The Rudolf Steiner Archive

To-day I want to make various comments on matters that have been mentioned lately, and to fill in certain gaps. If you follow with attention current trends, you will have noticed a feeling that the thoughts and impressions and impulses which for a long time have led to such “splendid progress” are no longer capable of helping us to cope with the immediate future. Yesterday one of our members gave me a copy of the Frankfurter Zeitung for last Wednesday, November 21st. There speaks a very learned gentleman ... he must be very learned, for he is not only a Doctor of Philosophy but also a Doctor of Theology, and also a Professor, so naturally he is a very clever man. He has written an article which deals with all sorts of spiritual needs of the present time, and in the course of it he says:

“The experience of the form of being which lies behind things does not require pious dedication or a religious evaluation, for it is itself religion. We are concerned not with feeling and grasping a particular content, but with the great Irrational which lies hidden behind all existence ... Anyone who makes contact with this, so that the divine spark leaps across, goes through an experience which is of primal character and may be called the primordial experience. Anyone who experiences this one thing, together with all that is stirred by the same flow of life, is imbued with—to use a favourite modern phrase—a feeling of cosmic existence.”

Excuse me for reading this to you: I am quoting it not in order to arouse in you any magnificent ideas, but so as to bring before you a sign of the times:

“A cosmic religiosity is coming to birth among us, and how strong is the demand for it is shown by the evident spread of the theosophical movement, which undertakes to discover and unveil the phases of this life beyond the range of the senses.”

It is really difficult to stumble through all these wishy-washy ideas, but you will agree that the article is remarkable as a symptom of the times! He goes on: “In this cosmic piety there is no question of a mysticism which turns away from the world ...” and so on.

It would be hard to discover anything intelligent in all this, but since it is written by a man with all these degrees, one must suppose that some intelligence is there! Otherwise we should have to take it as the obscure stammering of a learned man who has reached a dead end on his own path and now feels impelled to call attention to something which certainly exists and evidently appears to him as not wholly unattainable.

There is no cause for satisfaction in such remarks; we must above all take care not to let them lull us into a comfortable slumber just because it has again been noticed, from some point of view or other, that something lies behind the spiritual-scientific movement. That would be really harmful. People who write in this way are often quite satisfied with having written it. With these misty thoughts they point to something which is trying to make its way into the world, but they are far too complacent to go in for the serious study that Spiritual Science requires. Nothing less than that must lay hold of men's minds if some reality is to be brought into the trends of the times, so that healing can come of it. Of course it is easier to talk of this “surge” of “cosmic feeling” than to give serious attention to those things that are demanded by the signs of the times and must be made known to mankind. For this reason it seems to me necessary to repeat here the remarks I have made in public lectures and shall make again, with particular emphasis now on the distinction between the worn-out ideas which have led into these catastrophic times and those which must take hold of human souls if any sort of progress is to be accomplished.

The old wisdom, through which mankind has been guided up to our time, may give rise to thousands of congresses, world-congresses, people's congresses and so on; thousands and thousands of societies may be founded; but we must be clear that all these congresses and societies will accomplish nothing unless the life-blood of Spiritual Science flows through them. What is lacking among people to-day is the courage to embark on real research into the spiritual world. Strange as it may sound, it must be said—as a first step nothing else would be needed than to spread the little booklet, Human Life in the light of Anthroposophy, in the widest circles. Something would thereby be done to evoke knowledge of a connection between man and the cosmic order. The booklet calls attention precisely to this knowledge by showing in concrete terms how throughout the year the earth undergoes changes in its state of consciousness—and so on. What is said in that booklet and in this lecture is said with full consideration for the needs of our time. Acceptance of it would signify more than all this wishy-washy talk on cosmic feeling and surges and I know not what. I have just read this to you and I can't bring myself to repeat it—it is all put in such a senseless way.

This should of course not prevent us from taking note of such things: they are important and real. What I want to bring home to you is that we must not befog ourselves: we must be absolutely clear as to what we wish to do on behalf of Spiritual Science.

Now I will turn again to the fact that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch humanity will have to find ways of dealing with great life-problems which in a certain sense were veiled by the wisdom of the past. I have already called your attention to them. One of these great problems will be concerned with finding out how to place the spiritual etheric forces at the service of practical life. I have told you that in this epoch we have to solve the problem of how the radiations from human states of mind are carried over into machines; of how human beings are to be brought into relation with an environment which must become increasingly mechanised. A week ago I pointed out how superficially this mechanisation is treated in a certain part of the world. I gave you the example of how an American way of thinking tries to extend the realm of the machine over human life itself. I told you of the rest-pauses which were used in order to enable a given number of workmen to load up to 47½ tons, instead of a much lower figure; this involves simply the application of Darwinian natural selection to human life.

Where this kind of thing goes on, the wish to yoke up human strength with the strength of machines is always involved. It would be quite mistaken merely to oppose these things. They are not going to fade away; they are on the march. The only question is whether in the course of world-history they are going to be brought on to the scene by men who are unselfishly aware of the great aims of earth-evolution and wish to shape these developments for the healing of mankind, or by groups of men who want to use them for their own or the group's selfish ends. That is the issue. The point is not what is going to happen, for it certainly will happen, but how it happens—how these things are handled. The welding together of human beings with machines will be a great and important problem for the rest of the earth-evolution.

I have often pointed out, even in public lectures, that human consciousness depends on destructive forces. During public lectures in Basle I twice said that in our nerve-system we are always in process of dying. These forces of death will become stronger and stronger, and we shall find that they are related to the forces of electricity and magnetism, and to those at work in machines. A man will be able in a certain sense to guide his intentions and his thoughts into the forces of the machines. Forces in human nature that are still unknown will be discovered—forces which will act upon external electricity and magnetism.

That is one problem: the bringing together of human beings with machines, and this is something which will exert ever-increasing influence on the future.

The other problem is concerned with calling in spiritual relationships to our aid. This can be done only when the time is ripe, and when a sufficient number of people are rightly prepared for it. But we must come to the stage when spiritual forces are brought into action for the governance of life in relation to illness and death.

Medicine will be spiritualised—very highly spiritualised. These things will be caricatured from various standpoints, but the caricatures only show what has to come. Again, the question is whether or not this problem—like the other problem I have mentioned—is handled in an egotistic way by individuals or by groups.

The third great question concerns ways of thinking about human birth and upbringing. I have told you how congresses on this subject have already been held, and how a materialistic form of science will be brought to bear in the future on procreation and the union of man and woman. These things indicate the great significance that attaches to this process of becoming. It is easy enough to ask why those who have the right knowledge in these matters do not apply it. In the future it will be clear enough what the state of affairs is regarding this application, and what are the forces which are even now opposing, for example, a more generous provision for a spiritualised medicine or a spiritualised economic life. All that can be done at present is to speak of these things, until people—I mean those who are ready to accept them selflessly—understand them sufficiently. There are many who think they have already got as far as that, but many hindrances arise from the circumstances of life to-day. These will be overcome in the right way only if understanding goes deeper and deeper, and if we actually refrain, for a time at least, from attempting practical applications on any large scale.

Things have developed in such a way that one can say: Little is known of all that lay behind the old atavistic searchings which continued up to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. People talk a great deal about the old alchemy; sometimes they call to mind the creation of Homunculus and so on. But most of this talk misses the point. If people would come to understand what can be said about the Homunculus scene in Faust, for instance, they would be better informed: the essential thing is that a mist has been spread over these subjects since the sixteenth century. They have receded into the background of human consciousness.

The law which prevails here is the same law which governs the rhythmic alternation of waking and sleeping in man. Just as a person cannot do without sleep, so mankind could not dispense with the sleep regarding spiritual knowledge which has marked the whole period since the sixteenth century. Man had to fall asleep to the spiritual, so that it could reappear in a new form. These necessities must be clearly seen, but without letting them depress us. We must realise clearly that the time for awakening has now come, that we have to play our part in it, that events often run ahead of our knowledge and that we shall not understand the events going on around us unless we are willing to receive the knowledge and to act in accordance with it.

I have repeatedly told you that certain groups are working esoterically in the direction I have indicated. It was first of all necessary that certain forms of knowledge—called nowadays by such misunderstood words as alchemy, astrology, etc.—should fall into abeyance, so that men should no longer be able to discern the soul-element in outer Nature and should rather be thrown back on themselves. And in order that they should awaken their inward forces, certain things had to appear as abstractions. Now these things must again take on a concrete spiritual form.

During the last centuries three ideas have gradually emerged in abstract guise. They were incorrectly named by Kant, and correctly by Goethe. Kant called them God, Freedom and Immortality; Goethe called them God, Virtue and Immortality. If we look into what lies behind these three words, we find that the same words are taken abstractly by modern man and were taken more concretely—but also more materially in the old atavistic sense—up to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Experiments in the old style were carried out: the alchemists sought to observe processes in which the working of God could be seen. And they tried to produce the Philosopher's Stone.

Something concrete lies behind all these things. The Philosopher's Stone was to enable men to become virtuous—but this was thought of in a more material sense. It was also to lead to an experience of immortality: to bring a man into such a relationship to the cosmic whole that he would experience in himself what lies beyond birth and death. All the nebulous ideas by which people nowadays try to grasp these things no longer correspond with what was really intended. It has all become abstract, and it is of abstract ideas that modern men speak. They want to understand God through an abstract theology, and virtue also as something abstract—the more abstract it is, the better people like it. And it is the same with immortality. Speculation turns on what in man could be immortal. In my first Basle lecture [23rd November, 1917. (Not translated into English.)] I said that the kind of learning which under the name of philosophy occupies itself with such questions as that of immortality is a starveling, under-nourished kind of learning. That is merely another way of describing the abstract terms in which such matters are pursued.

In certain Western brotherhoods, however, a connection with the old traditions has been retained, and endeavours are made to use it for the egotistic interests of the group. It is time to call attention to these things. Of course, if from this Western quarter anything is said about God, virtue or freedom, and immortality, the words are given an abstract sense, but in the circle of initiates it is well known that all this is not mere abstract speculation. For their own part, they look for something much more concrete behind these abstract formulae, and in their own schools these terms are accordingly translated. God is translated as gold, and an endeavour is made to arrive at what lies behind the secret of gold, as it may be called. For gold, the representative of the sun-like within the earth's crust, does in fact enshrine an important secret. Gold stands in the same material relationships to other substances as the thought of God does to other thoughts. The only question is what is made of this secret.

This is linked up with the egotistic use of the mystery of birth, and here, real cosmic understanding is sought. All such understanding has been replaced for modern men by a purely earthly understanding. If someone wants to investigate, for example, how the embryonic life-cell of animal or man develops, he studies it through a microscope and is concerned only with what lies there directly under his lens. But that is far from being the whole thing. It will be realised—and some groups are very near this already—that the forces at work are not contained in the cell but come from the cosmos and its constellations. When a seed of life arises, it does so because the living creature which harbours the seed is receiving forces, cosmic forces, from all sides of the cosmos. And when fertilisation occurs, the results depend on which cosmic forces enter actively into the process.

One thing, not yet seen, will be recognised. To-day the idea is that we have a living creature, a hen, let us say. When a new seed of life appears in the hen, the biologist investigates how the egg arises out of the hen; he looks within the hen itself for the forces which cause the seed to grow. That is nonsense. The egg does not grow out of the hen; the hen is merely the substratum for it. The growth-forces work from out of the cosmos on to the soil which has been prepared in the hen for engendering the egg. The biologist to-day believes that the relevant forces are all to be found within the field of his microscope. Actually, what he sees there depends on stellar forces which work together in a certain pattern at a given point. When we discover the cosmic at this point, then for the first time we shall have got at the reality and the truth: it is the cosmic whole which conjures up the egg in the hen.

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All this is connected especially with the secret of the sun, and in earthly terms with the secret of gold. To-day I can give you only a sort of schematic indication of it; these things will become much clearer in the course of time.

When “virtue” is discussed in these same schools, they call it simply “health,” and try to learn how the cosmic constellations are connected with health and sickness in men. By this means they come to know the particular earthly substances, the juices and so on, which are in their turn connected with sickness and health. We shall see develop increasingly from a certain direction a more material form of medical knowledge, but it will rest on a spiritual foundation.

From this side also will be spread the idea that man cannot be made good by learning all sorts of ethical principles, but by ingesting copper, for example, under a certain constellation, and arsenic under another. You can well imagine how ideas of this kind can be used by egotistic groups for enhancing their own power. They need only withhold this knowledge from others, and this will be the best means of dominating large numbers of men. They will not need to talk about such things; it will be enough to bring forward some new titbit. Then they will find openings for this titbit, having first flavoured it appropriately, and they will achieve their purpose when these novelties are accepted in a materialistic sense. We have only to remember that spiritual potencies are hidden in everything material. Only he who knows that in a true sense there really is nothing material, but only the spiritual—only he will penetrate behind the secrets of life.

Similar endeavours are made from the same quarter to transpose the problem of immortality into a materialistic frame, and this, too, can be done by making use of the cosmic constellations. This method certainly does not yield the immortality that is the subject of so many speculations, but immortality of another sort. Given a brotherhood lodge, then—at least so long as life cannot be lengthened by working on the physical body—preparations are made for subjecting a soul to such experiences as will enable it to remain within the lodge after death, so that it may contribute its forces to those at the disposal of the lodge. In these circles, accordingly, immortality is called simply “lengthening of life.”

External signs of all this can indeed be seen. I don't know if some of you may have noticed a book which also came from the West and caused a little stir for a while; it was called “On the Nonsense of Death.” These things all move in the same direction. They are still at their beginnings, for everything beyond that is kept as a closely guarded esoteric secret by the egotistic groups. But these things are really possible if they are given a materialistic colouring; if the abstract ideas of God, virtue and immortality are turned into the concrete ideas of gold, health and lengthening of life, and if what I have called the great problem of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is utilised for the purpose of an egotistic group. You see, this “cosmic feeling,” which the learned Professor and Doctor of Theology talks about, is already being widely presented to people—and often, unfortunately, in an egotistic sense—as cosmic knowledge. For centuries science has kept its eyes fixed on earthly processes, and has ignored all the most significant influences that come from beyond the earth, but it is precisely in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch that extra-terrestrial forces from the cosmos will be put to use.

And so, just as it is essential for an orthodox professor of biology to have the most powerful microscope available and the most efficient laboratory methods, so, in the future, when science has been spiritualised, it will be of the utmost importance whether certain processes are carried through in the morning or in the evening, or at midday, and whether what has been done in the morning is allowed to be further influenced by an evening activity, or whether the cosmic influences are cut out, paralysed, from the morning until the evening. Processes of this kind will of necessity come to light and will run their course. Naturally, a great deal of water will have to flow under the bridges before the professional chairs and laboratories, at present organised on purely materialistic lines, are handed over to spiritual scientists, but this replacement must come about if humanity is not to sink into utter decadence. For example, if the question is one of doing good in the immediate future, existing laboratory methods must give way to methods whereby certain processes take place in the morning and are interrupted during the day, so that the cosmic stream passes through them again in the evening and is in turn rhythmically withheld again until morning. So the processes would take their course: certain cosmic workings would always be interrupted by day, and the cosmic morning and evening processes would be brought in. All sorts of arrangements would be necessary for this. You will realise that if one is not in a position to take any public action about these things, all one can do is to speak of them.

However, just as gold, health and the prolongation of life are put in the place of God, virtue and immortality, so from the same quarter efforts will be made to work not with the morning and evening processes, but with others. Last week I told you how an attempt will be made to set aside the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha, while for the West another impulse, a sort of Anti-Christ is introduced; and from the East an attempt will be made to paralyse the twentieth-century manifestation of the Christ Impulse by diverting attention from the coming etheric Christ.

Those concerned to present an Anti-Christ as the real Christ will try also to make use of something that works through the most material forces, but in this very way can work spiritually. Above all they will strive to make use of electricity and earth-magnetism in order to produce effects all over the world. I have shown you how earth-forces rise up into what I have called the human Double, the Doppelgänger. This secret will be opened up. An American secret will be to make use of earth-magnetism, with its north-south duality, and by this means to send over the earth guiding forces which will have spiritual effects. Look at the magnetic chart of the earth and compare it with what I am now saying. Observe where the magnetic needle deviates to East and West and where it does not deviate. I can give only hints about all this. From a certain direction in the heavens, spiritual beings are continually active, and they have only to be put into the service of the earth, and—because these beings working in from the cosmos can mediate the secret of the earth's magnetism—it will be possible for egotistic groups to get behind this secret and to accomplish a great deal in connection with gold, health and the prolongation of life. It will be necessary for them only to pluck up their faltering courage—and in certain circles that will be done readily enough!

From the East an endeavour will be made to strengthen what I have already explained: to place in the service of the earth the beings which work in from the opposite side of the cosmos. In the future there will be a great battle. Human science will stretch out to the cosmic, but will try to get there by different paths. It will be the task of good, healing science to find certain cosmic forces which can reach the earth through the co-operation of two cosmic streams, those of Pisces and Virgo. The great secret to be discovered will be how the influence which works from the direction of Pisces as a power of the sun unites itself with the influence working from the direction of Virgo. It will make for good when it is learnt how the morning and evening forces from the two sides of the cosmos can be brought into the service of humanity. (See diagram at end of lecture.)

These forces, however, will be left aside by those who try to achieve their whole purpose through the polaric duality of positive and negative forces. The forces which enable the spiritual to stream down to earth with the aid of positive and negative magnetism come from Gemini; they are the midday forces. In ancient times it was known that cosmic influences were involved in this, and to-day even exoteric scientists are aware that in some or other way positive and negative magnetism lie behind Gemini in the Zodiac. The aim will be to paralyse all that could be gained through a revelation of the true duality in the cosmos—to paralyse it in a materialistic, egotistic way by means of the forces which stream in particularly from Gemini and can be placed entirely at the service of the human “Double.”

Other brotherhoods, concerned above all to divert attention from the Mystery of Golgotha, will try to make use of the duality in human nature—the duality which in our epoch embraces man as a unity, but includes within him his lower animal nature. A human being is really a centaur in a certain sense: his humanity rests on his lower animal nature in its astral form. This working together of the duality in man gives rise to a duality of forces. This duality of forces will be utilised particularly by certain egotistic brotherhoods, chiefly from the side of India and the East, in order to mislead eastern Europe, whose task it is to prepare for the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And this will be done with the aid of the forces which work in from Sagittarius.

Whether to conquer the cosmic for mankind in a wrong, twofold way, or rightly in a one-fold way—that is the question facing mankind. From this will come a true renewal of astrology, which in its old form is atavistic and cannot survive. The wise Beings of the cosmos will enter into the struggle; one side will use the morning and evening processes in the way I have indicated; the West will prefer the midday processes, shutting out the morning and evening ones; and the East will prefer the midnight ones. Men will no longer manufacture substances on the basis merely of chemical attraction and repulsion; they will know that different substances arise according to whether they are made with morning and evening processes, or with midday and midnight ones. It will be known that such substances act in a quite different way on the triad, God, virtue and immortality—gold, health and prolongation of life. When the forces of Pisces and Virgo act in co-operation, nothing wrongful can be brought into being. Men will achieve something through which the mechanism of life will be detached, in a certain sense, from man himself, but will not give any one group power and rulership over another. The cosmic forces drawn from this direction will create remarkable machines, but only those that will relieve man of work, because they will carry a certain power of intelligence within themselves. And a Spiritual Science which itself reaches out towards the cosmic will have to see to it that all the great temptations which come from these machine-animals, created by man himself, are not allowed to exercise any harmful influence upon him.

With regard to all this, the essential thing is that people should prepare themselves for it by not treating realities as illusions and by coming to a genuine spiritual conception and understanding of the world. To see things as they are—very much depends on that! But we can see them as they are only if we are in a position to bring the ideas of Spiritual Science to bear on reality. For the rest of the earth's existence the dead will be co-operating actively in the highest degree, and it is how they co-operate that will matter. Here, above all, a great distinction will arise. On one side the attitude of men on earth can rightly lead the co-operation of the dead in such a direction that the dead will be active out of their own impulse, an impulse coming from the spiritual world which the dead are themselves experiencing. But from the other side many endeavours will be made to introduce the dead into human existence by artificial means. Along the indirect path through Gemini the dead will be led into human life, with the result that human vibrations will pass over into the mechanism of machines and will continue to vibrate there in a quite definite way. The cosmos will impart motion to the machines by the indirect path I have indicated.

It will thus be essential, when these problems emerge, that no improper methods should be applied to them, but only those elemental forces which belong to nature on their own account, and great care will have to be taken not to introduce improper forces into the realm of machines. In this occult sphere the human element must not be related to machinery in such a way that the Darwinian natural selection theory is used to determine the working capacity of human beings, in the way of which I gave you an example last week.

I am making these remarks—obviously they cannot exhaust the subject in so short a time—in the belief that you will meditate on these things and will try to build a bridge between them and all those experiences of life which can be encountered, particularly in this difficult time. You will see how things become clear to you if you contemplate them in the light that can come from such ideas as those I have been placing before you. The real point is not that in our time powers and constellations of powers are standing opposed to each other, as we are always being told in external exoteric life. The real point is quite different. It is that a kind of veil is now meant to be spread over the true impulses at work. Certain human powers are intent on saving something for themselves—what is it? Their aim is that impulses which up to the time of the French Revolution were justified, and were represented also by certain occult schools, shall now be taken charge of in an Ahrimanic-Luciferic sense, so as to maintain a form of society which is generally thought to have been overcome since the end of the eighteenth century.

Two powers, especially, stand in opposition to each other: the power representing the principle that was overcome at the end of the eighteenth century and the power representing the new age. A great many people, of course, are instinctively supporters of the new age. Therefore the representatives of the old impulses, those of the eighteenth, seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, must be yoked by artificial means to the forces which emanate from certain brotherhoods who are working for group-egotistic ends. The most effective principle for extending power over as many men as may be needed is to-day the principle of economic dependence. But that is only an instrument: the real thing is quite different. The real issue you can gather for yourselves from all the various hints I have given. The economic principle is connected with everything which seeks to enlist a great number of men all over the world as a kind of army in the service of these principles.

These are the powers which stand opposed to each other. And this indicates what it is that is really battling in the world to-day. In the West we have the principle which is really rooted in the eighteenth, seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, but which passes unnoticed because it clothes itself in the phrases of revolution and democracy. It wears them as a mask and by this means strives to gain all possible power for itself. These endeavours are favoured if as many people as possible do not exert themselves to see things as they are, and in this field allow themselves to be lulled to sleep again and again by the illusion that to-day there is a war between the Entente and the powers of Central Europe.

In reality there is no such war; only by going behind this illusion can one get at the real struggle, but light can be thrown on it if it is approached along the lines which, for certain reasons, I only hint at. At least we should endeavour not to take illusions for realities: then gradually the illusion will be dispelled as far as it need be. Above all we must strive to see these things objectively, as they really are.

If you bring together all that I have been saying, you will see that an apparently casual remark I made in the course of these lectures was not so at all. When I quoted something that Mephistopheles said to Faust, “I see you know the Devil” (he would certainly not have said this to Woodrow Wilson), it was by no means a casual remark: it can throw a great deal of light on the present situation. We must really look at these things objectively, without sympathy or antipathy; above all, we must be able to see how much in a particular case depends on the setting and how much on the capacity of an individual, for behind an individual's capacity there often lies something quite different from what lies behind the setting. Ask yourselves without prejudice—how much would Woodrow Wilson's brain be worth if it were not throned on the Presidency of the United States? Consider how it would be if this brain had a quite different setting: then its individual capacity would be revealed! The setting is what matters.

Let me now speak abstractly and radically, of course without discussing in detail the particular case I have mentioned—in a neutral country that would not be appropriate. If you take any individual brain, it can be revealing to ask whether it is worth something because it is illuminated and activated by a particular spiritual soul-force—whether it has the kind of spiritual significance I have been speaking of here—or whether it is worth no more than its weight, measured on a pair of scales.

In the eyes of people to-day, all this is grotesque; but what seems grotesque to them must come to seem obvious, if certain things are to be diverted from an unhealthy stream into a health-giving one. And what good is it to be always talking about them? You must come to see that there is no point in wishy-washy talk about “cosmic religiosity” or “how strong the striving for it is,” or of “the movement which aims at discovering and revealing the circulation of the life behind the senses,” and so on. All this does is to spread a mist over things which must be brought out clearly in the world, and should above all be carried as practical moral-ethical impulses into human life.

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I can give you only indications. I leave you to build on them in your own meditations. I have been speaking aphoristically in many respects. But you will have the possibility of drawing a great deal out of the relationships shown in this picture of the Zodiac, if you truly use it as a subject for meditation.

Today I would like to add a somewhat more extensive consideration about cosmic observation to our reflections. We, as human beings, must be thoroughly aware that we live on earth in the time that passes between birth and death, and that we consider everything that makes an impression on us, in the narrower and broader sense, with our senses and also with our intellect, but only from the point of view of our earthly residence. We often become aware of how much we are bound to this earthly abode by our external physical body. We learn already in school that a human being can only live if he breathes the air that surrounds him and that consists of a certain mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. Man is completely dependent on this air for his vital functions. We only need to consider how different our physical life would be if, for example, there were more oxygen in the air around us than there actually is. Let us assume that there were more oxygen in the air, then we would live faster, that is, we would have a much shorter lifespan on earth calculated by years. Time would be compressed, so to speak, and our lifespan would have to be shorter. This is basically just a very rough approximation. We can imagine that our entire human organism would be different if every single thing in our environment that has an influence on us were to be changed just a little. Such a consideration is indeed often made today. People are becoming aware of their physical dependence on their environment. However, at most one is only very clearly aware in the abstract that man also has a soul-spiritual being, and basically one never has such precise ideas about this spiritual-soul being as one has about the physical-bodily being. The physical-corporal aspect of our organization is so well known that one can say how differently abundant oxygen in the air would affect a person. Regarding the spiritual-soul being, one does not think so much, thoughts that would go something like this: If this spiritual-soul being were different from what it is, could it then be on earth between birth and death?

Just as our body is adapted to the amount of oxygen in the air, and how many other things in our body are adapted to the conditions that are just near the earth's surface, so too is our soul and spirit perfectly adapted between birth and death to what is immediately at the earth's surface. And when one becomes fully aware of this, then one will also be able to say: Just as the human being could not live as an earthly human being out there, just a few miles from the earth's surface, so too would the human soul, with its thinking, feeling and willing, not be able to live in a different way in other than earthly conditions, just as it lives in the earth's environment. Elsewhere, in a different position to the earth, it would have to be organized differently again as a spiritual-mental being. Just as the human body would derive no benefit from its lungs, once they were organized, if they were miles away from the earth's surface, so the human soul, with its thinking, feeling and willing, as it develops in earthly life, would be unable to function under other than earthly conditions.

One could not get any clear idea of these things at all if it were not possible for those people who seek an inner soul development to come to different soul experiences than are the case in ordinary thinking, feeling and willing. You all know from the descriptions in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' that one can arrive at quite different soul moods and dispositions, that one can arrive at a quite different soul content. One can arrive at a soul content that not only has ordinary thinking but also imagination, that lives in pictures instead of thoughts. One can go further and arrive at inspiration. Just as our lungs, with the air, perform their inhalation in relation to the physicality of the air, so too can one, so to speak, inspire and breathe in the spiritual and soul substance of the spiritual and soul substance spread throughout the world. And just as the lungs, when they inhale oxygen, draw their life from this oxygen, as the whole human body draws its life from this oxygen, so too the human soul draws its life from the inspirations that take place when such higher knowledge is acquired. And it is the same with the further level of knowledge, with intuition.

Then the soul rises to a completely different inner content. Then it experiences something essentially different. But this different experience is connected, as you know, with what can be called a soul-like going out of the body. We no longer feel so within our body when we ascend to imagination, inspiration and intuition as we feel when we are in ordinary earthly life. It is then with the spiritual-soul being just as if, for example, the lungs were transformed into an organ that breathes light instead of air. Then it could indeed live a few miles outside the earthly with the organism to which the lungs belong. Now, in the physical that is not possible at first, at least not for a human being, but it is possible for the spiritual and soul in us when we leave our body and then experience imagination, inspiration and intuition in our soul, we actually leave the earthly point of view, we already come to the point of view that we had before we descended into a physical body. We come through the fact that we ascend to imagination, inspiration and intuition, actually from an earthly view of the world to a cosmic view of the world. We are just simply no longer on earth, but we look at the earthly from a different point of view.

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This is not of great significance when it comes to observing human souls. However, it is of great significance when it comes to getting to know the spiritual in the cosmos itself. I will make this clear to you in a schematic drawing. Imagine that here is the earth, the human being on earth. Man sees the elements in his earthly surroundings. We can call them solid, liquid and gaseous. He perceives the fiery, the warm. But then what immediately belongs to the earth's surface ceases. By perceiving the fiery, the warm, man already rises to the perception of the earth's surroundings. He enters the light-filled realm, into that which we call the light ether. It is indeed our special characteristic that we can perceive the light ether through our looking, our seeing. But when imaginative perception occurs in a person, then he does not feel standing here on earth and letting his gaze wander out into the light ether, but then he actually feels as if he were perceiving and looking at the whole from the outside (drawing, red).

Particularly in relation to what I am discussing here, it is possible to speak quite definitely about how this happens. If you are standing on the earth and let your gaze wander freely into the cosmos, then by day you are looking into the light everywhere. By night you look up at the starry sky. There you make use, if I may say so, of the perceiving power of your eye. But the power of will is also constantly directed at this perceiving power of your eye. You actually use this power of will in earthly seeing only for the adjustment of the eye. But when you ascend to imaginative cognition, this willpower is trained more and more, especially for the individual senses. You feel how you, as it were, step out into space through your eyes and increasingly come to look at the cosmos from the outside.

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You do not have to believe that what I am describing here consists of your eye becoming huge, and then growing all the way over, and that you then look at the cosmos from the outside as you now look at the cosmos from the inside. You do not achieve this through the power of perception, but precisely through the will becoming clairvoyant. It is an experience in which the will expands, but in which you yourself are present. In this case you also look at the stars from the outside, as a person, when he is in the spiritual world as a soul, also looks at the stars from the outside, from where there are no more stars, not from the etheric region, but from the astral region, from which one can say that there is still space, and from which one can also say that there is no more space. It does not make much sense to speak of what I have just indicated as if there were still space. But one feels as if one had space within oneself. But then you do not see any stars. You know you are looking at the stars, but you do not see any stars, you see images. You actually see images everywhere within the stellar space. It suddenly becomes clear to you why in the old days, when people depicted spheres, they didn't just paint stars, but pictures.

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But now imagine looking through these pictures. Then you become aware that forces radiate down to Earth from all these pictures; only that these forces radiate together. If you look at a radiant star from here, from the Earth, you have the feeling that the rays diverge. If you look at it from outside, you have the feeling that the rays, the light effects that emanate from the pictures, are not only light effects but also power effects, and that they go together. These power effects go as far as the earth. And what do they do there? Yes, you see, they form the shape of the plants, for example. And the one who looks imaginatively says: the lily is a plant form on earth that was created in this form and shape by this group of stars. Another, a tulip shape, was created by another group of stars.

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And so you see what is on earth as plant cover (green), as if it were really painted by the starry sky. It is actually the case that the form of the plant body is determined, created, by the cosmos. And now you can easily understand: if you look further in, if you see the fixed stars out there, then closer to the earth you see the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and so on. They are moving. The fixed stars show you the constellations at rest, which give the plants their shape. But the moving planets send down forces of movement. It is these that the plants first draw out of the root, then make them grow higher and higher, and so on. Just as the shape of the plants is formed from the fixed starry sky, so the movement is formed from the movement of the celestial bodies closer to the earth. Only what takes place in the plant itself, this metabolism, that, for example, the plant absorbs carbonic acid, assimilates it, as they say, and secretes the carbon, so that it forms its carbon body, that is from the forces of the earth itself. We can therefore say: When we look at the plant in its entirety, its form is from the starry sky, its growth is from the planetary movement, and its metabolism is from the earth.

These are things that are regarded as foolishness by those who call themselves true scientific minds today, but they are the very reality. For he who regards the plant in its growth and form as it is done today, resembles one — I must here use a simile that I have often applied — who looks at a magnetic needle that points with one side to the north, with the other side to the south, and who now says: This is due to the magnetic needle, that one point points to the north, the other to the south. It is not due to the magnetic needle, but natural science naturally assumes that the whole earth is a great magnet, that it attracts the one point to the north and the other to the south. In natural science, the whole earth is used to explain the direction of the magnetic needle. But in the same way, if you want to explain the whole form of the plant, you have to use the whole universe. The plant is formed out of the whole universe. It is simply an awful absurdity that the same people who, for example, use the whole earth to explain the direction of the magnetic needle, want to explain the plant only in terms of its cells and their forces. Just as the magnet needle can only be understood when it is placed in the whole magnetic context of the earth, so can plants only be understood when they are placed in the whole cosmic context, when one comes to say: Here I am walking across a region, let us say, of central Europe; for this central Europe, during the time of flower growth, these constellations have a particular significance; hence the plants of this area grow here, because the heavens cause certain plants to grow on the earth in a particular area.

If we wish to observe plants from this point of view, if we go as far as the form, then we must actually take the whole Cosmos to help us. With the animals we need go only as far as the constellations of the zodiac. I have already spoken about this. The stars outside the zodiac have no influence on animals. The animal has thus already become more independent, no longer depends in its organic formation on the whole cosmos, but only on what is in and under the zodiac.

Man has become even more independent, because only the planets influence him, not in so far as he is a soul, but in so far as he is a physical organism. Only where it passes over into the moral, into the soul, must we go beyond the planetary influence, as was done in the older, really good views of astrology, not in today's lay and amateurish ones, which are still behind. But from all this you can see that one must say, in a certain way, but always only to the extent that one takes the external into account: this applies to the plant. For the animal, the form is connected with the zodiac, the growth with the planetary movement and the metabolism with the earth.

If we go up to the human being, then we can no longer ascribe his form to any constellation, but only to the whole universe as such; we can only say: the sphere; not to the individual constellations, but to the whole sphere. I have therefore said on one occasion – and it has already been printed – that in a certain sense the human brain is a reflection of the whole starry sky, not of a single group of stars. Thus, the sphere for form. For growth, in a certain sense, planetary motion too, but now the entire planetary motion, not individual planets, as it is for the plant, for the animal; and for metabolism, again, the earth.

Plant:

Form, starry sky
growth, planets
metabolism, earth

Animal:

Form, zodiac
growth, planets
metabolism, earth

Human being:

form, sphere
growth, planet
metabolism, earth

What was the progress in the development of knowledge? Basically, until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, no one who came into consideration with regard to knowledge doubted the things I have just discussed. Even if this ancient knowledge was not the fully conscious knowledge that we are striving for today through anthroposophy, for example, there was still a kind of dream-like but clairvoyant knowledge in those ancient times, at least up to the Mystery of Golgotha. And those people who were recognized as knowing something about the world had no doubt at all that when they looked at a plant blossom, they had to relate it to some configurations in the starry sky. And so with other things.

Then this knowledge increasingly disappeared during the first four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. After the great eradication of ancient knowledge - I have often described this eradication - only those insights remained that were handed down into the Middle Ages, were often distorted, and are now recorded in old books and are still enjoyed by some people who do not want to take refuge in the new knowledge but always want to look back to the old.

The realization that we are now consciously embracing, the cosmic realization of everything that appears here on our earth as a form, this cosmic realization that we are striving for today, was not present in conscious clairvoyance, but it was present in a certain way. It dawned on people more and more. And then, after man had devoted himself for some time to the artistic shaping of the word in drama, to the thought in dialectics, to the sound and word connection in rhetoric, to the contemplation of number in arithmetic, to the contemplation of form in geometry, after man had devoted himself to this artistic training of the human soul forces for several centuries, the world view emerged that no longer searches out there in the universe, that no longer asks: What is out there that a lily blossom or a tulip blossom can arise on earth? Instead, a worldview emerged that only calculates the present position of the stars, the size of the stars, which only mathematics can explain, which at most accepts mechanics and physics as astrophysics when the stellar world, when the extraterrestrial comes into consideration.

If there is the earth here and a mole in the earth here, the mole has a certain view of the world. But there is not much of the sun in this world view. In more recent times, people have lost the opportunity to look up from the lily blossom, from the tulip blossom into the starry sky, just as the mole does not have the opportunity to look up beyond the darkness of the earth. And there, human beings are stuck in the earth, water, air and fire. At most, they look out into the light like an earthworm does when it comes out during a rain shower and perhaps perceives something of the scant light out there. With regard to the spiritual world, humanity has gradually become entangled in a kind of mole existence. For only what man can find in his own inner being, the mathematical connections, he seeks outside in the cosmos; but he does not seek the concrete and spiritually real outside in the cosmos. One could say that the experience of freedom could only come to man through leading this mole-like existence for a while, through looking at the lily and no longer knowing that a picture of heaven is reflected in the lily; through looking at the tulip and no longer knowing that a picture of heaven is reflected in the tulip. In this way he has turned his powers more inward, and has attained the experience of freedom. But today we have reached the point where we must again grasp the spiritual universe in the eye of our soul. That which for centuries appeared only as the mathematical, mechanical structure of space must again appear to the soul's eye as a spiritualized cosmos. One can truly say: For centuries, humanity in the civilized world has led a spiritual life of privation, albeit for the purpose of cultivating human freedom; for everything that is experienced in the progress of humanity has meaning. But one must see through this meaning, one must not stop at one stage of development, but one must go along with the development and must be clear today: Now that humanity has developed the experience of freedom in its earthly mole-like existence, it must turn again to the contemplation of the spiritual, the spiritual world, not only the mathematical world.

But try to imagine vividly what I am dealing with now. It is really as if it had become dark in the soul in relation to the first four centuries after Christ, as if people had previously looked out and seen the light of the Spirit in the cosmos, figuratively speaking. There was just enough time, because this vision of the soul lasted for another four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, even if it became increasingly duller and duller, for the event of Golgotha, the Christ event, to still be viewed spiritually in the first centuries. Only the literature that refers to this spiritual view of the Christ event has also been eradicated. After all, there is nothing of this literature left except what the opponents wrote. Man faces the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that, apart from the simple, seemingly simple accounts of the Gospels, he does not have the great accounts that the spiritualists of the first four centuries still gave. He has only the accounts of the opponents. We have about as much of the greatest portrayals of the mystery of Golgotha as posterity would have of anthroposophy if it only read the writings of Kal/ly. I think one would not get a very adequate picture. You always have to bear in mind how these first four centuries worked to eradicate precisely the most intense insights that were still available when one looked out into the cosmos and knew that the Christ came to earth from a spiritual cosmos. One had to understand the spiritual cosmos in order to be able to understand how the Christ came to earth from the spiritual world and embodied himself in a human being. Then nothing remained, because humanity immersed itself only in the earthly, as the memories of the Mystery of Golgotha. The memories were passed down from generation to generation. And what was passed down as a memory was called a revelation, and it was sought to comprehend it with the intellectualism that was emerging more and more.

What is it then that is our task today in the face of these things? It is our task to learn to look out into the universe again and to be able to see spirit everywhere, not just by immersing ourselves in ourselves and wanting to experience the spiritual there, but by being able to experience the spirit in all the forms of the cosmos outside of us. That is our right, that must happen again. We must again penetrate into the luminous spirit of the whole cosmos, then we will also see the Mystery of Golgotha in a new light.

I have shown you how, in the last third of the nineteenth century, this merely confessional adherence to the Mystery of Golgotha was actually no longer present. I have told you that a spirit like Kar} Julius Schröer said as early as the beginning of the seventies: The religious issues are actually an anachronism. He believed that people are already striving for something completely different, for a different kind of piety, for a different kind of connection with the spiritual world. But it has essentially taken these last fifty years for only weak attempts to be made, such as the one I mentioned in Werfel's “Mirror Man.” But now one sees that individual people are drawn to rediscover their connection with the spiritual world. But do not think that this connection with the spiritual world can be easily found. It cannot be easily found for the reason that today what is called science has acquired terrible authority, and is practised everywhere as official science. But it has emerged from these secret activities. I do not mean this in a derogatory sense. Please do not think that I am criticizing the times by speaking of 'moles'. I am just trying to characterize. I really do not want to say anything derogatory, because basically, since the 15th century, great things have been achieved by these cosmic moles, who are called human beings.

If you do not believe this, then study the geography of moles or earthworms from a spiritual scientific point of view. This is a dream-like geography, but it is magnificent; it is just not suited to man. And if you were to study the geography of plants! The plant does not even dream in its etheric body, but what can be discovered in the etheric body is truly more magnificent than what can be learned at a faculty today. So, I do not mean any disrespect when I say: a mole existence, because I value it highly.

But the world is evolving, and now is the time for us to reconnect with spiritual perception, with spiritual insight. People cannot continue to live without immersing themselves in this spiritual insight. And now one must become quite clear how these things have actually worked in the last fifty years. And here I would again like to present a characteristic personality. Sometimes one can study personalities much more precisely than one can describe more impersonal and abstract, in terms of how things develop in relation to human cultures and their progress.

In these past reflections, I have referred you to Brentano and Nietzsche in order to show you, by way of what human souls have gone through, how evolution actually was. Today I would like to show you something more from the other side, how a person has been understood by his fellow human beings.

In the 1820s, on July 22, 1822, a certain Gregor Mendel was born (we are celebrating his 100th birthday today). I mentioned him the other day when I said that, while we were in Vienna, articles about Gregor Mendel appeared everywhere because his 100th birthday is approaching. This Gregor Mendel was born the son of a farmer in a Silesian village, studied with great difficulty and very good progress, and was ordained a priest in Moravia at the age of twenty-four. He thus became a Catholic priest. Gregor Mendel was an exceptionally good student, as they say, both as a grammar school student and even at the seminary. It was common practice in Austria at the time – it was in the forties or fifties of the last century – for particularly well-behaved, hard-working students to be given scholarships by their convents. They were then sent to university to be trained as secondary school teachers, because almost all positions in the grammar and secondary modern schools - I also mentioned this recently when I described our trip to Vienna - were filled by monks or priests. In Austria, priests taught at the schools that are called secondary schools here, up to and including university.

He was sent to Vienna to study mathematics and the exact natural sciences. After three years of study, you then had to take the teaching examination at that time. Mendel registered for the teaching examination, apparently thinking that because he had always received such excellent grades, it would be just as easy to pass the examination. He failed the teacher training examination, had to repeat it, and failed again, so that he could not repeat it a third time; because if you fail twice in such an important matter, you cannot continue.

Through all kinds of circumstances, as it once was in old Austria, a school principal somewhere in Moravia once said: Well, we don't have anyone else who has come through and gotten a good report card; but we need a teacher, so we'll just hire Gregor Mendel. And so he became a secondary school teacher for fifteen years. There is no denying that he nevertheless became one of those secondary school teachers who were sent to these higher schools as priests.

But then he particularly indulged his love of science, conducting a large number of experiments on the way inheritance occurs, especially in plants. He collected plants, planted plants, those, let's say, that have a reddish flower, and those that have whitish flowers. Then he allowed those that had reddish flowers to fertilize those that had whitish flowers, and then he got plants with nothing but reddish flowers, which were daughter plants. But in the second generation it was different. There was a certain number of reddish flowers, whitish flowers, mottled flowers, and so on. In short, Gregor Mendel said to himself: I must seek the atoms, the actual atomistic in the plant world, in the organic world in general. Those who are familiar with the development of intellectual life know how much thought was given to inheritance in those days. There are an enormous number of inheritance theories. But Gregor Mendel did not pay much attention to these inheritance theories. Instead, he planted his pea plants and observed how inheritance takes place when he allows a white pea to be fertilized by a reddish one. He to see if he got a red, white or mottled pea, and in this way he determined over generations how, for example, the color is formed, how inheritance is formed at all under different conditions, proportions and the like in peas.

Yesterday I described the time – it was in the 1960s – when all of this came about, which I have described, which worked in Herman Grimm's “Unüberwindlichen Mächten”, in Paul Heyses “Kinder der Welt”, in Du Bois-Reymonds “Grenzen des Naturerkennens” and so on from the most diverse sides. In Mendel's case, it worked in such a way that he established the conditions of inheritance.

The examiners at the two teaching exams were at least concerned enough about Gregor Mendel to fail him twice, and to give him the certificate: Completely unsuitable to teach any science to high school or secondary school students! — The other people, the later ones, were no longer concerned about Gregor Mendel at all. The books he wrote about the laws of inheritance are pretty much gathering dust in the libraries. Nobody cared about them anymore.

But for about twenty or twenty-five years, you can find that people cared more and more about Gregor Mendel. They dug up his laws of inheritance. Because now we are facing a very special phase of science. In the epoch in which Herman Grimm wanted to show how human intellect cannot overcome class prejudices because it is not powerful, in the epoch in which Du Bois-Reymond pronounced his “Ignorabimus”, in which Paul Heyse wrote his “Children of the World”, thus in the epoch in which reason, intellect, has become increasingly powerless and sapless, but where there was nevertheless a tendency towards a new piety among non-denominational people, which has now lasted for fifty years. At the same time, efforts were being made everywhere to develop atomism to de-soul science, and Gregor Mendel also endeavored to discover botanical and zoological atomism. He tried to compose each plant according to its inheritance from red and white flowers, from large and small, from thick and thin flowers, to see how thick and thin, red and white flowers, once they are there, remain as unchanging as atoms remain unchanging. Back then, people said, for example: in carbonic acid we have coal and in hydrocarbon we have coal. Hydrocarbon is something completely different from carbonic acid, but in both there is coal. The atoms that are there as coal are the same in carbonic acid and in hydrocarbon.

Mendel said: I have a red pea flower, and I have a white pea flower. Now the children that are born may be red. But now the children in turn have children, some of whom are red, some of whom are white, and some are mottled, speckled with red and white. And now it continues again: they have children, and among these there are again red, white and mottled ones, and so on. - Now we have the atomistic approach in relation to plants. If we look only at the color, red and white, then where the peas are red, only the white is hidden; it is also inside, only hidden. But with the further children, there it comes out again, just as the carbon is in the carbonic acid and in the hydrocarbon, in substances that are quite different from each other. That is the essential thing in the atoms, the carbon is here and is there; that is the same everywhere, the solid, the eternal atoms. The eternal atoms in plants, which are passed on by inheritance, are the colors, but also, for example, whether the plant is thick or thin, large or small; but the white is preserved, it is only sometimes hidden. Just as oxygen is present in water, so here the white is hidden in the red children and comes to light again when it has the opportunity.

Gregor Mendel was truly a great man, because he sought out what was then considered appropriate for the time, atomism for the inanimate world, in the right place, for the plant world, in line with the thinking of his time. He also made very interesting observations about the animal world, although he failed his teaching exams twice. He did all that, but at the time, no one paid any attention.

Then came the time when the discovery of radium and so on blew apart the atomism in the inanimate world. Recently, a rectorate speech was given in Berlin that seems to have dealt with this very nicely: you can't stick to the old atomism anymore. But people can't catch their breath quickly. Now they are losing their breath when they no longer have atomism. It no longer works in physics, and it doesn't really work in chemistry either. So, after Gregor Mendel had been gathering dust for a long time, his laws of inheritance were excavated, and today you can find everywhere that people are talking about Mendelism, that Mendelism is mentioned as something of the very first rank in the theory of inheritance, one hundred years after his birthday. The centenary of Gregor Mendel is now being celebrated in learned academies everywhere.

It is an interesting life: the priest, who remained unnoticed during his lifetime and who failed his teaching exams twice, has nevertheless achieved something that a large number of academies around the world are celebrating as a very first intellectual accomplishment. In the case of Brentano, I have shown you the man from within, how he viewed the world, how he felt about the Vatican Council and the dogma of infallibility. In the case of Nietzsche, I have tried to show you something similar. In the case of Gregor Mendel, I wanted to show you more how others viewed him. Because it is, after all, interesting that the learned body twice failed him in his teaching exams, that he then remained completely unnoticed and now rules the world in terms of the so-called laws of inheritance. What is that? Basically, it is nothing more than the emergence of the last phase of intellectualism and, indeed, something else, which I would like to talk about tomorrow. But the emergence of intellectualism, the last gasps of intellectualism, which is so closely linked to atomism, can be seen in the relationship between the world and Gregor Mendel and also the world and Mendel today.

I truly have no desire to take anything away from Gregor Mendel's fame. On the contrary, I have taken this opportunity today to introduce you to a truly great man, so that you will think of this great man here too. He is a great man. But it is precisely by studying the inner and outer destinies of great men that we can study the further development of humanity. It is not the small men, but the great ones, with whom one must study this, and Gregor Mendel is a great man, and you can be assured that I am more pleased that he is being celebrated today in all kinds of scientific academies than that I am pleased that he failed twice. You can believe that. But the fate of Gregor Mendel is extremely interesting. And I would like to say: this current clinging to atomism in the organic world is extremely characteristic of our time and actually belongs to all the phenomena that I wanted to describe to you in these days, which I examined yesterday from a different point of view and which I presented to you today from the point of view of Mendelism, for the centenary of Johann Gregor Mendel.

Introduction. This is based on the fact that we consider the view of nature itself to be incomplete.

In science, no special attention is paid to the actual genius of nature. At most, it is admitted that the genius's gaze succeeds in spotting the combination of natural forces; but it is not considered decisive for the shaping of the world view that we seek in science. The influence of genius on science is therefore said to be only a historical one, not a factual one.

What distinguishes the epoch of education in which we live from others can be traced back to Goethe. He has given it its character. In him, German poetry of our century sees an ideal to strive for; with the eye gained from his writings, we look at antiquity; with the same eye, Germans have succeeded in unraveling Shakespeare's genius. All the radii of German intellectual life emanate from him. However, this magnificent image of the great genius is marred by a dark spot that stands in unsatisfactory disharmony with the brightness spreading over it. Goethe's unreserved admiration in all fields of the intellect is contrasted with the dubious position in which his scientific achievements are placed.

Today, we have come back from the absolute rejection of these achievements, which occurred during Goethe's lifetime and long after his death, and we still have a completely negative attitude towards the physical part of the color theory, but we still grant them some importance. But if we take a closer look at the verdict of modern science, we cannot deny that the recognition of Goethe's scientific achievements is based on completely different premises than his other achievements and is by no means on a par with them.

Those who go furthest in their appreciation of Goethe in a scientific sense admit that Goethe's view of nature is based on ideas that also underlie the modern science of organisms – the Darwin-Haeckelian theory of evolution. But no one can dispute that this modern science does not originate from Goethe's view at all. His influence on it is not noticeable. And if it has been claimed in recent times that modern developmental theory would have reached its present state even without Goethe, this cannot be denied. Thus, one cannot ascribe to his efforts the power that was necessary to elevate the ideas on which they were based to the level of scientific conviction.

This fact is attributed to the fact that Goethe, while conceiving the connections within the organic series of beings entirely in line with the theory of evolution, did not penetrate to the principles that make this kind of connection comprehensible to us. Goethe is said to have anticipated Darwin's world view without being able to provide an explanation of it at the same time. Without this explanation, the theory of evolution appears as an arbitrary hypothesis.

This is precisely where the difference in the appreciation of Goethe's scientific achievements and his other writings lies. Through the latter, he created a new epoch. But the former lack precisely that which would make them the starting point of a new epoch. For we must not deceive ourselves: a scientific world view without a principled foundation is without any kind of justification and is no more than a series of unfounded ideas. Such a view lacks the one characteristic that would make it convincing: inner perfection, self-contained.

One would think that with such a fundamental difference in the influence of Goethe's two directions on posterity (that of his artistic and that of his scientific achievements), the origin of the same should also be traced back to two very different dispositions of Goethe's mind.

The question arises as to why Goethe was able to achieve the highest level of perfection in one direction, while in the other he was forced to stop where he should have provided the supports for his scientific edifice. Why the highest level of perfection in one area, while in the other it is precisely that which is lacking, which is necessary for perfection? Otherwise, it is much more the task of the genius to state the principles, and it is then up to the lesser minds to draw the further conclusions.

It seems to us that these principles are by no means lacking in Goethe, that one has simply not yet found the way to arrive at them.

The main characteristic of all of Goethe's views can be traced back to the fact that he seeks everything that is supposed to determine our judgment about an object in the external world in the realm of the latter itself. He does not allow anything extraneous or borrowed from the outside into such a judgment.

We can follow this in his ethical, aesthetic and also in his scientific assessments of events or objects. In Truth and Poetry, he occasionally says, in an explanation of his inclination towards incognito: “It is not a matter of objects in so far as they are worthy of praise or blame, but in so far as they can occur.” A judgment about whether something is praiseworthy or blameworthy presupposes an ethical model according to which one values an object. But Goethe rejects such a model because it is not taken from the events themselves, but rather is brought in from the outside. His judgment seeks only that which lies within the events themselves and makes it possible for us to explain why they have come about as they have. In his works one can find innumerable proofs of this direction of his mind. It may be said that Goethe does not judge about the objects of the external world, but he regards them in such a way that they express the explanation that our scientific need demands. He judges in the objects.

Knowledge and Belief

Goethe's views on the organic can be traced back to this principle. He contradicts the same, both the view of the final causes, which at the time of Goethe still represented almost the whole world, as well as the assumption [regarding] that the living beings could be traced back to mechanical causes. The former view comes down to the fact that an organic being has such an organization that we cannot explain it according to mere physical laws; the components of the being are in a connection and interaction that they would never enter into if they merely obeyed the mechanical-physical forces that govern them. Since these forces are the only ones that are accessible to our knowledge, the structure of organisms can only be explained if we assume that an external principle builds them according to a premeditated plan, so that this structure becomes a purposeful one. In this doctrine, theology found a mainstay of religion, a proof of the existence of God, and Kant gave it philosophical sanction. It contradicted Goethe's fundamental principle because it resorted to something outside the organism to explain it. It had to demand that all the elements that help us to understand the organism be found within it. If living beings have some purposeful structure, then something must be found within them from which this structure follows. Goethe's response to Link, who seeks to explain organic natural phenomena in terms of teleological principles, is: “The author, a knowledgeable botanist, explains physiological phenomena in terms of teleological views that are not, and cannot be, ours.” On January 6, 1798, he wrote to Schiller: “You know how much I am attached to the purposiveness of organic nature inwardly.” But the mechanistic view of living beings was just as incompatible with his fundamental principles as the teleologic one. The reason is quite the same. This view, too, does not explain the organism in terms of laws that are peculiar to it, as it were, innate in it, but rather makes it appear to be dominated by forces that are effective in inorganic nature. He did not want to explain the organic from the inorganic, but from itself. Even in his youth, he rejected the idea that the whole universe could be traced back to mechanical laws, as he describes in Truth and Fiction in relation to the système de la nature. “The système de la nature was announced, and so we really hoped to learn something about nature, our idol.” He sees himself as disappointed. “A matter should be from eternity, and moved from eternity, and should now with this movement right and left and on all sides without further ado produce the infinite phenomena of existence. We would have been satisfied with all this if the author had really built the world before our eyes out of his moving matter. But he may know as little about nature as we do: for by putting up some general concepts, he immediately leaves them to transform that which appears higher than nature, or as higher nature in nature, into material, heavy, indeed moving, but still directionless and formless nature, and thereby believes he has gained a great deal.” The same is expressed in the following saying of Goethe: “The nearest comprehensible causes are comprehensible and for that very reason most comprehensible; which is why we like to think of ourselves as mechanical, which is of a higher kind.” - This is proof that Goethe found teleology and the mechanical world view to be equally insufficient to explain the organic.

He demanded that a true science of the organic should create the concept of the organic and the laws of life in the mind, just as Galileo once created the laws of mechanical nature. But that is the task of genius. In his theory of colors, Goethe emphasizes the importance of natural science to the genius, for whom “one case is worth a thousand,” and he admires Galileo for developing the theory of pendulums and the fall of bodies from swinging church lamps.

Every advance in science depends on our expanding our system of concepts, for in doing so we shed light in a realm of phenomena that is dark to us. Without Galileo's laws, we can observe the swinging motion of bodies, the motion of falling and throwing, for as long as we like, but we will not understand them. Merely describing the phenomena is not enough. It is essential that our mind is able to create a concept that makes an appearance understandable to us. But this requires creative power. It is the peculiarity of genius that from within it the conceptual does not emerge as a gray, content-free generalization - gray theory - but as one that is saturated and full of content, creating ideas that make the outside world comprehensible to our minds.

In our time, however, people fail to recognize the necessity of this creative power of genius for science. This is because they consider the latter to be nothing more than a reflection, a photograph of reality, to which faithfulness is the main requirement. The task of compiling such a “lifelike” image falls primarily to what is called “common sense.” In the face of such a view, the substantial ideas of genius naturally appear as a falsification of experience, as “conceptual poetry”.

For this view, genius has a very small role at all. At most, it can hasten the discovery of some natural law through a divinatory insight, it can find sooner what the history of science without it would have arrived at sooner or later, but that genius should also have any significance for the formulation of the content of a natural law is, according to this view, out of the question. In the face of this view, one is driven to ask: why have science at all if it is supposed to offer nothing more than a reflection of experience? Why not be satisfied with mere contemplation? The history of science, as well as science itself today, refutes this view. All progress in science is based on the creative power of the human mind. The laws of nature are not the object of direct experience; they are the creations of the human mind. Goethe belongs to the ranks of those who have truly conquered a field for science by creating new ideas. What he calls the type in the field of organic nature is to the latter what Galileo's mechanical principles are.

Only the consistent development of the fundamental view of the necessity of explaining every object of nature from its own self, as set forth above, led Goethe to this idea of the type. But his mission as a poet is also based on the same fundamental direction of his spirit. As a poet, he had the task of transforming immediate reality into poetry. This immediate reality as such no longer satisfies a certain higher need of man.

There is something about the way phenomena unfold that can no longer satisfy us. Chance plays a role and brings about constellations in reality that do not satisfy our reason. Goethe felt this more than anyone else. He often speaks of “wicked” chance, by which he means that some event takes an outcome that it would not take if only the necessity of reason were to prevail in the world. His mission in both poetry and science is to arrive at a satisfactory view of things that goes beyond what is directly experienced. “Real life often loses its luster to such an extent” (Poetry and Truth II, 9th book and Schröer's edition of the dramas $117), ”that it [sometimes] has to be refreshed with the varnish of fiction.” But in doing so, he never goes beyond what is given to man in poetry either, so that Merck could say of him that he seeks to give the real a poetic form, while others seek to realize the so-called poetic, the imaginative, which gives nothing but nonsense. We see that Goethe's whole mission actually consists in seeking the necessary, that which satisfies our minds, within reality itself. But his work in the field of inorganic nature is also based on the same disposition of his mind.

In the organism, we have a center that works from within the phenomena, and this is what we have to start with in order to arrive at a satisfactory explanation of them. In inorganic nature, however, there is no such central element; all effects can be traced back to external influences, spatial and temporal conditions, etc. It seems almost impossible to provide anything other than a mere photograph if one does not want to go beyond reality. And yet Goethe demands with all his energy that we also seek the principles for explaining phenomena within the given itself. “The highest would be to comprehend that all fact is already theory.” To get to know Goethe from this side, it is necessary, above all, to consider what Goethe the experiment is. A phenomenon of inorganic nature results from the interaction of the qualities that fill space and time, from the interaction of substances and forces.

The conditions for the progression of a phenomenon lie in the nature of the interacting objects and in the constellation in which they find themselves as a result of their location in space and time. This latter factor is now something that is added to the nature of the objects. Phenomena thus always contain a factor that prevents us from explaining them as a necessary consequence of the existing objects. According to Goethe, the experiment is to eliminate this factor of direct experience. The experiment is to bring the objects of the sensory world into such a mutual dependence that we are able to recognize a certain event as the necessary consequence of the existing objects. Everything that modifies the original mutual behavior of the objects is to be eliminated by the experiment. Goethe calls a phenomenon that comes about in this way a primal phenomenon. In mathematics, the primal phenomenon of physics corresponds to the axiom. The latter has no other function than to show us the relationships between simple spatial quantities in such a way that their connection is immediately comprehensible to us without further deduction. The entire mathematical system is nothing more than a complication of the axioms. Goethe wants to shape physics in an analogous way. It should be a system that arises through a complication of the archetypal phenomena and thus has an inner necessity in the way it is constructed. We find every phenomenon of experience in the system of science, not only in the random constellation in which it appears to us in the external world, but in a systematic whole from which it can be fully understood in its course. For Goethe, theory is nothing more than higher experience, but precisely higher experience, in which all details are connected as required by reason. “There is a delicate empiricism that makes itself intimately identical with the object and thereby becomes the actual theory” (Spr. in Prosa, N. 906).

Do we now ask whether Goethe's view of nature really lacks fundamental principles and whether it therefore proves to be incomplete, unfinished, in need of justification? The preceding pages show most decidedly that this is not the case. The foundations of Goethe's scientific views are the most definite that can be imagined, and they are identical with those that determine the whole direction of his work. His view is self-sustaining and did not have to await its justification from a later time. What it lacked was to apply the given points of view to all areas of the world of phenomena.

The reason why the self-justifying guarantee of Goethe's world view was denied is that so far no one has considered his scientific endeavors in the context of his entire being. But most of his assertions are not at all comprehensible without such a perspective, and it is easy to then attribute a false sense to them. If we now look from the Goethean view of nature to the modern one, of which he was a prophet, then we must indeed admit that his starting points were essentially different. The modern view of nature arose from the need to explain the entire universe in terms of mechanical causality. It was believed that the explanation of nature could only be made consistent if the laws that govern the inorganic could also be extended to the organic. We see that this view is based on a premise that Goethe rejected.

From this alone it is clear that the similarity of one of Goethe's assertions with one of the mechanical explanation of nature can only be an external one, and that it is absolutely necessary to go back to the most original axioms of Goethe if one wants to recognize the true meaning of his assertions. From this it also becomes clear how the misunderstanding we referred to above regarding the recognition of Goethe as a scientific thinker developed. There is a certain, and it must be admitted extensive, agreement between Goethe's view of nature and that of modern natural science; however, Goethe starts from completely different premises than the latter. But because these latter premises were not regarded as really scientific, because they were denied the power to found a view of nature, it was concluded that Goethe lacked the principles for his view of nature altogether, whereas in fact he lacked only those that dominate the mechanical explanation of the universe.

Goethe's view of nature is thus a self-contained whole, with its own foundations, and can only be understood in itself. By being lumped together with other theories, it is placed in an inadequate position.

But if one is to pass judgment on its influence on the shaping of science, then it must indeed be described as very slight, and it remains for the future to decide whether, through the power inherent in it, it will succeed to satisfy the scientific needs of humanity more than other explanations of nature, and whether it will thus one day be granted a more fruitful influence on the development of human thought than has been the case so far.

Today, we want to take a look at the world of medieval legends from the point of view of the theosophical worldview. Two important legends are characteristic of the intellectual development of Europe in the Middle Ages, the two legends that are grouped around the Holy Grail.

In earlier times, the knowledgeable expressed themselves to the people about the deepest truths through legends and myths. If the people who lived where Northern and Central Europe is today had been taught such concepts as we now get in the theosophical world view, the people of yore would not have understood them. The sages spoke to each people and age as that people and age could understand. They always based their teachings on the law of reincarnation.

The sages who told the secrets of the world to the peoples of Northern and Central Europe were the Druids. “Druid” means “oak”. When it is said that the Germans celebrated their religious services “under oaks”, it does not only mean that they really celebrated their services under natural oaks, but it also means that they were under the guidance of the Druids. And when it is said that Boniface “fell the oak,” it means that the old Druidic service was overcome by Christianity. A true fact was given in the form of the saga. The Druid introduced the true facts into the sagas. The Druid priest was already speaking to all the souls that are today absorbing our worldview. He spoke to them in a way that was appropriate for that time. All of us who have adopted the theosophical worldview have heard the same things before in myths and fairy tales, otherwise we would not be able to understand them today. This is the secret of the great masters: they live fully in the awareness that they are among people who are repeatedly embodied.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the basic truths of Germanic-Central European culture lived in a great saga. If we get to know this saga, we understand what was present in the Middle Ages. The Druid priests nourished the awareness that once upon a time there was a high culture far to the west. This culture was in a land called Nifelheim or Nibelungenheim. This Nifelheim was the old Atlantis. It used to be a foggy place because of its peculiar atmospheric conditions, which were very different from ours.

The Germanic tribal saga thus truly reflects the truth. It points to an ancient land that once existed between Europe and America, where the Atlantic Ocean is now. This ancient land of Atlantis perished, along with the treasures of power and wisdom. These treasures were referred to as gold, and their demise is told in the saga as the sinking of the gold of the Nibelungen hoard. The treasure of the Nibelungs is to be raised in a new way, more in the East, in Europe. First Wotan, then Siegfried are the initiates who have the task of bringing the old treasure back to today's Europe, of making the Nibelung hoard fruitful again for newer culture in a certain way. The fact that the saga presents us with a secret initiate, Wotan, helps us to gain a deep insight into another ancient culture. The letters W and B correspond to each other. Wotan, Wodan is the same as Bodha Buddha. Wotan is actually the Germanic form of the word Buddha. We come across a common origin of the European Wotan religion and the Asian Buddha religion. The Buddha religion did not spread so much in India, but among those peoples of Asia who still had something of the Atlantean culture in them. The Wotan peoples also brought their views from the Atlantean culture. Their further development was expressed in the legends that the Druid priests had taught them. The saving of the hoard of the Nibelungs - the Atlantean culture - by Wotan and Siegfried is particularly beautifully expressed in these sagas.

A tragically prophetic thread runs through these sagas, which can be found from Russia via Germany to France and England, and can be found everywhere where druid priests taught. They taught prophetically: a twilight of the gods will come. We are the remnants of Atlantean culture. We must die to make way for something better. Our initiates are prophets of what is to come. A certain tragedy is expressed in all those who are initiated in the manner of Siegfried. The Song of the Nibelungs contains an ancient form of initiation: the distress of the Nibelungs, the lament of the Nibelungs. The very intimate disciples were taught that another would come who would bring the spiritual life. The mood of the Götterdämmerung was spread everywhere. All lived in the feeling and the intimate disciples in the certainty: One will come who will be very different from our initiates. - This is expressed in the saga through Siegfried.

In Scandinavia and Russia, the Drotten mysteries were analogous to the Druid mysteries. “Drotte” is another form of Druid. Throughout the ancient mysteries, Sig is the name of the original, great initiate. All names composed with “Sig” lead back to Sig, for example Sigurd, Sigmund, Sieglinde and so on. Siegfried was the initiate who had found peace in initiation. “Peace” means that which leads the human being beyond all doubt; it is the satisfaction of desire, the desire for knowledge, for power. Siegfried is depicted in all pictures as invulnerable. Achilles, the Greek initiate, remained vulnerable at one point, at the heel. Siegfried, after overcoming the dragon, became invulnerable except for one point, the point between the shoulder blades. This is where the cross is to be carried. This symbol played a profound role in the ancient mysteries. There it was said: You are all vulnerable at the point where one will have the cross. The one who will cover this place with the cross, the cross-bearer, will be the great initiate who is no longer vulnerable. This is what gives the Nordic saga its great appeal. This wisdom was an apocalyptic wisdom.

All occultists know that this wisdom emanates from a central oracle of twelve initiates, the so-called “White Lodge”. From there, the wisdom is carried out into the world. Nowhere is this different from the fact that the individual knows himself to be connected to the others. Everywhere there were twelve members of the lodge. Such are also the twelve apostles. The consciousness of those who intuitively perceive and the wisdom of those who know leads back to the Round Table of King Arthur. This is nothing other than the Great White Lodge, which in the Siegfried initiation made clear to the nations what it had to say to the world. Great initiates were members of the Round Table, which existed in Wales until the time of Queen Elizabeth of England. Then it was abolished for political reasons.

Two very specific political currents were traced back to these primeval times by medieval popular consciousness. In the Frankish people, who were so fortunate as to conquer the West of Europe, there was a dynasty that actually traced its origins back to the times of Atlantis. They were called the “Wibelungen” or “Nibelungen” — from which the word “Ghibellines” later emerged. There was an old consciousness of a ruling dynasty rising among the Franks, rooted in the old Nibelungen land, combining secular and priestly power. That is why Charlemagne tried to have the royal crown placed on him in Rome, to add a spiritual element to the secular one.

Originally, all the power that was assumed was derived from what had come over from Atlantis. The fact that people thought and sensed that a twilight of the gods was coming also connected a certain tragic trait to the ruling dynasty. It was said: Those who want to know can well become initiates, but they must be replaced by something else. This sentiment was first expressed in the well-known Barbarossa saga; then something was added that was not in the usual saga. Barbarossa was correctly thought of as a continuation of the old Franconian rulers. The Hohenstaufen were the Ghibellines, Waiblingen, Wibelungen, Nibelungen, in contrast to the Guelphs, the Guelfs. The more intimate version adds to the well-known Barbarossa saga that Barbarossa brought the Holy Grail from Asia to Europe. He himself perished as a physical personality and now waits for his time to come. This expresses the whole mood of the Middle Ages towards ancient paganism and the new Christianity.

People began to look at their own national soul and said: We brought our culture over from ancient Atlantis. But it is destined to perish; Christianity must take its place. But it will rise again, purified, cleansed, elevated by Christianity. — A beginning was made to create a transition from the end of the descent to the beginning of the ascent. A beginning was made to imagine the course of the lower German spiritual culture in such a way that the clairvoyant, Atlantean consciousness was replaced by something that had yet to come. Natural bravery, piety, virtue had to be reclaimed in a different, new way. There were three conceptions, conceptions of three definite powers: Wotan is the intuitive power as represented by the initiate; Wili is the will itself; We is the mind, with a tragic trait where it becomes apocalyptic. Now another time was to come. Now, through the Christian teaching, the point of passage was to be gained, and one was to ascend again to what was before the twilight of the gods.

That Barbarossa sits in the mountain means that he is an initiate. The “mountain” is the place of initiation. Christ went with his disciples “on the mountain” - into the mystery. The ravens signify an initiation of Barbarossa. In the Persian initiation ritual, there are seven stages of initiation. The “ravens” signify the first stage of personal initiation. They denote the still existing connection of the initiate with the environment. Think of the ravens of Elijah. We also find ravens with Wotan. They mediate his communication with the environment. Thus, Barbarossa, the initiate, also had the ravens around him, which still kept him connected to the world.

Barbarossa had brought the Holy Grail from the Orient. This Holy Grail had been kept on the Mons salvationis, the mountain of salvation. It is now surrounded by the successors of King Arthur's Round Table, the twelve knights who added the Christian initiation to the old pagan initiation. The Grail is the symbol of the Christian initiation. Those who wanted to be initiated into the secrets of the Holy Grail became Christian initiates. One becomes a Christian initiate by first going through all doubts and then getting a firm hold in the connection with Christ Himself. One thing is necessary for this: direct trust in the figure of Christ. The first disciples placed particular emphasis on the fact that Christ was there. They say: We want to bear witness that we were with Him. We have laid our hands in His wounds. What we have seen and heard ourselves, that we proclaim. Paul is an apostle because he has truly seen the Risen One in spirit. It depends on the direct experience, which one acquires not through wisdom and logic, but directly.

It is clear to us what Parzival is meant to achieve on his wanderings. Parzival's mother is called Herzeleide. If you read Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, who was a thoroughly initiated man, deeply, between the lines and words, you will find that the name of Parzival's mother, Herzeleide, is a reflection of the tragic trait that lay in the German soul. Those who do not follow the Parzival path carry sorrow in their hearts; they have to gain peace for themselves. Wolfram von Eschenbach knew how to clothe the saga in a beautiful form. With the one fact, he meant a profound symbol - the female personality always signifies consciousness: Herzeleide is the state of consciousness from which Parzival starts. At first he has a tragic consciousness. He struggles through everything that worldly knighthood can offer, with a naive, simple consciousness, in order to come to the secret of the Holy Grail.

We must keep this together with the Barbarossa saga. Barbarossa went to Asia to seek the secrets of the Holy Grail, the initiation of Christianity. But he perished on the way to the Holy Grail. He has to wait “in the mountains” until Christianity can find the connection to the earlier initiation. Barbarossa brought Christianity, but has not yet achieved the deeper initiation of Christianity.

Parzival is the new Christian initiate, the great symbol that replaces the Siegfried initiation. Siegfried has overcome the lower nature, the lindworm, the snake. Parzival becomes the initiate of the Holy Grail, who gets to know the one who is invulnerable where Siegfried was still vulnerable. In Parzival, the original idea of Christianity is expressed. It no longer knows the idea of reincarnation. One regards the one life between birth and death as the only one. The valuable thing is the one incarnation. One no longer looks up to Manas, Budhi, Atma. The Parzival initiation was only to come to the awareness of the connection with Christ, to consider the one incarnation in which man comes to knowledge through compassion and not through knowledge to compassion, as it happens through theosophy. Theosophy teaches us to recognize how we are one with all people. Through it, one knows that one is responsible for what our brother does. Theosophy leads through knowledge to compassion. But humanity had to go through a period of development for a while, where it was to come to knowledge through compassion. It had to descend into the depths of compassion, because one can also come to knowledge there. It had to be so, in order that people might get to know this earthly world in all its importance. Christianity was to educate humanity, so that the earthly might also be grasped in its significance. Therefore, man first had to be directed, steered downwards, in the moral sense, towards physical life. Only then could he arrive at the great achievements that begin with city culture.

The progress of the Middle Ages is described in the saga in the transition from the Parzival saga to the Lohengrin saga. This saga emerges at a time when cities are being founded all over Europe, primarily serving the emerging bourgeoisie, which is no longer based on the spiritual life but on the material life. All material achievements are prepared in the cities, for example, the art of printing. Without the culture of the cities, modern science would not have been able to develop in this way. The universities are also a consequence of this culture. A Copernicus, a Kepler, a Newton and so on would not have been possible without it. Dante's “Divine Comedy” and the painters of the Renaissance can also be traced back to the culture of the cities.

The saga of the connection between Parzival, the father, and Lohengrin, the son, points to the importance of urban culture. Elsa of Brabant represents the cities, the urban consciousness. In all mysticism, that which works against the physical world is presented as something feminine. Goethe speaks of the “eternal feminine”; in Egypt, Isis was worshipped in this sense.

Let us consider the stages of the chela's initiation. The chela must first overcome three stages. The first step is that of the homeless man, where man is torn out of the physical world, where he becomes objective towards the physical world. He must unlearn to be partial, he must learn to love everything equally; he does not love less, but he transfers his love to everything that deserves love, not just to his homeland and so on. The second step is where the chela builds huts. He finds a new home. The disciples on the mountain have reached this stage. They are beyond space and time, they see Elijah and Moses. That is why they say: “Let us build huts.” The third stage is that of the swan. A swan is the chela who has come so far that all things speak to him, even those who have their consciousness on higher planes. On the physical plane, only man has the ego. The animal has consciousness on the astral plane, the plant on the mental plane (rupa plane), the mineral on the higher mental plane (arupa plane). One must rise to higher worlds to find the I, the names of other beings; there things speak their own names to the chela. The world then becomes resounding and sounding for him everywhere. In view of this fact, Goethe says:

The sun resounds in the ancient manner In the spheres of the brothers' song, And its prescribed journey it completes With a thunderclap.

He repeats this reference from the prologue in heaven where he leads Faust over into the higher worlds:

The new day is already born for the ears of the spirit. Rock gates creak and rattle, Phoebus' wheels roll and clatter, What a roar brings the light! It trumpets, it trompets, the eye blinks and the ear is amazed, Unheard-of things are heard.

It is not a matter of indifference that the Prologue in Heaven in the first part of “Faust” and the second part begin in this way. Goethe was pointing to something very specific: it is the third degree of chelaship, where the world around us becomes resounding and all things tell us their name. Jesus had reached such a degree when he was to receive Christ. This degree was designated in the White Lodge as the swan. Swans were those who were no longer allowed to speak their name, but to whom the whole world revealed its names.

Lohengrin, the son of Parzival, is the initiate who founded city culture, who was sent by the great Grail lodge to fertilize the consciousness of medieval humanity. Elsa of Brabant characterizes the striving human consciousness, which is fertilized by the environment, the masculine. The urban consciousness represented by Elsa is to be fertilized by Lohengrin, by the Holy Grail. The connection between Lohengrin and Elsa of Brabant is the connection between material culture and the spiritual task of the fifth sub-race. The swan is the man initiated in the third degree, who brings in the Master from the Great Lodge. Man must let the Master work upon him without asking about His nature. Elsa of Brabant must accept what He gives her as her due. The moment she asks out of curiosity, the initiate disappears. All this is expressed in the Lohengrin saga.

The Templars had brought the initiation wisdom of the Holy Grail from the Orient to the Mountain of Salvation, mons salvationis, the place of initiation of Christianity. An initiation ceremony pointed directly to the future of the whole human race. It was said: a time will come when Christianity will experience a new phase. The progress of human spiritual culture has always been consciously referred to as the progress of the sun. Before 800 BC, the sun passed through the constellation of Taurus for about 2200 years. Over in Asia, the bull was worshipped as the divine. Even before that, the twins were worshipped in Persia for the same reason: good and evil, duality. Around 800 BC, the Sun entered the sign of Aries or the Lamb. This is indicated by the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Christ calls Himself the Lamb of God because He appeared under this sign. [Today the Sun is in the sign of Pisces.] The Knights Templar point to the next constellation; the Sun will then enter the constellation of Aquarius. There Christianity will truly arise for the first time, paganism united with Christianity. This culture will resurrect a new John. This moment will occur when the sun is in the sign of Aquarius. John means 'water bearer'; he will be the herald of a new era of Christianity. It is said that the Knights Templar pointed to John the Baptist, not to Christ. But the John of whom they speak is the Aquarius.

The last phase of Christianity, which originated with the initiate Lohengrin, has brought about the period of usefulness, which has now reached its peak. The theosophical movement wants to be the successor of such movements, as the Parzival movement was and as the one that originated with the initiate Lohengrin. Modern materialism also owes its origin to great initiates, but it must be replaced by a new phase, by a new cycle. This is what Theosophy wants to bring about. But it is always the initiates who speak when a new cultural impact is to be given.

And now we must go on to say something about the cases you have with you at Lauenstein.¹

I would like to speak first of that eldest boy of yours, who is sixteen years old, and in whom we can clearly recognise an inferiority occasioned by the failure of the I and astral body to penetrate the physical organisation. He was given into your care comparatively late; you did not, I think, have him with you until he was in his sixteenth year? So you have here a case with antecedents that have already undergone marked development. If the boy could have been taken in hand earlier on and given the advantage of Waldorf School education, then, in the time between the change of teeth and puberty, he would have experienced the principle of authority in the right way. Care would also have been taken, first of all, to watch all the time and see what things really interested him, and then, starting from these, to extend his field of interest. Had this been possible, and if in addition the boy could at the same time have been given lead in gently administered doses, then notwithstanding his inherent difficulties the boy's soul would be today on quite a different level. For it is plain, the boy has interests. He has moreover definite ability. You will however have seen from the quite simple test that we put to him, where the lad's trouble lies.

You will remember, I set him a comparatively simple sum in arithmetic—a problem in subtraction, put in the form that accords with the methods of Waldorf School education. For we always ask, you know: What have I to take from a given number in order to leave another given number as remainder: Thus, we do not, as is usually done in teaching arithmetic, give the minuend and subtrahend, but instead the minuend and the remainder, leaving the subtrahend to be found. This way of stating the problem puts the condition of mind and soul to severer test; on the other hand, the child is helped far more in his development when he has to tackle the problem in this form, than when it is put to him the other way round. As you saw, the boy was able to do the sum, but not able to do it at once. As soon as he had solved the problem, he came up to me with great delight; but it must have been an hour and a half later. He took thus an hour and a half to do the sum, and was happy and delighted when he had found the answer. There was therefore no doubt about it, the boy had the necessary ability, he was able to do the sum. All the members of his organism were in readiness to be directed to the task; there was, so to speak, no “fault in the contact”. The trouble with him is only that he needs longer time. And the reason for this is, that from the very outset his ether body and his physical body offer resistance; they fail to unfold the activity that is proper to them, in spite of the fact that the possibilities for the activity are there all the time.

Follow carefully how the boy's interests work. You will find they remain in the head organisation; they cannot make their way down into the rest of the body. This fact was clearly demonstrated in a little incident that took place during my visit. You saw how the boy came up to us with his little Kodak and wanted to take our photograph. He managed it quite well, carrying the whole thing through with intense interest. Afterwards I tried to suggest to him that he should make another exposure. This would have necessitated his going to fetch a new film; his interest would have had to reach beyond what lay immediately to hand. He resisted the idea, and nothing would persuade him to listen to it. When an interest seizes hold of him in the very movement, here and now—he is ready for it—he is “all there”: but if the situation requires that he should bring the interest down into his metabolism-and-limbs system, then at once his ether and physical bodies set up a powerful resistance. What should one do in such a case?

With a boy already in his teens, it is of course much more difficult than it would have been earlier; we should however set ourselves even now to intervene with our pedagogical therapy. Taking as our starting point things that the boy follows with a certain interest, we should go on from these, widening the circle of his interest in all directions. A great deal can be achieved by recognising and appealing to an entirely healthy instinct that the boy undoubtedly possesses—despite his difficulties. For you must realise that even in persons who are abnormal, healthy instincts are yet always present. And with this boy, you will find that as soon as you draw his attention to objects and processes that call for skilful handling, he will at once begin to experience a widening of his circle of interests.

The boy has, you see, difficulty in following the road that leads from the head organisation to the metabolism-and limbs organisation, and thence, as I have explained to you, out again beyond. This latter part of the journey he accomplishes only with great difficulty, since there is in him no capacity to perceive what is going on there. Even the slight measure of perception that is present in a normal human being is in his case lacking. Once, however, he can be brought to see, he has an object plainly before him, the skilfulness of his own limbs, the sight will fill him with joy. You must get him to do things which will bring this about. An excellent plan will be to give him Curative Eurythmy exercises, to be done with legs and hands, but especially taking care to see that the toes and fingers move with great energy. Then draw the boy's attention to these movements that are going on in his limbs, let him watch himself making the movements.

If it should happen that you have to do with younger children who already show signs of this kind of difficulty, where what has been decided upon by the head does not easily find its way down into the rest of the organism, try getting them to touch their feet with their head. In the case of the boy we are considering, it is too late for this, but you may any day receive into your Home quite little children with the same disability. Try it yourselves; you will find it is no easy matter! But for small children it is a very good exercise; they can be brought even to kiss their own toes. Another thing that never fails to help in such cases—and it could prove a real blessing even to your boy—is to get the child to hold a pencil between his great toe and the next, and with the pencil contrive to trace out some letters of the alphabet, and so have the enjoyment of discovering that he can write with his feet. It is quite possible that even at his age this boy of yours could receive very great benefit from such an experiment. For in cases such as his, Curative Eurythmy—and writing with the toes is a kind of Curative Eurythmy!—can be of the very greatest help. Whether also a course of treatment with lead will at his age afford him the help he stands in need of, we shall discover when we begin to make trial with it and note its effects.

All that I have been saying will have demonstrated to you the imperative need for a delicate and fine power of observation. The simple calculation that took the boy an hour and a half to make, the reluctance to go back into the house to fetch a new film—facts like these may seem trifling and insignificant, and yet it is just this kind of thing that we must learn to make the object of careful observation. As we come to do so, we shall realise what an invaluable aid it can be to the educator of backward children if he is sensitive to every little thing that happens with the child he wants to help.

And now you will be wanting to say to me: It looks as though the education of backward children is going to take up all one's time; one will have to be perpetually giving one's whole attention to the children, and will have no time left to meditate, no time in fact to do anything else whatever! That is not the case; and the esoteric nature of a life-work such as you are undertaking should not allow you ever to admit for a moment this point of view. What is wanted is not that you should all day long be constantly on the watch—not that at all, but rather that you should acquire a quick sense for characteristic happenings. If one has already learned how to watch quite a number of children and knows how to make the right use at every turn of one's powers of perception, it is, under certain circumstances, quite possible to carry out a thorough investigation of a single child in five or ten minutes. It does not depend at all on the length of time one devotes to the matter, but wholly on the degree to which one is able to unite oneself inwardly with the act of perception. If people would only realise that one has to really connect oneself inwardly with the phenomena in question then a great deal of time would be saved, especially for those who work in the professions.^E1

Now, there was at Lauenstein another boy, a typical case, a fifteen-year-old epileptic. You could see the same type in the boy we had here before us the other day; only, your boy at Lauenstein is several years older. The first thing that claims our attention in his case is the difficult situation created by the fact that he is at the age of transition to puberty. He has been castrated, has he not? Now what we are concerned with is the process of attaining puberty as it has to go forward in the whole organism. The fact that the boy has been castrated, means that in his case we have to reckon with a phenomenon that manifests in him with extraordinary vehemence—namely, the reaction that is induced as a result of this unnatural influence that has been brought to bear on the evolution of sex. The boy gives indeed every appearance of one in whom the transition to puberty is going to prove difficult. The gradual attainment of puberty is, as we have said, a process that belongs to the whole organism; and the sole significance that castration possesses for the boy at the present time consists in the reactionary influence it has in him upon the attainment of puberty.

The first thing to do therefore is to see that the boy is placed where he will be sure of being treated in the way that is right and necessary for boys who are attaining puberty—that is to say, where care is taken to provide conditions under which such boys have their interest aroused in all the processes that go on in the world in which they find themselves. Boys who are at the age of puberty urgently need Waldorf School education. This boy must not be left to the mercy of his own impulses and emotions; we must try to bring it about that he is continually occupied with something outside himself, and takes a keen interest in the objects and processes that he finds around him. Tell me, how is he getting on at school? Perhaps you can tell me this?

(S. “He can neither read nor write. During the past year we have not even made a beginning with school for him. Frau F. did once begin to teach him reading and writing; it was on the Montessori method, and he did not get on at all, he seemed unable to make any progress. His school attainments have really to be counted as nil.”)

He shows, you see, a certain obtuseness to external impressions. We shall here be under the necessity of applying Waldorf School education in the way we are accustomed to do with quite little children—taking our start, that is, from painting, and so providing the opportunity for the boy to put out into colour whatever is tormenting him inwardly. Get him to paint, and you will see what can be got rid of this way. And then you can go farther with him in whatever direction his own inclinations and abilities indicate.

There can moreover be no question but that we must intervene here also with our therapy. We have not, I think, up to now, prescribed any medicaments? The boy should have algae and belladonna. Therapeutical treatment will consist then of these two remedies. You probably understand in a general way the nature of algae injections, but you will do well to enter a little more deeply into the significance of them; for you should, you know, be ready to make use of them on your own responsibility, in individual cases. Why do we propose for this boy algae injections?

In the algae we have plants that have neither strongly developed root formation nor strongly developed flower formation. It is indeed almost as though flower and root had been telescoped. The leaf organisation is the main thing; everything else is produced from it. In algae therefore, since foliage preponderates, we find no very near relationship to the earth. Nor, on the other hand, is there any very near relationship to the outer cosmos. There is however a relationship to the watery and airy elements that are active immediately over the surface of the earth. Algae—and the same applies also to mushrooms—are plants that are, as it were, completely steeped in the interplay of air and water. And these two kinds of plants have in addition this characteristic in common, that they are strongly attracted to the minute quantity of sulphur which is to be found everywhere today in water as well as in air. Consequently, when these plants are introduced into the rhythmic organism of man, they are peculiarly adapted to restore harmony between astral body and ether body. And harmony between astral body and ether body is precisely what is lacking in a boy of this type.

In cases where we perceive a disturbance due to the ego organisation making too great demand upon the astral body and not allowing it to enter into the etheric body, we must have recourse rather to the mushroom type of plant. The algae, which come nearer to the ordinary plant, are to be used when the physical body and etheric body refuse to allow the astral body to enter—that is to say, when the disharmony is due not to an excessive attraction exerted by the ego organisation, but to a special resistance put up by the ether body.^E2

Then there was a girl you had at Lauenstein. Perhaps you would kindly describe her for us, in accordance with the indications I gave at the time?

(S.: “I too have seen this girl only on that one occasion—a girl with protruding lips. You pointed out that something very serious must have happened to her astral body between the ages of 3 and 4; the child must, you said, have had at that time a violent attack of itching and scratching. The mother confirmed afterwards that high temperatures had occurred at that age, accompanied by irritation and itching. For treatment, nicotiana enema was prescribed; and if that did not help, nicotiana injections were to be given. The girl is fifteen years old.”)

So we have here a girl who has attained the age of fifteen, and in whom we can see quite clearly that the astral organisation has made very weak connection with the organism as a whole. The girl is obviously of that type.^E3 One notices at once that the astral organisation is far too weak to restrain the ego in face of the temptation that always assails man when he eats—the temptation to enjoy the eating too much, to revel in the sweet and pleasant taste of the food. When the astral body is not sufficiently active in the lower region of the face, then the lips will be found to protrude noticeably—a symptom that is due to the excessive pleasure experienced in tasting food and also in the initial process of digestion, that takes place in the mouth. Phenomena such as these have far-back antecedents; obviously they cannot be making their appearance for the first time at this somewhat late stage of childhood. As has been said, I stated at the time that an irregularity must have occurred in the child's development about the 3rd or 4th year.

How can you learn to perceive such facts for yourselves? You can find your way to such perceptions if you set out to do so with the love that I have described to you and upon which you will remember I laid such stress. You must never say: In order to perceive such things, I should have to be clairvoyant. To say that betokens an inner laziness—a quality that must on no account ever be found in one who undertakes the task of education. Long before you attain to the clairvoyance that is required for spiritual research in general, you can beget in yourself the faculty simply to perceive what is really the matter. The power to do this can be born in you, if you approach with loving devotion all that shows itself in the child, and especially just those developments that come with abnormal conditions. What you say to yourself at that moment will be true. There is of course need here for esoteric courage. This esoteric courage can and does develop in man—provided only that one thing does not stand in the way.

It is strange, and at the same time significant, that these inner intuitions are so little noticed by the very people who are, comparatively speaking, well able to have them. Anthroposophists have many an opportunity to pay heed to such inner intuitions! For they have these intuitions, far more than is supposed, but they fail to attend to them—the reason being that in the moment when they should do so, they find themselves assailed by a vanity that is hard to overcome. With the discovery of faculties not known before, all manner of impulses that spring from vanity begin to crop up in the soul. Along with the other characteristics of our age that I described for you in my lecture yesterday, as well as on several other occasions, we have to reckon also a tendency to grow vain and conceited, for it is a tendency that is terribly prevalent in present-day mankind.

This is a matter that should receive serious consideration from those of the present-day Youth—and you yourselves are of course among the number—who are devoting their lives to some great and noble calling. There is in our time great need that young men and women should rise up among us and exercise a regenerating influence upon mankind; and what I am now going to say is not said out of misunderstanding of the Youth Movement of our day, nor from lack of understanding, but out of a true understanding of it. It is a necessity, this Youth Movement, it is something of quite extraordinary significance; for those older people who can understand it, the modern Youth Movement is interesting in the highest degree. Not a word shall be uttered here against it. Nor shall we attempt to deny that there is only too often a deplorable lack of readiness on the part of the older generation to understand this Youth Movement, and that a great many plans have suffered shipwreck just because the Movement has not been taken seriously enough, just because people have not troubled themselves to look into it sufficiently. But the Youth Movement does need to beware of one thing when it sets out to undertake specific practical tasks; and it is incumbent on those of us who have had experience in the matter to call attention to it, for it makes one seriously apprehensive for the whole future of the Movement. I mean a certain vanity that shows itself there on every hand.

This vanity is not so much due to a lack of education and culture, but is rather the consequence of an inevitable situation. For the will to action necessitates of course a strong development of inner capabilities, and then it follows all too easily that under the influence of Ahriman vanity begins to spring up in the soul. I have had opportunity in my life to make careful and intimate observation of persons who were full of promise—persons too of the most various ages of life—in whom one could see again and again how with the dawn of the Age that has followed Kali Yuga, vanity began to grow and thrive in their souls. It is not, therefore, only among the Youth that the vanity shows itself. What concerns us at the moment however is the special form of it that manifests in the Youth and that has in point of fact hindered them from developing the right and essential character that lies inherent in present-day Youth, waiting to be developed. Hence the phenomenon with which we are so familiar, this endless talk of “missions”, of great tasks, with all too little inclination to set to work upon the details, to take pains about the small things that require to be done in carrying out these tasks.

These will emphatically be need in the future for what has been described in simple words as devotion to detail.

Devotion to detail and to little things is something which the Youth of our time need to develop. They are far too apt to revel in abstractions; and this revelling in abstractions is the very thing that can then lure them with irresistible force into the snare of vanity. I do beg you to bethink yourselves of the difficulties that beset your path on this account. Make it a matter of esoteric striving to master this tendency to vanity; for it does indeed constitute a real hindrance to any work you undertake.

Suppose you want to be able to speak to some fellow human being from out of an intuitive power of vision. The things you need to behold in him are by no means written plain for all to see; and you may take it that statements made about backward children from the ordinary lay point of view are generally false. What you have to do is to see through what lies on the surface, see right through it to the real state of affairs. If therefore you want to come to the point of being able to say something to him out of intuitive vision, what do you need for that? You need to tell yourself with courage and with energy—not just saying it at some particular moment, but carrying it continually in your consciousness, so that it determines the very quality and content of your consciousness:—“ I can do it.” If, without vanity, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, and in earnest endeavour to overcome all the things that hinder, you repeat these words, not only feeling them, but saying them to yourself over and over again, then you will begin to discover how far you are able to go in this direction. Do not expect to find the development of the faculty you seek, by spinning out all manner of theories and thoughts. No, what you need to do is to maintain all the time this courageous consciousness, which develops quite simply of itself when once you have begun to fetch up from the depths of your soul what lies hidden there, buried (metaphorically speaking) beneath an accumulation of dust and rubbish.

Generally speaking, people are not able to achieve anything of this kind in the realm of pedagogy. They could do so if only they would set themselves seriously to bring to life within them a certain truth. Let me explain to you how this can be done.

Try to accustom yourselves to live your way every evening into the consciousness: In me is God. In me is God—or the Spirit of God, or what other expression you prefer to use. (But please do not think I mean just persuading yourself of this truth theoretically—which is what the meditations of the majority of people amount to!) Then, in the morning let the knowledge: I am in God shine out over the whole day. And now consider! When you bring to life within you these two ideas, which are then no longer mere thoughts, but have become something felt and perceived inwardly, yes, have even become impulses of will within you, what is it you are doing?

First, you have this picture before you: In me is God;

and on the following morning, you have this picture before you: I am in God (see Figure 3, right). They are one and the same, the upper and the lower figure. And now you must understand: Here you have a circle (yellow); here you have a point (blue). It doesn't look like that in the evening, but in the morning the truth of it comes to light. And in the morning you have to think: Here is a circle (blue); here is a point (yellow). Yes, you have to understand that a circle is a point, and a point a circle. You have to acquire a deep, inner understanding of this fact.

But now, this is really the only way to come to a true understanding of the human being! You remember the drawing I made for you, of the metabolism-and-limbs man and the head man (see Figure 1.). That drawing was nothing else than a realistic impression or record of what you have before you now in this simple figure for meditation. In the human being it becomes actual reality; the I-point of the head becomes in the limb man the circle—naturally, with modifications. Adopting this line of approach, trying, that is, to understand man inwardly, you will learn to understand the whole of man. You must, first of all, be quite clear in your mind that these two figures, these two conceptions, are one and the same, are not at all different from one another. They only look different from outside. There is a yellow circle; here it is too! There is a blue point; here it is too! Why do they look different? Because that drawing is a diagram of the head, and this a diagram of the body. When the point claims a place for itself in the body, it becomes the spinal cord. It makes its way in here

and then the part it plays in the head organisation is continued in the spinal cord. There you have the inner dynamic of the morphology of man. Taking it as your starting point, you will be able, by meditation, to build up a true anatomy, a true physiology. And then you will acquire the inner intuition that can perceive in how far the upper and lower jaws are limbs; for you will begin to see in the head a complete organism in itself, sitting up there on the top of the human being, an organism whose limbs are dwarfed and have—in process of deformation—turned into jaws. And you will come to a clear perception of how teeth and toes are in polarity to one another. For you have only to look at the attachments of the jawbones, and you can see it all there before you—the stunted toes, the stunted hands and feet.

But, my dear friends, meditation that employs such pictures as I have been giving can never take its course in the kind of mood that would allow us to feel: Now I am going to settle down to a blissful time of meditation; it will be like sinking into a snug, warm nest! No, the feeling must be continually present in us that we are taking the plunge into reality—that we are grasping hold of reality.

Devotion to little things—yes, to the very smallest of all! We must not omit to cultivate this interest in very little things. The tip of the ear, the paring of a finger-nail, a single human hair—should be every bit as interesting to us as Saturn, Sun and Moon. For really and truly in one human hair everything else is comprised; a person who becomes bald loses a whole cosmos! What we see externally—we can verily create it inwardly, if only we achieve that overcoming which is essential to a life of meditation. But we shall never achieve it so long as any vestige of vanity is allowed to remain—and vestiges of vanity lurk in every corner and crevice of the soul. Therefore is it so urgent, if you want to become real educators, and especially educators of backward children, that you should cultivate, with the utmost humility, this devotion in the matter of little things. And when you have made a beginning in this way in your own sphere, you can afterwards go on to awaken in other circles of the Youth Movement this same devotion to little things.

And then it will indeed become possible for you to receive, for example, indications that are afterwards verified from external evidence—as happened, you remember, in the case we are considering. And here I must say in connection with this very case, I have occasion to find grave fault. The same kind of thing happens only too often in connection with the various undertakings that have been begun within our anthroposophical movement. The situation was as follows. Here was a girl concerning whom I told you that a kind of abnormality must have occurred in her development between the third and fourth year. You question the mother, and the mother confirms that it was so. What did you do then? Please tell me, honestly and sincerely: What did you do, when the mother confirmed the fact? (Silence.) Please be esoterically honest and tell me the truth, you three: what did you do? (Silence.) If you had done the right thing, you would now be telling me: “We danced and jumped until we made a hole in the ceiling!” And the after-effect of this jumping for joy would be still expressing itself today—and not merely in words, it would be shining out from you like a light.

That is what you need—enthusiasm in the experience of truth. This enthusiasm is an absolute sine qua non: you cannot get on without it. For years it has been so terribly painful to me, the way the members of the anthroposophical movement stand there as if they were rooted to the spot—and the young too, almost as much as the old. But now consider what it means, That they can stand there so impassively. Look at Nietzsche! What a different sort of fellow he was—even if he did get ill from it! He made his Zarathustra become a dancer. Can't you become dancers—in the sense Nietzsche meant it? Why, you should be leading lives of joy—deep inner joy in the truth! There is nothing in the world more delightful, nothing more fascinating, than the experience of truth. There you have an esotericism that is far more genuine, far more significant than the esotericism that goes about with a long face. Before everything else—and long before you begin to talk about having a “mission”—there must be this living inner experience of truth.

The girl had, when three or four years old, an occult fever. It is even called that in the medical world—one of those instances where medicine has retained an earlier form of speech. When a doctor does not know what is the cause of a fever, he calls it an “occult” fever. This occult fever, then, made its appearance. During the period round about the third and fourth years, the astral body was particularly weak. The physical body and the ether body reacted to this and developed too strongly; and then the astral body was unable to keep up with them. It is exceedingly important that we take cognisance first of all of this fact: at the age of three the growth of the astral body suffered a significant check, the child's astral body became stunted and cramped within itself. I must come to its aid. It must receive help to make up for what has been lost; and this help can be given through education, by awakening the child's interest in many directions. Tell me now, how has it been with this girl at school?

(S.: “We are not having the girl with us in the Home, she will come only for treatment. She was in a school for giving special help to backward children up to the beginning of her sixteenth year, and can read and write, and work with numbers up to about a thousand. In all other respects we have really no knowledge of the girl, we had her there only in order for you to see her. Enema containing nicotiana was prescribed.”)

It will be important to treat this girl with Curative Eurythmy.^E4

As a result of the stunting of the astral body, a strong tendency to deformation has, you see, made its appearance in the upper organism. The child has about her an extraordinarily animal look, the reason being that all that part which belongs to the organs of mastication is deformed. We have already been making very careful tests here in the Clinic of the influence of nicotiana juice in counteracting deformation; and this girl is just a case in point, where it will be able to do its good work. So you see it will be possible right away to begin—slowly—to make some progress. The nicotiana juice is given by the mouth, to start with; and then one has to watch carefully—one must acquire an eye for such things—to see whether the organs of mastication are beginning to come more under the control of the organism. For, as it is, the organs of mastication lie almost entirely outside the realm of the child's control. They just hang there—limp. The child can thus be treated with nicotiana juice given by the mouth in suitable decimal of dilution, beginning with the sixth and going up to the fifteenth. If it should turn out that this does not work strongly enough, we shall have to resort to injection of nicotiana juice in a high potency into the circulation, so that it may make direct contact there with the astral body and enable us to achieve in this way what we failed to achieve when we administered nicotiana juice by ingestion.

I have also a further suggestion to make. The nicotiana juice is intended to work within the astral body and remain there, and it will perhaps be good if we try to prevent its influence from entering too powerfully into the ego organisation—if we try, that is, to arrest it before it reaches the ego organisation. This result can be induced by giving—not often, perhaps only once a week—a weak sulphur bath.

Tomorrow we will speak about the other cases that you have at Lauenstein, and I shall be particularly glad to be able to consider with you the interesting phenomenon of albinism, which we have opportunity to study in two of your children. One of them is fifteen years old and the other a much younger sister of hers. (Dr. Steiner asked Dr. Vreede [the original leader of the Mathematical-Astronomical Section at the Goetheanum] if she had drawn their horoscopes, and she handed them to him. The dates were 6th December, 1909, approximately 4 a.m., and 18th May, 1921, approximately 3 a.m., both at Jena.) How does Uranus stand? Did you not find any special constellations? (Dr. Vreede replied that she had—namely with Uranus and Neptune. In the case of the elder girl, Neptune was in opposition to Uranus.)

Such children always show two main characteristic peculiarities: fair hair; and poor sight, with the variation in the eyes. These are the essential phenomena of albinism. No more than a superficial study is required to discover that in albinos we have to do with an organisation that is very feeble at assimilating iron, but on the other hand assimilates sulphur with the greatest ease. The organisation resists iron; it resists dealing with it, and this applies especially to the periphery of the body; assimilation of iron stops short of the periphery. Sulphur, on the other hand, is driven to the periphery; and not only so, but driven even out beyond it. That is how it comes about that in the region of the hair, you see, all around, a sulphur-aura, which pales and bleaches the hair and takes the strength out of it. And in the eyes (which are formed comparatively independently, being built into the organism from without, in the embryo time)—in the eyes you have a still more striking manifestation of a sulphur-aura. Here it has the effect of fairly forcing the eyes to betake themselves out of the etheric into the astral. In such children we see the eye plucked right out of its “grotto”, the etheric body of the eye left disregarded and its astral body very much to the fore and fully engaged.

Very important questions arise at this point. If we consider the “forming” of man, we find that he stands in connection on the one hand with the telluric forces that divulge themselves to us in the substances of the earth, and on the other hand, with the whole cosmos. He is dependent on both. Both sets of forces are present in the individual process of evolution, as well as also in the stream of inheritance. Let us take first, in considering these two children, the stream of inheritance. Neither in the case of the father nor of the mother is there any indication of albinism. They are both perfectly normal human beings. There was however somewhere in the antecedents—was it a grandmother, of whom it is reported that she had signs of albinism? (Frl. Dr. K.: “It was a sister of the mother.”) An aunt, then. Albinism has been known in the family; that is all that need concern us at the moment. A tendency to albinism is present in the antecedents. And did you not tell me that there had been other cases in the Saal region, also at Jena? (Frl. Dr. K.: “Yes, two children; and one adult, aged thirty-two, who is already married. Of these three, in only one case had there been albinism before in the family history.”) It would seem, therefore, that albinism is in some way endemic to a certain part of the country, but meets also with many counter-influences. And so in fact it makes its appearance quite sporadically! Only under certain circumstances will an albino be born there. The equation will immediately suggest itself: How does it come about that an albino is born in a particular territory?

In the case of an albino we have, as we have seen, a sulphurisation process working outwards, so that little sulphur islets occur in the aura, in the periphery. And now we look round in the native environment of the children to see where we can find sulphur. The whole valley of the Saal abounds in iron sulphide. Iron and sulphur are thus present in combination. You can study first the presence of iron in the neighbourhood, and then again the presence of sulphur; and you can take special note of the whereabouts of the beautiful pyrites (iron sulphide). These delicate and lovely cubes of pyrites with their beautiful golden gleam are a characteristic product of the valley of the Saale. Other regions nearby yield gypsum. Gypsum is, as you know, calcium sulphate with 20 per cent water. So that here again we have an opportunity to study sulphur—this time in combination with calcium. This kind of study of the soil will throw light for us on all that lives in the atmosphere etc.; and so we shall have first of all to give ourselves to the study of that which comes out of the ground and is connected with the absorption of sulphur and iron. For we have here a territory that is also very rich in iron, and the question arises: How does this opposite relationship come about in this territory in regard to earth and man, in the earth has a great power of attraction for iron, while the human being cannot attract iron at all, or only with difficulty? What constellations must be present to cause the human being to be particularly disposed to reject the iron and accept the sulphur?

Here we come into the realm of the cosmic; we have to set about investigating the constellations that were present at birth (we cannot of course do it for conception). And this will lead us to ask whether there were not in the case of these children who are albinos, quite special constellations, constellations moreover that can only seldom occur. We shall have to find what we can learn, not from the planets that move more quickly, but from the constellations of the planets that take a long time to revolve, such as Saturn and Uranus. You see, therefore, to what kind of questions such cases will lead us. We must first find the right questions to ask; when once we have the questions, then we are ready to begin our study.^E5

Now, for these children also, I would like to prescribe a little course of treatment, basing it on the indications I have given today. We will talk of that tomorrow.

I gather from a remark that was made to me this morning, that you are wanting something more than is contained in the lectures. These (you feel) go too much in the direction of “devotion to detail”—too much, that is, in the direction that you need! But I am really entirely ready to meet you in this matter, and propose to use here the new method I have been using with the workmen at the Goetheanum. For there I have allowed it gradually to come to this—that I ask them on what I am to speak; so that, ever since a certain date, the workmen themselves have been specifying the themes they want dealt with in the lectures. And now they can never complain that they do not get lectures on subjects they want to hear about.

• 1. Curative home in Jena-Lichtenhain, founded by Franz Löffler, Siegfried Pickert, and Albrecht Strohschein.
• E1. Rudolf Steiner visited Lauenstein on 18th June, 1924, almost immediately after the Home was opened. The children were brought to him; and having first had a good look at each in turn, talking with the child and enquiring into the history of the case, he explained to us how this or that condition had come about, and gave indications for therapeutical treatment and education.
  
  The explanations and advice given by Rudolf Steiner on the occasion of this visit were noted down, and provide in each case a most valuable addition to the words spoken by him in this course. Wonderful, above all, was the example Rudolf Steiner set us in the whole way in which he met the children, entering with loving and devout interest into every single detail of their condition. For the little group of us who were taking part together in these first beginnings of the work of Curative Education, the whole visit was a deep experience, and the memory of it continues to be cherished in the “Institutions for the Education and Healing of Children in Need of Special Care”. Some of the indications and instructions given by Rudolf Steiner will be added here as Notes to the Course.
  
  As regards this boy, Rudolf Steiner told us that he is lacking in brain sand (the calcareous concretions of the pineal body). The convulsions and the whole general condition must go back to some fright to which the mother had been subjected during pregnancy. (Enquiry afterwards confirmed this.) He added that one must, in such cases, always ask how things were with the mother during pregnancy. The convulsions, he said, were a secondary effect.
  
  For therapy, Rudolf Steiner prescribed injections of thyroid gland secretion. The medicament must enter the body in a centripetal direction, in order to evoke a reaction that works centrifugally. The preparation should still contain epithelial cells. On the day following the injection, the fever curve, also the pulse and the breathing, should be measured, quantitatively and qualitatively.
  
  In addition, the boy should drink a full glass of Levico water in the course of each day, diluted in the proportion 1:8.
  
  Curative Eurythmy: O, I (ee), L.
• E2. When this poor feeble-minded boy, who was as a rule excessively restless, was brought to Rudolf Steiner, he became for the moment quite peaceful and at rest, and the finer side of his nature, which was generally overlaid and hidden, suddenly revealed itself in a truly beautiful manner. Rudolf Steiner took particular interest in the boy's sense-perceptions, and proved to us that he cannot see far into the distance. When his bad teeth were alluded to, Rudolf Steiner pointed out that his finger nails also were soft and weak. The following notes of the conversation were made at the time: “Did you not notice anything particular about the mother? This is a case where we can see evidence of a remarkable karma. The astral body is over-ripe. Something is working in from the preceding incarnation. The time between death and new birth has been quite short, with the result that the soul has brought into this incarnation something of the astral body of the former incarnation. The boy still has even now strange dreams at night. This fact will reveal itself to you in strange and disconnected remarks that he makes after waking up. Supposing he has at some time or other seen snakes, then it may be that now he will see them coiling and uncoiling themselves. It is a case of a poor astral body, that has its seat mainly in the back of the head.” (Here Dr. Steiner laid his hand, with a gesture of the most intense interest, on the back of the boy's head, which was thickly covered with stubborn black hair. “This condition has to be met by introducing a counter-astrality; and that we can do by the use of algae. For algae draw in the astral forces of the surrounding air. Mushrooms do this still more; but we had better not begin with the strongest influences. All parasitic plants draw in astrality. By means of algae injections, healthy astrality will be attracted—astrality, that is, which is opposite in quality to the astrality already in the body; for there the astrality is bad.
  
  The therapy will therefore be: Algae inoculations D 5; Belladonna D 4, D 10, D 15, D 20, D 30.”
  
  Dr. Steiner was shown the record of the fits. The suggestion having been raised that their occurrence might be running parallel with the rhythms of the Moon, Dr. Steiner said that the influence of the Moon could not in this case be the direct cause of the fits; at the most, it could affect only the consciousness.
  
  Eurythmy should be done, especially with the legs.
• E3. Dr. Steiner said at Lauenstein: “She has a kink in her astral body; its form has no unity or coherence; above, it is weak, whilst below, it is stronger.”
• E4. At Lauenstein the following prescription was given: Nicotiana enema, a five per cent decoction, twice a week. If this does not help, then Nicotiana injections D 6. Curative Eurythmy: F, M, UT (oot), TU (too).
• E5When the children were brought to Rudolf Steiner at Lauenstein, he particularly enquired whether there had not been some weakness or debility in the mother. The mother declared that she had never been seriously ill, but admitted that she had suffered from chlorosis as a girl and had in general been very anaemic. Rudolf Steiner: “So the mother, you see, was evidently, earlier on, in a delicate state of health.” The father too had in his youth been weak and ailing. Their first child, at whose birth the mother was twenty years old and the father twenty-two, died young of pneumonia. The second was the elder of the girls we are considering. The third, a boy, is entirely normal. Then came, as fourth, the younger of our two albinos.
  
  Rudolf Steiner also made enquiries about the geological conditions of the district in which the children had been born. Information was given of the presence of pyrites and gypsum, to which allusion is made in the lecture. He then asked whether the people of the district were strikingly blond. This was denied; on the contrary, they are inclined to be dark. Lastly, he enquired whether the parents were relatives of one another; the answer was in the negative.
  
  Rudolf Steiner then explained to us the connection of the albinism with the sulphur. “These children”, he said, “are completely sulphurous. In them, sulphur processes are permeating the entire body.” The children are “all eye”; processes which ought to be going on in the eye alone are here taking place throughout the body. The quivering in the eyes and the furtive glancing hither and thither are due to oscillation between ether body and astral body.

In the early lectures of this Course it will be necessary to repeat certain things that were said in explanation of the Gospel of St. Luke. There are facts and happenings in the life of Christ Jesus which cannot be understood unless these two Gospels are compared.

For any deeper understanding of the Gospel of St. Matthew it is of primary importance to know that in respect of his physical body, the Individuality with whom this record is primarily concerned had descended from Abraham through three times fourteen generations; he therefore represented a kind of quintessence of the whole Hebrew race. Spiritual Science knows that this Individuality and the original Zoroaster or Zarathustra were one and the same.

In the lecture yesterday some idea was given of the external scene of Zarathustra's activities in the very ancient times in which he lived, and now the views of life and the world prevailing in his environment must also be considered. Principles of profound significance were contained in the world-view held by men in those regions and to speak of only a few of the teachings that are rightly regarded as having been given by the first Zarathustra is to point to deep foundations of all post-Atlantean thought.

External history itself tells us of the two fundamental principles underlying the teachings of Zarathustra: the principle of Ormuzd, the Good Being of Light, and that of Ahriman, the Being of Darkness and Evil. But even in exoteric presentations of this religious system it is emphasized that these two, principles—Ormuzd or Ahura Mazdao, and Ahriman—derive from one universal principle: Zeruane Akarene.

What is this single, undivided origin, from which the other two principles—at war with one another in the world—derive? Zeruane Akarene is generally translated ‘uncreated Time’. The primal principle of which Zarathustra's teaching tells may therefore be thought of as the calm, as yet undisturbed flow of cosmic Time. Moreover, the very sense of the words implies that it is meaningless to pursue the question further—to ask what was the origin of this calm flow of Time. It is important to realise once and for always that one may speak of something in cosmic existence without being justified in putting further questions, let us say, about the causes of a First Principle such as this. Whenever mention is made of a cause, abstract thinking will seldom refrain from asking further questions about the cause of that cause, and so on, forcing the concepts back as it were to infinity But when there is a desire to stand firmly on the ground of Spiritual Science, genuine meditation will make it clear that questioning about causes must end somewhere and that to continue it beyond a certain point is merely to indulge in fantasy.

In the book Occult Science—an Outline I referred to this form of mental procedure. As an example, I said that the sight of wheel-tracks on a road may evoke the question: What has caused them? The answer is: The wheels of a cart. Further questions might be: Where, exactly, are the wheels joined to the cart? Why do they make tracks and why was the cart being driven along the road? Such questions can be answered. The cart made the tracks because it was being driven along the road and it was driven because someone wanted to be carried in it—but this kind of questioning leads finally to the intention which caused the person concerned to use the cart. And if a halt is not made here, further questions regarding the cause of the intention lose point and become no more than a game.

The same is true in connection with the great questions of Cosmogony. Somewhere our questioning must end. For the deeper teachings of Zoroastrianism it is meaningless to go back beyond the calm flow of ‘uncreated Time’.

We now see that Zoroastrianism divides Time itself again into two principles, or—better said—speaks of two principles proceeding from Time: a good principle of Light characterized as that of Ormuzd, and an evil principle of Darkness, that of Ahriman. This dual conception is based upon a profoundly significant truth, namely that all Evil in the world, everything that in its physical image must be called dark and sinful, was not originally so. I said that in ancient Persian thought, the wolf, for example—which in a certain way represented something savage and evil, an outcome of the working of the Ahriman-principle—was regarded as having degenerated; when left to itself the Ahriman-principle could become active in it. Thus the wolf had descended from a being in which the presence of the Good cannot be denied. According to the conceptions of the ancient Persians and the earliest Aryan peoples, the fundamental principle in evolution is that Evil comes into being because something that was good in the form in which it existed in an earlier epoch retains this form in a later age; in failing to transform itself it becomes retrogressive, for it preserves the form suitable for an earlier time. Therefore the cause of all Evil :all Darkness, was to the earliest Aryan peoples simply this: a form of being that was good in a previous epoch continues without change into later times and the consequence of the impact of such a form with one that has made progress is a. battle between the two—the battle between Good and Evil. So in the thought of ancient Persia, Evil is not absolute Evil but, rather, Good manifesting out of its appropriate time, something that once, in an earlier period, was good but is no longer so. Evil in the present, therefore, manifests in the form of events through which conditions suitable for the past are carried into the present. When there is as yet no conflict between the earlier and the later, Time is still undifferentiated, not divided into single ‘moments’.

This profoundly significant world-view held by very early post-Atlantean peoples can be regarded as, the basis of, Zoroastrianism; it includes the concept that was characterized in the lecture yesterday and was dominant in those who adhered to the teachings of Zarathustra. There is evidence on every side that these peoples recognized two phases proceeding from the hitherto undivided flow of Time—two phases coming into conflict as they encounter one another and resolving their conflict only in the stream of onflowing Time. It was realised that the new must come into being and that the old must not be swept away; the goal of the Universe—above all, the goal of the Earth—will be achieved through the creating of balance, of harmony, between the old and the new. This conception, as it has now been characterized, lies at the basis of all forms of higher development originating in Zoroastrianism.

Once the original centre of Zoroastrianism had been established in the region and epoch indicated yesterday, its influence was effective wherever it made its way. And we shall see what a tremendous effect it had upon subsequent epochs, giving expression everywhere to the teaching on the polarity between the old and the new.

The reason why Zarathustra was able to exercise such a far-reaching influence upon posterity was that at the time when he had attained the highest Initiation possible in his day, he had two intimate pupils of whom I have previously spoken.¹ To one of these pupils Zarathustra taught everything relating to the secrets of surrounding physical Space, the secrets of contemporaneous existence. To the other pupil he taught the secrets of Time in flow, the secrets of evolution, of development. On a previous occasion I said that at a certain point on the path of Initiation such as this, something of great significance is able to take place, namely that the teacher can offer up part of his own being to his pupils. And Zarathustra offered up to his two pupils his own astral body and his own etheric body. The Individuality of Zarathustra, the inmost core of his being, remained intact for ever-recurring incarnations. But his astral ‘raiment’, that is to say the astral body in which he had lived as Zarathustra in a very early post-Atlantean epoch—this astral raiment was so perfect, so charged with the essence of his whole being that it did not disperse as do the astral sheaths of other human beings, but remained intact. In the great process of evolution the power of an Individuality bearing human sheaths of this quality, may enable them to remain intact and be preserved, and this was so in the case of the astral body of Zarathustra.

The pupil who had received from Zarathustra the teaching about Space and everything that exists contemporaneously in physical Space—this pupil was reborn in the personality known in history as the Egyptian Thoth, or Hermes. Occult investigation reveals that he was destined not only to consolidate in his own being all the teaching imparted to him in an earlier incarnation by Zarathustra, but to do even more. This was made possible by the fact that through a process enacted in the holy Mysteries, the preserved astral body of Zarathustra himself was incorporated into him. Thus the Individuality of this pupil of Zarathustra was reborn as the inaugurator of Egyptian culture. The Egyptian Hermes therefore bore within himself part of the being of Zarathustra, and this power, together with the fruits of his own former discipleship, enabled Hermes to give the impulse for all that was great and significant in the culture and civilization of ancient Egypt.

In order that the mission of this messenger of Zarathustra might be fulfilled, there had naturally to be a folk suited to receive the impulse. Only among those peoples who had taken the more southerly path from Atlantean territories, had settled in the East of Africa and in whom a high degree of clairvoyance in its Atlantean form had been preserved—only among such peoples could fruitful soil be found for what Hermes, the reborn pupil of Zarathustra, was able to impart. The soul-life prevailing in the Egyptian population came into contact with the teaching of Hermes and from this source the culture of ancient Egypt developed.

It was a culture of a very special character. Think of what treasures of wisdom had been received by Hermes when Zarathustra imparted to him the secrets of things existing contemporaneously in Space. Hermes bore within his own being this supremely important teaching of Zarathustra. As we have often heard, the most characteristic feature of Zarathustra's teaching was that he directed the attention of his people to the Sun and the external light of the Sun, explaining to them that this solar body is only the outer sheath of a lofty Spiritual Being. Thus Zarathustra entrusted to Hermes the secrets of the the reality of being underlying the whole of Nature in the world of Space, the reality of being which underlies everything in contemporaneous existence but goes forward through Time from epoch to epoch, manifesting itself anew in each particular epoch. The wisdom possessed by Hermes concerned all that proceeds from the Sun and evolves to further stages. And the reason why he was able to instill this teaching into the souls of the descendants of Atlantean peoples was because those souls had at one time themselves gazed into the mysteries of the Sun and had preserved in memory something of their vision. Everything, of course, had advanced in evolution—the souls who were destined to receive the wisdom of Hermes, as well as Hermes himself.

Circumstances were different in the case of the second pupil of Zarathustra. To him had been entrusted the secrets relating to the flow of Time, and he had necessarily to experience the conflict between the old and the new, the active principle of contrast, of opposition and of polarity, implicit in evolution. Zarathustra had offered up part of his being for this second pupil as well, and when the latter was reborn he too was able to receive what had been bequeathed to him. Whereas the Individuality of Zarathustra remained intact, the astral and etheric sheaths were separated from him, but because they had been borne by such a mighty Individuality, they too remained intact and did not disperse. At a certain point in his new incarnation, this second pupil, to whom had been communicated the wisdom relating to Time—in contrast to that relating to Space—this second pupil received into him-self the etheric body of Zarathustra, who had offered it up as he had offered up his astral body. This second pupil of Zarathustra was reborn as Moses, into whom, in very early childhood, the preserved etheric body of Zarathustra was incorporated.

Religious chronicles that are genuinely based on occultism contain mysterious clues pointing to the secrets disclosed by occult investigation. To enable Moses, the reincarnated pupil of Zarathustra, to receive into himself the etheric body of his former teacher, something quite unusual must necessarily happen to him. It was essential that the miraculous legacy he was to receive from Zarathustra should be incorporated into him before impressions from the environment were made upon his individuality, as in the case of other human beings. This is narrated symbolically in the story that he was laid in a cradle of reeds and lowered into a river—an indication of a remarkable Initiation, During the process of Initiation a human being is shut off from the outer world for a certain period of time and what he is destined to receive is then instilled into him. Thus the etheric body of Zarathustra that had been preserved intact was incorporated into Moses at a certain moment while he was shut off from the outer world; and then there could come to flower within him the wonderful wisdom concerning Time once imparted to him by Zarathustra. He was able, now, to give expression to it in pictures suitable for his people.

Hence we have from Moses the mighty pictures of Genesis—external Imaginations of the wisdom of successive epochs. These pictures were the expression of reborn knowledge, of wisdom that had once been imparted to him by Zarathustra and was now rooted in his very being because the etheric sheath of Zarathustra himself had been incorporated into him.

But in a measure of such significance for the evolution of humanity, two factors are essential. Not only must there be an Initiate to inaugurate an impulse in culture, but it must be possible for this great Individuality to plant the seed of future culture in the folk-soil suitable for it. And to understand the nature of the folk-soil into which Moses could plant what had been transmitted to him by Zarathustra, it will be well to concern ourselves with a certain, characteristic of the Mosaic wisdom.

In an earlier incarnation, then, Moses had been a pupil of Zarathustra. At that time there had been imparted to him the wisdom relating to Time together with the secret that in all epochs the earlier clashes with the later, thus producing contrast. If Moses as the bearer of this wisdom was to become a factor in the evolution of humanity, it had to be presented as a contrast to the other stream of wisdom—the Hermes-wisdom. And this was what actually happened.

Hermes had received from Zarathustra the direct wisdom, the Sun-wisdom, that is to say, knowledge of the reality of being working mysteriously in the outer, physical sheath of the light—the solar body. With Moses it was different. The kind of wisdom of which he was the recipient is harboured more in the denser, etheric body, not in the astral body. His was the wisdom that does not only look upwards to the Sun, seeing all things streaming from the Sun, but is also concerned with what stands over against the light and essential quality of the Sun; this wisdom assimilates—without being corrupted by it—that which has become earthly, dense, solidified, old. This was Earth-wisdom, comprised, it is true, within Sun-wisdom, but for all that essentially Earth-wisdom, The secrets of Earth-evolution, of how man develops on the Earth and how the Earth evolves when the Sun has separated from it—these were the secrets imparted to Moses. And this, if we study the inner, not the external aspects of the matter, explains why we encounter in the teachings of Hermes something that is an utter contrast to the wisdom of Moses.

In studying all such matters, certain modes of thought current at the present time apply the principle that in the night all cows are grey! Those who think in this way have eyes only for similarities and are overjoyed when, for example, they find the same thing in the teachings of Hermes and of Moses: here a triad, there a triad, here a quaternary, there a quaternary, and so on. But there is not much point in this. It would be rather like a person setting out to train someone else to be a botanist without teaching him what differentiates, let us say, a rose from a carnation, but speaking only of features that are identical in both. This does not help. We must know in what respects the beings themselves, and also the forms of wisdom,differ; we must realise that the Moses-wisdom was quite different in character from the Hermes-wisdom. Both forms of wisdom proceeded, originally, from Zarathustra; but just as unity, divides and manifests in very various ways, so did Zarathustra give essentially different revelations to each of his two pupils.

If we steep ourselves in the Hermes-wisdom, we find illumination on cosmogony—it explains to us the origin of worlds and the operations of the inpouring light. But in the Hermes-wisdom we do not find the concepts which reveal the fact that in the evolutionary process the earlier works on into the later, and because of this, the past and the present come into conflict, causing the opposition between Darkness and Light. Earth-wisdom which makes intelligible to us how the Earth, together with Man, evolved after the Sun had separated—this is nowhere contained in the Hermes-wisdom. But it was to be the special mission of the Moses-wisdom to make comprehensible to men the evolution of the Earth after the separation of the Sun. Earth-wisdom was to be the gift of Moses; Sun wisdom, the gift of Hermes. To Moses, with his remembrances of all that had been imparted to him by Zarathustra, there is revealed the process of the Earth's evolution and man's evolution on the Earth. His starting-point as it were is the earthly; but the earthly is separated from the Sun and contains the Sun-nature in a weakened form only. The earthly comes towards and meets the Sun-nature. Hence the Earth-wisdom of Moses had actually to encounter the Sun-wisdom of Hermes in concrete existence; these two streams of wisdom had to contact each other. The outer circumstances too indicate this in a most wonderful way. Moses is born an Egypt, his people are brought thither and make contact with the. Egyptians—the people of Hermes. These happenings are the outer reflection of the contact of Sun-wisdom with Earth-wisdom. Both forms of wisdom stem from Zarathustra but pour over the Earth in quite different streams of evolution, eventually meeting and working in conjunction.

Now certain wisdom connected with proceedings in the Mysteries always expresses itself in, a very special way about the deepest secrets of human and other happenings. In the lectures on Genesis given at Munich, I indicated how extraordinarily difficult it is to speak in terms of current language of these great truths which embrace not only the deepest secrets of the being of man but also cosmic facts. Our words are often fetters, for they bear the connotations that have come to be attached to them from long usage, and when with the great wisdom-truths unfolding themselves in the soul we resort to language, endeavouring to clothe these inner revelations in words, we find ourselves battling with a dreadfully feeble instrument.

The greatest piece of nonsense uttered in the course of the 19th century and repeated times without number is that it should be possible to couch every real truth in simple words and that language, with the means of expression it offers, should actually be a criterion of whether a person is in possession of some particular truth or not. This statement, however, only shows that those who make it are not in possession of essential truth but only of such truths as have been conveyed to them through language in the course of the centuries, the forms of which may change. For such people language is adequate and they feel nothing of the struggle that must often be waged with it. But this struggle becomes only too glaringly real when something of great consequence has to be expressed.

(I referred in Munich to the hard struggle I had with language in connection with the passage spoken in the meditation chamber at the end of the first scene, in. the Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. It was actually no more than a faint echo—all that could be expressed through the feeble instrument of language—of what the Hierophant was intended to say to the pupil.)

In the sacred Mysteries the very deepest secrets were brought to expression and the inadequacy of language for this purpose was felt at all times. Hence the age-long efforts in the Mysteries to find means of expression for the soul's experiences. Terms and phrases that had been used in ordinary intercourse for centuries proved to be utterly inadequate, whereas the opposite was true of the pictures arising when the gaze was directed to the expanse of universal space, to the constellations, to the appearance of a certain star or the eclipse of one heavenly body by another at definite times. These were pictures well fitted to portray particular happenings and experiences in man's life of soul. I will give a brief example.

Let us suppose it was a matter of announcing that something of great and far-reaching importance would take place at a particular moment in time because some human soul would then be sufficiently mature to undergo a sublime experience and to communicate it to his people; or perhaps there might have been a desire to indicate that a people, or a particular section of humanity, had reached a certain state of maturity in evolution and that an Individuality had come to dwell among them, possibly from some quite different region. In the latter case, the highest point reached in the development of this individual was coincident with the highest point reached in the development of the folk-soul of the people concerned and it was desired to express the unique nature of this event. Nothing that could be conveyed through ordinary language was found to be lofty enough to impress men's feelings with the significance of such an event. It was therefore expressed pictorially by saying : When the highest power developed by an an individual coincides with the highest power developed by a particular folk-soul, it is as when the Sun is in the constellation of Leo and radiates its light from there. In this example the picture of the Lion was chosen to denote something manifesting in its greatest strength in the evolution of humanity. A phenomenon in cosmic space was thus used to indicate a happening in the life of humanity. Such is the origin of certain expressions used in history; they were derived from the stars and constellations,and were the means used to express spiritual facts in the life of mankind.

When it is said, for example, that an event in the evolution of humanity is expressed symbolically by a phenomenon in the heavens such as the Sun in Leo or in some particular constellation, trivial thinkers are very apt to reverse the real meaning and state that all happenings connected with the early history of humanity were mythical descriptions of movements of celestial bodies; whereas the truth is that earthly events were expressed in pictures taken from the constellations. The truth is invariably the opposite of the theories loved by superficial thinkers.

This connection with the Cosmos is something that should fill us with reverence for what we are told about the great events in the evolution of mankind and the expression of them in pictures derived from cosmic phenomena. There is actually a mysterious connection between all cosmic existence and what comes to pass in man's existence; for happenings on Earth are reflections of happenings in the Cosmos.

In a certain respect the convergence of the Sun-wisdom of Hermes and the Earth-wisdom of Moses in Egypt is also a reflection, a mirror-image, of happenings in the Cosmos. Picture to yourselves certain forces streaming out from the Sun and other forces streaming back from the Earth into cosmic space; the point in space at which they meet will not be without importance; according to whether the contact is made at a point nearer to or farther away from the sources in question, the effect of the radiations emitted and then sent back, will be different. The contact between the Hermes-wisdom and the Moses-wisdom in ancient Egypt was presented in the Mysteries in such a way that comparison was possible with something that according to spiritual-scientific cosmology had already taken place in the Cosmos. We know that Sun and Earth had separated, that for a time the Earth was still united with the Moon, that then a part of the Earth moved out into space to become our present Moon. The Earth had therefore sent back part of itself towards the Sun in cosmic space. And when, in Egyptian civilization, the Earth-wisdom of Moses came into contact with the Sun-wisdom of Hermes, this remarkable happening was also like a ‘radiation’—this time from the Earth towards the Sun.

After its subsequent separation from the Sun-wisdom of Hermes, the wisdom of Moses Earth-wisdom—can be said to have developed further as the science of the Earth and of Man; in its course towards the Sun it absorbed and steeped itself in the direct wisdom radiating from the Sun. There was, however, to be a limit to this absorption; the wisdom of Moses was destined to progress on its own and develop independence. Hence it remained in Egypt only until enough had been absorbed for its needs; then came the “Exodus of the Children of Moses from Egypt”, in order that the Sun-wisdom received by the Earth-wisdom might be assimilated and also developed.

Two phases must therefore be distinguished in the wisdom of Moses: one while it is developing in the sphere of the wisdom of Hermes, surrounded by it on all sides and perpetually absorbing it. Then comes the separation, and after the exodus from Egypt the wisdom of Moses, although now developing independently, elaborates the wisdom of Hermes it has absorbed and on its own further course reaches three stages . What was its goal and, its destined task?

The task of the wisdom of Moses was to find the way back again to the Sun. It had become Earth-wisdom. Moses was born with all that had been imparted to him by Zarathustra as a wise man of the Earth and he sought for the way back to the Sun in different stages. At the first stage he had steeped himself in the wisdom of Hermes; the course of his further development can best be portrayed in pictures drawn from cosmic existence. When the effects of what happens on the Earth stream back into cosmic space, the first encounter on the path towards the Sun is with Mercury. (We know that thc Venus of ordinary astronomy is Mercury in the terminology of occultism and the Mercury of astronomy is Venus according to occultism.) On the way from the Earth towards the Sun, therefore, the Mercury-nature is encountered first, at a later stage the Venus-nature and then the Sun-nature. Hence through, inner processes in the life of soul, Moses was to develop the heritage received from Zarathustra in such a way that on the returning path it would be able to find the Sun-nature again; it had therefore to reach a definite stage. The wisdom inculcated by Moses into culture and civilization had necessarily to develop in the form in which he had imparted to his people. Hence on the path of return, having first absorbed something of the wisdom imparted by Hermes as directly radiating from the Sun, Moses developed it with a new orientation, that is, in the opposite direction.

It is said that Hermes later called Mercury (Thoth), brought to his people art and science, knowledge of the external world, external art, in the form suitable for them. But it was in a different, indeed opposite way, that Moses himself was to reach this Hermes-Mercury-wisdom and develop it to further stages on the returning path. This process portrayed in the history of the Hebrews up to the time and reign of David; he is described as the royal psalmist, as a divine prophet, as a man of God, an armour-bearer and also a player on the harp. David is the Hermes, the Mercury, of the Hebrew people who had now developed to the stage of being able to produce a Hermes- or Mercury-wisdom in an independent form. At the time of David, therefore, the Hermes-wisdom, once assimilated by the Moses-wisdom, had reached the region, or stage, of Mercury.

On the returning pail towards the Sun the wisdom of Moses was to advance to the Venus-stage. Hebraism reached this stage at the time when the Moses-wisdom, as it had flowed down the centuries, was destined to unite with an entirely different element, with a stream of wisdom that had come from the other direction.

Whatever rays back from the Earth into space encounters Venus on the path to the Sun, and during the Babylonian captivity the wisdom of Moses encountered the wisdom that had made its way over from Asia and was presented in a modified form in the Babylonian and Chaldean Mysteries. This contact was made during the time of the Babylonian captivity. Like a wanderer who, having started from the Earth with a knowledge of what the Earth is, had passed through the region of Mercury and arrived in the region of Venus in order there to receive the light of the Sun falling upon Venus, so did the wisdom of Moses absorb what had proceeded directly from the sanctuaries of Zoroastrianism and was being continued in a modified form in the Mysteries of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It was this that the Moses-wisdom received during the Babylonian captivity, thus assimilating wisdom that had made its way to the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

But something else came to pass as well. Moses had encountered the wisdom that once upon a time had streamed from the Sun. In the sanctuaries that were known to and frequented by the wise men among the Hebrews during the captivity, the legacy of the wisdom bequeathed by Moses to his people mingled with the Sun-nature of the wisdom harboured in the Mystery-centres in the regions around the Euphrates and the Tigris where the reincarnated Zarathustra was teaching. Approximately at the time of the Babylonian captivity, Zarathustra himself was incarnated; thus while teaching in that region, he who had already given over one part of his wisdom, receive it back again. He himself incarnated time and time again, and in his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos he became the teacher of the captive Jews who knew of the sanctuaries existing in those regions.

Thus in its later course the wisdom of Moses came into contact with what Zarathustra himself had been able to achieve after he had moved from the more distant Mystery-centres to those of Asia Minor. There he became the teacher of the initiated pupils of Chaldea as well as of individual initiated teachers; there were also those in whom the Moses-wisdom was fructified by the stream with which they could now make contact, being able to receive from Zarathustra himself, in his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos, what he himself had formerly imparted to their ancestor—Moses. Such was the destiny of the wisdom of Moses. It had actually originated with Zarathustra and had been transplanted into foreign lands. It was as if a Sun-being with bandaged eyes had been carried down to the Earth and on the return journey must seek again for what it had lost.

Moses, then, was the reincarnated pupil of Zarathustra. In his existence in Egyptian civilization everything once imparted to him by Zarathustra lit up again within him; but isolated in the domain of the Earth, it was as if he did not know the source of his illumination. Hence he took the path towards what had once been of the nature of the Sun; in Egypt he turned to the Hermes-wisdom which presented the wisdom of Zarathustra in its direct form, not in reflection as in his own case. After he had absorbed enough of the Hermes-wisdom, the stream of his own wisdom developed in a straightforward course. Having established in the Davidic age a form of Hermes-Wisdom, with its own science and art, the stream of Moses-wisdom moved towards the Sun whence it had originally issued, but in a form which at first concealed its real nature.

In the centres of learning in ancient Babylon where he was also the teacher of Pythagoras, Zarathustra—Zarathas or Nazarathos—could only teach in a way that was possible in a specially constituted body, for he was obliged to use such a body as his instrument. If he was to give expression to the Sun-nature in its fullness as he had once done and had then imparted it to Hermes and Moses—if he was to give expression to this wisdom in a new form, suitable for the later epoch, he needed a bodily sheath that would be a worthy instrument. It was only in a form conditioned by a body such as ancient Babylonia was able to produce that Zarathustra could bring forth again all the wisdom which he then conveyed to Pythagoras, to the learned Hebrews and the Chaldean and Babylonian sages who at that time—in the sixth century B.C.—were in a position to hear it.

In regard to what Zarathustra was able to teach, it was actually as if the light of the Sun had first been intercepted by Venus and could not find its way directly to the Earth; it was as if the Zarathustra-wisdom could not manifest itself in its primal form but only in modification. For to enable this wisdom to work in its original form Zarathustra would have to be enveloped in a suitable body and such a body could only be produced in an altogether unique way—which may be characterized somewhat as follows.

It was said in the lecture yesterday that there were three folk-souls in Asia, each of a different character : the Indian in the South, the Iranian and the Turanian to the North. It was indicated that these three species of souls came into being, firstly, because the northern stream of the Atlantean peoples had passed into Asia across these regions and had spread through them. But another stream had passed through Africa and its final offshoots had penetrated as far as the regions of the Turanian peoples. Where the northern stream which had passed from Atlantis towards Asia met the other stream which had passed from Atlantis through Africa, a remarkable mixture of peoples was produced and a racial stock formed from which the Hebrews subsequently sprang.

Something very remarkable came to pass in these people. Faculties of astral-etheric clairvoyance that had remained in a state of decadence among certain people and had become corrupt as the last phase of a faculty of clairvoyance directed outwards—all this turned inwards in those who became the Hebrew people. The direction was entirely changed. Instead of manifesting in its outer operations in the form of a lower astral clairvoyance, as the remains of the old Atlantean clairvoyance, it worked as an organizing power in the inner constitution of the body. What had become a decadent outward clairvoyance and having remained static had been permeated by the Ahrimanic element—this had then developed in the right way through becoming an active force in the inner, organic constitution of the human body. In the Hebrew people this faculty did not come to expression as an outdated form of clairvoyance but it worked as a transforming force upon the bodily nature, thus bringing it to a stage of greater perfection. The faculty that in the Turanian people had become decadent, worked creatively and with transforming power in the inner constitution of the Hebrews.

The following may therefore be said. In the bodily nature of the Hebrew people as propagated through blood-relation- from generation to generation, there were working the forces which as outward clairvoyant vision had had their day and were no longer to continue in this form but were now to function in a different sphere where they would be in the right element. The faculty that had enabled the Atlanteans to look with spiritual vision into space and into spiritual regions and in the Turanians had become a degenerate residue of clairvoyance—this faculty turned inwards in the Hebrew people. What had been of a divine-spiritual nature in Atlantean culture worked inwardly, in the Hebrews as an organic formative force and within their blood was able to light up as an inner consciousness of the Divine. It was as if everything that had been seen by the Atlantean when he directed his clairvoyant gaze outwards to the expanse of space had now become wholly inward, arising in the inmost organism of the Hebrews as consciousness of, Jahve or Jehovah, as inner, consciousness of the Divine. Thus the Hebrews felt the Godhead to be united with their blood, felt themselves pervaded, impregnated, by the Godhead outspread in space, and knew that this same Godhead was living within them, pulsing through their very blood.

Yesterday we considered the contrast between the Iranian and the Turanian civilizations. Now, having compared the faculties of the Turanians with those of the Hebrew race, we see that what had become decadent in the former progressed in the latter, subsequently working in the blood. What had been visible to the Atlantean now manifested in the Hebrew in the form of inner feeling. This experience is summed up in a single word—the name JEHOVAH. Compressed as it were into a single point, into one inner centre of consciousness of the Divine, lived the God who had been revealed to Atlantean clairvoyance behind all external phenomena. Invisible and inwardly experienced, the God lived in the blood of the generations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, leading them and all their succeeding generations from event to event on their path of destiny. In this way the outer had become inward; the outer was now experienced within, no longer seen, no longer called by different names but known by a single designation: ‘I AM THE I AM !’ The Divine had assumed an entirely different form. Whereas with the faculties man possessed in the Atlantean epoch he had found the God out yonder in the Universe, he now found the God in the centre of his own being, in his ‘I’, felt the God in the blood flowing through the generations. The great God of the Universe had now become the God of the Hebrews, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the God who flowed in the blood through the generations.

Thus was founded the racial stock whose inner mission for the evolution of humanity we shall study tomorrow. It has only been possible to-day to give an indication of the very earliest stage in the composition of the blood of this people, the stage when everything that in the Atlantean age man had allowed to work in upon him from outside was now com-pressed within his own being. We shall see what mysteries are fulfilled in happenings that have only been touched upon to-day, and we shall learn to understand the unique nature of the people from whom Zarathustra, as the Being we call Jesus of Nazareth, could derive his body.

• 1. e.g. in the Lecture Cycle The Gospel of St. Luke, Lecture Five.

If we are to realise to some extent what the Christ Event signified for the evolution of humanity, reference must again be made to a fact already known to those of you who heard the lectures given last year in Basle on the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the more necessary to speak of this, because to-day we shall be studying the Christ Event in broad outline and proceed in the next lectures to fill in details. But to draw this broad outline We must remind ourselves of a fundamental truth of human evolution, namely, that in the course of it men are constantly acquiring new faculties and reaching stages of greater perfection. In its external aspect, this fact becomes obvious simply by looking back over the comparatively short period covered by ordinary history and perceiving how in the course of time new faculties unfolded, finally giving birth to modern civilization and culture. If, however, a particular faculty is to awaken in human nature and eventually be attain-able by everyone, this faculty must appear somewhere for the first time in a specially significant form.

In the lectures on St. Luke's Gospel I spoke of the ‘Eight-fold Path’ which men can tread if they adhere to what flowed into the evolution of humanity through Gautama Buddha. This Eightfold Path is usually said to consist of the following: right view, right understanding, right speech, right action, right vocation, right application, right memory or recollectedness, right contemplation.¹ These are attributes of the life of soul. It can be said that since the time of Gautama Buddha, human nature has reached a stage where it is possible for man gradually to unfold in himself, as intrinsic faculties of his own, the attributes of this Eightfold Path. Before Gautama Buddha had lived on Earth in the incarnation in which he attained Buddhahood, this would have been beyond the power of human nature. Let us therefore be quite clear about the following.—In order that in the course of hundreds of thousands of years these faculties should be able to gradually to develop in individual men, it was essential for the initial impetus to he given through the presence in physical human nature of a Being as lofty as Gautama Buddha. As have said, these faculties will, in fact, unfold in a considerable number of human beings and when the number is sufficient, the Earth will be ready to receive the next Buddha—Maitreya Buddha—who is now a Bodhisattva.

Between these two events, therefore, lies the phase of evolution during which it should he within the power of a sufficiently large number of human beings to acquire the higher intellectual and moral qualities comprised in the Eightfold Path. In the personality of Gautama Buddha all these qualities of the Eightfold Path were present.

It is a law of the evolution of humanity that such qualities must be present in their fullness at some one time in a single personality: then, although time process may take thousands of years, they flow into humanity in general, enabling all men to receive this impulse and to develop the corresponding faculties.

Now, that which is to stream into humanity through the Christ Event will not need some use thousand years to achieve its effect as in the case of the impulse given by Gautama Buddha. What has already streamed into humanity through the Christ Being will live and continue to work as a faculty in men for the whole remaining period of Earth-evolution. What, then, is it that has come to humanity through the Christ Event, as an impulse infinitely more powerful than that of the Buddha?

It may be characterized in the following way.—The powers to which man could attain in pre-Christian times only through the Mysteries, have, since the Christ Event, become accessible—and will become increasingly so—as a universal attribute of human nature. To understand what this means it is first of all necessary to have a clear idea of the nature of the ancient Mysteries and of the process of Initiation in the pre-Christian era.

In ancient times Initiation always varied in form among the different peoples of the Earth, and it has continued to do so—in the post-Atlantean epoch also. Part of the process of Initiation was experienced by particular peoples and part by others. Those who believe in the principle of reincarnation will be able to answer the question why it was not possible for the whole process of Initiation to be experienced by every ancient people. This was not necessary, for the simple reason that a soul who had been born into one people and had there experienced a particular part of Initiation had further incarnations among different peoples and could experience the other part.

Initiation is the power to see into the spiritual world in a way which is impossible to sense-perception or to the intellect that is dependent upon the physical body.

In normal earthly life, twice. within twenty-four hours, man has to be in the sphere where the Initiate also is, but the Initiate is conscious of his surroundings, whereas ordinary man is not. Within a period of twenty-four hours man's life alternates between waking and sleeping. As anthroposophists you are all aware of the fact that when a man goes to sleep he emerges in his astral body and Ego from his physical and etheric bodies. His Ego and astral body expand into the Cosmos, whence he draws the forces he needs during waking life. From the time of going to sleep until waking, his being is in very truth spread over the Cosmos to which indeed he is always related, though he knows nothing about it. His physical consciousness is extinguished at the moment of going to sleep, when his astral body and Ego pass out of his physical and etheric bodies. During sleep man is in the Great World, the Macrocosm, but in normal earthly existence he is entirely unaware of it. Initiation means that lie is no longer unconscious when his being expands into the Cosmos, and thereby he becomes able to participate consciously in the existence of the other celestial bodies that arc connected with our Earth. Such is the nature of Initiation into the Great World.

If, without proper preparation, a man were able to become aware of the world into which he passes during sleep, the overwhelming power and splendour of the impressions made upon him would give rise to an experience comparable only to unprotected eyes being dazzled and blinded by the rays of the Sun. He would he overcome by blindness inflicted by the Cosmos, and be killed in soul. The aim of all Initiation is that man shall not pass into the Macrocosm unprepared, but with organs strengthened to such an extent that he is able to endure the impact. That is one aspect of Initiation: penetration into the Universe, enlightened perception of the world into which man actually passes during sleep at night, but of which he knows nothing.

The reason why this sojourn in the Great World dazzles and bewilders is that in the material world of the senses man is accustomed to altogether different conditions. In the world of the senses he is accustomed to consider everything from a single viewpoint; and if he comes across something that does not tally exactly with the opinions he has formed from this one viewpoint, lie regards it as false. This is quite suitable for life on the physical plane but if he were to attempt to pass out into the Macrocosm through Initiation still holding the opinion that there should he conformity in this sense, he would never find his bearings. His mode of life in the world of the senses is such that he places himself at a particular point and front this point—as though it were his snail-house—he judges everything. But when he undergoes Initiation his consciousness passes out into the Great World.—Let us suppose a man were to pass outwards in one particular direction only; he would experience only what lies in this direction, and everything else, being unnoticed, would remain unknown to him. In point of fact, however, man cannot pass out into the Macrocosm in one direction only; he must necessarily pass out in all directions, for the process is one of expansion, of spreading into the Macrocosm and the possibility of haying one single standpoint ceases altogether. He must be able to contemplate the world not only from the one point but to contemplate it as well from a second and a third standpoint. This means that he must above all develop a certain mobility and universality of vision.

There is, of course, no need to fear that an infinite number of viewpoints must be attained as is theoretically possible. Twelve are enough—in the star-language of the Mystery Schools they were symbolized by the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. A man must not, for example, pass out into the Cosmos in the direction of the constellation of Cancer only, but in such at way that he actually beholds the world from twelve different viewpoints. It does not help here to look for what is called ‘conformity’ in abstract, intellectual parlance. Conformity can be sought afterwards, in the different modes of perception that are adopted. The primary necessity is to contemplate the world from different sides.

Let me say here in passing that the great difficulty to be faced in all movements based upon occult truths is that people are so prone to import the habits of ordinary life into these movements. When truths discovered by supersensible investigation have to be communicated, it is necessary, even in the case of purely exoteric descriptions, to adhere to the principle of describing than from different points of view. Those who for years have followed the development of our movement attentively will have noticed that it has been our endeavour never to describe things from one aspect only but always from many different angles. This, of course, is also the reason why people who insist upon judging everything according to the usages of the physical plane, find contradictions here or there. Every object has a different appearance when seen from one side or from another, and in such circumstances it is easy to find contradictions. The principle in a spiritual-scientific movement should be to remember that when one statement appears to differ from an earlier one, each was being made from a particular standpoint. To avoid undue emphasis being laid upon the apparent existence of contradictions, it must be repeated that the principle of giving descriptions from many angles is always obeyed among us. For example, in the lecture-course given in Munich last year—The East in the Light of the West—great world-mysteries were described from the standpoint of Oriental philosophy. It is essential therefore for anyone who desires to attain consciousness of the Cosmos by the path outlined, to acquire mobility of vision. If he is not willing to do this he will find himself lost in a labyrinth. It is true that man can adapt himself to the Cosmos, but it is also true that the Cosmos does not adapt itself to man. Suppose someone full of preconceptions expands into the Cosmos in one direction only and insists upon adhering to this particular viewpoint; what happens is that conditions in the Cosmos have changed while and he is therefore left behind. Suppose—to use imagery deriving from the stars—he goes out in the direction Aries and believes his viewpoint to be of that constellation. But the Cosmos, having moved onwards, is actually presenting to hint what lies in the constellation of Pisces, and then—symbolically expressed—he sees what is coining from Pisces as an experience arising in Aries. Confusion is the result, and he finds himself in a labyrinth. The essential thing to remember is that man needs twelve standpoints, twelve viewpoints, to be able to find his bearings in the labyrinth of the Macrocosm.

So far we have spoken of one aspect of Initiation, namely the process of passing outwards into the Cosmos. But there is yet another way in which man is in the divine-spiritual world without knowing it; and this happens during the other period of the twenty-for hours of the day. On waking from sleep he sinks down again into the physical and etheric bodies, but quite unconsciously, for at the moment of waking his faculty of perception is immediately diverted to the outer world. Were he to descend consciously into his physical and etheric bodies he would experience something altogether different.

Man is protected by the sleeping state from penetrating consciously into the Macrocosm without due preparation. He is protected from entering consciously into the physical and etheric bodies by the fact that his faculty of perception is diverted to the outer world at the moment of waking. The danger that would arise for a man who was to descend consciously, but without proper preparation, into his physical and etheric bodies, is somewhat different from the blindness and confusion already described as the danger threatening one who attempts to expand his consciousness into the Macrocosm before being fit to do so.

If a man comes into contact with the inmost nature of his physical and etheric bodies and identities himself with it, there is an intensification of what constitutes the very purpose of these bodies, namely to enable him to unfold Ego-consciousness. Unless there has been proper preparation, the Ego descends into the sphere of the physical and etheric bodies unpurified and a man is so overpowered that the resulting mystical experiences preclude inner truth, inasmuch as deceptive pictures arise before him. If a man obtains insight into his own inner nature, he will be united with whatever egoistic , wishes, impulses, vices are in him. In ordinary circumstances no such union takes place, for during day-consciousness his attention is diverted to experiences of the outer world and they preclude comparison with what may arise out of perception of his own inner nature.

I have spoken on other occasions of the experiences described by Christian martyrs and saints when for the first time they penetrated to the depths of their own inner nature. These experiences illustrate the situation I have been describing. These Christian saints describe the temptations and deceptions that came to them when, having shut out all outer perception, they sank into their own inmost nature. Their descriptions are entirely in keeping with the truth, and it is therefore highly instructive to study the biographies of saints from this point of view and to see how man is normally diverted from awareness of the forces operating in his passions, emotions, impulses, urges and the like, because in ordinary life he immediately directs his attention to the external world.—We can therefore say: When a man descends into his own inner nature, he is as it were compressed into his Egohood, entrapped in his Egohood, concentrated with all intensity in that point at which his only desire is to he an Ego, to satisfy his own wishes and cravings; the evil that is in him then endeavours to lay hold of his Ego, Such are the conditions prevailing during this experience.

On the one hand, therefore, when a man attempts to expand into the Cosmos without due preparation, the danger confronting him is that of being blinded, dazzled; and on the other hand he is compressed, confined entirely within his Ego when he penetrates, without the right preparation, into his own physical and etherize bodies.

But yet another form of Initiation was cultivated among certain peoples. While on the one side the expansion into the Macrocosm was practised especially among the Aryan and Northern peoples, the other form was practised above all among the Egyptians, namely, the form of Initiation in which man draws near to the Divine through directing his gaze inwards and through deepened contemplation, through sinking into himself, comes to know his own nature as the work of the Divine.

In the days of the ancient Mysteries the evolution of humanity as a whole had not yet reached the stage where Initiation—whether leading outwards into the Macrocosm or inwards into man's own being, into the Microcosm—could be carried out in such a way that man was left entirely to himself. When, for example, in the process of an Egyptian Initiation a candidate was being inducted into the field of the forces operating in his physical and etheric bodies, experiencing them in full consciousness, from all sides there burst from his astral nature the most terrible passions and emotions; demonic, diabolic beings and influences issued from him. Hence the officiating Hierophant in the Egyptian Mysteries had helpers—twelve in number—who by receiving these demons into themselves turned them aside from the course they would otherwise have pursued. In this sense, therefore, man was never completely free in the old process of Initiation. For what would inevitably be evoked as a result of the penetration into the physical and etheric bodies could only be endured when a man had around him the twelve helpers who received the demons into themselves and subdued them.

Something similar took place in the Northern Mysteries, where expansion into the Macrocosm was made possible by the presence again of twelve helpers of the Initiator who surrendered their own forces to the candidate for Initiation, thus endowing him with the power to unfold the thinking and feeling necessary for finding his way through the labyrinth of the Macrocosm.²

This kind of Initiation—where man was not left to himself but was obliged to depend entirely for safety from demonic forces upon the helpers of the officiating Hierophant—was gradually to he superseded by another, one that can be achieved by a man himself, where the Initiator merely gives indications about what ought to to done and the man then gradually learns to find his own war onwards. No considerable progress has yet been made along this path, but little by little there will unfold in humanity a faculty making it possible for a man both to ascend into the Macrocosm and to descend into the Microcosm without assistance and to pass through both forms of Initiation as a free being.

The Christ Event itself took place for this very purpose: It was the starting-point from which it became possible for matt to penetrate in complete independence into the physical and etheric bodies, as well as to pass outwards into the Macrocosm, into the Great World. It was, however, necessary that both the descent and the ascent (or expansion) should he accomplished in freedom once, in the fullest possible sense, by a Being as sublime as Christ Jesus. The fundamental significance. of the Christ Event is that Christ, the all-embracing Being, accomplished in advance what it would become possible for a sufficiently large number of people to achieve in the course of Earth-evolution.—What was it that actually came to pass as a result of the Christ Event?

It was necessary on the one side that the Christ Himself should descend into a physical body and an etheric body. And because in one human being these bodies had become so sanctified that it was possible fur the Christ so to descend, once and once only, the impulse was given in the evolution of mankind whereby every human being who seeks for it is able to experience in freedom and independence the descent into his physical and etheric bodies. This had never before been accomplished, had never before taken place. For in the ancient Mysteries something quite different was brought about through the instrumentality, of the Hierophant and his helpers. In the Mysteries a candidate for Initiation could descend into the secrets of the physical and etheric bodies and rise to those of the Macrocosm only when he was not living consciously in his physical body; he had to be entirely free from the body. When he returned from this body-free state he could remember his experiences in the spiritual worlds, but he could not bring them to physical experience. It was a matter of remembrance only.

This state of things was radically changed through the Christ Event. Before Christ's coming, no Ego had ever consciously penetrated through the whole of the inner nature of man, right into the physical and etheric bodies. This had now come to pass for the first time through the Christ Event.

The other impulse was also given, in that a Being of a rank infinitely more exalted than that of man, was nevertheless united with human nature and, so united, poured His Being into the Macrocosm through the power of his own Ego, without external aid. Christ alone could make it possible for man gradually to acquire the power to penetrate into the Macrocosm in freedom. These are the two basic facts presented to us in the two Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke.—In what sense is this meant?

We have learnt that the Zarathustra-Individuality who in very early post-Atlantean times was the great Teacher of Asia, incarnated in the 6th/7th century B.C. as Zarathas or Nazarathos; and again later he incarnated as the Jesus-child of the Solomon line of the House of David, as described in St. Matthew's Gospel. In his first twelve years this Individuality in the Solomon Jesus-child developed all the faculties and qualities it was possible to unfold in the instrument of the physical and etheric bodies of an offspring of the House of Solomon. He was able to do so only because he lived for twelve years in this particular physical and etheric body. Human faculties become one's own in the real sense only when they are made into serviceable instruments. At the age of twelve the Zarathustra-Individuality passed out of the Solomon Jesus and entered into the other Jesus, described in the Gospel of St. Luke, who had descended from the Nathan line of the House of David.

The two boys were brought up in Nazareth. The Zarathustra-Individuality passed into the child of the Nathan line on the occasion described in the Gospel of St. Luke, when, after having been lost during the Feast, he was found again in the Temple at Jerusalem. The child of the Solomon line died soon afterwards, but the Zarathustra-Individuality who had dwelt within him lived on in the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel until his thirtieth year, developing to further stages all the faculties it had been possible to acquire through the instruments prepared for the Solomon Jesus in the way described. These faculties were now enriched and supplemented by what could be acquired through the very special astral body and Ego-bearer which were present in the Jesus child of St. Luke's Gospel.

Thus it was Zarathustra himself who evolved in the body of the Jesus described by St. Luke, from his twelfth until his thirtieth year, developing all the qualities contained in that body to the stage where he was able to make his third great offering—the offering of the physical body which then, for three years, became the physical body of the Christ. In a very much earlier epoch the Zarathustra-Individuality had bequeathed his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. He now offered up his physical organism, that is to say, he relinquished Ins physical sheath, with the whole of its etheric and astral content, to the Christ. And the sheaths which until then had been indwelt by the Zarathustra-Individuality, were now indwelt by a Being of an absolutely unique nature—by the Christ who is the fount of all the wisdom of the great World-Teachers. .

This is the event portrayed in the Baptism by John in the river Jordan. It is an event whose infinite, all-embracing significance is indicated in one Gospel in the words: ‘Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I behold my very Self, in whom my own Self confronts me!’—a better rendering than the comparatively trivial words...‘in whom I am well pleased’. Elsewhere in the New Testament the rendering is: ‘Thou art my beloved Son: this day I have begotten thee’. (Acts XIII, 33; also Hebrews, V, 5.) Here there is a clear indication of a birth—namely, the birth of Christ into the sheaths prepared by Zarathustra and then offered up by him. At the moment of the Baptism by John, the Christ Being entered the human sheaths made ready by Zarathustra; and there was now a rebirth of the three sheaths themselves, in that they were permeated by the spirit-substantiality of Christ. Christ was now in human sheaths—in bodies, uniquely prepared it is true, but for all that such are possessed in a less perfect state by other men.

Christ, the highest Individuality who can be united with the Earth, was now living in human sheaths, in a human body. But if He was to be a pattern for all mankind of full and complete Initiation, He would have to experience both the descent into the physical and etheric bodies, and the ascent into the Macrocosm. This He did. But from the very nature of the Christ Event it will be obvious that in His descent into the bodily sheaths, Christ was proof against all the temptations—with which He was indeed confronted but which rebounded from Him. It must also be obvious that the dangers accompanying expansion into the Macrocosm could have no effect on Him.

The Gospel of St. Matthew describes how after the Baptism the Christ Being actually descended in full consciousness into the physical and etheric bodies. The account of this is given in the story of the Temptation. We can see how in every detail this scene of the Temptation portrays the experiences undergone by man when he descends into the bodily sheaths. Christ's descent into a human physical body and etheric body was a contraction into human Egohood, lived through as an example, so that it is possible for us to say: ‘All this can happen to us, but if we are mindful of Christ, if we strive to follow His example, we have the power to confront and to overcome everything that may issue from the physical and etheric bodies’.

The first outstanding Initiation-event described in the Gospel of St. Matthew is the Temptation. It portrays one side of Initiation, the descent into the bodily sheaths. The other side of Initiation is also described, in that it is shown how Christ, having assumed the physical nature of man, underwent the experience of expansion into the Macrocosm.

I must here speak of an objection that is very naturally made. It will be fully met in the course of the following lectures but the main point at least shall be considered to-day. The objection is this. If Christ was a Being of such sublimity, why had He to undergo all these trials, why had He to descend into physical and etheric bodies, why—as every man has to do had He to emerge from these bodies and expand into the Macrocosm? He did this, not for His own sake, but for the sake of man! In higher spheres a like deed would have been within the power of Beings akin in nature to Christ, but it had never yet taken place in a human physical body and etheric body. No human body had yet been permeated by the Christ Being. Divine substantiality had before this passed out into space; but what lives in man had never yet been borne out into space. The incarnate Christ alone was capable of such a deed. It was a deed that had to be accomplished for the first time by a Divine Being clothed in human nature.

This second basic event is recounted in the Gospel of St. Matthew where it is shown that the other side of Initiation, expansion into the Macrocosm, into the world of the Sun and Stars, was actually accomplished by Christ. First He was anointed—as others were—so that He should be cleansed and be proof against whatever might approach Him, above all from the physical world. The anointing—an act that played a part in the ancient Mysteries—is presented here at a higher level, in the arena of actual history, whereas formerly it took place only in the seclusion of the temples. We see how at the Passover, Christ gives expression not only t0 the state of inner self-possession, but also to the expansion into the Macrocosm, when in the words, ‘I am the Bread’, He declares to those around Him that feels Himself living in whatever exists on the Earth in the form of material substance. In the scene of the Passover there is indicated the conscious expansion into the Macrocosm, as distinct from the unconscious expansion that takes place during ordinary sleep. And the inevitable experience of being dazzled and blinded is voiced in the monumental words: ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death’. Christ Jesus experiences in full reality what men experience as the pains of death, paralysis, blindness. The scene at Gethsemane depicts the agony of the soul in parting from the body. What follows in the Gospel narrative is intended to describe the process of passing out into the Macrocosm: the Crucifixion and the Entombment are processes that had formerly been enacted in the Mysteries only.

This, then, is the other main theme of the Gospel of St. Matthew—the expansion into the Macrocosm. Our attention is drawn to the fact that Christ Jesus had been living hitherto in the physical body which afterwards hung on the Cross. He had been concentrated in one point of space and now expanded into the Cosmos. Those who would seek for Him now could not find Him in this physical body but would have to seek Him with clairvoyant vision in the spirit which pervades space.

Christ had accomplished alone what had formerly been enacted in the Mysteries during the three-and-a-half days with extraneous help. He had accomplished that which was at His trial held against Him—namely, His statement that if this Temple were destroyed He would build it again in three days—a clear indication, this, of the initiation into the Macrocosm accomplished in the Mysteries during the three-and-a-half days. He then indicates that hereafter He must no longer be sought in the physical sheath in which He had been confined, but outside, in the spirit pervading cosmic. space. Even in feeble modern translations the majesty of this passage reveals itself to us: ‘Hereafter ye shall see at the right hand of Divine Power the Being who is now born as the prototype of the evolution of humanity and He will appear to you out of the clouds’. It is there, in the Cosmos, that the Christ must be sought, as the prototype of the great Initiation to be undergone by man when he forsakes the body and expands into the Macrocosm.

Herein we have the beginning and the end of the earthly life of Christ. It begins with the birth that took place at the Baptism by John into the body of which we have spoken. It begins with the one side of Initiation as presented in the story of the Temptation: the descent into the physical and etheric bodies. And it ends with the presentation of the other side of Initiation: the expansion into the Macrocosm. Here there is first the scene of the Last Supper, followed by the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Between these two points lie the events recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew; and in the following lectures we will insert the details into the sketch that has now been drawn in mere outline.

• 1. Renderings of the original terms vary greatly in literature on Buddhism. Those used here are taken from The Way of Zen, by A. W. Watts (Thames & Hudson), where it is pointed out that each name was originally preceded by the word samyak, meaning ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’. Thus ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’ view, and so on.
• 2. See also the Cycle: Macrocosm and Microcosm. Lecture Six.

The essential characteristic of our present age in evolution is to be recognized in the fact that the thoughts of man on Earth are abstract and dead, persisting in us as a residue of the living nature of the soul in pre-earthly existence.

This stage of development leading to abstract, that is to say, to dead thoughts is connected with the acquisition of consciousness of freedom within the process of evolution. We will give special attention today to this aspect of the subject by studying the course taken by evolution in the post-Atlantean era.

You know that after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the gradual distribution of the continents on the Earth as we know them today took place and that on the dry land, or within the areas of the dry land, five successive civilization- or culture epochs have evolved, epochs which in my book Occult Science: an Outline I have called the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Latin and our present Fifth culture epoch.

These five epochs are distinguished by the fact that the constitution of man, in the general sense, is different in each of them. If we go back to the very early culture-epochs this constitution is also expressed in the whole outer appearance of man, in his bodily features. And the nearer we come to our own epoch, the more clearly is the progress of humanity expressed in the natural tendencies of the soul. Matters relating to this subject have often been described but today I will speak about them from a point of view to which less attention has hitherto been paid.

If we go back to the first, the ancient Indian civilization-epoch which was still partly a direct outcome of the Atlantean catastrophe, we find that in those days a man felt himself to be far rather a citizen of the Cosmos beyond the Earth than a citizen of the Earth itself. And if we study the details of life at that time which, as I have often pointed out, takes us back to the seventh/eighth millennium B.C., it must be emphasised that, not out of intellectual observation—for that was unknown in those days—but out of deep, instinctive perception in that remote past, great importance was attached to the outer appearance, the external aspect of a man. Not that the people of those days engaged in any kind of study of physiognomy—that, of course, was utterly foreign to them. Such a practice belongs to much later epochs, when intellectualism, although not yet fully developed, was already dawning. These men, however, had a sensitive feeling for physiognomy. They felt deeply that if someone had this or that facial expression it indicated certain musical talents. They attached great importance to divining the musical gifts of an individual from his facial expression but also from his gestures and movements, his whole appearance as a human being. In those olden days men did not strive for any more definite knowledge of human nature in general. At that time, if anyone had come to them saying that something should be ‘proved’, they simply would not have known what was meant. It would have troubled them, would almost have given them physical pain; indeed in still earlier times there would have been actual physical pain. To ‘prove’—that would be like carving someone with knives ... so these men would have said. Why should anything have to be proved? We do not need to know anything so certain about the world that it must first be proved.

This is connected with the very vivid feeling these people still had of having come from pre-earthly existence, from the spiritual world. In the spiritual world there is no such thing as ‘proving’. There it is known that proving is a matter that has meaning on the Earth but not in the spiritual world. The wish to prove something in the spiritual world would seem to indicate a definite norm of measurement : the height of a human being must be such and such ... and then, as in the Procrustean myth, something is cut off from one who is too tall and someone too short is stretched! This is more or less what ‘proving’ would be in the spiritual world. Things there do not allow themselves to be manoeuvred into proofs ; things there are inwardly mobile, inwardly fluid.

To an Indian belonging to the ancient Indian epoch with his vivid consciousness of having descended from the spiritual world, of having simply enveloped himself in this external human nature—to such an Indian it would have seemed highly curious if anyone had demanded of him that something should be ‘proved’. These people much preferred what we today should call ‘divining’ because they wanted to be attentive to what was revealed in their environment. And in this activity of ‘divining’ they found a certain inner satisfaction.

Moreover a certain instinct enabled them to infer cleverness in a man from a face of this or that type; from another face they inferred stupidity; from the stature they inferred a phlegmatic temperament, and so on. In that epoch, divining took the place of what we today would call explanatory knowledge. And in human intercourse the aim of reciprocal behaviour was to be able to infer the moral quality of a man from his attitude of soul; from his movements and gestures, his stature.

In the earliest epoch of ancient Indian existence there was no such thing as division into castes—that came later. In connection with the Mysteries of ancient India there was actually a kind of social classification of men according to their physiognomies and their gestures. This was possible in early epochs of evolution, for a certain instinct prompted men to accept such classifications. What later arose within Indian civilization as the caste system was a kind of schematic arrangement of what had been a far more individual classification based upon an instinctive feeling for physiognomy. And in those olden days men did not feel outraged if they were ranked here or there according to their physiognomy; for they felt themselves to be God-given beings of Earth. And the authority of those from the Mysteries who were responsible for this classification, was absolute.

It was not until the later post-Atlantean civilization-epochs that the caste system gradually developed from antecedents of which I have spoken in other lectures. In the epoch of ancient India there was a deep and strong feeling that the basis of man's being was a divine IMAGINATION.

I have told you a great deal about the existence of a primordial, instinctive clairvoyance, a dreamlike clairvoyance. But in remotely distant times of the post-Atlantean era men not only spoke of seeing dreamlike Imaginations, but they said : In the particular configuration of the physical body of man when he enters Earth-existence there is present a divine Imagination. A divine Imagination becomes the basis of the being who descends to the Earth as man, and in accordance with it he forms his physiognomy and the whole physical expression of his manhood, from childhood onwards.

And so men not only looked instinctively, as I have indicated, at the physiognomy of an individual; they also saw there the Imagination of the Gods. They said to themselves : The Gods have Imaginations and they imprint these Imaginations in the physical human being.—That was the very first conception of what man is on the Earth, as a being sent by the Gods.

Then came the second post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient Persian. The instinctive feeling for physiognomy was no longer as strong as it had been in earlier times. Now men no longer looked upwards to Imaginations of the Gods but to THOUGHTS of the Gods. Formerly it had been assumed that an actual picture of man exists in certain divine Beings before a man comes down to the Earth. Afterwards, the conception was that Thoughts, Thoughts which together formed the Logos—the expression subsequently used—were the basis of the individual human being.

In this second post-Atlantean epoch—strange though it seems, it was so—great importance was attached to whether a human being was born during fine weather, whether he was born by night or by day, during the winter or the summer. There was nothing resembling intellectual reasoning but men had the feeling: whatever heavenly constellation is approved by the Gods, whether fine weather or blizzard, whether day or night, when they send a human being down to the Earth, this constellation gives expression to their Thoughts, to their divine Thoughts. And if a child was born perhaps during a storm or during some other unusual weather conditions, that was regarded by the laity as the expression of the divine Thought allocated to the child.

This was so among the laity. Among the priesthood, which in turn was dependent on the Mysteries, and kept the official register, so to speak, of the births—but this is not to be understood in the modern bureaucratic sense—these aspects of weather, time of day, season of the year and so forth, indicated under what conditions the divine Thought was allocated to a human being. This was in the second post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient Persian epoch.

Very little of this has persisted into our own time. Nowadays something extremely boring is suggested if it is said that a person talks about the weather. It is considered derogatory to say of anyone nowadays that he is a bore, he can talk of nothing but the weather.—In the days of ancient Persia such a remark would not have been understood ; it was someone who had nothing interesting to say about the weather who would have been regarded as exceedingly boring! And in point of fact it is true that we have lifted ourselves right out of the natural environment if no connection can be felt between human life and meteorological phenomena. In the ancient Persian epoch an intense feeling of participation in the cosmic environment expressed itself in the fact that men thought of events—and the birth of a human being was an important event—in connection with what was taking place in the Universe.

It would be a definite advance if men—they need not merely talk about the weather being good or bad, for that is very abstract—if men were again to reach the stage of not forgetting, when they are relating some incident, to say what kind of weather was experienced, what natural phenomena were connected with it.

It is extremely interesting when, here or there, striking phenomena are still mentioned, as, for instance was the case in connection with the death of Kaspar Hauser. Because it was a striking phenomenon, mention is made of the fact that the sun was setting on the one side while the moon was rising on the other, and so forth.

And so we can come to understand human nature as it was in the second post-Atlantean epoch.

In the third post-Atlantean epoch this instinct in men had very largely already died out—the instinct for perceiving the spiritual, for perceiving divine Thoughts in the phenomena of weather—and then men began gradually to calculate, to compute. Calculation of stellar constellations replaced the intuitive grasp of the divine Thoughts of man in the natural order; and when a child was born into the world they calculated the positions of the stars, of the fixed stars and the planets. It was essentially in the third, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch that the greatest importance was attached to the capacity to reckon from the stellar constellations the conditions under which a human being had passed from the pre-earthly into the earthly life.

So there was still consciousness of the fact that man's earthly life was determined by conditions of the extra-terrestrial environment. But now it was necessarily a matter of calculation; the time had come when the connection of the human being with the divine-spiritual Beings was no longer directly perceptible.

You need only consider how the whole mental process is really external when it is a matter of calculation. Most certainly I am not going to speak in support of the laziness of youth or of the later indifference to arithmetic shown by grown men. But it is a very different matter to give precedence to external modes of thinking which have very little to do with the whole being of man, and are simply arithmetical methods. These methods of calculation were introduced in all domains of life during the third post-Atlantean epoch. But, after all, the calculations were concerned with super-earthly conditions in which Man was at least reckoned to have his rightful abode. Whatever was calculated had been permeated through and through with feeling. But calculations today are sometimes thought out, sometimes not even thought out but arrived at simply by the application of method; calculation today is often unconcerned with content, being simply a matter of method. And the absence of content that is sometimes obvious in mathematics because method alone has been followed, is really appalling—I do not say this out of ill-will—but it is terrible. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch there was still something thoroughly human in calculations.

Then came the Graeco-Latin epoch. This was the first postAtlantean civilization-epoch in which man felt that he was living entirely on the Earth, that he was completely united with the Earth-forces. His connection with the phenomena of weather had already become a matter of mythology. The spiritual reality with which he had still felt vitally linked in the second post-Atlantean epoch, that of ancient Persia, had become the world of the Gods. Men no longer stressed the significance of climbing Olympus and plunging their heads in the mist veiling the summit; they now left it to the Gods, to Zeus, to Apollo, to plunge their heads in this Olympic cloud. Anyone who follows the myths belonging to this Graeco-Latin culture-epoch will even now have the impression that at one time men felt a relationship with the clouds and with phenomena of the heavens, but that later on they transferred this relationship to their Gods. Now it was Zeus who lived with the clouds, or Hera who created havoc among them. In earlier times man was involved with his own soul in all this. The Greek exiled Zeus—this cannot be stated in drastic terms but it does indicate how things were—the Greek had exiled Zeus to the region of the clouds, to the region of light.

The man of the ancient Persian epoch felt that together with his soul he still lived in that region. He could not have said, ‘Zeus lives in the clouds or in the light’—but because he felt his soul to be at home in the realm of the clouds, in the realm of the air, he would have said: ‘Zeus lives in me.’ The Greek was the first man in the post-Atlantean epoch who felt himself to be wholly a citizen of the Earth, and this attitude too developed only slowly and by degrees. Hence it was in the Graeco-Latin epoch that the feeling of connection with pre-earthly existence first died away. In all the three earlier post-Atlantean civilization-epochs men were keenly aware of their connection with the pre-earthly existence. No-one could have confronted them with a dogma denying pre-existence. In any case such dogmas can be formulated only if there is some prospect of their being accepted. One must be sensible enough to lay down as a dogma only that for which a number of people are prepared through evolution. The Greeks, however, had lost all awareness of pre-earthly existence and they felt themselves to be entirely men of the Earth—so much so that although they felt themselves to be still permeated by the divine-spiritual, yet they were thoroughly at one with all that belongs exclusively to the Earth.

One must have a feeling for the reason why such mythology could be evolved for the first time in the Greek period, after the connection of man's own soul with super-earthly phenomena had been lost. In the first post-Atlantean epoch man felt himself to be the product of divine Imagination which he conceived as being present in the sphere of soul and spirit (diagram). Later he felt himself to be the product of divine Thoughts manifesting in the phenomena of the heavens, in wind and weather, and so forth. Then he gradually lost the consciousness which once led him into the cosmic expanse but had narrowed more and more into the confines of the Earth. Then came the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, when through calculation man was recognized as a cosmic being. And then came the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin epoch, when man became wholly a citizen of the Earth.

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If we look back once again into the third post-Atlantean epoch, we come to a time when, although men calculated the conditions of their heavenly existence, at the same time they still had very strong feelings about where they were born on Earth. This is a particularly interesting fact. Except for calculation, men had forgotten their heavenly existence and in any case the calculation had first to be made. It was the age of astrological calculations. But a man who perhaps had no data at all for the time of his birth, nevertheless felt the effects of calculation. One who was born in the far south felt in what he could experience there, the effects of the calculation; he attached more importance to this than to the calculation itself. The calculation was different for one who was born in the north. The astrologers of course could work out the calculation itself but the man felt the effects of it. And how did he feel these effects?

He felt them because the whole natural tendency of his soul and Body was bound up with the place of his birth and its geographical and climatic characteristics ; for in this third postAtlantean culture-epoch man felt himself to be primarily a creature of breath. His breathing in the south was not the same as it was in the north. He was a being of breath. Of course, outer civilization was not advanced enough to enable such feelings to be expressed ; but what was living in the human soul was a product of the breathing-process; and the breathing process in turn was a product of the place on Earth where a man was born, where he lived.

This was no longer so among the Greeks. In the Greek age it was not the breathing-process or the connection with the locality on Earth that was the determining factor. In the Greek age it was the tie of blood, the tribal feeling and sentiment that gave rise to the group-soul consciousness. In the third postAtlantean epoch, group-souls were felt to be connected with the earthly locality. In that epoch men pictured to themselves wherever there is a holy place, the God who represents the group soul is within it; the God was attached to the locality. This ceased during the Greek period. Then, together with the Earth-consciousness, with the attitude of soul bound to the Earth through man's feelings, sentient experiences and instincts, there began the feeling for kinship in the blood. Man had been brought right down to the Earth. His consciousness no longer led him to Look beyond the Earth; he felt that he belonged to his tribe, to his race, through his blood.

And what is our own position in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch? This is almost obvious from the diagram I have sketched in accordance with the facts. Yes, we have crept into the Earth. We have been deprived of the super-earthly forces; we no longer live and should no longer live, with the purely earthly forces which are astir in the blood; we have become dependent upon subterranean forces, sub-earthly forces.

That there are indeed such forces you may learn from what is done with potatoes. You know, of course, that in the winter the peasants bury their potatoes in trenches; then they keep alive, otherwise they would perish. Conditions under the Earth are different; there the summer warmth is maintained during the winter.

Now the life of plants in general can only be understood when we know that up to the flower the plant is a product of the previous year. It grows out of the Earth-forces; it is only the flower that needs the actual sunlight.

What, then, does it signify for us as human beings that we become dependent upon sub-earthly forces? It is not the same for us as for potatoes. We are not laid in trenches in order that we may thrive during the winter. Our dependence upon sub-earthly forces signifies something quite different, namely, that the Earth takes away from us the influence of the super-earthly. We are deprived of this influence by the Earth. In his consciousness, man was first a divine Imagination, then a divine Thought, then the result of calculation, then Earth-man. The Greek felt himself to be a man belonging altogether to the Earth, living in the blood. We, therefore, must learn to feel ourselves independent of the super-earthly ; but independent, too, of what lies in our blood.

This has come about because we no longer live through the period between our twenty-first and twenty-eighth years in the same way as men did in earlier times; we no longer have the second experience described yesterday, we no longer have living thoughts as the result of consciousness influenced by the super-earthly, but we have thoughts which have no inner vitality at all and are therefore dead. It is the Earth itself, with its inner forces, which kills our thoughts when we become Earth-men.

And a remarkable vista ensues: as Earth-men we bury what is left of man in the physical sphere; we give over the corpse to the Earth-elements. The Earth is also active in the process of cremation; decay is only a slow process of burning. As to our thoughts—and this is the striking characteristic of the Fifth post-Atlantean period—when we are born, when we are sent down to the Earth, the Gods give over our thoughts to the Earth. Our thoughts are buried, actually buried, when we become men of Earth. This has been so since the beginning of the Fifth post-Atlantean epoch. To be possessed of intellect means to have a soul with thoughts from which the heavenly impulses have been taken away by the Earth-forces.

The characteristic of our manhood today is that in our inmost soul, precisely through our thinking, we have united with the Earth. On the other hand, as a result of this, it is only now, in the Fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch that it is possible for us to send back to the Cosmos the thoughts which we imbue with life through our earthly deeds in the way described at the end of yesterday's lecture.

Evolutionary impulses of this nature lie at the very roots of the significant products of human culture. And our feelings cannot but be profoundly stirred by the fact that at the time when European humanity was approaching this Fifth postAtlantean epoch, poetic works such as Wolfram von Eschenbach's ‘Parsifal’ appeared. We have often studied this work as such but today we will direct our eyes of soul to something that is to be found there as a majestic sign of the times. Think of the remarkable characteristic that now becomes evident, not only in Wolfram, but wherever the poetic gift comes to expression in men of that period.

A certain uneasiness is perceptible concerning three stages in the evolution of the human soul. The first trait to be observed in a human being when he comes into this world, when he submits himself to this life and is living in a naive connection with the world—the first trait to be observed is simplicity, dullness.

The second, however, is doubt. And precisely at the time of the approaching Fifth post-Atlantean epoch, doubt is graphically described. If doubt is close to the heart, a man's life (or soul) must have a hard time¹—such was the feeling prevailing in those days. But there was also the feeling: man must wrestle his way through doubt to blessedness. And blessedness was the word used for the condition created when man has brought divine life again into thoughts that have become ungodly, into dead thoughts that have become completely earthly. Man's submergence in the earthly realm—this was felt to be the cause of the condition of doubt; and blessedness was felt to be a break from earthly things through the vitalizing of thoughts.

SIMPLICITY—DULLNESS
DOUBT
BLESSEDNESS

This was the gist of the mood prevailing in the poetic works of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, when man was struggling onwards to the Fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The dawn of this epoch was felt more intensely at the time than it is today, when men are weary of thinking about these things, when they have become mentally too lazy. But they will have to begin again to think deeply about such matters and to set their feelings astir, otherwise the ascent of mankind would not be possible. And what does that really mean? The Earth acts as a mirror for man; he is not intended to reach a sub-earthly level. But his lifeless thoughts penetrate into the Earth and apprehend death, which pertains to the Earth-element only. However, the nature of man himself is such that when he imbues his thoughts with life he sends them out into the Cosmos as mirror-pictures. And so all the living thoughts that arise in man are seen by the Gods glittering back from evolving humanity. When man is urged to make his thoughts come alive he is being called upon to be a co-creator in the Universe. For these thoughts are reflected by the Earth and stream out again into the Universe, must make their way again out into the Universe.

Hence when we grasp the meaning of the evolution of mankind and the world, we feel that in a way we are led back again to the epochs that have already been lived through. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, man's status an Earth was arrived at by means of calculation; but for all that he was always brought by this means into connection with the surrounding world of stars. Today we proceed historically, starting from man; man becomes the starting-point for a study which you will find presented in the book, Occult Science: an Outline, where we have actually sent out living human thoughts and noted what they have become when we follow them in the cosmic environment as they speed away from us, when we learn to live with these living thoughts in the cosmic expanse.

These processes indicate the deep significance of the fact that man has come to the stage of having dead thoughts, that he is, so to speak, in danger of uniting completely with the Earth.

Let us follow the picture further. Genuine Imaginations make this possible. It is only deliberately thought-out Imaginations that lead us no further. Think for a moment of a mirror. We say that it throws the light back. The expression is not quite accurate, but in any case the light must not get behind the mirror. There is only one way in which this could happen and that would be if the mirror were broken. And indeed, if man does not vitalize his thoughts, if he persists in harbouring merely intellectualistic thoughts, dead thoughts, he must destroy the Earth.

Admittedly, the destruction begins with the most highly rarefied element: warmth. And in the Fifth post-Atlantean epoch man has no opportunity of ruining anything other than the warmth-atmosphere of the Earth through the ever-increasing development of purely intellectualistic thoughts. But then comes the Sixth post-Atlantean epoch. If by that time man has not been converted from intellectualism to Imagination, destruction would begin, not only of the warmth-atmosphere but also of the air-atmosphere, and if their thoughts were to remain purely intellectualistic, men would poison the air, ruining, in the first place, all vegetation.

In the Seventh post-Atlantean epoch it will be possible for man to contaminate the water, and if his exudations were to be the outcome of purely intellectualistic thoughts, they would pass over into the universal fluidity of the Earth. Through this universal fluidity of the Earth, the mineral element of the Earth would, in the first place, lose cohesion. And if man did not vitalize his thoughts, thereby giving back to the Cosmos what he has received from it, he would have every opportunity of shattering the Earth.

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Thus the life of soul in man is intimately connected with natural existence. Intellectualistic knowledge today is a purely Ahrimanic product, aiming at blinding humanity to these things If a man is persuaded that his thoughts are merely thoughts and have nothing to do with happenings in the Universe, he is being deluded into believing that he can have no influence upon the evolution of the Earth, and that either with or without his collaboration the Earth will at some time come to an end in some such way as foretold by physical science.

But the Earth will not come to a purely physical end; its end will come in the way brought about by mankind itself.

Here again is one of the points where we are shown how Anthroposophy connects the moral world of soul with the physical world of the senses, whereas today no such connection exists and modern theology even considers it preferable to regard the moral sphere as being entirely independent of the physical. And philosophers today who drag themselves about, panting and puffing, with backs bent under the burden of the findings of science, are happy when they can say : Yes, for the world of nature there is science; but philosophy must extend to the Categorical Imperative, to that about which man can know nothing.

These things today are often confined to the schools and universities. But they will take effect in life itself if mankind does not become conscious of how soul-and-spirit is creative in the physical-material realm and of how the future of the physical material realm will depend upon what man resolves to develop in the realm of soul-and-spirit. With these basic principles we can become conscious on the one side of the infinite importance of the soul-life of mankind, and on the other side of the fact that man is not merely a creature wandering fortuitously over the Earth, but that he belongs to the whole Universe.

But, my dear friends, right Imaginations give rise to what is right. If man does not vitalize his thoughts, but is more and more apt to allow them to die, then his thoughts will creep into the Earth and, in the end, he will become an earthworm in the Universe, because his thoughts seek out the habitations of the earthworms. That too is a valid Imagination.

Human civilization should avoid the possibility of man becoming an earthworm, for should that happen the Earth will be shattered and the cosmic goal that is quite clearly within the scope of human capacities, will not be reached. There are things which we should not merely take into our theories, into our abstract speculations, but deeply into our hearts, for Anthroposophy is a concern of the heart. And the more clearly it is grasped as a concern of the heart, the better it is understood.

• 1. With a slight variation Dr Steiner was quoting the opening couplet of Wolfram von Eschenbach's ‘Parsifal’. In the original the lines are as follows:
  Ist zwîfel herzen nâchgebûr.

The lecture presented here is the 3rd of 12 lectures in the series entitled A Living Knowledge of Nature, the Fall of the Intellect into Sin, the Spiritual Resurrection.

Within this course of lectures I intend to speak of things which are connected with the preceding lectures, but which bring results of spiritual science drawn from a deeper source and show how the human being is placed in the universe. We speak of man in such a way that we envisage, to begin with, his physical organization and his etheric or vital body revealed to spiritual investigation; and then we speak of the astral body and of the Ego organization. But we do not yet grasp man's structure if we simply enumerate these things in sequence, for each of these members has a different place in the universe. We are able to grasp man's position in the cosmos only if we understand how these different members are placed in the universe.

When we study the human being, as he stands before us, we find that these four members of human nature interpenetrate in a way which cannot at first be distinguished; they are united in an alternating activity, and in order to understand them we must first study them separately, as it were, and consider each one in its special relation to the universe. We can do this in the following way, by setting out, not from a more general aspect, but from a definite standpoint.

Bear I mind, to begin with, the more peripheric aspect of man, the external boundary, what is outside him. From other anthroposophical studies we know that we discover certain senses only when we penetrate, as it were, below the surface of the human form, into man's inner life. But essentially speaking, also the senses which transmit us a knowledge of our own inner being, have to be sought in regard to their starting point, and to begin with in a very unconscious way, on the inner side of the surface of man's being. We may therefore say: Everything in man existing in the form of senses should be looked for on the surface. It suffices to bear in mind one of the more prominent senses; for example, the eye or the ear—these show that the human being must obtain certain impressions from outside. How matters really stand in regard to these senses should, of course, be studied more deeply, by a more profound research. This has already been done here for some of the human senses. But the way in which these things appear in ordinary life induces us to say: A sense organ—for example, the eye or the ear—perceives things through impressions coming from outside.

Man's position on earth easily enables us to see that the chief direction which determines the influences enabling him to have sensory perceptions can approximately be described as “horizontal.” A more accurate study would also show us that this statement is absolutely correct; for when perceptions apparently come from another direction, this is an illusion. Every direction relating to perception must in the end follow the horizontal. And the horizontal is the line which runs parallel to the surface of the earth. If I now draw this schematically, I would therefore have to say: If this is the surface of the earth, with the perceiving human being upon it, the chief direction of his perceptions is the one which runs parallel to the earth. All our perceptions follow this direction. And when we study the human being, it will not be difficult to say that the perceptions come from outside; they reach, as it were, man's inner life from outside. What meets them from inside? From inside we bring towards them our thinking, the power of forming representations or thoughts.

If you consider this process, you cannot help saying: When I perceive through the eye, I obtain an impression from outside, and my thinking power comes from inside. When I look at the table, its impression comes from outside. I can retain a picture of the table in my memory through the representing or thinking power which comes from within. We may therefore say: If we imagine a human being schematically, the direction of his perceptions goes from the outside to the inside, whereas the direction of his thinking goes from the inside to the outside.

What we thus envisage, is connected with the perceptions of the earthly human being in ordinary life, of the earthly human being appearing to us externally in the present epoch of the earth's development. The things mentioned above are facts evident to the ordinary human consciousness. But if you study the anthroposophical literature, you will find that there are other possibilities of consciousness differing from those which exist for the earthly human being in ordinary life.

I would now ask you to form, even approximately and vaguely, a picture of what the earthly human being perceives. You look upon the colours which exist on earth, you hear sounds, you experience sensations of heat, and so forth. You obtain contours of the things you perceive, so that you perceive their shape, and so forth.

But all the things in our environment, with which we have thus united ourselves, only constitute facts pertaining to our ordinary consciousness. There are, however, other possibilities of consciousness, which remain more unconscious in the earthly human being and are pushed into the depths of his soul life; yet they are just as important, and frequently far more important in human life than the facts of consciousness which exhaust themselves in what I have described so far.

For the human constitution which man has here on earth, the things below the surface of the earth are just as important as those which exist in the earth's circumference. The circumference of the earth, what exists around the earth, may be perceived by the ordinary senses and grasped by the representing capacity which meets sense perception. This fills the consciousness of the ordinary human being living on the earth.

But let us consider the inside of the earth. Simple reflection will show you that the inside of the earth is not accessible to ordinary consciousness. We may, to be sure, make excavations reaching a certain depth and in these holes—for example in mines—observe things in the same way in which we observe them on the earth's surface. But this would be the same as observing a human corpse. When we study a corpse, we study something which no longer constitutes the whole human being, but only a residue of man as a whole. Indeed, those who are able to consider such things in the right way must even say: We are then looking upon something which is the very opposite of man. The reality of earthly man is the living human being walking around, and to him belong the bones, muscles, etc. which exist in him. The bone structure, the muscular structure, the nerve structure, the heart, lungs, etc. correspond to the living human being and are as such true and real. But when I look upon the corpse, this no longer corresponds to the living human being. The form which lies before me as corpse, no longer requires the existence of lungs, of a heart, or of a muscular system. Consequently these decay. For a while they maintain the form given to them, but a corpse is really an untruth, for it cannot exist in the form in which it lies before us; it must dissolve. It is not a reality. Similarly the things I perceive when I dig a hole into the earth are not realities.

The closed earth influences the human being standing upon it, differently from the things which exist in such a way that when the human being stands upon the earth, he beholds them through his senses, as the earth's environment.

If, to begin with, you consider this from the soul aspect, you may say: The earth's environment is able to influence man's senses and it may be grasped by the thinking or representing capacity pertaining to ordinary human consciousness. Also what is inside the earth exercises an influence upon man, but it does not follow the horizontal direction; it rises from below. In our ordinary state of consciousness, we do not perceive these influences rising from below in the same way in which we perceive the earth's environment through the ordinary senses. If we could perceive what rises up from the earth in the same way in which we perceive what exists in the earth's environment, we would need a kind of eye or organ of touch able to feel into the earth, without our having to dig a hole into it, so that we could reach or see through (durchgreifen) the earth in the same way in which we see through air when we behold something. When we look through air, we do not dig a hole into it; if we first had to dig a hole into air, in order to look at it, we would see our environment in the same way in which we would see the earth in a coal mine. Hence, if it were not necessary to dig a hole into the earth in order to see its inside, we would have to have a sense organ able to see without the need of digging holes into the earth, an organ for which the earth, such as it is, would become transparent to sight or touch. In a certain way this is the case, but in ordinary life these perceptions do not reach human consciousness. For what the human being would then perceive are the earth's different kinds of metals.

Consider how many metals are contained in the earth. Even as you have perceptions in your air-environment—if I may use this expression—even as you see animals, plants, minerals, artistic objects of every kind, so perceptions of the metals rise up to you from the earth's inside. But if perceptions of the metals could really reach your consciousness, they would not be ordinary perceptions, but imaginations. And these imaginations continually reach man, by rising up from below. Even as the visual impressions come, as it were, from the horizontal direction, so the radiations of metals continually reach us from below; yet they are not visual perceptions of the minerals, but something pertaining to the inner nature of minerals, which works its way up through us and takes on the form of imaginations or pictures. But the human being does not perceive these pictures; they are weakened. They are suppressed, as it were, because man's earthly consciousness is not able to perceive imaginations. They are weakened down to feelings.

If, for example, I imagine all the gold existing in some way in the caverns of the earth, and so forth, my heart really perceives an image which corresponds to the gold in the earth. But this picture is an imagination, and for this reason ordinary human consciousness cannot perceive it, for it is dulled down to a life feeling, an inner vital feeling, which cannot even be interpreted, less still perceived, in its corresponding image. The same applies to the other organs, for the kidneys perceive in a definite image all the tin which exists in the earth, and so forth.

All these impressions are subconscious and they do not appear in the general feelings that live in the human being. You may therefore say: The perceptions coming from the earth's environment follow a horizontal direction and are met from within by the thinking or representing power; from below come the perceptions of metals—above all, of metals—and they are met by feeling, in the same way in which ordinary perceptions are met by the thinking capacity. This process, however, remains chaotic and unreal to the human beings of the present time. From these impressions they only derive a general life-feeling.

If the human being on earth had the gift of imagination, he would know that his nature is also connected with the metals in the earth. In reality, every human organ is a sense organ, and although we use it for another purpose, or apparently do so, it is nevertheless a sense organ. During our earthly life, we simply use our organs for other purposes. For we really perceive something with each organ. The human being is in every way a great sense organ, and as such, he has differentiated, specified sense organs in the single organs of his body.

You therefore see that from below, the human being obtains perceptions of metals and that he has a life of feeling corresponding to these perceptions. Our feelings exist in contrast to everything coming to us from the earth's metals, even as our thinking or representing power exists in contrast to everything which penetrates into our sense perceptions from the earth's environment.

But in the same way in which the influences of the metals reach us from below, so we are influenced from above by the movements and forms of the celestial bodies in the world's spaces. We have sense perceptions in our environment, and similarly we have a consciousness which would manifest itself as inspired consciousness, as inspirations coming from every planetary movement and from every constellation of fixed stars. Even as our thinking capacity streams towards our ordinary sense perceptions, so we send out to the movements of the celestial bodies a force which is opposed to the impressions derived from the stars, and this force is our will. What lies in our will power, would be perceived as inspiration, if we were able to use the inspired state of consciousness.

You therefore see that by studying man in this way, we must say to ourselves: In his earthly consciousness we find, to begin with, the condition in which he is most widely awake: his life of sensory perceptions and of thoughts. During our ordinary, earthly state of consciousness, we are completely awake only in this life of sensory perceptions and thoughts. Our feeling life, on the other hand, only exists in a dreaming state. There, we only have the intensity or clearness of dreams, but dreams are pictures, whereas our feeling life is the general soul constitution determined by life; that is to say, feeling. But at the foundation of feeling lie the metal influences coming from the earth. And the consciousness based on the will lies still deeper. I have frequently explained this. Man does not really know the will that lives in him. I have often explained this by saying: The human being has the thought of stretching out his arm, or of touching something with his hand. He can have this thought in his waking consciousness and may then look upon the process of touching something. But everything that really lies in between, the will which shoots into his muscles, etc., all this remains concealed to our ordinary consciousness, as deeply hidden as the experiences of a deep slumber without dreams. We dream in our feelings and we sleep in our will. But the will which sleeps in our ordinary consciousness responds to the impressions coming from the stars, in the same way in which our thoughts respond to the sense impressions of ordinary consciousness. And what we dream in our feelings is the counter-activity which meets the influences coming from the metals of the earth.

In our present waking life on earth, we perceive the objects around us. Our thinking capacity counteracts. For this we need our physical and etheric body. Without the physical and etheric body we could not develop the forces which work in a horizontal direction—the perceptive and thinking forces. If we imagine this schematically we might say: As far as our daytime consciousness is concerned, the physical and etheric bodies become filled with sense impressions and with our thinking activity. When the human being is asleep, his astral body and his Ego organization are outside. They receive the impressions which come from below and from above. The Ego and the astral body really sleep in the metal streams rising up from the earth, if I may use this expression, and in the streams descending from the planetary movements and the constellations of fixed stars.

What thus arises in the earth's environment exercises no influence in a horizontal direction, but exists in form of forces which descend from above, and in the night we live in them.

If you could attain the power of imagination by setting out from your ordinary consciousness, so that the imaginative consciousness would really exist, you would have to achieve this in accordance with the demands of the present epoch of human development; namely, in such a way that every human organ is seized by the imaginative consciousness. For example, it would have to seize not only the heart, but every other organ. I have told you that the heart perceives the gold which exists in the earth. But the heart alone could never perceive the gold. This process takes place as follows: As long as the Ego and astral body are connected with the physical and etheric bodies, as is normally the case, the human being cannot be conscious of such a perception. Only when the Ego and the astral body become to a certain extent independent, as is the case in imagination, so that they do not have to rely on the physical and etheric bodies, we may say: The astral body and the Ego organization acquire, near the heart, the faculty of knowing something about these radiations coming from the metals in the earth. We may say: The center in the astral body for the influences which come from the gold radiations, lies in the region of the heart. For this reason we may say: The heart perceives—because the real perceptive instrument in the astral body pertaining to this part, to the heart—not the physical organ, but the astral body, perceives.

If we acquire the imaginative consciousness, the whole astral body and also the whole Ego organization must enable the parts corresponding to every human organ to perceive. That is to say, the human being is then able to perceive the whole metal life of the earth—differentiated, of course. But details in it can only be perceived after a special training, when he has passed through a special occult study, enabling him to know the metals of the earth. In the present time, such a knowledge would not be an ordinary one. And today it should not be applied to life in a utilitarian way. It is a cosmic law that when the knowledge of the earth's metals is used for utilitarian purposes in life, this would immediately entail the loss of the imaginative knowledge.

Last part—It may, however, occur that owing to pathological conditions, the intimate connection which should exist between the astral body and the organs is interrupted somewhere in man's being, or even completely, so that the human being sleeps, as it were, quite faintly, during his waking condition. When he is really asleep, his physical body and his etheric body on the one hand, and his astral body and his Ego on the other, are separated; but there also exists a sleep so faint that a person may walk about in an almost imperceptible state of stupor—a condition which may perhaps appear highly interesting to some, because such people have a peculiarly “mystical” appearance; they have such mystical eyes and so forth. This may be due to the fact that a very faint sleeping state exists even during the waking condition. There is always a kind of vibration between the physical and etheric body and the Ego organization and astral body. There is an alternating vibration. And such people can be used as metal feelers—they feel the presence of metals. But the capacity to feel the presence of special metal substances in the earth is always based on a certain pathological condition.

Of course, if these things are only viewed technically and placed at the service of technical-earthly interests, it is, cruelly speaking, quite an indifferent matter whether people are slightly ill or not; even in other cases, one does not look so much at the means for bringing about this or that useful result. But from an inner standpoint, from the standpoint of a higher world conception, it is always pathological if people can perceive not only horizontally, in the environment of the earth, but also vertically, in a direct way, not through holes. What thus comes to expression, must, of course, be revealed in a different way. If we take a pen and write down something, this is contained in the ordinary life of thought; this must be lifeless. But the ordinary life of thought drowns in light (“verleuchtet”)—if I may use this expression in contrast to “darkens” (“verdunkelt”)—the perception coming from below; consequently, it is necessary to use different signs from those we use, for example, when we write or speak; different signs must be used when specific metal substances in the earth are perceived through a pathological condition. I observe, for example, that also water is a metal. Pathological people may actually be trained, not only to have unconscious perceptions, but also to give unconscious signs of these perceptions—for example, they can make signs with a rod placed in their hand.

What is the foundation of all this? It is based on the fact that there is a faint interruption between the Ego and astral body on the one hand, and the physical and etheric body on the other, so that the human being does not only perceive what is, approximately speaking, at his side, but by eliminating his physical body he becomes a sensory organ able to perceive the inside of the earth, without having to dig holes into it.

But when this direction exercises its influence, a direction which is normally that of feeling, then one cannot use the expressions which correspond to the thinking capacity. These perceptions are not expressed in words. They can only be expressed, as already indicated, through signs.

Similarly, it is possible to stimulate perceptions descending from above. They have a different inner character; they are no longer a perception of metals, but inspiration, conveying the movements or the constellation of the stars. In the same way in which the human being perceives the earth's constitution as rising up from below, he now perceives, descending from above, something which again arises through pathological conditions, when the Ego is in a more loose connection with the astral body. He then perceives, descending from above, something which really gives the world its division of time, the influence of time. This enables him to look more deeply into the world's course of events, not only in regard to the past, but also in connection with certain events which do not flow out of man's free will, but out of the necessity guiding the world's events. He is then able to look, as it were, prophetically into the future. He casts a gaze into the chronological order of time.

With these things I only wished to indicate that through certain pathological conditions it is possible for man to extend his perceptive capacity. In a s o u n d and h e a l t h y way this is done through imagination and inspiration.

Perhaps the following may explain what constitutes sound and unsound elements in this field. For a normal person it is quite good if he has—let us say—a normal sense of smell. With a normal sense of smell he perceives objects around him through smell; but if he has an abnormal sense for any smelling object in his environment, he may suffer from an idiosyncrasy, when this or that object is near him. There are people who really get ill when they enter a room in which there is just one strawberry; they do not need to eat it. This is not a very desirable condition. It may, however, occur that someone who is not interested in the person, but in the discovery of stolen strawberries, or other objects which can be smelled, might use the special capacity of that person.

If the human sense of smell could be developed like that of dogs, it would not be necessary to use police dogs, for people could be used instead. But this must not be one. You will therefore understand me when I say that the perceptive capacity for things coming from below and from above should not be developed wrongly, so as to be connected with pathological conditions, for these are positively destructive for man's whole organization.

To train people to sense the presence of metals would therefore be the same as training them to be bloodhounds, police dogs, except that here—if I may use this expression—the humanly punishable element is far more intensive. For only through pathological conditions can such things appear in this or that person. All the things which generally come towards you in an ignorantly confused and nebulous way, will be understood in regard to their theory, and also by judging them as they have to be judged, within man's whole connection with the world. This is one aspect of the matter.

The other aspect is that there is also a right application of such a knowledge. A person who is endowed with the imaginative power of knowledge, must not use the imaginative forces of the astral body, located in the region of the heart, to procure gold. He may, however, apply these forces to recognize the construction, the true tasks, the inner essence of the heart itself. He may apply them in the meaning of human self-knowledge. In physical life this also corresponds to the right application of—let us say—the sense of smell, of sight, and so forth. We learn to know every organ in man when we are able to put together what we discern as coming from below or from above.

For example, you learn to know the heart when you recognize the gold contained in the earth, which sends out streams that may be perceived by the heart, and when, on the other hand, you recognize the current of will descending from the sun; that is to say, when you recognize the counter-current of the sun current in the will. If you unite these two streams, the joint activity of the sun's current from above, streaming down from the sun's zenith, and of the gold perceived below—if the gold contained in the earth stirs your imagination, and the sun your inspiration, you will obtain knowledge of the human heart, heart knowledge. In a similar way it is possible to gain knowledge of the other organs. Consequently, if the human being really wants to know himself, he must draw the elements of this knowledge from the influences coming from the cosmos.

This leads us to a sphere which indicates even more concretely than I have done on previous occasions man's connection with the cosmos. If you add to this the lectures which I have just concluded on the development of natural science in more recent times, you will gather, particularly from yesterday's lecture, that on the present stage of natural science man learns to know essentially lifeless substance, dead matter. He does not really learn to know himself, his own reality, but only his lifeless part. A true knowledge of man can only arise from the joint perception of the lifeless organs which we recognize in man, the organs in their lifeless state, and all we are able to recognize from below and from above in connection with these organs.

This leads to a knowledge based on full consciousness. An earlier, more instinctive knowledge was based upon an interpolation of the astral body which was different from that of today. Today the astral body is interpolated in such a way that man, as an earthly human being, may become free. This entails that he should recognize in the first place what is dead, and this pertains to the present, then the life foundation of the past through that which rises up from below—from the earth's metals—and finally the life-giving forces descending from above as star influences and star constellations.

A true knowledge of man will have to seek in every organ this threefold essence: the lifeless or physical, the basis of life or the psychical, and the life-giving, vitalizing forces, or the spiritual.

Everywhere in human nature, in every detail connected with it, we shall therefore have to seek the physical-bodily, the psychical, and the spiritual. Logically, its point of issue will have to be gained from a true estimate of the results so far obtained in the field of natural science. It is necessary to see that the present stage of natural science leads us everywhere to the grave of the earth and that the living essence must be discovered and lifted out of the earth's grave.

We discover this by perceiving that modern spiritual science must endow old visions and ideas (Ahnungen) with life. For these always existed. In these days I have given advice to people working in different spheres; I would advise those studying history of literature that when they speak of Goetheanism, they should keep to Goethe's ideas expressed in the second part of “Wilhelm Meister”, in “Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahren”, where we find the description of a woman who is able to participate in the movements of the stars, owing to a pathological condition of soul and spirit. At her side we find an astronomer. And she is confronted by another character, by the woman who is able to feel the presence of metals. And at the side of this woman we find Montanus, the miner, the geologist. This contains a profound foreboding, far profounder than the truths in physics discovered since Goethe's time in the field of natural-scientific development, great as they are, for these natural-scientific truths pertain to man's circumference. But in the second part of “Wilhelm Meister” Goethe drew attention to something pertaining to the worlds with which man is connected—with the stars above, with the earth's depths below.

Many things of this kind may be found, both in the useful fields and in the luxury fields of science. But also these things will only be drawn to the surface as real treasures of knowledge, when Goetheanism, on the one hand, and spiritual science on the other, will be taken so earnestly that many things of which Goethe had an inkling will be illumined by spiritual science; and also spiritual science may thus change into something giving us a historical sense of pleasure when we see that Goethe had a kind of idea of things which now arise in form of knowledge, and which he elaborated artistically in his literary works.

With all these things, however, I wish to point out that when we speak of scientific strivings within the anthroposophical movement, these should be followed with that deep earnestness which does not bring with it the danger of Anthroposophy being deduced from modern chemistry, or modern physics, modern physiology, and so forth, but which includes the single branches of science in the real stream of living anthroposophical knowledge. One would like to hear of chemists, physicists, physiologists, medical men speaking in an anthroposophical way. For it leads to no progress if specialists succeed in forcing anthroposophy to speak chemically, physically or physiologically. This would only rouse opposition, whereas there should at last be a progress, evident in the fact that Anthroposophy reveals itself as Anthroposophy also to these specialists, and not as something which is taken in accordance with its terminology, so that terminologies are thrown over things which one already knows, even without Anthroposophy. It is the same whether anthroposophical or other terminologies are applied to hydrogen, oxygen, etc., or whether one adheres to the old terminologies. The essential thing is to take in Anthroposophy with one's whole being, then one becomes a true Anthroposophist, also as a chemist, physiologist, physician, etc.

In these lectures, in which I was asked to describe the history of scientific thought, I wished to bring, on the basis of a historical contemplation, truths that may bear fruit. For the anthroposophical movement absolutely needs to become fruitful, really fruitful, in many different fields.

Today I would like to begin by telling you a little story from the world of knowledge in the 19th century, so that we can use it to orient ourselves to the great changes that have taken place in the soul of Western man. I have emphasized it often: the person of the present time has a strong awareness that people have actually always thought, felt and sensed as they do today, or that if they felt differently, it was because they were children developing, and that only now, I would say, has the human being advanced to the right manliness of thinking. In order to really get to know the human being, one must be able to put oneself back into the way of thinking of older times, so that one is not so sure of victory and haughty about what fills human souls in the present. And when one then sees how, in the course of just a few decades, the thoughts and ideas that existed among the educated have changed completely, then one will also be able to grasp how radically the soul life of human beings has changed over long periods of time, which we were indeed obliged to point out again yesterday.

One of the most famous Hegelians of the 19th century is Karl Rosenkranz, who, after various residences, was a professor of philosophy at the University of Königsberg for a long time. Rosenkranz was a Hegelian, but his Hegelianism was, first of all, colored by a careful study of Kant – he saw Hegel, so to speak, through the glasses of Kantianism – but, in addition, his Hegelianism was strongly colored by his study of Protestant theology. All of this – Protestant theology, Kantianism, Hegelianism – came together in this man from the mid-19th century.

Hegelianism had disappeared from the horizon of educated Central Europe by the last third of the 19th century, and it is hard to imagine how deeply thinking people in Central Europe were steeped in it in the 1840s. That is why it is difficult today to get an idea of what it actually looked like in a soul like that of Karl Rosenkranz.

Now, after all, Rosenkranz was a person who, in the 1940s, thought in a way that was expected of someone who had abandoned old, useless thinking, who had submitted to modern enlightenment and was not superstitious, according to the educated way of thinking at the time. One could think that Rosenkranz was such a person, who was, so to speak, at the height of the education of the time.

Now this Karl Rosenkranz – it was in 1843 – once went for a walk and on this walk met a man named Bon, with whom he had a conversation that was so interesting for him, for Rosenkranz, that Rosenkranz recorded this conversation. Bon was a Thuringian, but by no means, in the sense that Rosenkranz, a man who had grown entirely out of his time. Bon, for his part, probably thought of Rosenkranz as being obsessed with the latest ideas, and as a person who, although unprejudiced in a sense, no longer understood the good old wisdom that Bon still possessed.

And so these two – as I said, it was in 1843 – entered into a conversation. Bon had been educated at the University of Erlangen and had been mainly a student of the somewhat pietistic philosopher Schubert, who, however, was still full of older wisdom, of wisdom that placed a great deal of emphasis on using special dream-like states of consciousness to get into the essence of a person. Schubert was a man who thought very highly of the old wisdom handed down and who had the belief that if one cannot bring something to life in oneself through a meaningful inner life of the good old wisdom, then one cannot really seriously know anything about man through the new wisdom. In this respect, Schubert's works are extremely interesting. Schubert liked to delve into the various revelations of human dream life, including the abnormal states of mind, as we would perhaps say today, the states of mind of the medium who was not a fraud, the states of that clairvoyance that had been preserved as if atavistically from ancient times, in short, the abnormal, not the fully awake states of mental life. In this way he sought to gain insight into the human being.

One of Schubert's students was Bon. But then Bon had come here to Switzerland and had adopted a spiritual life in Switzerland that today's Swiss are mostly unaware of, that it once existed here. You see, Bon had adopted so-called Gichtelianism in Switzerland. I don't know if much is still known among today's Swiss that Gichtelianism was quite widespread; not only in the rest of Europe – it was at home in the mid-19th century in the Netherlands, for example – but it was also quite common in Switzerland.

This Gichtelianism was namely that which remained in the 19th century, also through the 18th century, but still in the 19th century, of the teachings of Jakob Böhme. And in the form in which Gichtel represented Jakob Böhme's teachings, this teaching of Jakob Böhme then spread to many areas, including here to Switzerland, and that is where Bon got to know Gichtelianism.

Now, Rosenkranz had read a lot, and even if he, due to his Kantianism, Hegelism and Protestant theologism, could not find his way into something like that in an inwardly active way as Jakob Böhme's teachings or their weakening in Gichtel, then at least he understood the expressions, and he was interested in how such a remarkable person, a Gichtelian, spoke.

Now, as already mentioned, Rosenkranz recorded the conversation that took place in 1843. Initially, they discussed a topic that was not too incomprehensible for either Kantians or Hegelians of the 19th century. In the course of the conversation, Rosenkranz said that it is actually unfortunate when you want to reflect deeply on some problem that you can be disturbed by all sorts of external distractions.

I would like to say that, when Rosenkranz says this, one already feels something of what came later to a much higher degree: the nervousness of the age. One need only recall that among the many associations that formed in pre-war Central Europe, one originated in Hanover and was called “Against Noise.” The aim was to strive for laws against noise, so that in the evening, for example, people could sit quietly and reflect without being disturbed by noise from a neighboring inn. There are magazine articles that propagated this association against noise. The intention to establish such an association against noise is, of course, a result of our nervous age. So one senses from Karl Rosenkranz's speech that one could be so unpleasantly disturbed by all sorts of things going on in the environment when one wants to reflect or even when one wants to write a book. One can sense some of this nervousness. And Bon seems to have had a lot of sympathy for the complaint of a man who wants to think undisturbed, and he then said to Rosenkranz: Yes, he could recommend something good to him, he could recommend the inconvenience.

Rosenkranz was taken aback. He was now supposed to do exercises in inconvenience, so Bon recommended that he should learn to develop inconvenience within himself. Yes, said Rosenkranz, it is unpleasant when you are disturbed by all sorts of things. - Then Bon said: That's not what I mean. And now Bon explained to Rosenkranz what he actually meant by inconvenience. He said: “You have to see that you become so firm within yourself that you are not affected in your own constellation by the turba of other events in the surrounding area, so that the pure tincture can develop in your own astra.”

Now, that's what Bon had learned here in Switzerland from the Goutuelians, to say that one should take care not to be disturbed in one's own constellation by the turba of the other processes in the surrounding area, so that the pure tincture of one's own astrum could remain. As I said, Rosenkranz understood the expressions. I believe that today not even everyone understands the expressions, even if they want to be a very learned person.

What did the Goutelian Bon actually mean back then? Well, you see, Bon lived in the propagated ideas of Jakob Böhme. I recently characterized this Jakob Böhme a little. I said that he collected the wisdom that had remained popular from all folklore. He has absorbed a lot from this popular wisdom that one would not believe today. This popular wisdom has even been preserved in many cases in the expressions of so-called reflective people, as I have just quoted them from the mouth of Bon. And one could imagine something under these expressions that had a certain inner vitality. Traditions still existed of what an older humanity had absorbed in the older clairvoyance. This older form of clairvoyance consisted of forces that emerged from the physicality of the human being. It is not necessary to say that this old form of clairvoyance lived in the physical. That would be to misunderstand that everything physical is permeated by the spiritual. But actually the old clairvoyant drew what he had placed before his soul in his dreamlike imaginations from the forces of his physicality. What pulsated in the blood, what energized the breath, even what lived in the transforming substances of the body, all this, as it were, evaporated spiritually into the spiritual and gave the old clairvoyant grandiose world pictures, as I have often described them here. This old clairvoyance was drawn from the physical.

And what was revealed to you when you were living, as if you felt the whole world in a violet light, felt yourself as a violet cloud in violet light, so that you felt completely within yourself, that was called the 'tincture'. And that was felt as one's own, as that which was connected with one's own organism. It was felt as one's own Astrum. This inwardness, sucked out of the body, was called by the Gouthelean Bon the pure tincture of one's own Astrum.

But the time had come – actually it had long since come – when people could no longer extract such things from their physicality. The time had long since come when the old clairvoyance was no longer suited to man. Therefore, people like Jakob Böhme or Gichtel felt that it is difficult to bring these old ideas to life. Man had simply lost the ability to live in these old ideas. They, as it were, immediately passed away when they arose. Man felt insecure in them, and so he wanted to use everything to hold on to these fleeting inner images, which still, I might say, came up through the inner sound of the old words. And just as he felt the pure tincture of his own astral within him, so he felt when anything else approached that it would immediately displace the images. This other, that which lived spiritually in the things and processes of the environment, was called Turba. And through this Turba one did not want to let one's own constellation, that is, one's soul state, be disturbed, in which one could be when one really immersed oneself in the inner sound of the old words, in order to, so to speak, have one's humanity firmly through the preservation of this traditional inner life. Therefore, one strove not to accept anything external, but to live within oneself. One made oneself “inconvenient” so that one did not need to accept anything external.

This inconvenience, this life within oneself, is what Bon recommended to the Rosary in the form I have just shared with you. But you see, this is actually a glimpse into the spiritual life of a very old time, which was still present within the circles of Goutelianism in the mid-19th century, albeit at dusk, fading away. For what was dying away there was once an inner experience of the divine spiritual world in dream-like, clear-vision images, through which the human being felt much more like a heavenly being than an earthly one.

And the prerequisite for that old state of mind was that the person had not yet developed the pure thinking of more recent times. This pure thinking of more recent times, which has only really been spoken about in full awareness in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, is something that is not really felt much about today. This pure thinking is something that has initially developed in connection with natural science.

If we look at a part of this natural science that shows us what is to be said here in a particularly characteristic way, we turn to astronomy. Through Copernicus, astronomy becomes purely a world mechanics, a kind of description of the world machinery. Before that, there were still ideas that spiritual beings were embodied in the stars. Medieval scholasticism still speaks of the spiritual essence of the stars, of the intelligences that inhabit the stars, that are embodied in the stars, and so on. The idea that everything out there is material, thoughtless, that man only thinks about it, is a recent development. In the past, man created images for himself, images that combined with his view of a star or constellation. He saw something living, something weaving for itself in there. Not pure thinking, but something soul-living connected man with his environment. But man has developed pure thinking in this environment first.

I have said here before that older people also had thoughts, but they received the thoughts at the same time as their clairvoyance. They received clairvoyant images from their environment, and then they drew their thoughts from the clairvoyant images. The elderly did not directly extract pure thoughts from external things. It is a peculiarity of modern times that man has learned to embrace the world with mere thought. And in this embrace of the world, man first developed this pure thinking.

But now something else is linked to all these things. Those people to whom something like what the Bon said about the rosary still points back, these people did not experience sleep in the same way as the merely thinking modern person experiences sleep. The merely thinking modern person experiences sleep as unconsciousness, which is interrupted at most by dreams, but of which he rightly does not think much. For, as the state of mind of man in modern times is, dreams are not of much value. They are, as a rule, reminiscences of the inner or outer life and have no special value in their content. So that actually unconsciousness is the most characteristic feature of sleep. It was not always that. And Jakob Böhme himself still knew a kind of sleep in which consciousness was filled with real insights into the world.

A person like Jakob Böhme, and then also Gichtel, who still worked hard to find his way into such a state of mind, said: Well, if you observe the things of the senses with your eyes, grasp the world with your other and then further grasps with thoughts that which one grasps there with the senses, then one can indeed learn many beautiful things about the world; but the real secrets of the world are not revealed there. Only the outer image of the world is manifested.

As I said, Jakob Böhme and Gichtel knew such states of consciousness, where they neither slept nor merely dreamt, but where the consciousness was filled with insights into real world secrets hidden behind the sensual world. And they valued this more than what was revealed to their senses and to their minds. Mere thinking was not yet something significant for these people. But the opposite was also present for them, namely the awareness that a person can perceive without his body. For in such states of consciousness, which were neither sleep nor dreaming, they knew at the same time that the actual human being had largely detached himself from his body, but had taken with him the power of blood, had taken with him the power of breathing. And so they knew: Because man is inwardly connected with the world, but his waking body obscures this connection for him, man can, if he makes himself independent to a certain extent from this waking body, through the finer forces of this body, which the old clairvoyance, as I have explained, has sucked out of the body, gain knowledge of the secrets of the world.

But in this way, precisely when he entered into such special states of sleep, man came to an awareness of what sleep actually is. People like Jakob Böhme or Gichtel, who said to themselves: When I sleep, then with the finer limbs of my being I am also outside in the finer nature. I submerge myself in the finer nature.

They felt themselves standing in this finer nature. And when they woke up, they knew: That with which I, as a finer human being, was in the finer nature during sleep, also during unconscious sleep, that also lives in me while I am awake. I fill my body with this when I feel, when I think, which at that time was not just pure thinking. So when I think and create images in my mind, this finer humanity lives in these images.

In short, it had a real meaning for these people when they said: That which I am in my sleep also lives on in me during waking. And they felt something like a soul blood pulsating on into sleep during the waking states of consciousness.

A person like Jakob Böhme or Gichtel would say to themselves: When I am awake, I continue to sleep. Namely, what happens in me during sleep continues to have an effect when I am awake. This was a different feeling from that of the modern person, who has now moved on to mere thinking, to pure intellectual thinking. This modern person wakes up in the morning and draws a sharp line between what he was in his sleep and what he is now awake. He does not carry anything over from sleep into waking life, so to speak. He stops being what he was in his sleep when he begins to wake up. Yes, modern humanity has grown out of such states of consciousness as still lived in a person like Bon, who was a Goutelian, and in doing so it has actualized something that has actually been present in the first third of the 15th century. It has actualized this by moving into the waking day life of mere intellectualistic thinking. This, after all, dominates all people today. They no longer think in images. They regard images as mythology, as I said yesterday. They think in thoughts, and they sleep in nothingness.

Yes, this actually has a very deep meaning: these modern people sleep in nothingness. For Jakob Böhme, for example, it would not have made sense to say, “I sleep in nothingness.” For modern people, it has become meaningful to say, “I sleep in nothingness.” I am not nothing when I sleep; I retain my self and my astral body during sleep. I am not nothing, but I tear myself out of the whole world, which I perceive with my senses, which I grasp with my waking mind. During modern sleep, I also tear myself out of the world that, for example, Jakob Böhme saw in special, abnormal states of consciousness with the finer powers of the physical and etheric bodies, which he still took with him into his sleeping states.

The modern person not only breaks away from his sensory world during sleep, but also from the world that was the world of the ancient seer. And of the world in which the human being then finds himself in from falling asleep to waking up, he cannot perceive anything, because that is a future world, that is the world into which the earth will transform in those states that I have described in my 'Occult Science' as the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan states. So that in fact the modern man, who is trained in intellectualistic thinking - forgive the expression - lives in nothing during sleep. He is not nothing, I must emphasize it again and again, but he lives in nothing because he cannot yet experience what he lives in, the future world. It is nothing for him yet. But it is precisely because the modern human being can sleep in the void that his freedom is guaranteed; for from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up, he lives into the liberation from all the world, into the void. It is precisely during sleep that he becomes independent. It is very important to realize that the special way in which the modern human being sleeps guarantees his freedom.

The old seer, who still perceived from the old world, not from the future world, who perceived from the old world, could not become a completely free human being, because he became dependent in this perception. Resting in the void during sleep actually makes the modern human being, the human being of the modern age, free.

Thus, there are two counter-images for the modern human being. First, during waking hours he lives in thought, which is a mere thought, no longer containing images in the old sense; as I said, he regards them as mythology. And during sleep he lives in nothingness. In this way he frees himself from the world and gains a sense of freedom. Thought images cannot force him because they are mere images. Just as little as the mirror images can force, can cause anything, the thought images of things can force man to do something. Therefore, when man grasps his moral impulses in pure thoughts, he must follow them as a free being. No emotion, no passion, no internal bodily process can cause him to follow those moral impulses that he is able to grasp in pure thoughts. But he is also able to follow these mere images in thought, to follow this pure thought, because during sleep he finds himself freed from all natural laws in his own physical being, because during sleep he truly becomes a pure free soul that can follow the non-reality of thought; while the older person also remained dependent on the world during sleep and therefore could not have followed unreal impulses.

Let us first consider the fact that the modern man has this duality: he can have pure thoughts, which are purely intellectualized, and a sleep spent in nothingness, where he is inside, where he is a reality, but where his surroundings show him a nullity. Because now comes the important part. You see, it is also rooted in the nature of modern man that he has become inwardly weak-willed as a result of everything he has been through. Modern man does not want to admit this, but it is true: modern man has become inwardly weak-willed. If one only wanted to, one would be able to understand this historically. Just look at the powerful spiritual movements that have spread in the past, and the will impulses with which, let us say, religious founders have worked throughout the world. This inward will impulsiveness has been lost to modern humanity. And that is why modern man allows the outer world to educate him in his thoughts. He observes nature and forms his purely intellectualistic thoughts from natural processes and natural beings, as if his inner life were really only a mirror that reflects everything. Yes, man has become so weak that he is seized with a terrible fear when someone produces a thought of his own, when he does not merely read thoughts from what external nature presents. So that at first pure thinking developed in the modern man in a completely passive way.

I do not say this as a rebuke; for if humanity had immediately proceeded to actively produce pure thought, it would have brought all sorts of impure fantasies from the old inheritance into this thinking. It was a good educational tool for modern humanity that people allowed themselves to be tempted by the grandiose philistines, such as Bacon of Verulam, to develop their concepts and ideas only in the outside world, to have everything dictated to them by the outside world. And so, little by little, people have become accustomed to not living in their concepts and ideas, in their thinking itself, but to letting the outside world provide their thinking. Some get it directly by observing nature or looking at historical documents. They get their thoughts directly from nature and history. These thoughts then live within them. Others only get it through school. Today, people are already bombarded from an early age with concepts that have been passively acquired from the outside world.

In this respect, the modern human being is actually a kind of sack, except that it has the opening on the side. There he takes in everything from the external world and reflects it within himself. These are then his ideas. Actually, his soul is only filled with concepts of nature. He is a sack. If the modern human being were to examine where he gets his concepts from, he would come to realize this. Some have it directly, those who really observe nature in one field or another, but most have absorbed it in school; their concepts have been implanted in them.

For centuries, since the 15th century, man has been educated in this passivity of concepts. And today he already regards it as a kind of sin when he is inwardly active, when he forms his own thoughts. Indeed, one cannot make thoughts of nature oneself. One would only defile nature by all kinds of fantasies if one made thoughts of nature oneself. But within oneself is the source of thought. One can form one's own thoughts, yes, one can imbue with inner reality the thoughts that one already has, because they are actually mere thoughts. When does this happen? It happens when a person summons up enough willpower to push his night person back into his day-time life, so that he does not merely think passively but pushes the person who became independent during sleep back into his thoughts. This is only possible with pure thoughts.

Actually, that was the basic idea of my “Philosophy of Freedom”, that I pointed out: into thinking, which modern man has acquired, he can really push his I-being. That I-being, which he - I could not yet express it at the time, but it is so - frees during the state of sleep in modern times, he can push it into pure thinking. And so, in pure thinking, man really becomes aware of his ego when he grasps thoughts in such a way that he actively lives in them.

Now something else is linked to this. Let us assume that Anthroposophy is presented according to the model of modern natural science. People take in Anthroposophy, at first they take it in the way that modern people are accustomed to, in the manner of passive thinking. One can understand it if one's human understanding is healthy, one does not need to apply mere belief. If the human intellect is merely healthy, one can understand the thoughts. But one still lives passively in them, as one lives passively in the thoughts of nature. Then one comes and says: Yes, I have these thoughts from anthroposophical research, but I cannot stand up for them myself, because I have merely taken them in - as some people like to say today: I have taken them in from the spiritual-scientific side. We hear it emphasized so often: the natural sciences say this, and then we hear this or that from the spiritual-scientific side. What does it mean when someone says, “I hear this from the spiritual-scientific side”? That means he points out that he remains in passive thinking, that he also wants to absorb spiritual science only in passive thinking. For the moment a person decides to generate within himself the thoughts that anthroposophical research transmits to him, he will also be able to stand up for their truth with his entire personality, because he thereby experiences the first stage of their truth.

In other words, in general, people today have not yet come to pour the reality that they experience as independent reality in their sleep into the thoughts of their waking lives through the strength of their will. If you want to become an anthroposophist in the sense of absorbing anthroposophical thoughts and then not simply passively surrendering to them, but rather infusing through a strong will what you are during every night of dreamless sleep into the thoughts, into the pure thoughts of Anthroposophy, then one has climbed the first step of what one is justified in calling clairvoyance today, then one lives clairvoyantly in the thoughts of Anthroposophy. You read a book with the strong will that you do not just carry your day life into the anthroposophical book, that you do not read like this: the day before yesterday a piece, then it stops, yesterday, then it stops, today, then it stops, etc. Today people read only with one part of their lives, namely only with their daily lives. Of course you can read Gustav Freytag that way, you can also read Dickens that way, you can read Emerson that way, but not an anthroposophical book. When you read an anthroposophical book, you have to go into it with your whole being, and because you are unconscious during sleep, so you have no thoughts - but the will continues - you have to go into it with your will. If you want to grasp what lies in the words of a truly anthroposophical book, then through this will alone you will at least become immediately clairvoyant. And you see, this will must also enter into those who represent our anthroposophy! When this will strikes like lightning into those who represent our Anthroposophy, then Anthroposophy can be presented to the world in the right way. It does not require any magic, but an energetic will that not only brings the pieces of life into a book during the day. Today, by the way, people no longer read with this complete piece of life, but today when reading the newspaper it is enough to spend a few minutes each day to take in what is there. You don't even need the whole waking day for that. But if you immerse yourself in a book that comes from anthroposophy with your whole being, then it comes to life in you.

But this is what should be considered, especially by those who are supposed to be leading figures within the Anthroposophical Society. Because this Anthroposophical Society is being tremendously harmed when it is said: Yes, Anthroposophy is proclaimed by people who cannot stand up for it. We must come to a point where we can find our way into these anthroposophical truths with our whole being, rather than just passively experiencing them intellectually. Then the anthroposophical proclamation will not be made in a lame way, always just saying, “From the spiritual-scientific side we are assured...” Instead, we will be able to proclaim the anthroposophical truth as his own experience, at least initially for what is closest to the human being, for example for the medical field, for the physiological field, for the biological field, for the field of the external sciences or of external social life. Even if the higher hierarchies are not accessible at this first level of clairvoyance, what is around us in the form of spirit can truly be the object of the human soul's present state. And in the most comprehensive sense, it depends on the will whether people arise in our Anthroposophical Society who can bear witness to this, a valid witness, because it is felt directly, felt as a living source of truth, a valid living witness to the inner truth of the anthroposophical.

This is also connected with what is necessary for the Anthroposophical Society: that personalities must arise in it who, if I may use the paradoxical expression, have the good will to will. Today one calls will any desire; but a desire is not a will. Some would like something to succeed in such and such a way. That is not will. The will is active power. That is missing today in the broadest sense. It is lacking in the modern man. But it must not be lacking within the Anthroposophical Society. There calm enthusiasm must be anchored in strong will. That also belongs to the living conditions of the Anthroposophical Society.