but wants more; she should spin straw into gold again. She is locked in another room with even more straw, and when the little man appears again and asks, “What will you give me if I spin the straw into gold for you?” she gives him her ring. By morning all the straw is spun into glittering gold. But the king is still not satisfied. The manikin comes again, but now the girl has nothing more to give him. “Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child,” says the little man, and so she promises. And when, after a year, the child is there and the manikin comes and reminds the queen of her promise, she begs him to wait. “I will give you three days' time,” he replies. “If you know my name by that time, you shall keep your child.” The miller's daughter sends messengers far and wide. She must find every name and also the particular name of the little man. Finally, after several wrong guesses, she succeeds in naming the little man by his right name: Rumpelstiltskin.

No other work of art gives us the feeling of utmost inner joy as the fairy tale with its unsophisticated pictures, yet we can also know the deep soul experience from which such a tale arises. It is a prosaic but accurate comparison to say, we can know a great deal about the chemistry of our food and still take pleasure in something delicious we're eating. And so we can know and understand something about these deep inner soul experiences in us that are felt but not “known”—and that emerge as the pictures of fairy tales.

Indeed our solitary soul, this miller's daughter, is a lonely thing, both in sleep and in waking life, even though she is harbored in our body. The soul feels (but unconsciously) the great antithesis she has to live in; she experiences (but does not understand) her unending task, her own anchorage in divine worlds.

The soul will always be aware of other insignificant abilities in comparison to those of outside nature. Nature is the mighty enchantress, who can transform one thing into another in a trice—something the soul would like to be and do.

In everyday consciousness, one can submit with a good grace to this disparity between the human being and the omnipotent wisdom of the spirit of nature. In the depths of the soul, however, things are not so simple. The soul would certainly come to grief if she did not surmise that within her own conscious being a still deeper being is present, something she can trust, something she might be able to describe like this:

You, Soul, are still at such an imperfect stage—but there is something in you, another entity, who is far more clever than you, who can help you to accomplish the most difficult tasks and give you wings to rise up and look over wide perspectives into an infinite future. Someday you will be able to do what is still impossible, for there is something within you that is far, far greater than the part of you now that “knows”; it will be a loyal helper if you can enter into an alliance with it. But you must truly be able to form a concept of this creature who lives within you and is so much wiser, cleverer, more skilful than you are yourself.

When you try to imagine this conversation of the soul with itself, an unconscious conversation with the more capable part of the soul, you can then try to catch this nuance in the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale: what the miller's daughter had to experience in not being able to spin straw into gold and then finding a loyal helper in the little manikin. It is impossible to blow away the fragrance of those pictures, even when we know their origin, deep down in our soul life. Let us take another tale. Please forgive me if it is connected with things that seem to have a personal coloring; it is not meant to be personal. It makes it somewhat easier to explain if I add this small personal note.

In my book Occult Science [ An Outline of Occult Science, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1972.] you will find a description of the evolution of the world. I don't intend to speak about it now—possibly on another occasion. During this evolution of the world our earth has passed through certain stages as a planet in the universe, and these stages can be compared to the stages of life in the individual human being. Just as individuals go through one life after another, the earth itself has had various planetary stages or embodiments. In spiritual science, for certain reasons, we speak about the earth—before its “earth” stage began—as having a “moon” stage and before that, a “sun” stage. There was a sun evolutionary period as a planetary pre-stage of our earth in the primordial past; an ancient sun was still united with the earth, from which—at a later stage—it split away. The moon also split away from what originally was the sun. Our sun today is not the original one but only a piece of it; we can speak of an ancient sun-stage of the earth and also of our present sun. Spiritual research can look back to the time in earth evolution when the second sun, our present one, developed as an independent body in the universe. In searching for the existence at that time of beings actually perceptible to the senses, it finds only the lower species up to the level of the fishes.

You can read all this in more detail in Occult Science, and there you will be able to understand it. The actual details, however, can be found only through the scientific methods of spiritual research. At the time they were discovered and I wrote them down (more precisely, they were not discovered just when I wrote them down but they were, one can say, discovered for me and I wrote them down in Occult Science) the following fairy tale was quite unknown to me—and this is the personal note I wanted to add. I can verify the fact that it was unknown then, for I found it much later in Wundt's Elements of Folk Psychology and traced it then back to its source.

Before I give you a short summary of the fairy tale, let me say this: Everything the spiritual researcher finds in the spiritual world—and what was just described had to be found in the spiritual world, for otherwise it would no longer exist—everything in that world is very much connected with the human soul. In the very deepest roots of our soul we are united with that world. It is always at hand; we enter it unconsciously as soon as we fall asleep in a normal way. In our union with that world, our soul holds within itself not only its sleep experiences but also all those experiences related to world evolution as we have described them. It is a paradox but one can say that the soul knows unconsciously that it experienced the stream of evolution from the original sun to its daughter, the sun we see shining in the sky, and to the moon that is also a child of the original sun. Moreover, the soul can recognize that it was living through a soul-spiritual existence at that time, for it was not yet united with earthly substance. It could look down then on earthly happenings, for example, when the highest animal organisms were the fish-prototypes, at the time when the present sun and moon developed by separating from the earth. In the unconscious, the soul is connected with these happenings.

Now look at this short folk tale that can be found among several primitive peoples: There was once a man who was made of resin. He worked only at night. If he had worked in the daytime, the sun would have melted him. One day, however, he did go outside, for he wanted to catch some fish. And lo! the man made of resin melted away. His sons made up their minds to take revenge. They shot off their arrows. They shot so well that the arrows formed figures, towering one above the other. They became a ladder, reaching right up into the sky. The two sons climbed up the ladder, one by day, the other by night. And one son became the sun, the other son became the moon.

It is not my custom to explain such tales with abstract, intellectual ideas. Everyone can realize, however, through spiritual research how the human soul is deeply connected with everything happening in the world, how the soul can be understood only through spiritual means, and how it hungers to enjoy the picture-images of its unconscious experiences—this is truly different. If you feel this, you will also feel, vibrating like an echo of this folk tale, just what human souls experienced at the time of the primordial sun and then at the origin of the sun and moon during the time of fish-development in earth evolution. It was for me a most important event—and this is the personal note—to discover, long after these things were described in Occult Science, this particular tale. Even though I would never wish to explain it in an abstract way, a certain feeling comes over me when I look at the evolution of the world, a feeling that is twin-brother to the one I get from immersing myself in the wonderful picture-images of the folk tale.

We can look at another story, this one from the Melanesian Islands. Before we hear it, let us recall that according to spiritual research the human soul is closely connected to the present-day happenings and facts of the universe. It may be too picturesque, but nevertheless quite correct from the spiritual-scientific standpoint, to describe the life of the soul when it leaves the body in sleep as completely related to and united with the whole universe. One possibility of remembering or understanding this relationship of our ego, for example, to the cosmos, at least to something significant in the cosmos is to look at the plants. They can grow only when they have the light and warmth of the sun. They are rooted in the earth and consist, as spiritual science tells us, of a physical body interwoven by an etheric body. This is not enough, however, to cause the plants to unfold and blossom; they must also have the forces of the sun shining down on them.

Looking at the human body during sleep, we see to some degree its equivalence to a plant. Our sleeping body is like a plant, in that it has the same power to grow. But the human being has freed himself from the cosmic order in which the plant is caught. A plant has to wait for sunlight to come to it, the rising and setting of the sun. It is dependent, as we humans are not, on the external cosmic order. Why are we not? Because of a fact that spiritual research has discovered, that the human ego, which in sleep is outside the plant-like body, unfolds for the body what the sun unfolds for the plant. The sun pours its light over the plant; the human ego shines too, resting spiritually over the sleeping body. And the human ego is related to the life of the sun; it is itself a kind of sun for the plant-like human body, engendering its growth during sleep, repairing its various forces that have been used up during the daytime. In perceiving this, we realize how much like the sun our ego is. As the sun moves across the sky—of course I am speaking of its apparent movement—the effect of the sun's rays changes according to the constellations of the zodiac from which they come to earth. In the same way, spiritual science shows us ever more clearly that the human ego passes through the various phases of its experience; the physical body is influenced according to each aspect. We perceive the sun's effect on earth, with the help of spiritual science, according to whether it is passing through Aries, or Taurus, or any other constellation. Rather than refer to the sun in general terms, it is preferable to describe the effect of the sun from one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. As we consider the sun's passage through the constellations, we become aware of its relationship to the ever-changing ego.

All this is described much more fully in Occult Science; it can be acquired as spirit-soul knowledge. We can perceive it as something that takes place unconsciously in the depths of the soul and yet takes place as an inward involvement with the spiritual powers of the cosmos alive in the planets and constellations.

Let us compare these secrets of the universe, disclosed by spiritual science, with the following Melanesian tale, which I will sketch very briefly.

In the road is a stone. The stone is the mother of Quatl, and Quatl has eleven brothers. After Quatl and his brothers were created, Quatl began to create the world. But in this world that Quatl created, there was no change of night and day. Quatl heard about an island where there was a difference between the day and the night. He traveled to that island and brought a host of beings back to his own land. And through the power of these beings, those in Quatl's land came into the alternation of sleeping and waking. Sunrise and sunset occurred for them as soul happenings.

It is amazing what vibrates as echo from this story. If you read the whole thing, you will find that every sentence vibrates with the tones of world secrets, just as our soul vibrates in its depths when it hears how spiritual science describes those secrets. It is true: the source of fairy tale mood and fairy tale poetry lies in the depths of the human soul! The tales are simply pictures using external happenings to help characterize the soul experiences we have described; the pictures are nourishment for the hunger arising from these experiences. This must also be true: we are quite distant from the experience but nevertheless we can feel them echoing in the fairy tale picture-images.

When all this has been said, we should not be surprised to find that the most beautiful and characteristic fairy tales have come to us from those very early times when human beings had a certain clairvoyant consciousness. Because of this, they were able to come close to the wellsprings of fairy tale mood and poetry; it is not at all strange that from those parts of the earth where souls are closer to spiritual sources than in the western world, for example in India or the Orient, fairy tales can have an especially distinctive character.

Furthermore, in German we find Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Children's and Household Tales, which they collected by listening to their relatives or other more or less simple, unsophisticated people telling stories that remind us of the ancient European sagas; even the fairy tales contain elements of the great stories of heroes and gods. We should not be surprised to hear that the most significant fairy tales have now been proven older than the sagas. The hero stories, after all, describe someone at a certain time of life in a particular difficulty, while the fairy tales show us what is relevant to every single person at every period of life from his first breath to his last. Then we understand how a fairy tale can press into itself the deep-seated soul experience on awakening from sleep, of feeling completely inadequate in the face of the powers of nature; how, too, one feels equal to it only with the consoling knowledge that something greater than oneself is present in the soul that may even allow one to triumph over the forces of nature.

When you have a feeling like this, you will understand why there are so many giants that have to be dealt with in the tales. Indeed, they make their appearance without fail as an image out of the soul's mood on waking up—of its wanting to enter the body and seeing the “gigantic” forces of nature alive there. The battle the soul has to undergo is exactly what corresponds—though this cannot be understood perhaps with the intellect—to the various descriptions of people having to fight giants. The soul realizes when confronted by battles with giants that it has only one advantage—and that is its cleverness. This is the soul's perception: You can slip into your body but what can you do about those tremendous forces of the universe? Why, there's one thing the giants don't have that you do have ... cleverness! reason! Unconsciously this lives in the soul even when it realizes the small strength it has; we find that the soul, put into this position, can express itself in the following pictures:

A man was going along the road. He came to an inn, went in, and asked for a bowl of milk soup. Flies by the dozen were buzzing around; some fell into the soup, the others he swatted. When he counted a hundred dead flies on the table, he boasted, “A hundred with one blow!” The innkeeper hung a medallion around his neck that said: He killed a hundred with one blow.

The man went further and came to a castle where the king was looking out of his window. When he caught sight of the wayfarer and his medallion, the king thought to himself, “This is a fellow I can make use of!” The king hurried out and took the man into his service to do a certain task. “There is a pack of bears coming ever and again into my kingdom. Look! if you've killed a hundred with one blow, you can put an end to those bears.” The man said, “I'll do it!” But first he demanded his wages and plenty of food before the bears should arrive, for he thought he might as well enjoy his life for a while, in case it should be cut short. Now came the time when the bears were expected; he collected together all the sweet things bears like to eat, and laid them ready.

The bears came, ate up everything they found and were so well stuffed that they had to lie down to sleep off their greed. And now as they lay helpless, the man came and finished them off. When the King arrived, the man told him, “I simply chopped off their heads while they jumped over my stick!” The King was delighted with this brave fellow and gave him a still harder task. “Look! The giants will soon be coming back into my kingdom. You must help me with them.” The man promised and when the time came, he collected a great amount of good things to eat, which he took along with him, besides a young lark and a piece of cheese. Sure enough, he met the giants and began to boast about how strong he was. One of them said, “We'll show you how much stronger we are!” Taking up a stone, he squeezed it into a powder. “Do that likewise, little man, if you're as strong as we are.” The other giant aimed an arrow up into the sky, shot it off, and only after a very long time, it dropped down again. “Do that likewise, little man, if you're as strong as we are.” At that, the man who had killed a hundred with one blow told them, “I can do better than that.” He took up a stone, stuck his piece of cheese on it and said, “Watch me press water out of the stone!” Sure enough, when he squeezed, water squirted out of the cheese. The giants were astonished. Then the man took the lark and let it fly upwards, saying, “Your arrow came back, but mine will go up so high that it never comes back!” Sure enough, the lark did not return. The giants were so astonished that they decided that they would have to overcome him with cunning, for it seemed that they couldn't manage it with strength. However, they failed to get the better of the man with cunning, for he got the better of them. They lay down together to sleep and in the dark the man put over his head a pig's bladder that was blown up and filled with blood. The giants told one another, “We can't overcome him when he's awake, so we'll have to wait until he sleeps.” As soon as he was asleep, they attacked him with great blows on the head and broke the pig's bladder. The blood gushed out; the giants were sure they had finished him off. Therefore they laid themselves to rest and slept so peacefully that it was easy for the man to put an end to them.

Just as it is in dreams, this fairy tale peters out in a somewhat vague, unsatisfactory way; nevertheless we do find in it the conflict of the human soul with the forces of nature, first with the “Bears” and then with the “Giants.” But something more is in the fairy tale. The man who “killed a hundred with one blow” stands out so clearly that we feel something vibrating in the unconscious depths of our soul to the utter trust he had in his cleverness, even in the face of those powerful forces he found so “gigantic.” It is wrong to try to explain in abstract detail the picture-images created with such artistry, and this is not the intention here. Nothing actually can disturb the character of a fairy tale if you feel how it echoes our inward soul processes. And these inner processes—however much one knows about them, however much as spiritual science itself can know about them—you do become ever and again entangled in them; then, experiencing them in a fairy tale, you see them in their most elemental, primary form. Knowledge of these soul-happenings, when it is present, does not destroy the ability to transform them into fairy tale magic.

It is certainly stimulating for the spiritual researcher to discover in fairy tales just what the human soul has need of when confronting its innermost experiences. The fairy tale mood can never be disturbed, for research that is able to arrive at the wellsprings of the tales in subconscious life will find there something that becomes poorer for the ordinary consciousness when it is described abstractly. The fairy tale itself is the most perfect description of these deepest of soul experiences. Now one can understand why Goethe put into the manifold eloquent picture-images of his Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily the rich experiences of life that Schiller expressed in abstract philosophical terms. It was pictures that Goethe wanted to use—even though he was otherwise very much given to thought—in order to express his most profound perception of the subconscious roots of human soul life.

Because fairy tales belong to our innermost feeling and emotional life and to everything connected with it, they are of all forms of literature the most appropriate for children's hearts and minds. It is evident that they are able to combine the richest spiritual wisdom with the simplest manner of expression. One has the feeling that in the magnificent world of art there is no greater art than this one, which traces the path from the unknown, unknowable depths of the soul to the charming and often playful fairy tale pictures.

When what is most difficult to understand is able to be put in the most clearly perceptible form, the result will be great art, intrinsic art, art that belongs at a fundamental level to the human being. Human nature in the child is linked to the life of the whole world in such a primary way that children must have fairy tales as soul-nourishment. The expression of spiritual force can move much more freely when it comes towards a child. It should not be entangled in abstract, theoretical ideas if the child's soul is not to become dry and disturbed, instead of remaining linked to the deep roots of human life.

Therefore there is nothing of greater blessing for a child than to nourish it with everything that brings the roots of human life together with those of cosmic life. A child is still having to work creatively, forming itself, bringing about the growth of its body, unfolding its inner tendencies; it needs the wonderful soul-nourishment it finds in fairy tale pictures, for in them the child's roots are united with the life of the world. Even we adults, given to reason and intelligence, can never be torn away from these roots of existence; we are most connected with them just when we have to be fully involved with the life of the time. Therefore at various parts of our life, if we have a healthy, open-hearted mind, we will happily turn back to fairy tales. Certainly there is not a single age or stage of human life that can take us away from what flows out of a fairy tale, for otherwise we would be giving up the deepest and most important part of our nature; we would be giving up what is incomprehensible for the intellect: a sensing within ourselves, a sense for what is pictured in a simple fairy tale and in the simple, artless, primordial fairy tale mood.

The brothers Grimm, and other collectors like them, devoted long years to bringing the world the somewhat civilized fairy tales they had gathered out of the folk tradition. Although they had no help from spiritual science, they lived wholeheartedly with these tales, convinced that they were giving human beings what belonged intrinsically to human nature itself. When you know this, you will understand that although the age of reason did its best for a hundred years or so to alienate everyone, even children, away from fairy tales, now things are changing. Fairy tale collections like the Grimms' have found their way to every person who is alive to such things; they have become the property and treasure of every child's heart, yes, property of all our hearts. This will grow even stronger when spiritual science is no longer considered just a theory but becomes a mood of soul, one that will lead the soul perceptively towards its spiritual roots. Then spiritual science, moving and spreading outwards, will be able to confirm everything that the genuine fairy tale collectors, fairy tale lovers, fairy tale tellers wanted to do.

To sum up what spiritual science would like to say today in describing the fairy tale, we can take the poetic and charming tribute that a devoted friend of the tales [Ludwig Laistner (1848 – 1896)] liked to use in his lectures, some of which I was able to hear. He was a man who understood how to collect the tales and how to value them.

“The fairy tale is like a good angel, given us at birth to go with us from our home to our earthly path through life, to be our trusted comrade throughout the journey and to give us angelic companionship, so that our life itself can become a truly heart- and soul-enlivened fairy tale!”

The idea of development, which has become common in more recent times, does not truly consider the phenomena to which it is applied in terms of their main characteristics. Thus, when development is used to consider a connection between humanity and animality, the first question is not: How can the human being be imagined? It is taken too simply. It is not considered that the head, for example, must be grasped by completely different ideas than the rest of the organism. The head, if thought about correctly, represents so much of what is connected with the essence of the human being that the rest of the organism can be thought of as a limb attached to the head, into which the processes of transforming air and food are transferred. It is as if the head is to be relieved of these intraorganic processes. This idea, developed, would lead to seeing in the organization of the head the indication of an older form of human development that also included the organs for the transformation of air and food, and which then, through development towards the soul-spiritual side, separated these organs out as appendages. The same cannot be said of animals, not even of the more highly developed ones. In them, the head appears so much as a part of the whole organism that the latter must be spoken of as the whole animal. One can only say of man that he adds the animal to himself in order to relieve the head of what is essential to it. This leads to the idea that man is by nature older than animals; that he has added to his organization that of animality at a stage in his development, in order to ascend as a head being to a level of his essence that he could only reach by doing so.

Furthermore, this thought leads to the recognition that the living conditions in which the human being was when it had not yet added animal nature to itself were different from those that came later. For if they had been the same, the “human” head would have had to have degenerated into the animal form under their influence even then. These living conditions cannot have been the present earthly ones. For these bring man precisely in the animal direction of development. But his head shows another.

The question arises: What causes this other direction of development of the head being “human”? An unbiased consideration of the main characteristics of the head also teaches us about this. One must find it more mineralized than the rest of the organism. The mineralization of the organism, which ultimately ends in the bone system, is most comprehensively expressed in the head. And it is nothing other than this mineralization that pushes the initial organs of respiration and metabolism out of the head. In the animal head, this mineralization is far less advanced. But this leads us to ask: what predominates in the animal head in terms of mineralization? Unbiased observation shows that this is the vegetable aspect. The human head acquires its essence by progressing from the vegetable to the mineral. This leads us to think of it at an earlier stage of development in the stage of stronger vegetable development. The later vegetabilization of the animal head corresponds to an animalization of its entire being. Thus, the earlier stage of humanity must also show the human being as a head being in a stronger animalization than it is today. Today's conditions cause the degree of mineralization that is now characteristic of the human being. These conditions could not have been present when he was a mere head being. One must think of the state of the earth with the present conditions as having been preceded by another, which did not yet have the impact of the mineral forces that are bringing about the present state of humanity. Neither the present human forms nor the present animal forms could have lived within this state. Beings lived that held the middle between the present human and the present animal. Beings that could become human if they were able to absorb mineralization and that sank deeper into animality if they could not do so. The latter, which are the ancestors of the present animals, only formed as a whole organization what man added as initial links.

Now, through mineralization, man's spiritual element approaches him. This lives in him as his independent spiritual being by mineralizing part of his physical being. The animal does not have this spiritual being because it cannot mineralize itself to the same extent as man. By absorbing it, man experiences an independent spiritual being within himself, which is itself the opposite of the spiritual [in its organization]. He must extract the spirit from its organization in order to experience it as an independent being. In an earlier stage of development, the spirit permeated the animal's organization to a greater extent; in the present stage, the spirit permeates the organization to a lesser extent, but the human being is its participant. The animal is not able to experience the spirit living in its organization as spirit through itself.

The older intermediate forms between humans and animals were, on the whole, those in which spirit only permeated their organization. The ancestors of the present-day animals continued this relationship in the present-day conditions; to the old developmental conditions, the human being added others that brought about his spiritualization. The external living conditions that correspond to this spiritualization are those that the human being has around him as his world of the senses. What the human being observes as such a sensory world around him, he experiences externally through perception; inwardly, it asserts itself in his mineralization process. Animal nature is excluded from both. It remains inwardly more plant-like than the human being; and it does not exclude its sensory organs to such an extent from this more plant-like organism that the external world can be experienced through them to the same degree as it can by the human being. Thus animal life is much more than human life organically closed in itself; it does not participate in the external world to the same degree as man. Animal life is soul-life; human life is soul-spiritual life. The animal shapes its organism in soul-life and lives with it in the world as soul; man shapes his organism in spiritual life and lives with it in the world as spirit.

Insightful knowledge guides us in all these matters. There is more spiritual in the head of a human being than in the rest of the organism. The head is permeated by the insight of the spiritual of the rest of the organism. It stands out from the spiritual of the rest of the organism. In the course of a human life, the head of a child is more spiritual than that of a mature person; and the head of an old person shows a spirituality that is quite different from that of the rest of the organism. For those who can see these conditions, the earlier stage of the whole development of humanity is just as much a part of them as the childhood of a person is part of the sensory view. For beings who still actualize this earlier human stage today are present for the observing consciousness. These beings do not participate in the mineral process of the earth. Nothing of the mineral substance penetrates into their organization. They cannot be perceived by the senses. But they are perceived when the rhythm, which is unconscious in human life, is raised into consciousness. Then they are recognized as souls that are on the way to becoming human spirits. Man was such a soul before he became the spirit-soul that he is at present. But he could only be it when the earth was not yet endowed with the mineral impulses of the present. When it developed vegetable impulses instead of these. Man was then not yet man, but an ancestral being of the earth. It worked as a whole in the same way as a vegetable formation works today. It did not yet show the mineral impulse. One can say that man was then just as much an animal as he was not an animal. For he developed the present form of his animality only later.

In that man fashions his animality under the influence of the organization of his head, the latter becomes different from what it could become through the conditions which in earthly life directly shape the animality in animals. Careful observation, attentive in the deeper sense, shows the following as the main characteristic of the human being in this respect: Man is placed in the world by different balances of power than the animal. The weight pressure of his head is in a different direction to the line that passes through his center of gravity than in the animal. Attention must be paid to the fact that in judging what is considered here, it is not the temporary position of the human being that is considered, but the expression of these balances of power in his lasting form. In this form, the relationship between the brain and spinal cord, which distinguishes humans from animals, is expressed. But the relationship of the hands and arms to the feet and legs also comes out of the same balance of power in the revelation. The human being experiences this balance of power with all its consequences in a dull consciousness as that which carries his 'I'. And by standing face to face with another person, he perceives their 'I' directly in this form. Both perceptions, that of one's own ego and that of the other person's ego, live at the bottom of ordinary consciousness like the experiences of sleep consciousness. Only that the latter alternates with ordinary consciousness, the dull consciousness of the “I” always accompanies this ordinary consciousness. A second thing is this: the thought prevailing in the animal organization finds expression in the animal form. In the human form, it is not the thought that is expressed, but the equilibrium just described. Because in the animal the thought flows completely into the organic form, the animal does not have the faculty of thinking as a special power of the soul. What is formed in the manifold forms of the animal world into a sensory revelation: the human being carries it within him in a formless way, as a living weaving of his thinking. And this living weaving becomes the bearer of his soul. The animal soul lives, as it were, solidified in the animal form; the human soul lives a life of its own, free of the body and formless. The third consideration is that the animal's emotional life only flares up in response to its inhibited or uninhibited will. The human being can separate the emotional life from the will. In the human being, feeling develops into a way of life connected with the continuous experience of his body, while in the animal it is a temporary inner revelation of the experience of inhibited or uninhibited will. It is in this interpenetration of the body with the independent element of feeling that the difference between human and animal corporeality lies. And it is in the sphere of the body, so to speak, impregnated with the life of feeling, that the origin of memory also lies. Because feeling separates from the will in this way in the human being, the will is again separated from the organization of one's own body to a much greater degree than in the animal. The animal is connected soulfully with the results of its will, the human being spiritually. The animal directly involves its body in its volition, while the human being only involves that which is separated from the body, so to speak, as a physical precipitation. In perceptive experiences, this is revealed in such a way that the human being is conscious of standing, with his volition transforming into action, as a spiritual being in the same world in which he stands through experiencing the equilibrium with his ego. As a spirit, man lives in the perception of the balance of the world and in his actions determined by his will. As a soul, he lives in his thinking, which reveals an existence separate from him in the forms of the animal world, and in his feeling; as a body, he experiences this feeling and as a body, he is part of his will. In willing, the spirit physically places itself in the world; in feeling, it lives in it as an organic process; in thinking, the soul frees itself from the body; in the “I”, the human being becomes aware of himself as spirit. In animals, thinking, which lives in meaningful forms, directly causes the form; not through its own thinking, but through the content of this form, it permeates feeling and thus the physical body, which in turn is directly connected to the external world, in that what is experienced in feeling is in truth only inhibited or uninhibited will.

In that the human being has developed the animalistic as an appendage, its outer form carries an ambiguity. As a head being, the human being is in fact only the confluence of all animal forms. He is, as such, the entire animal world as a unity. For him, the head is what the external world is for the animal. This remaining organism is actually only a reflection of the head, but one that is removed from what is determined by the characterized balance. In the head, the firmly shaping and contouring element of thinking is anchored; in the rest of the organism, that which sets this thinking in motion. Nothing of feeling is anchored in the head except the continuous dream of this feeling, while feeling itself has its carrier in the rest of the body. And as for the will, the organism of the head can only produce a dreamless, dull consciousness of sleep for it, for the will has as its vehicle the qualitative state of equilibrium between the rest of the organism and the outer world. Therefore, the will can only shine forth before the ordinary consciousness to the extent that the person perceives the way in which it brings him into ever-changing relationships with the outer world.

For the seeing consciousness, the result of the will is again felt directly, but as an experience outside of the body, not in the sense that the inhibition or furtherance of the will expresses itself in one's own body, but insofar as the will can be seen as hindering or furthering the world; feeling becomes the soul-sensual expression of thoughts; thoughts appear as a spirit full of content. Through the spirit, which is full of content, the beholder experiences the world as imagination; through the thoughts of the soul-bearing feeling, the world is experienced as inspiration; through the will, which is connected to feeling again, the world is experienced through intuition. The animal is an imagination fixed in the sensual through its form; its soul is inspired to it, and its body is a realized intuition. In man, the I penetrates into imagination, thinking into inspiration, feeling into intuition, and the objective spirit that lifts him out of animality into will.

An external comparison of man with the animal does not yield any knowledge. For what can still be perceived in the animal can only be seen supernaturally in the human being: the formative world of thought. What is still physical in the animal is soul-physical in the human being: the bearer of the emotional world; what is still experienced in the animal in the body is experienced by the human being in his relationship to the external world, his changing qualitative equilibrium with the external world.

For the external observer, there are basically only hints of what is going on. Compare the physiognomy of the animal with that of the human being. The animal is entirely physiognomy, and a specific one at that. In the human being, the physiognomic aspect stands out from the formation and becomes a reflection in the countenance of what the released thought is able to bring to the formation, which is expressed in the balanced relationship between the head and the rest of the organism. In the animal, the soul is bound to what the body experiences through its organization. And feeling is part of this experience. In the human being, the independent soul reveals itself in everything between laughing and speaking, between crying and the wide range of gestures expressing displeasure. In animals, the will is a direct result of the bodily organization and its determination by the external world. In the human being, the experience of the external world becomes decisive for the will. In the will, the human being disconnects his bodily organization. Through his volition, he accomplishes what has nothing to do with his bodily organization. The difference between humans and animals only becomes apparent when we are able to recognize what the forces at work in humans are outside of humans: the power of thought is the force that shapes the animal forms.

What is the power of feeling?

Self-observation shows that its seat is in the body. In the human being it lives as the soul within the body. In the human being, it takes the desiring element out of the animal will. In this way, feeling is experienced in the body, but not merely as inhibited or uninhibited desire (will). It is the bringing forth of that within the body which the animal's desire-nature does not have. It is a soul counter-image of the plant life that lives in human feeling. What is characterized in the above as vegetabilization in the animal, lives in the animal directly bound to the animal, but in the human being it separates soulfully from the animal and is experienced as liberated feeling. The will lives in the mineralized in the human being, while in the animal it is bound to the vegetabilized. The animal has a will organism; the human being separates a will mechanism from this will organism. The animal has a form organism; the human being separates the thought organism from this form organism. The thought organism interacts with the perception mechanism; the will mechanism is actually only the part of the external world found in the human being. In the mechanism of will, the human being does not belong to himself; he is in it as a spirit in the external world. In the emotional organism, the human being is present as a soul-inspired spirit; in the thought organism, he is present as a head-body, but this body is actually a knowing experience of the physical, so it is a spiritual body. In the consciousness of self, the spirit lives in the conditions of equilibrium determined by the human element. It lives in the physical, but only through the forces active in the physical. [Text aborts]

Today we will characterise certain general principles of the art of education for the period between the change of teeth and puberty, passing on in the next lecture to more detailed treatment of single subjects and particular conditions which may arise.

When the child reaches his ninth or tenth year he begins to differentiate himself from his environment. For the first time there is a difference between subject and object; subject is what belongs to oneself, object is what belongs to the other person or other thing; and now we can begin to speak of external things as such, whereas before this time we must treat them as though these external objects formed one whole together with the child's own body. I showed yesterday how we speak of animals and plants, for instance, as though they were human beings who speak and act. The child thereby has the feeling that the outside world is simply a continuation of his own being.

But now when the child has passed his ninth or tenth year we must introduce him to certain elementary facts of the outside world, the facts of the plant and animal kingdoms. Other subjects I shall speak of later. But it is particularly in this realm that we must be guided by what the child's own nature needs and asks of us.

The first thing we have to do is to dispense with all the textbooks. For textbooks as they are written at the present time contain nothing about the plant and animal kingdoms which one can use in teaching. They are good for instructing grown up people about plants and animals, but we shall ruin the individuality of the child if we use them at school. And indeed there are no textbooks or handbooks today which show one how these things should be taught. Now the important point is really this.

If you put single plants in front of the child and demonstrate different things from them, you are doing something which has no reality. A plant by itself is not a reality. If you pull out a hair and examine it as though it were a thing by itself, that would not be a reality either. In ordinary life we say of everything of which we can sec the outlines with our eyes that it is real. But if you look at a stone and form some opinion about it, that is one thing; if you look at a hair or a rose, it is another. In ten years' time the stone will be exactly as it is now, but in two days the rose will have changed. The rose is only a reality together with the whole rosebush. The hair is nothing in itself, but is only a reality when considered with the whole head, as part of the whole human being. Now if you go out into the fields and pull up plants, it is as though you had torn out the hair of the earth. For the plants belong to the earth just in the same way as the hair belongs to the organism of the human being. And it is nonsense to examine a hair by itself as though it could suddenly grow anywhere of its own accord.

It is just as foolish to take a botanical tin and bring home plants to be examined by themselves. This has no relation to reality, and such a method cannot lead one to a right knowledge of nature or of the human being.

Here we have a plant (see drawing) but this alone is not the plant, for there also belongs to it the soil beneath it spread out on all sides, maybe a very long way. There are some plants which send out little roots a very long way. And when you realise that the small clod of earth containing the plant belongs to a much greater area of soil around it, then you will see how necessary it is to manure the earth in order to promote

healthy plant growth. Something else is living besides the actual plant; this part here (below the line in drawing) lives with it and belongs to the plant; the earth lives with the plant.

There are some plants which blossom in the spring, about May or June, and bear fruit in autumn. Then they wither and die and remain in the earth which belongs to them. But there are other plants which take the earth forces out of their environment. If this is the earth, then the root takes into itself the forces which are around it, and because it has done so these forces shoot upwards and a tree is formed.

For what is actually a tree? A tree is a colony of many plants. And it does not matter whether you are considering a hill which has less life in itself but which has many plants growing on it, or a tree trunk where the living earth itself has as it were withdrawn into the tree. Under no circumstances can you understand any plant properly if you examine it by itself.

If you go (preferably on foot) into a district in which there are definite geological formations, let us say red sand, and look at the plants there, you will find that most of them have reddish-yellow flowers. The flowers belong to the soil. Soil and plant make up a unity, just as your head and your hair also make a unity.

Therefore you must not teach Geography and Geology by themselves, and then Botany separately. That would be absurd. Geography must be taught together with a description of the country and observation of the plants, for the earth is an organism and the plants are like the hair of this organism. The child must be able to see that the earth and the plants belong together, and that each portion of soil bears those plants which belong to it.

Thus the only right way is to speak of the plants in connection with the earth, and to give the child a clear feeling that the earth is a living being that has hair growing on it. The plants are the hair of the earth. People speak of the earth as having the force of gravity. This is spoken of as belonging to the earth. But the plants with their force of growth belong to the earth just as much. The earth and the plants are no more separate entities than a man and his hair would be. They belong together just as the hair on the head belongs to the man.

If you show a child plants out of a botanical tin and tell him their names, you will be teaching something which is quite unreal. This will have consequences for his whole life, for this kind of plant knowledge will never give him an understanding, for example, of how the soil must be treated, and of how it must be manured, made living by the manure that is put into it. The child can only gain an understanding of how to cultivate the land if he knows how the soil is really part of the plant. The men of our time have less and less conception of reality, the so-called “practical” people least of all, for they are really all theoretical as I showed you in our first lecture, and it is just because men have no longer any idea of reality that they look at everything in a disintegrated, isolated way.

Thus it has come about that in many districts during the last fifty or sixty years all agricultural products have become decadent. Not long ago there was a Conference on Agriculture in Central Europe, on which occasion the agriculturists themselves admitted that crops are now becoming so poor that there is no hope of their being suitable for human consumption in fifty years' time.

Why is this so? It is because people do not understand how to make the soil living by means of manure. It is impossible that they should understand it if they have been given conceptions of plants as being something in themselves apart from the earth. The plant is no more an object in itself than a hair is. For if this were so, you might expect it to grow just as well in a piece of wax or tallow as in the skin of the head. But it is only in the head that it will grow.

In order to understand how the earth is really a part of plant life you must find out what kind of soil each plant belongs to; the art of manuring can only be arrived at by considering earth and plant world as a unity, and by looking upon the earth as an organism and the plant as something that grows with this organism.

Thus a child feels, from the very start, that he is standing on a living earth. This is of great significance for his whole life. For think what kind of conception people have today of the origin of geological strata. They think of it as one layer deposited upon another. But what you see as geological strata is only hardened plants, hardened living matter. It is not only coal that was formerly a plant (having its roots more in water than in the firm ground and belonging completely to the earth) but also granite, gneiss and so on were originally of plant and animal nature.

This too one can only understand by considering earth and plants as one whole. And in these things it is not only a question of giving children knowledge but of giving them also the right feelings about it. You only come to see that this is so when you consider such things from the point of view of Spiritual Science.

You may have the best will in the world. You may say to yourself that the child must learn about everything, including plants, by examining them. At an early age then I will encourage him to bring home a nice lot of plants in a beautiful tin box. I will examine them all with him for here is something real. I firmly believe that this is a reality, for it is an object lesson, but all the time you are looking at something which is not a reality at all. This kind of object-lesson teaching of the present day is utter nonsense.

This way of learning about plants is just as unreal as though it were a matter of indifference whether a hair grew in wax or in the human skin. It cannot grow in wax. Ideas of this kind are completely contradictory to what the child received in the spiritual worlds before he descended to the earth. For there the earth looked quite different. This intimate relationship between the mineral earth kingdom and the plant world was then something that the child's soul could receive as a living picture. Why is this so? It is because, in order that the human being may incarnate at all, he has to absorb something which is not yet mineral but which is only on the way to becoming mineral, namely the etheric element. He has to grow into the element of the plants, and this plant world appears to him as related to the earth.

This series of feelings which the child experiences when he descends from the pre-earthly world into the earthly world—this whole world of richness is made confused and chaotic for him if it is introduced to him by the kind of Botany teaching which is usually pursued, whereas the child rejoices inwardly if he hears about the plant world in connection with the earth.

In a similar manner we must consider how to introduce our children to the animal world. Even a superficial glance will show us that the animal does not belong to the earth. It runs over the earth and can be in this place or that, so the relationship of the animal to the earth is quite different from that of the plant. Something else strikes us about the animal.

When we come to examine the different animals which live on the earth, let us say according to their soul qualities first of all, we find cruel beasts of prey, gentle lambs or animals of courage. Some of the birds are brave fighters and we find courageous animals amongst the mammals too. We find majestic beasts. like the lion. In fact, there is the greatest variety of soul qualities, and we characterise each single species of animal by saying that it has this or that quality. We call the tiger cruel, for cruelty is his most important and significant quality. We call the sheep patient. Patience is his most outstanding characteristic. We call the donkey lazy, because although in reality he may not be so fearfully lazy yet his whole bearing and behaviour somehow reminds us of laziness. The donkey is especially lazy about changing his position in life. If he happens to be in a mood to go slowly, nothing will induce him to go quickly. And so every animal has its own particular characteristics.

But we cannot think of human beings in this way. We cannot think of one man as being only gentle and patient, another only cruel and a third only brave. We should find it a very one-sided arrangement if people were distributed over the earth in this way. You do sometimes find such qualities developed in a one-sided way, but not to the same extent as in animals. Rather what we find with a human being, especially when we are to educate him, is that there are certain things and facts of life which he must meet with patience or again with courage, and other things and situations even maybe with a certain cruelty, although this last should be administered in homeopathic doses. Or in face of certain situations a human being may show cruelty simply out of his own natural development, and so on.

Now what is really the truth about these soul qualities of man and the animals? With man we find that he can really possess all qualities, or at least the sum of all the qualities that the animals have between them (each possessing a different one). Man has a little of each one. He is not as majestic as the lion, but he has something of majesty within him. He is not as cruel as the tiger but he has a certain cruelty. He is not as patient as the sheep, but he has some patience. He is not as lazy as the donkey—at least everybody is not—but he has some of this laziness in him. Every human being has these things within him. When we think of this matter in the right way we can say that man has within him the lion-nature, sheep-nature, tiger-nature and donkey-nature. He bears all these within him, but harmonised. All the qualities tone each other down, as it were, and man is the harmonious flowing together, or, to put it more academically, the synthesis of all the different soul qualities that the animal possesses. Man reaches his goal if in his whole being he has the proper dose of lion-ness, sheep-ness, tiger-ness, the proper dose of donkey-ness and so on, if all this is present in his nature in the right proportions and has the right relationship to everything else.

There is a beautiful old Greek proverb which says: If courage be united with cleverness it will bring thee blessing, but if it goes alone ruin will follow. If man were only courageous with the courage of certain birds which are continually fighting, he would not bring much blessing into his life. But if his courage is so developed in his life that it unites with cleverness—the cleverness which in the animal is only one-sided—then it takes its right place in man's being.

With man, then, it is a question of a synthesis, a harmonising of everything that is spread out in the animal kingdom. We can express it like this: here is one kind of animal (I am representing it diagrammatically), here a second, a third, a fourth and so on, all the possible kinds of animals on the earth. How are they related to man?

The relationship is such that man has, let us say, some

thing of this first kind of animal (see drawing), but modified, not in its entirety. Then comes another kind, but again not the whole of it. This leads us to the next, and to yet another, so that man contains all the animals within him. The animal kingdom is a man spread out, and man is the animal kingdom drawn together; all the animals are united synthetically in man, and if you analyse a human being you get the whole animal kingdom.

This is also the case with the external human form. Imagine a human face and cut away part of it here (see drawing) and

pull another part forwards here, so that this latter part is not harmonised with the whole face, while the forehead recedes; then you get a dog's head. If you form the head in a somewhat different way, you get a lion's head, and so on.

And so with all his other organs you can find that man, even in his external figure, has what is distributed amongst the animals in a modified harmonised form.

Think for instance of a waddling duck; you have a relic of this waddling part between your fingers, only shrunken. Thus everything which is to be found in the animal kingdom even in external form is present also in the human kingdom. Indeed this is the way man can find his relationship to the animal kingdom, by coming to know that the animals, taken all together, make up man. Man exists on earth, eighteen hundred millions of him, of greater or less value, but he exists again as a giant human being. The whole animal kingdom is a giant human being, not brought together in a synthesis but analysed out into single examples.

It is as though your were made of elastic which could be pulled out in varying degrees in different directions; if you were thus stretched out in one direction more than in others, one kind of animal would be formed. Or again if the upper part of your face were to be pushed up and stretched out (if it were sufficiently elastic) then another animal would arise. Thus man bears the whole animal kingdom within him.

This is how the history of the animal kingdom used to be taught in olden times. This was a right and healthy knowledge, which has now been lost, though only comparatively recently. In the eighteenth century for instance people still knew quite well that if the olfactory nerve of the nose were sufficiently large and extended backwards then you would have a dog. But if the olfactory nerve is shrivelled up and only a small portion remains, the rest of it being metamorphosed, then there arises the nerve that we need for our intellectual life.

For observe how a dog smells; the olfactory nerve is extended backwards from the nose. A dog smells the special peculiarity of each thing. He does not make a mental picture of it, but everything comes to him through smell. He has not will and imagination but he has will and a sense of smell for everything. A wonderful sense of smell! A dog does not find the world less interesting than a man does. A man can make mental images of it all, a dog can smell it all. We experience various smells, do we not, both pleasant and unpleasant, but a dog has many kinds of smell; just think how a dog specialises in his sense of smell. Nowadays we have police dogs. They are led to the place where someone has pilfered something. The dog immediately takes up the scent of the man, follows it and finds him. All this is due to the fact that there is really an immense variety, a whole world of scents for a dog. The bearer of these scents is the olfactory nerve that passes backwards into the head, into the skull.

If we were to draw the olfactory nerve of a dog, which passes through his nose, we should have to draw it going backwards. In man only a little piece at the bottom of it has remained. The rest of it is present in a morphosed form and lies here below the forehead. It is a metamorphosed, transformed olfactory nerve, and with this organ we form our mental images. For this reason we cannot smell like a dog, but we can make mental pictures. We bear within us the dog with his sense of smell, only this latter has been transformed into something else. And so it is with all animals.

We must get this clear in our minds. Now a German philosopher called Schopenhauer wrote a book called The World as Will and Idea. But this book is only intended for human beings. If a dog of genius had written it he would have called it The World as Will and Smell and I am convinced that this book would have been much more interesting than Schopenhauer's.

You must look at the various forms of the animals and describe them, not as though each animal existed in an isolated way, but so that you always arouse in the children the thought: This is a picture of man. If you think of a man altered in one direction or another, simplified or combined, then you have an animal. If you take a lower animal, for example, a tortoise, and put it on the top of a kangaroo, then you have something like a hardened head on the top, for that is the tortoise form, and the kangaroo below stands for the limbs of the human being.

And so everywhere in the wide world you can find some connection between man and the different animals.

You are laughing now about these things. That does not matter at all. It js quite good to laugh about them in the lessons also, for there is nothing better you can bring into the classroom than humour, and it is good for the children to laugh too, for if they always see the teacher come in with a terribly long face they will be tempted to make long faces themselves and to imagine that that is what one has to do when one sits at a desk in a classroom. But if humour is brought in and you can make the children laugh this is the very best method of teaching. Teachers who are always solemn will never achieve anything with the children.

So here you have the principle of the animal kingdom as I wished to put it before you. We can speak of the details later if we have time. But from. this you will see that you can teach about the animal kingdom by considering it as a human being spread out into all the animal forms.

This will give the child a very beautiful and delicate feeling. For as I have pointed out to you the child comes to know of the plant world as belonging to the earth, and the animals as belonging to himself. The child grows with all the kingdoms of the earth. He no longer merely stands on the dead ground of the earth, but he stands on the living ground, for he feels the earth as something living. He gradually comes to think of himself standing on the earth as though he were standing on some great living creature, like a whale. This is the right feeling. This alone can lead him to a really human feeling about the whole world.

So with regard to the animal the child comes to feel that all animals are related to man, but that man has something that reaches out beyond them all, for he unites all the animals in himself. And all this idle talk of the scientists about man descending from an animal will be laughed at by people who have been educated in this way. For they will know that man unites within himself the whole animal kingdom, he is a synthesis of all the single members of it.

As I have said, between the ninth and tenth year the human being comes to the point of discriminating between himself as subject and the outer world as object. He makes a distinction between himself and the world around him. Up to this time one could only tell fairy stories and legends in which the stones and plants speak and act like human beings, for the child did not yet differentiate between himself and his environment. But now when he does thus differentiate we must bring him into touch with his environment on a higher level. We must speak of the earth on which we stand in such a way that he cannot but feel how earth and plant belong together as a matter of course. Then, as I have shown you, the child will also get practical ideas for agriculture. He will know that the farmer manures the ground because he needs a certain life in it for one particular species of plant. The child will not then take a plant out of a botanical tin and examine it by itself, nor will he examine animals in an isolated way, but he will think of the whole animal kingdom as the great analysis of a human being spread out over the whole earth. Thus he, a human being, comes to know himself as he stands on the earth, and how the animals stand in relationship to him.

It is of very great importance that from the tenth year until towards the twelfth year we should awaken these thoughts of plant-earth and animal-man. Thereby the child takes his place in the world in a very definite way, with his whole life of soul, body and spirit.

All this must be brought to him through the feelings in an artistic way, for it is through learning to feel how plants belong to the earth and to the soil that the child really becomes clever and intelligent. His thinking will then be in accordance with nature. Through our efforts to show the child how he is related to the animal world, he will see how the force of will which is in all animals lives again in man, but differentiated, in individualised forms suited to man's nature. All animal qualities, all feeling of form which is stamped into the animal nature lives in the human being. Human will receives its impulses in this way and man himself thereby takes his place rightly in the world according to his own nature.

Why is it that people go about in the world today as though they had lost their roots? Anyone can see that people do not walk properly nowadays; they do not step properly but drag their legs after them. They learn differently in their sport, but there again there is something unnatural about it. But above all they have no idea how to think nor what to do with their lives. They know well enough what to do if you put them to the sewing machine or the telephone, or if an excursion or a world tour is being arranged. But they do not know what to do out of themselves because their education has not led them to find their right place in the world. You cannot put this right by coining phrases about educating people rightly; you can only do it if in the concrete details you can find the right way of speaking of the plants in their true relationship to the soil and of the animals in their rightful place by the side of man. Then the human being will stand on the earth as he should and will have the right attitude towards the world. This must be achieved in all your lessons. It is important—nay, it is essential.

Now it will always be a question of finding out what the development of the child demands at each age of life. For this we need real observation and knowledge of man. Think once again of the two things of which I have spoken, and you will see that the child up to its ninth or tenth year is really demanding that the whole world of external nature shall be made alive, because he does not yet see himself as separate from this external nature; therefore we shall tell the child fairy tales, myths and legends. We shall invent something ourselves for the things that are in our immediate environment, in order that in the form of stories, descriptions and pictorial representations of all kinds we may give the child in an artistic form what he himself finds in his own soul, in the hidden depths which he brings with him into the world. And then after the ninth or tenth year, let us say between the tenth and twelfth year, we introduce the child to the animal and plant world as we have described.

We must be perfectly clear that the conception of causality, of cause and effect, that is so popular today has no place at all in what the child needs to understand even at this age, at the tenth or eleventh year. We are accustomed nowadays to consider everything in its relation to cause and effect. The education based on Natural Science has brought this about. But to talk to children under eleven or twelve about cause and effect, as is the practice in the everyday life of today, is like talking about colours to someone who is colour blind. You will be speaking entirely beyond the child if you speak of cause and effect in the style that is customary today. First and foremost he needs living pictures where there is no question of cause and effect. Even after the tenth year these conceptions should only be brought to the child in the form of pictures.

It is only towards the twelfth year that the child is ready to hear causes and effects spoken of. So that those branches of knowledge which have principally to do with cause and effect in the sense of the words used today—the lifeless sciences such as Physics, etc.—should not really be introduced into the curriculum until between the eleventh and twelfth year. Before this time one should not speak to the children about minerals, Physics or Chemistry. None of these things is suitable for him before this age.

Now with regard to History, up to the twelfth year the child should be given pictures of single personalities and well-drawn graphic accounts of events that make History come alive for him, not a historical review where what follows is always shown to be the effect of what has gone before, the pragmatic method of regarding History, of which humanity has become so proud. This pragmatic method of seeking causes and effects in History is no more comprehensible to the child than colours to the colour-blind. And moreover one gets a completely wrong conception of life as it runs its course if one is taught everything according to the idea of cause and effect. I should like to make this clear to you in a picture.

Imagine a river flowing along like this (see drawing). It has

waves. But it would not always be a true picture if you make the wave (C) come out of the wave (B), and this again out of the wave (A), that is, if you say that C is the effect of B and B of A; there are in fact all kinds of forces at work below, which throw these waves up. So it is in History. What happens in 1910 is not always the effect of what happened in 1909, and so on. But quite early on the child ought to have a feeling for the things that work in evolution out of the depths of the course of time, a feeling of what throws the waves up, as it were. But he can only get that feeling if you postpone the teaching of cause and effect until later on, towards the twelfth year, and up to this time give him only pictures.

Here again this makes demands on the teacher's fantasy. But he must be equal to these demands, and he will be so if he has acquired a knowledge of man for himself. This is the one thing needful.

You must teach and educate out of the very nature of man himself, arid for this reason education for moral life must run parallel to the actual teaching which I have been describing to you. So now in conclusion I should like to add a few remarks on this subject, for here too we must read from the nature of the child how he should be treated. If you give a child of seven a conception of cause and effect you are working against the development of his human nature, and punishments also are often opposed to the real development of the child's nature.

In the Waldorf School we have had some very gratifying experiences of this. What is the usual method of punishment in schools? If a child has done something badly he has to “stay in” and do some Arithmetic for instance. Now in the Waldorf School we once had rather a strange experience: three or four children were told that they had done their work badly and must therefore stay in and do some sums. Whereupon the others said: “But we want to stay and do sums too!” For they had been brought up to think of Arithmetic as something nice to do, not as something which is used as a punishment. You should not arouse in the children the idea that staying in to do sums is something bad, but that it is a good thing to do. That is why the whole class wanted to stay and do sums. So that you must not choose punishments that cannot be regarded as such if the child is to be educated in a healthy way in his soul life.

To take another example: Dr. Stein, a teacher at the Waldorf School, often thought of very good educational methods on the spur of the moment. He once noticed that his pupils were passing notes under the desk. They were not attending to the lesson, but were writing notes and passing them under their desks to their neighbours who then wrote notes in reply. Now Dr. Stein did not scold them for writing notes and say: “I shall have to punish you,” or something of that sort, but quite suddenly he began to speak about the Postal System and give them a lecture on it. At first the children were quite mystified as to why they were suddenly being given a lesson on the Postal System, but then they realised why it was being done. This subtle method of changing the subject made the children feel ashamed. They began to feel ashamed of themselves and stopped writing notes simply on account of the thoughts about the postal system which the teacher had woven into the lesson.

Thus to take charge of a class it is necessary to have an inventive talent. Instead of simply following stereotyped traditional methods you must actually be able to enter into the whole being of the child, and you must know that in certain cases improvement, which is really what we are aiming at in punishment, is much more likely to ensue if the children are brought to a sense of shame in this way without drawing special attention to it or to any one child; this is far more effective than employing some crude kind of punishment. If the teacher follows such methods as these he will stand before the children active in spirit, and much will be balanced out in the class which would otherwise be in disorder.

The first essential for a teacher is self-knowledge. If for instance a child makes blots on his book or on his desk because he has got impatient or angry with something his neighbour has done, then the teacher must never shout at the child for making blots and say: “You mustn't get angry! Getting angry is a thing that a good man never does! A man should never get angry but should bear everything calmly. If I see you getting angry once more, why then—then I shall throw the inkpot at your head!”

If you educate like this (which is very often done) you will accomplish very little. The teacher must always keep himself in hand, and above all must never fall into the faults which he is blaming his children for. But here you must know how the unconscious part of the child's nature works. A man's conscious intelligence, feeling and will are all only one part of his soul life; in the depths of human nature, even in the child, there holds sway the astral body with its wonderful prudence and wisdom.¹

Now it always fills me with horror to see a teacher standing in his class with a book in his hand teaching out of the book, or a notebook in which he has noted down the questions he wants to ask the children and to which he keeps referring. The child does not appear to notice this with his upper consciousness, it is true; but if you are aware of these things then you will see that the children have subconscious wisdom and say to themselves: He does not himself know what I am supposed to be learning. Why should I learn what he does not know? This is always the judgment that is passed by the subconscious nature of children who are taught by their teacher out of a book.

Such are the imponderable and subtle things that are so extremely important in teaching. For as soon as the subconscious of the child, his astral nature, notices that the teacher himself does not know something he has to teach, but has to look it up in a book first, then the child considers it unnecessary that he should learn it either. And the astral body works with much more certainty than the upper consciousness of the child.

These are the thoughts I wished to include in today's lecture. In the next few days we will deal with special subjects and stages in the child's education.

• 1. For an elucidation of the “astral body” and other higher members of man's being, see Rudolf Steiner:The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.

In recent weeks we have been considering the human being from all kinds of different points of view, with the aim of getting a better idea of complex human nature and the relationship of the human being to the world.

Let us begin by recalling something very simple, something we know about the elemental aspects: the fact that in the present world cycle, the human being has four effective aspects—physical body, ether body, astral body and I. Let us also consider how these four essentially manifest. We have to say that the I mainly comes to revelation in all expressions of the human will. When we sleep, the will is essentially at rest. In other words: the will principle does not then come to expression through the physical organization. The I is outside the physical body when we sleep. The fact that the will principle does not come to expression reveals to us that the I is then not present in the physical body.

The activity of the astral body essentially can be observed in the whole sphere of feelings. The astral body is also outside the human being in sleep, when the sphere of feelings moves to the dim, dark part of the conscious mind. Consciousness is altogether silent in sleep, and we may thus be in some doubt as to what really comes to revelation through the physical body and the ether body. Let us leave this aside for the moment. The physical body is the most obvious part of the human being. Even someone not able to have imaginative vision can perceive the reality of the ether body in a number of ways. For the moment, however, let us leave aside the physical and the etheric from the point of view we have just taken of the I as the will aspect and the astral as the feeling aspect.

If we follow a person’s life from morning to evening, in the waking state, the I and astral body are at work in the physical and ether bodies with regard to will and feelings. Taking all the inner experiences arising in the waking state, we have first of all the world of sensory perceptions, which are bound to the physical body. We also have the world of thoughts and ideas as the consequence of sensory perception. We know very well that our world of ideas in the waking state has elements of will and feeling in it.

We have often stressed that in the sphere of the soul it is easy to make the abstract distinction between ideas, feelings and will elements. But in reality these three inner activities blend into each other. We can sense the will element in the linking or separating of ideas. We can also perceive that the idea is imbued with feeling. We can feel ourselves in sympathy with one idea and perhaps in antipathy with another. Let us now turn to the I and the astral body as they leave the living body on going to sleep. They leave something behind in the physical world which, while it does not appear at first sight to be the same as plant life, essentially is nevertheless like it, for it has a physical and an ether body just like a plant. In our astral principle we have something which comes to outward revelation in the animal world, and in our I we have something which emerges in the specifically human form, thus also coming to outward revelation. Since, however, I and astral body are outside the physical and ether bodies from when we go to sleep until we wake up again, we cannot say that this human form or animal nature is part of the inner nature of I and astral body. We have to realize that I and astral body do not come to revelation in that case; when I and astral body are on their own, during sleep, they cannot reveal themselves to the physical world in a way perceptible to the senses or to the rational mind.

I and astral body are therefore entirely beyond sensory perception. Now we also know that when we look at something in the plant world, we are not at all inclined to see it the way we see a human being. Looking at a human being we are interested in the moral element, for instance, whether the individual is good or bad. This means that there is no point in thinking in terms of good or evil with reference to the physical and ether body, the principles which remain in the physical world when we have gone to sleep. The whole human moral element is brought back when we wake up and I and astral body return to the physical and ether bodies.

Even people who do not have higher vision may take this as a sign that I and astral body have to do with what we call “the moral world order”. Our physical and ether bodies soak this up, as it were, as we wake up. And it is in no way absurd for those who do not have higher vision to say: Essentially, I and astral body belong to a completely different world, for the physical and ether bodies are neutral when it comes to being good or evil, just as plants are. I and astral body take moral responsibility into them.

Even those who do not achieve higher vision through the science of the spirit which takes its orientation from anthroposophy, but whose thinking relates to everyday life, will be able to realize that we are dealing with polar opposites here: physical body and ether body inclined to nature-given form, and I and astral body inclined to moral form. To take this further, however, we will need to draw on observations made through higher vision. When we use this to study the I and the astral body in the world to which they belong between going to sleep and waking up, they are seen to have the world of the spirit as their environment just as the natural world is the environment of the physical body. I and astral body bring the inner mortality to human beings from the world of the spirit. As the physical and ether bodies are morally neutral, they cannot possibly draw on them for moral impulses. They do in truth gain the moral impulses from the world in which they are between going to sleep and waking up.

In the science of the spirit, the following is said with regard to this: When human beings leave their physical and ether bodies on going to sleep, they meet, without being aware of it, the spiritual entities of the world, presenting to them all the inner morality they developed when conscious in their physical and ether bodies. They are compelled to let the world of soul and spirit work on the moral elements they have brought. This brings us to a different aspect of something we have often considered in our efforts to build a bridge between etheric and physical worlds on one hand and moral and spiritual worlds on the other.

The I has will quality. It develops its whole structure and constitution between waking up and falling asleep in the physical and ether bodies. When we go to sleep, the I meets the entities of the spiritual world. Here, as people walking around in the physical world, we perceive solid bodies with our organs of touch; we see colours, we use sensory perception. We relate to the physical forces of the world in a specific way The I also enters into a specific relationship to the powers of the world where it lives between going to sleep and waking up. Let me present this in graphic form It can only be schematic, of course. Let us say this is the physical man being in the process of going to sleep (Fig. 40, yellow).

This, which I am drawing here, is the ether body which fills the human being. If I were to draw the human being in the waking state, I’d have to draw in the astral body and the I. I am not going to do so, because I want to characterize the condition of going to sleep. The will element, that is, the I, meets the entities of the spiritual world.

It relates to them in the way we relate to physical entities with our physical body when awake. The relationship between the will-related I and the entities of the spiritual world is, however, much more real than the maya-like relationship which the physical body has with its environment. The relationship in sleep comes to expression above all in the following way, more or less, I can only put these things into images for you): When the I is in touch with the powers of the spiritual entities between going to sleep and waking up, everything evil in our state of soul makes the I waste away; everything good allows the will-related I to develop in freedom.

Showing this in graphic form we arrive at a specific form of the spiritual, will-related I form as it leaves the body (remember, these are only images). With regard to the human being of limbs, the I is quite intensely inside the human being even during sleep. Let me show it like this: These furrowed lines (light-coloured) have evolved from counter activities of the spiritual entities, their form depending entirely on the moral constitution. We may indeed say that the 1 assumes a spiritual form based on its moral constitution as it enters the world of the spirit.

When we go to sleep, the astral body also goes into the world outside us which is a world of soul quality. The will-related I meets the entities of the spiritual world, the feeling-related astral body enters into the soul sphere outside us.

The constitution of our will, with reference to good and evil, also has elements, or powers, of feeling in it. We merely have to recall the different feeling mood we have after doing a good deed compared to after doing something bad. 1 need only mention the whole sphere of self-reproach and inner satisfaction and you can see how our moral constitution is imbued with feeling. The feeling element as a whole enters the soul sphere when we fall asleep, and this enters into a relationship with the soul world outside. When we are awake we relate to the physical world around us through our ideas and in doing so develop the inner life of feelings—though the life of feeling merely connects with the life of ideas inside us. When we are asleep, our feeling-related astral principle makes direct contact with the astral world.

It is not given form, however. The will-related I is given form (I have shown this by drawing furrowed lines). Interaction between the astral body and the soul environment results in something I cannot draw as furrowing. I have to call it colouring, imbuing the astral body. To draw it I would, according to whether we are full of self-reproach or inner satisfaction, feelings of sympathy and antipathy, show the astral coloured by something with schematically may be shown as a particular colour (Fig. 41, reddish, blue).

Through the I, therefore, our higher nature is given form, and the astral is coloured through and through. This is of course a schematic way of putting it. It is perfectly justifiable to express these processes in colour images, but it has to be said that only part of the process can be expressed in this way. Instead of colouring the image I might just as well have all kinds of musical instruments at hand, for instance, and give expression to the above in combinations of sounds. One might even bring in qualities of taste. All this whirls and swirls together in the astral body when it is outside the physical body between going to sleep and waking up.

The situation is such, however, that the direction of the effective powers which bring about everything I have drawn, really derive, seen in schematic form, from the human being of limbs and metabolism. The spiritual entities and the soul world giving form and colour are working from below upwards, as it were.

If we try to discover the true nature of that which is given form and colour outside the human being between going to sleep and waking up, we finally arrive at the following. Between waking up and going to sleep the human form is complete, with I, astral body, ether body and physical body forming an interrelated whole. This goes hand in hand with a specific intensity of conscious awareness which is intellectual and has qualities of feeling and will. Compared to it, the element which is outside during sleep has an infantile quality. We think of a child’s dimmed-down state of consciousness, something we can only come close to when our consciousness is filled with dreams. Now imagine the child’s dimmed-down consciousness becoming even less developed—this would be closer to the nature of what is outside us during sleep. We might say: The element which is outside the human being during sleep is more infantile than the mind and spirit of a child.

What is the real nature of the element of human soul and spirit which lives outside during sleep? In the light of spiritual science, the determining factor is characteristically seen to come from the human being of limbs and metabolism. Studying what can be observed through higher vision one has the feeling—which gradually grows into the definite realization—that by taking this whole aspect here to be a photographic negative and visualizing the positive, we actually get the structure of the human brain. The scale is not the same, but if you see it as a negative and visualize the positive you get the human brain.

Think back to the various aspects I have presented. I have said that the structure of the human head in one particular life inwardly, in the structure of its powers, represents the individual from the previous life on earth, minus the head. What you are today contains the powers your head will have in your next life on earth. We see the same thing in what a human being puts into the outside world between going to sleep and waking up, except that it is infantile, childlike in form and, of course, converted into a negative.

Between going to sleep and waking up human beings in fact put an image into the world of what will incarnate into a physical form in their next life on earth. This is extraordinarily significant. If we now recall that it is the moral constitution of the soul which determines this form and coloration (Fig. 41), we must consider the powers inherent in the human head in the next life on earth to be the embodiment of the moral constitution of the soul in the present life. Since the powers of the human being come to expression in our ability to think and form ideas, this ability will therefore be the outcome of our moral constitution of soul in the present life. All of this exists as an image in what human beings put into the outside world on going to sleep.

In the light of the science of the spirit it would thus be fair to say: During the night, when we are asleep, we put a quite specific question to another world, the world of the spirit. We do not do this consciously but with a part of us that moves out of the physical and ether bodies at that time. The question we put is: How does my moral constitution of soul appear to the entities in the world of the spirit?

And we are given an answer which consists in the shaping of the furrows and the colouring we are given, both in accord with our moral constitution of soul. Every morning we enter into our physical and etheric bodies on waking up with an answer gained in the world of soul and spirit. Going to sleep, we always unconsciously ask a question; waking up, the answer is given at the unconscious level from the world of the spirit. At that level, we are all the time in dialogue with the world of the spirit, gathering there the answers which tell us the true state of our inner nature.

This allows you to see something which otherwise is always extraordinarily abstract. You see, when we speak of our conscience, this is something very real to us; yet when we are asked to speak of the specific nature of our conscience we immediately become rather vague. With reference to our moral impulses, conscience is something of which we have a real inner experience. Yet if we use the methods of ordinary science to reflect on conscience, we fall into chaos and are unable to arrive at anything definite. Here you are given something definite, which is, that your moral constitution of soul wins a continuous response from the world of the spirit. You bring the forms developed by the world of the spirit into your physical and etheric reality, and with this you bring the voice of conscience to it. In waking life, the answer given in form and colour is transformed into the voice of conscience. In fact we depend on the sleep state for everything we have by way of inner moral attitude.

Many examples have been given of the greater wisdom inherent in the instinctive perception of earlier times and the instinctive perception, which are not intellectual; it is greater than our modern science, though it takes the form of images. The moral principles of instinctive perception contain much of what comes back to us again through the true science of the spirit, though it is now clearer, more transparent and defined. One of the principles which is part of popular belief is that if someone has offended you, do not take your inner reaction to this through sleep but if at all possible settle the matter before you go to sleep. Do not take your anger through sleep, therefore, but try to calm it before you go to sleep.

When you know that going to sleep means you are putting a question to the world of the spirit and that waking up is the answer to your question, you will be able to say to yourself: The answer you receive from the world of the spirit and take into your physical body as you wake up will be different if you moderated your anger the night before, or reduced the offence you felt, than if you take the feelings of offence into sleep and put your question out of injured feelings or in such anger that the fire of your anger fills the whole question. If you take an angry mood into the world of the spirit it is as if a stream of volcanic fire were to pour into that world. The soul world outside then has to colour this stream of volcanic fire (Fig. 41, reddish). This is very different from the situation where you have let your anger go down before going to sleep.

The effects of much of what I have said here can be seen not only in the human heart and mind but also in the way physical life and the life of the internal organs, is tuned. The causes of many diseases lie in the questions we receive to the answers we unconsciously put to the spiritual world as we go to sleep. In the waking state, our physical and etheric organs have to deal fully with everything the will-related I and the feeling-related astral body bring with them from the world of the spirit as we wake up.

It is quite wrong to think we have lots of experiences when awake but none in our sleep. When awake we experience processes that mostly take place between ourselves and the physical outside world. Satisfaction feit about these processes accompanies our clear perception of our relationship to the world rather like an inner dream in heart and mind—you will remember that the feeling element only has dream-level intensity of consciousness. When we are between going to sleep and waking up, however, considerable inner activity goes an in the I and astral body: The will-related I is given form, the feeling-imbued astral body is imbued with the powers of the outside world of soul and spirit. These real, factual processes penetrate and stream through the physical and ether bodies, and the way we behave in the physical world is determined by this. We do more for our inner life during sleep than we do in our waking hours. 011 the other hand, what we do when asleep depends an those waking hours. I'd say that the whole significance of sleep essentially lies not only in physical experience but in the moral structure of our inner nature.

I have shown on a number of occasions that superficial ideas about the way in which the human physical and ether bodies relate to the process of going to sleep are wrong. It is usually said that human beings grow tired because they use their limbs, because they work, and they need to sleep to make up for this. Merely to remember that we do not always go to sleep because we are tired will put us on the right track. Think of the well-rested retired gentleman who may go to a lecture, for instance, because it is the done thing; he’ll usually be fast asleep after the first five minutes, which is hardly due to his being tired.

Considering the superficial experiences to be gained in this field, we come to realize that people generally confuse cause and effect in this instance. We are in fact tired because we want to go to sleep. The impulse to go to sleep is a much more inward one than the physical tiredness which is its counterpart. When the outside world offers nothing of interest, the longing arises to withdraw from it. Soul and spirit then leave the living physical body, which grows tired. We grow tired because we want to go to sleep, not the other way round. Anyone can see this, if they have the will to do so. It is of course extraordinarily difficult to accept the truth of things that are so closely bound up with people’s self-satisfied life interest. But if we are prepared to accept truth, we will reach the point where we do not merely see going to sleep as a physical and physiological process, but consider it in relation to the whole cosmos which, as I have shown from many different points of view, also contains the moral impulses as real impulses, not just mere words. The alternation between sleeping and waking thus shows us how a bridge can be built between the physical and the moral elements in our world order.

Du Bois-Reymond,⁴⁰ the physiologist who gave that famous lecture on the limits of natural science, once said: “It is utterly beyond us to grasp the human being as he is in waking life.” Well, we know what to think of such a statement. Du Bois-Reymond believes, however, that it is possible for us to grasp the sleeping human being. According to him, the laws and relationship of the physical world outside, which we are able to grasp, also pertain to the sleeping human being, only in a more complex fashion. We know this to be incorrect, but let us merely consider the statement, which is, that we can have scientific understanding of the sleeping human being, but not of the waking human being.

So here a scientist is admitting that we cannot use the tools of science to discover what pervades the whole human being in the waking sate, and that the sleeping individual as a physical entity looks very different from an individual who is awake even in the eyes of scientists.

Scientists know nothing, of course, of the will-related I and feeling-related astral body which leave the human being for the non-physical world. But this “nothing”, what is it in the light of our present study? It is something which belongs to the moral world order. The activity of the moral principle is a real world which begins at the very point where people taking the scientific approach cease their observations. After waking up, the real effects of the moral principle show themselves only in the inner constitution of the human being. To enter into the sphere where moral reality is to be found we must therefore consider the world in which human beings live between waking up and going to sleep. It is not surprising, therefore, that people who take the scientific view and do not enter into this world only know a real world which does not contain the moral impulses and therefore relegate moral impulses to the realm of pure belief.

Such belief, however, becomes insight as real as that achieved by the followers of the scientific approach once we turn our attention to the other sphere. Our discussion will, of course, have to be based on completely different premises if we want to consider this sphere of spirit and soul imbued with moral principles.

If my drawing represented something from the physical world, I would have to base myself on the physical. My drawing would be an image of this, and we would progress from external reality to something which is merely image. We have to take the opposite route if we want to represent the non-physical. We have to experience it inwardly and then go outside and represent inward experience in an image. This kind of inward experience is extremely mobile and I should really show this colouring as glittering and gleaming, shifting and changing, growing luminous and fading away again, which is exactly what the spiritual scientist observes when considering the human being as a whole.

If one gains a vision of the astral body and I during sleep—I am trying to be extremely accurate here—the form given to the I and the colouring given to the astral body is bright and distinct. When I and astral body return to the physical and ether bodies, this bright, glittering and gleaming principle grows dark and dull. Outside the body the I aspect has definite contours; inside the body it grows indefinite. You get quite a specific feeling when you watch the I and astral body becoming submerged in the physical and ether bodies on waking. To use abstract words to describe this, means expressing oneself rather clumsily as a rule. It is however possible to define it relatively clearly. Observing the process you have a feeling which is rather like being aware of the coming of autumn and winter and letting this influence your soul. To consider the waking-up process in terms of the whole human being is to enter into a mood like that experienced with the coming of winter. Going to sleep, with the spirit and soul principles going outside the human being, you experience an inner mood similar to the one experienced with the coming of spring and summer. It is indeed the case that you enter into something very special here.

Dear friends, for several weeks I have tried to show how by taking the approach of spiritual science we come to see the human in relationship to the whole cosmos. I have shown you the human form in its relationship to the world of the fixed stars, and the levels of human life in relation to the world of the planets. Considering the human being in the light of spiritual science, we are always taken outside the human being. Today we have considered the alternating states of waking and sleeping; entering into them with inner feeling, we are again taken outside the human being, this time not into the world of the stars but into the world of time. So we said to ourselves: We understand the waking-up process if we understand the coming of autumn and winter; we understand the process of going to sleep if we understand the coming of spring and summer. From the progress of time in the human being we are taken into the progress of time in the cosmos, into the changing seasons. The human being is seen to be an image also of what happens in time. In the preceding weeks we endeavoured to see the human being as an image of the macrocosm more in terms of space.

We thus relate the human being to the world, and understand him in terms of the world. And then the moral world order also becomes reality for us and not a world of empty words. If we enter into everything we are able to feel in considering our relationship to the world, religious impulses enter into our ethical and moral world. The ethical will then comes to express the divine will which reigns in the human being, and the ethical and moral sphere is lifted up into the ethical and religious sphere. This is how anthroposophy as science of the spirit seeks to find the way to the ethical and religious. We shall continue with this tomorrow.

• 40. Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–96), German physiologist born in Berlin of French parentage, professor of physics at Berlin. The lecture referred to was published in Leipzig in 1916.