The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear friends,

There is something that is always overlooked in this present age, something that has to do with the working, and the wanting to work, of the spiritual world. It is this: that total spiritual activity must include the creative activity to be found in human thought and feeling. What really lies at their foundation has been completely forgotten in this age of materialistic thought; today humankind is fundamentally entirely unaware of it. That is why in this very field a kind of evil mischief is perpetrated throughout our present civilization. You surely know that from every possible center, whatever it may be called, all kinds of instructions go out to people telling how they can enhance their thought power, how their thoughts can become powerful. In this way seeds are strewn in every direction of something that in earlier spiritual life was called—and still is called—“black magic.” Such things are the cause of both soul illnesses and bodily illnesses, and the physician and priest must be aware of them in the course of their work. If one is alert to these things, one already has a clearer perception of the illnesses and symptoms of human soul-life. Moreover one can work to prevent them. This is all of great importance. The intent of instruction about thought power is to give people a power they would otherwise not possess, and this is often used for pernicious reasons. There is every possible kind of instruction today with this intent—for instance, how business executives can be successful in their financial transactions. In this area a tremendous amount of mischief is perpetrated.

And what is at the bottom of it all? These things will simply become worse unless clear knowledge of them is sought precisely in the field of medicine and in the field of theology. For human thinking in recent times, particularly scientific thinking, has come enormously under the influence of materialism. Often today people express their satisfaction over the fact that materialism in science is on the decline, that the tendency everywhere is to try to reach out beyond materialism. But truly this is slight satisfaction for those who see through these things. In the eyes of such people, the scientists or the theologians who want to overcome materialism in a modern manner are much worse than the hard-shell materialists whose assertions gradually become untenable through their very absurdity. And those who talk so glibly about spiritualism, idealism, and the like are strewing sand in people's eyes—and it's going into their own eyes as well.

For what do Driesch¹³ and others do, for instance, when they want to present something that is beyond physical-material events? They use exactly the same thoughts that have been used for hundreds of years to think about the material world alone, thoughts that indeed have no other capacity than to think about the material world alone. These are the thoughts they use to think about something that is supposed to be spiritual. But such thoughts do not have that capacity. For that, one has to go to true spiritual science. That is why such strange things appear and today it is not even noticed that they are strange. A person like Driesch, for instance, recognized officially by the outer world but in reality a dilettante, holds forth to the effect that one must accept the term “psychoid.” Well, if you want to ascribe to something a similarity to something else, that something else must itself be around somewhere. You can't speak of apelike creatures if there are no apes to start with. You can't speak of the “psychoid” if you say there's no such thing as a soul! And this silly nonsense is accepted today as science, honest science, science that is really striving to reach a higher level. These things must be realized. And the individuals in the anthroposophical movement who have had scientific training will be of some value in the evolution of our civilization if they don't allow themselves to be blinded by the flaring-up of will-o'-the-wisps but persist in observing carefully what is now essential to combat materialism.

Therefore the question must be asked: How is it possible for active, creative thinking to arise out of today's passive thinking? How must priests and physicians work so that creative impulses can now flow into the activity of individuals who are led and who want to be led by the spirit? Thoughts that evolve in connection with material processes leave the creative impulse outside in matter itself; the thoughts remain totally passive. That is the peculiar characteristic of our modern thought world, that the thoughts pervading the whole of science are quite passive, inactive, idle. This lack of creative power in our thinking is connected with our education, which has been completely submerged in the current passive science. Today human beings are educated in such a way that they simply are not allowed to think a creative thought—for fear that if they should actually entertain a creative thought they wouldn't be able to keep it objective but would add some subjective quirk to it! These are things that must be faced. But how can we come to creative thoughts? This can only happen if we really develop our knowledge of the human being. Humans cannot be known by uncreative thoughts, because by their very nature they themselves are creative. One must re-create if one wants knowledge. With today's passive thinking one can only understand the periphery of the human being; one has to ignore the inner being.

It is important that we really understand the place humanity has been given in this world. Today therefore, let us put something before our souls as a kind of goal that lies at the end of a long perspective, but that can make our thoughts creative—for it holds the secret for making human thought creative.

Let us think of the universe in its changing and becoming—say in the form of a circle. (Plate VII) We may picture it like this because actually the universe as it evolves through time presents a kind of rhythmic repetition, upward and downward, with respect to many phenomena. Everywhere in the universe we find rhythms like that of day and night: other, greater rhythms that extend from one Ice Age to another, and so forth. If first we confine our inquiry to the rhythm that has the largest intervals for human perception, it will be the so-called Platonic year, which has always played an important role in human thoughts and ideas about the world when these were filled with more wisdom than they are now.

We can come to the Platonic year if we begin by observing the place where the sun rises on the first day of spring, the twenty-first of March of each year. At that moment of time the sun rises at a definite spot in the sky. We can find this spot in some constellation; attention has been given to it through all the ages, for it moves slightly from year to year. If, for instance, in 1923 we had observed this point of spring, its place in the sky in relation to the other stars, and now in 1924 observe it again, we find it is not in the same place; it lies farther back on a line that can be drawn between the constellation of Taurus and the constellation of Pisces. Every year the place where spring begins moves back in the zodiac a little bit in that direction. This means that in the course of time there is a gradual shift through all the constellations of the starry world; it can be seen and recorded. If we now inquire what the sum of all these shifts amounts to, we can see what the distance is from year to year. One year it is here, the next year there, and so on—finally it has come back to the same spot. That means after a certain period of time the place of spring's beginning must again be in the very same spot of the heavens, and for the place of its rising the sun has traveled once around the entire zodiac. When we reckon that up, it happens approximately every 25,920 years. There we have found a rhythm that contains the largest time-interval possible for a human being to perceive—the Platonic cosmic year, which stretches through approximately 25,920 of our ordinary years.

There we have looked out into the distances of the cosmos. In a certain sense we have pushed our thoughts against something from which the numbers we use bounce back. We are pushing with our thoughts against a wall. Thinking can't go any further. Clairvoyance must then come to our aid; that can go further. The whole of evolution takes place in what is encircled by those 25,920 years. And we can very well conceive of this circumference, if you will—which obviously is not a thing of space, but of space-time—we can conceive of it as a kind of cosmic uterine wall. We can think of it as that which surrounds us in farthest cosmic space. (Plate VII, red-yellow)

Now let us go from what envelops us in farthest cosmic space, from the rhythm that has the largest interval of time that we possess, to what appears to us first of all as a small interval, that is, the rhythm of our breathing. Now we find—again, of course, we must use approximate numbers—we find eighteen breaths a minute. If we reckon how many breaths a human being takes in a day, we come to 25,920 breaths a day. We find the same rhythm in the smallest interval, in the human being the microcosm, as in the largest interval, the macrocosm.

Thus the human being lives in a universe whose rhythm is the same as that of the universe itself. But only the human being, not the animal; in just these finer details of knowledge one finally sees the difference between the human and the animal. The essential nature of the human physical body can only be realized if it is related to the Platonic cosmic year; 25,920 years: in that span of time the nature of our physical body is rooted. Take a look in An Outline of Esoteric Science at the tremendous time periods, at first determined otherwise than by time and space as we know them, through the metamorphosis of sun, moon, and earth. Look at all the things that had to be brought together, but not in any quantitative way; then you can begin to understand the present human physical body with all its elements.

And now let us go to the center of the circle, (Plate VII) where we have the 25,920 breaths that, so to speak, place humanity in the center of the cosmic uterus. Now we have reached the ego. For in the breathing—and remember what I said about the breathing, that in the upper human it becomes a finer breathing for our so-called spiritual life—we find the expression of the individual human life on earth. Here, then, we have the ego. Just as we must grasp the connection of our physical body to the large time interval, the Platonic cosmic year, so we must grasp the connection of our ego—which we can feel in every breathing irregularity—to the rhythm of our breathing.

So you see, our life on earth lies between these two things—our own breathing and the cosmic year. Everything that is of any importance for the human ego is ruled by the breath. And the life of our physical body lies within those colossal processes that are ruled by the rhythm of 25,920 years. The activity that takes place in our physical body in accordance with its laws is connected with the large rhythm of the Platonic year in the same way that our ego activity is connected with the rhythm of our breathing. Human life lies in between those two rhythms. Our human life is also enclosed within physical-etheric body and astral body-ego. From a certain point of view we can say that human life on earth lies between physical body-etheric body and astral body-ego; from another point of view, from the divine, cosmic aspect, we can say human life on earth lies between a day's breathing and the Platonic year. A day's breathing is in this sense a totality; it relates to our whole human life.

But now let us consider from the cosmic standpoint what lies between human breathing, that is, the weaving life of the ego, and the course of a Platonic year, that is, the living force out in the macrocosm. As we maintain our rhythm of breathing through an entire day of twenty-four hours, we meet regularly another rhythm, the day-and-night rhythm, which is connected with how the sun stands in relation to the earth. The daily sunrise and sunset as the sun travels over the arch of heaven, the darkening of the sun by the earth, this daily circuit of the sun is what we meet with our breathing rhythm. This is what we encounter in our human day of twenty-four hours.

So let us do some more arithmetic to see how we relate to the world with our breathing, how we relate to the course of a macrocosmic day. We can figure it out in this way: Start from one day; in a year there are 360 days. (It can be approximate.) Now take a human life (again approximate) of seventy-two years, the so-called human life span. And we get 25,920 days. So we have a life of seventy-two years as the normal rhythm into which a human being is placed in this world, and we find it is the same rhythm as that of the Platonic sun year.

So our breathing rhythm is placed into our entire life in the rhythm of 25,920. One day of our life relates to the length of our entire life in the same rhythm as one of our breaths relates to the total number of our breaths during one day. What is it, then, that appears within the seventy-two years, the 25,920 days in the same way that a breath, one inhalation-exhalation, appears within the whole breathing process? What do we find there? First of all we have inbreathing-outbreathing, the first form of the rhythm. Second, as we live our normal human life there is something that we experience 25,920 times. What is that? Sleeping and waking. Sleeping and waking are repeated 25,920 times in the course of a human life, just as inbreathing and outbreathing are repeated 25,920 times in the course of a human day. But now we must ask, what is this rhythm of sleeping and waking? Every time we go to sleep we not only breathe carbon dioxide out, but as physical human beings we breathe our astral body and ego out. When we wake, we breathe them in again. That is a longer inbreathing-outbreathing: it takes twenty-four hours, a whole day. That is a second form of breathing that has the same rhythm. So we have a small breath, our ordinary inhalation-exhalation; and we have a larger breath by which we go out into the world and back, the breath of sleeping-waking.

But let us go further. Let us see how the average human life of seventy-two years fits into the Platonic cosmic year. Let us count the seventy-two years as belonging to one great year, a year consisting of days that are human lives. Let us reckon this great cosmic year in which each single day is a whole human life. Then count the cosmic year also as having 360 days, which would mean 360 human lives. Then we would get 360 human lives x 72 years = 25,920 years: the Platonic year.

What does this figure show us? We begin a life and die. What do we do when we die? When we die, we breathe out more than our astral body and ego from our earthly organism. We also breathe our etheric body out into the universe. I have often indicated how the etheric body is breathed out, spread out into the universe. When we come back to earth again, we breathe our etheric body in again. That is a giant breath. An etheric inbreathing-outbreathing. Mornings we breathe in the astral element, while with our physical breath we breathe in oxygen. With each earth-death we breathe the etheric element out; with each earth-life we breathe the etheric element in.

So there we have the third form of breathing: life and death. If we count life to be our life on earth, and death to be our life between death and a new birth, then we have the largest form of breathing in the cosmic year:

1. Inhalation-exhalation, the smallest breath.
2. Sleeping-waking, a larger breath.
3. Life-death, the largest breath.

Thus we stand first and foremost in the world of the stars. Inwardly, we relate to our ordinary breathing; outwardly, we relate to the Platonic year. In between, we live our human life, and exactly the same rhythm is revealed in this human life itself.

But what comes into this space between the Platonic year and our breathing rhythm? Like a painter who prepares a canvas and then paints on it, let us try painting on the base we have prepared, that is, the rhythms we have found in numbers. With the Platonic year as with smaller time rhythms, especially with the rhythm of the year, we find that continual change goes on in the outer world. Also it is change that we perceive; we perceive it most easily in temperatures: warmth and cold. We need only to think of cold winter and warm summer—here again we could present numbers, but let us take the qualitative aspect of warmth and cold. Human beings live life within this alternation between warmth and cold. In the outer world the alternation is within the element of time; and for so-called nature, changing in a time sequence from one to the other is quite healthful. But human beings cannot do this. We have, in a certain sense, to maintain a normal warmth—or a normal coldness, if you will—within ourselves. We have to develop inner forces by which we save some summer warmth for winter and some winter cold for summer. In other words, we must keep a proper balance within; we must be so continually active in our organism that it maintains a balance between warmth and cold no matter what is happening outside.

There are activities within the human organism of which we are quite unaware. We carry summer within us in winter and winter within us in summer. When it is summer, we carry within us what our organism experienced in the previous winter. We carry winter within us through the beginning of spring until St. John's Day; then the change comes. As autumn approaches, we begin to carry the summer within us, and we keep it until Christmas, until December 21, when the balance shifts again. So we carry in us this continual alternation of warmth and cold. But what are we doing in all this?

When we examine what we are doing, we find something extraordinarily interesting. Let this be the human being (see drawing below).

We realize from simple superficial observation that everything that enters the human being as cold shows the tendency to go to the nerve-sense system. And today we can point out that everything that works as cold, everything of a winter nature, works in the building up of our head, of our nerve-sense organization. Everything of a summer nature, everything that contains warmth, is given over to our metabolic-limb system. If we look at our metabolic-limb system, we can see that we carry within it everything summery. If we look at our nerve-sense functions, we can see that we carry in them everything we receive out of the universe that is wintry. So in our head we always have winter; in our metabolic-limb system we always have summer. And our rhythmic system maintains the balance between the one and the other. Warmth-cold, warmth-cold, metabolic system-head system, with a third system keeping them in balance. Material warmth is only a result of warmth processes, and material cold the result of cold processes. So we find a play of cosmic rhythm in the human organism. We can say that winter in the macrocosm is the creative force in the human nerve-sense system centered in the head. Summer in the macrocosm is the creative force in the human metabolic-limb system.

This way of looking into the human organism is another example of the initiatic medicine of which I spoke when I said it has a beginning in the book¹⁴ that Dr. Wegman worked out with me. The beginning is there for what must more and more become a part of science.

If we climb the rocks where the soil is so constituted that winter plants will grow in it, we come to that part of the outer world that is related to the organization of the human head. Let us suppose that we collect medicinal substances out in the world. We want to make sure that the spiritual forces appearing in an illness that originates in the nerve-sense system will be healed by the spirit in outer nature, so we climb very high in the mountains to find minerals and plants and bring them down for medicines for head illnesses. We are acting out of our creative thinking. It starts our legs moving toward things we must find in the earth that correspond to our medical needs. The right thoughts—and they come out of the cosmos—must impel us all the way to concrete deeds. These thoughts can stir us without our knowledge. People, say, who work in an office—they also have thoughts, at least they sometimes have them—now they are impelled by some instinct to go off on all sorts of hikes. Only they don't know the real reason—but that doesn't matter. It only becomes important if one observes such people from a physician's or a priest's standpoint. But a true view of the world also gives one inspiration for what one has to do in detail.

Now again, if we have to do with illnesses in the metabolic-limb system, we look for low-growing plants and for minerals in the soil. We look for what occurs as sediment, not for what grows above the earth in crystal form. Then we get the kind of mineral and plant remedies we need. That is how observation of the connection between processes in the macrocosm and processes in man lead one from pathology to therapy.

These connections must again be clearly understood. In olden times people knew them well. Hippocrates was really a latecomer as far as ancient medicine is concerned. But if you read a little of what he is supposed to have written, of what at any rate still preserved his spirit, you will find this viewpoint throughout. All through his writings you will find that the concrete details relate to broad knowledge and observation such as we have been presenting. In later times, such things were no longer of any interest. People came more and more to mere abstract, intellectual thinking and to an external observation of nature that led to mere experimentation. We must find the way back again to what was once vision of the relation between the human being and the world.

We live as human beings on the earth between our ego and our physical body, between breathing and the Platonic year. With our breathing we have a direct relation to the day. What do we relate to with our physical body? How do we relate physically to the Platonic year? There we relate to totally external conditions in the evolution of large natural processes—for instance, to climatic changes. In the course of the large natural processes human beings change their form, so that, for instance, successive racial forms appear, and so forth. We relate qualitatively to what happens in the shorter external changes, to what successive years and days bring us. In short, we evolve as human beings between these two farthest boundaries. But in between we can be free, because in between, even in the macrocosm, a remarkable element intervenes.

One can be lost in wonder in pondering over this rhythm of 25,920 years. One is awed by what happens between the universe and the human being. And as one contemplates all this, one realizes that the whole world—including the human being—is ordered according to measure, number, and weight. Everything is wonderfully ordered—but it all happens to be human calculation! And at important moments when we are explaining a calculation—even though it is correct—we always have to add that curious word “approximately.” For our human calculation never comes out exactly right. It is all absolutely logical; order and reason are in everything, they are alive and active, everything “works,” as we say. And yet there is something in all of it, something in the universe that is completely irrational. Something is there so that however profound our awe may be, even as initiates, when we go for an afternoon walk we still take an umbrella along. We take an umbrella because something could happen that is irrational. Something can appear in the life of the universe that simply “doesn't come out right” when numbers are applied to it. And so one has had to invent leap years, intercalary months, all kinds of things. Such things have always had to be used for the fixing of time. What is offered by a well-developed astronomy that has deepened into astrology and astrosophy (for one can think of it in that way) is all destroyed for immediate use by meteorology. This latter has not attained the rank of a rational science; [This lecture was given in 1924.] it is more or less permeated by vision, and will be, more and more. It takes an entirely different path; it consists of what is left over by the other sciences. Modern astronomy itself lives only in names; it is really nothing more than a system for giving names to stars. That is why even Serenissimus came to the end of his knowledge when newly found stars had to have names. He would visit the observatories in his country and let them show him various stars through the telescope, then after seeing everything he would say, “Yes, I know all that—but how you know what that star's name is, that very distant star, that's what I don't understand.” Yes, of course it's obvious, the standpoint you've adopted at this moment when you laugh at Serenissimus. But there's another standpoint: one could laugh at the astronomers. I'd rather you'd laugh at the astronomers, because there's something very strange going on in the world as it evolves.

If you want to inquire into the old way of naming things, Saturn and so forth, you should think back to our speech course,¹⁵ and recall that in olden times names were given from the feeling the astrologers and astrosophers had for the sound of some particular star. All the old star names were God-given, spirit-given. The stars were asked what their names were, because the tone of the star was always perceived and its name was then given accordingly. Now, indeed, you come to a certain boundary line in the development of astrosophy and astrology. Earlier they had to get the names from heaven. When you come to more recent times when the great discoveries were made, for instance, of the “little fellows” (Sternwichten), then everything is mixed up. One is called Andromeda, another has another Greek name. Everything is mixed up in high-handed fashion. One can't think that Neptune and Uranus are as truly characterized by their names as Saturn was. Now there is only human arbitrariness. And Serenissimus made one mistake. He believed the astronomers were carrying on their work similarly to the ancient astrosophers. But this was not so. They possessed only a narrow human knowledge, while the knowledge of the astrosophers of olden times, and astrologers of still older times, came directly out of humanity's intercourse with the gods. However, if today one would return from astronomy to astrology or astrosophy, and thereby have a macrocosm to live in that is rational throughout, then one would reach Sophia. Then one would find too that within this rationality and Sophia-wisdom meteoronomy, meteorology, and meteorosophy are the things that “don't come out right” by our human calculation, and one can only question them at their pleasure! That's another variety of Lady! In ordinary everyday life, one calls a lady capricious. And the meteorological Lady is capricious all the way from rainshowers to comets. But as one gradually advances from meteorology to meteorosophy one discovers the finer attributes of this world queen, attributes that do not come merely from caprice or cosmic emotion, but from the Lady's warm heart. But nothing will be accomplished unless in contrast to all the arithmetic, all the thinking, all that can be calculated rationally one acquires a direct acquaintance with the beings of the cosmos and learns to know them as they are. They are there; they do show themselves—shyly perhaps at first, for they are not obtrusive. With calculations one can go further and further, but then one is getting further and further away from the true nature of the world. For one is only reaching deeds from the past.

If one advances from ordinary calculation to the calculating of rhythms as it was in astrology for the harmony of the spheres, one goes on from the calculating of rhythms to a view of the organization of the world in numbers, as we find them in astrosophy. On the other hand one finds that the ruling world beings are rather shy. They do not appear at once. First they only present a kind of Akasha photography, and one is not sure of its source. One has the whole world to look at, but only in photographs displayed in various parts of the cosmic ether. And one does not know where they come from.

Then inspiration begins. Beings come out of the pictures and make themselves known. We move out of “-nomy” - but just to “-logy.” Only when we push through all the way to intuition does the being itself follow from inspiration and we come to Sophia. But this is a path of personal development that requires the effort of the whole human being. The whole human being must become acquainted with such a Lady, who hides behind meteorology—in wind and weather, moon and sun insofar as they intervene in the elements. Not just the head can be engaged as in “-logy,” but the whole human being is needed.

Already there is a possibility of taking the wrong path in this endeavor. You can even come to Anthroposophy through the head—by coming from anthroponomy, which is today the supreme ruling science, to anthropology. There you just have rationality, nothing more. But rationality is not alive. It describes only the traces, the footprints, of life and it gives one no impulse to investigate details. Yet life really consists of details and of the irrational element. What your head has grasped, you have to take down into the whole human being, and then with the whole human being progress from “-nomy” to “-logy,” finally to “-sophy,” which is Sophia.

We must have a feeling for all this if we want to enliven theology on the one side and medicine on the other through what can truly enliven them both—pastoral medicine. But the essential thing is that first of all, at the very outset of our approach to pastoral medicine, we learn to know the direction it should take in its observation of the world.

• 13. Hans Driesch (1867–1941). Scientist and philosopher.
• 14. Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman, Extending Practical Medicine (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996).
• 15. Rudolf Steiner, Speech and Drama (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1986).

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, our main problem is that we must give up the Waldorf School ideal for the twelfth grade. We cannot base the twelfth-grade curriculum upon our principles. We simply have to admit that we must take all the subjects in other high schools into account during the final year. I am looking with some horror at the last semester, when we will have to ignore everything except the subjects required for the final examination. It’s inconceivable that we can work any other way if the students are to pass the final examination. This is really a problem. After thinking about it a long time, I do not think there is much to say about the curriculum for that class except those things we already considered, such as chemical technology and such.

The students are about eighteen, and at that age it is best if they attain an overall understanding of history and art. We should give them an understanding of the spirit of literature, art, and history without, of course, teaching them about anthroposophy. We must try to bring them the spirit in those subjects, not only in the content but also in the way we present them. With the students, we should at least try to achieve what I have striven for with the workers in Dornach, pictures that make it clear that, for instance, an island like Great Britain swims in the sea and is held fast by the forces of the stars. In actuality, such islands do not sit directly upon a foundation; they swim and are held fast from outside. In general, the cosmos creates islands and continents, their forms and locations. That is certainly the case with firm land. Such things are the result of the cosmos, of the stars. The Earth is a reflection of the cosmos, not something caused from within. However, we need to avoid such things. We cannot tell them to the students because they would then need to tell them to their professors in the examinations, and we would acquire a terrible name. Nevertheless, that is actually what we should achieve in geography.

In physics and chemistry, we should try to cover every principle that reveals the whole system of chemistry and physics as an organism, a unity, and not simply an aggregate as most people assume. With the twelfth grade, we have a kind of conclusion, and we must draw conclusions everywhere. We must give answers to the questions that arise, for instance, in mineralogy, where the five Platonic solids manifest. We should do that when we study minerals and crystals.

In art, we can only continue what we previously did in music, sculpture, and painting. That can never be concluded.

Unfortunately, we can do none of that. The only new thing we can do is one hour of chemical technology. Elsewhere, we will need to make sure that we simply bring the students far enough along that they can answer the questions on the final examination. This is terrible, but there is nothing we can do to avoid it. However, we should follow our curriculum as exactly as possible until the students are fourteen. As far as possible, I would ask you to consider up to that year all the things that have fallen by the way. We need to strictly carry out the curriculum until the students are fourteen.

I am telling you all this so that you will know how you would need to think were it possible to apply the principles of the Waldorf School with eighteen-year-old students. Eighteen-year-olds need to understand the various historical periods in a living way, particularly regarding the “getting younger” of humanity. That would have an important influence upon people. In the oldest periods of humanity, people could feel the development of their souls until the age of sixty. Following the Mystery of Golgotha, they could feel it only until the age of thirty-three, and today that is possible only until twenty-seven. Students need to comprehend this ongoing decrease before they begin their studies at an institution of higher learning. It is something that belongs in the general education in a Waldorf school and would have a tremendously beneficial effect upon the students’ souls.

The situation is as follows. When we look at the learning goals of the twelfth grade, we need to imagine that the students will continue at a college, and we also need to imagine that they have completed their general education. We can find our teaching goals in the following circumstances. Today, you can represent anthroposophy to the world such that people with sound human feeling can understand it. (Sound human understanding does not exist today.) They can understand it through feeling. Today, however, if those who have gone through a modern high-school education do not have a particular predisposition, it is impossible for them to comprehend certain anthroposophical truths. Today, they have hardly any possibility of understanding such things.

If you consider Kolisko’s chemistry, it is clear that it is unimaginable for modern chemists. You can teach students that kind of imaginative capacity until the age of eighteen or nineteen, that is, until the completion of the moon cycle, which then begins again. If people are to comprehend certain concepts, they must achieve a particular development during that period.

Compared to other people today, you are all a little crazy. You all have something that sets you apart from the current general development, something that is present to a greater or lesser extent in each of you. You have a certain kind of eccentricity. You are, in a certain way, not quite normal. Those who are normal, that is, “normal people,” cannot understand some things. Chemists with a normal education cannot understand Kolisko’s chemistry. They simply have no concepts for it. Our goal should be to make that understanding possible for our students. However, we cannot achieve that when we are forced to work toward ruining brains in exactly the same way that modern schools work toward that goal. Souls cannot be ruined. They undergo a self-correction before the next earthly life, although if things remain as they are today and continue into the next earthly life, humanity will degenerate. We cannot do these things. It is simply impossible. Even people like Herman Grimm could maintain themselves upon their islands only by brusquely brushing away certain concepts. People like him simply went past others, but they were the last who had such concepts. Those people, who were quite old during the 1890s, were the last who had them, and that possibility died with them.

It is particularly difficult with today’s youth. Today’s young people, as we have seen quite clearly in our anthroposophical youth movement, have a tendency to reject all ideas. They are not interested in ideas and, therefore, to the extent that they do not accept anthroposophy, become disorganized. Today’s young people are forced into a terrible tragedy, particularly if they are academically inclined and have gone through our college preparatory schools. We can achieve more for those students who go into practical life at the age of fourteen.

It is impossible, for example, to develop a spatial concept as I described it in the recent teachers’ course in Dornach, that is, the three dimensions, up-down, left-right, front-back. That is why it is so difficult to give people an understanding of anthroposophical truths. No one today is interested in things for which there should be broad public interest. I have said that everything connected with the will works three-dimensionally in the earthly realm. Everything connected with feeling is not three-dimensional, but two-dimensional, so that when you move from willing to feeling in your soul, you have to project the third dimension onto the plane in a direction that corresponds with front to back. We need to remember that we cannot simply—we can reduce it to the symmetry of the human being, but we cannot limit it to only that. This plane is two-dimensional everywhere—thinking then leads to one dimension and the I to zero dimensions. When we do that, the situation becomes quite clear. Now I ask you, how can such elementary things be presented in a lecture? There is simply no possibility of making that plausible to the modern public. No one is interested in it.

It would certainly be wonderful if, for example, in addition to the normal perspective of orthogonals, planes, and centers, people understood perspectives of three dimensions to two, from two dimensions to one, and then from one to the zero dimension. It would be wonderful if people could do that so that we could differentiate a point in many ways.

I am telling you all these things so that you can see how things need to be in the future and how we should form a school that would really educate people. Today, so-called educated people are really very undeveloped because today’s students are required to know many things in a certain way, but they really need to know them in a quite different way. I think we should try to do as much of that as possible in the lower grades, but in the upper grades, we must be untrue to our own principles, at least for the most part. We can only include one thing or another here and there. Even someone like J.W. can say to me that she would take the final examination if she thought she would pass. I told her that would be sensible only if she is certain she will pass. If she failed, it would not be good for the school.

The worst thing is that if we could convince the state to accept our reports, our students could very well follow a course of study at the university with what they would learn from our curriculum. Everything connected with the final examination, which causes such misery in modern school life, is absolutely unnecessary for studying at the university. Students could take up Kolisko’s chemistry as a subject. They would at first be surprised by chemical formulas, of course, but they could learn that later. It is much more important that they understand the inner processes of materials and the relationships between them. These are the things I wanted to say. I would like to discuss this whole question further. I would have completed the curriculum, but it has no meaning for the twelfth grade. We already know what we must do.

The students need to complete all the practical subjects insofar as possible. That is something you will feel after a time. So that the children have some sense of security, I would like to ask them about these subjects. I had the impression a while ago that the children thought the questions were unusual when you stated them poorly.

A teacher: Could we split the classes?

Dr. Steiner: We would need to have parallel classes from the age of fourteen, but we do not have enough teachers. The problem is financial. I would like to know how the finances are now. We should always keep that in mind.

There is some discussion about the financial situation.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the important thing is not that we have a financial report, but that we always have what we need in the bank. We can certainly continue, but we will have to do something. Otherwise, it will be impossible to do what needs to be done. For now, we cannot consider such a split.

At the college level, we cannot reach our goals for a very long time. The Cultural Committee might have done that, but they fell asleep after a few weeks. We might be able to achieve the things we want so much if we had the situation that existed in Austria for many private high schools. There many parochial high schools had the right to give and grade the final examinations, and technical schools could provide an accepted final report. I believe there are no such institutions in Germany. We would need a state official to be present, but the teachers would actually do the testing. A state official, while certainly causing many difficulties in our souls, in the end would have little effect on the grades if the final examination was held by our teachers.

A teacher: I believe we should speak to the students who will not be able to pass the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: That depends. People will say the faculty is at fault if more than a third of the class do not achieve the learning goals. If it is less than a third, the fault is thought to be the students’, but when a third or more do not achieve what they should, then it is seen as the faculty’s problem. You know that, don’t you?

In general, no one who has had good grades fails. The problem is, that is not taken into account. A further point is whether we could avoid using those really unpedagogical textbooks. The teacher could, of course, use them for preparation. Most of those texts are simply extracts from various scientific books. I have noticed that the questions come from such books and that there are readings from them, also. That can, however, cause many problems. We need to get away from using such references. We can use Lübsen’s books since they are quite educational, although the last editions have been somewhat ruined. His books are very pedagogical through all the editions before those made by his successor. Imagine for a moment the wonderful value of calculus in pedagogy. His analytical geometry is also pedagogically wonderful, at least the older edition, as well as his volumes on algebra and analysis. He has, for example, a collection of problems that are extraordinarily good because the methods required to solve them are very instructive.

A teacher: Should we throw out all the textbooks?

Dr. Steiner: For translation, they are not so bad. However, for German readings, you should not use normal textbooks. They are quite tasteless. Perhaps we should write down our lesson plans for the following teachers, so they could at least have some material for reading. There are so many people here who can type. Why can’t we prepare documents that people can read? The offices are filled with people, but I have no idea what they do.

A teacher: The students in the twelfth grade would like an additional hour of French.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to make everything possible. It is terrible that the twelfth-grade students will not receive an introduction to architecture. If everyone teaching languages helped, it might be possible.

An English teacher asks about prose readings for the twelfth grade, about Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History, and about the English art and literature magazine The Athenaeum.

Dr. Steiner: The Athenaeum is edited very practically. You should not give it to the students, but instead use some individual essays. You could also use it in the eleventh grade. We do not have such well-edited magazines in Germany anymore. This is an old magazine, a humanistic magazine par excellence. There was a terrible German imitation called Literary News. Zarnck’s Literarisches Zentralblatt (Literary journal) was also a terrible imitation. It was a magazine for people who do not exist even in England.

A teacher: We have done enough of Tacitus and Horace. Should we take up Sallustius?

Dr. Steiner: Sallustius and Tacitus. I think the Germania would be enough. You could have them read a larger piece from that and then give them a test.

A teacher asks about music for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: A feeling for style, as such, an awareness of how Bach differs from others, is the main thing for the twelfth grade. At worst, you will have a problem at Christmastime if we see that we cannot continue all of the art instruction. Do not consider it an impossibility that we have to stop all art instruction at Christmas. Other people make fun of our things.

A teacher asks about religious instruction for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You should go through religious history and give an overview of religious development. Begin with the ethnographic religions and then go on to folk religions and finally universal religions.

Begin with the ethnographic religions such as the Egyptian regional gods, where the religions are still quite dependent upon the various tribes. There are also regional gods throughout Greece. You need to do this in stages. At first, we have the religions that are fixed at a given location, the holy places. Then, during the period of wandering, the tent replaces the holy places, the religion becomes more mobile, and folk religions arise. Finally, we have universal religions, Buddhism and Christianity. We cannot call any other religions universal.

In the ninth grade, read the Gospel of Luke, which is a pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

A teacher asks about the Apocrypha.

Dr. Steiner: The children are not yet mature enough to go through the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha contains many things that are more correct than what is written in the Gospels. I have always extended the Gospels by what we can verify from the Apocrypha. Sometimes there are strong conflicts. When they take up the Gospels, the children must grasp them. It is difficult to explain the contradictions, so if they took up the Apocrypha nothing would make sense anymore. I would simply study the Gospels. A teacher asks about religion in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Following St. John’s Gospel, a number of paths are possible. You could do either the Gospel of St. Mark or Augustine, selecting some sections from the Confessions where he speaks more about religion.

A teacher asks if they should teach zoology and botany in the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Those subjects need to be included if our reports are to be officially recognized. We study zoology in the fifth grade, then the human being, then zoology again. If we did not have this problem of final examinations, I think it would be wonderful to present zoology to the children in the course of three weeks. That would be eighteen mornings to handle the twelve groups of animals. In the twelfth grade, we should limit zoology to categorization; the same is true of plants.

The students already know about skeletal structure, since you have already done anthropology. The most important thing is that they gain an overview about how we classify animals. You should begin with single-celled animals, then go through the worms. You will have twelve if you consider the vertebrates as one class. A teacher asks about how continents swim.

Dr. Steiner: Usually people do not think about how it looks if you move toward the center of the Earth. You would soon come to regions where it is very fluid, whether it is water or something else. Thus, according to our normal understanding, the continents swim. The question is, of course, why they don’t bump into one another, why they don’t move back and forth, and why they are always the same distance from one another, since the Earth is under all kinds of influences. Why don’t they bump into one another? For instance, why is a channel always the same width? We can find no explanation for that from within the Earth. That is something that comes from outside. All fixed land swims and the stars hold it in position. Otherwise, everything would break apart. The seas tend to be spherical.

A teacher asks for more details. Dr. Steiner takes a teacher’s notebook and draws the following sketch in it while giving an explanation.

Dr. Steiner: The contrast is interesting. The continents swim and do not sit upon anything. They are held in position upon the Earth by the constellations. When the constellations change, the continents change, also. The old tellurians and atlases properly included the constellations of the zodiac in relationship to the configuration of the Earth’s surface. The continents are held from the periphery; the higher realms hold the parts of the Earth. In contrast, the Earth holds the Moon dynamically, as if on a leash. The Moon goes along as if on a tether.

A teacher asks about drawing exercises for fourteen- and fifteenyear- olds.

Dr. Steiner: You should have the children paint the moods of nature. The continuation students in Dornach have done wonderful work in painting. I had them paint the difference between sunrise and sunset, and some of them have done that wonderfully. They should learn those differences and be able to paint them. Those are the kinds of things you could work with, for example, the mood of rain in the forest. In addition, they should learn the differences between painting and sculpting.

In the lower grades, take care, when things get out of hand and you cannot get through the material, that you do not rashly reach for a substitute and simply tell the children a story to keep them quiet.

I hope to be here again tomorrow morning.

In connection with the public lectures and public gatherings, it always affords me a satisfaction also to be able to address this Group here in The Hague, and I shall try this evening to say some things that may be to you a more intimate continuation, a supplement, of what I was able to express in the public lectures. (Lectures given in The Hague, Rotterdam, and Delft, Holland, from October 31 to November 6, 1922)

In order to have knowledge of the spiritual world and for the acquirement of an inner life with the spiritual world, it is necessary most of all to see in the right light that which one might call the concealed aspects of human existence. Indeed, the concealed aspects of human existence are the more important aspects for the comprehensive judging and evaluation of human life. This may not be admitted willingly by people who merely think superficially and materially, but it is none the less true. No one can become acquainted with human existence, unless he is able to enter into its concealed aspects.

One could, perhaps, if I may thus express myself, demur against the Gods and say that they have put the most precious thing for man into the concealed aspects of his life; that they have not afforded him what is most precious in the visible aspect of life. If this had been done, man would in a higher sense remain impotent. We acquire spirit-soul strength, which then can permeate our whole being, through the very fact that we must first achieve our genuine human dignity and our human nature, that we must first do something in the realm of our soul and spirit in order to become man at all in the right sense of the word. And in this victory, in this necessity of having first to accomplish something to become man, in this lies that which can fill us with strength, which can permeate with forces the innermost depth of our being.

In order, therefore, to explain more definitely this leading theme which I have introduced today, I will speak to you again from a certain viewpoint about that concealed aspect of human existence which is enveloped in the unconsciousness of sleep. And then I will bring to your attention something of that which lies enveloped in states of existence that remain unconscious during earth life: those states of existence in pre-earthly life and the life after death.

The sleep life takes place in such a way for man that, after the transition through dreams—which have, however, but a very dubious existence and a very dubious significance for human life, if one simply accepts them as they present themselves—he falls into the unconsciousness of sleep, out of which he emerges only on awakening, when he immerses himself with his ego and his astral body in the ether body and physical body; that is, when he makes use of both these principles as a tool in order to perceive his physical environment and then to work within this physical environment through his will. But that which lies beyond birth and death is enveloped in that very part of man's being which becomes unconscious when he falls asleep... And the conditions which the human being experiences there I will describe to you as though they were conscious. They can become conscious only to the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive consciousness. But the difference between this and what every man experiences in the night is only a difference in knowledge. The individual who, as a modern initiate, looks into the sleep life knows how it is, but this does not make the life of sleep into something different for him from what it is for every man, even for the one who passes through it quite unconsciously. Thus our description can be in conformity with reality when we describe that which remains unconscious as though the human being experienced it consciously. And this is what I shall now do.

After the transition through dreams—as I intimated before—man passes, as regards the normal consciousness, into unconsciousness. But the reality of this unconscious state, as it manifests itself to the higher, supersensible knowledge, is that, directly after falling asleep, man enters into a sort of contourless existence. If he should realize his condition consciously, he would feel himself poured out into an etheric realm. He would feel himself outside of his body, not limited, however, but widely diffused; he would sense or observe his body as some object outside of himself. If this condition should become conscious, it would be filled, as regards man's soul nature, with a certain inner anxiety or uneasiness. He feels that he has lost the firm support of the body, as though he stood before an abyss.

What is called the Threshold of the Spiritual World has to exist for the reason that the human being must first prepare himself to have this feeling, the feeling of having lost that support which the physical body affords, and to bear that anxiety in the soul which is caused by his facing something entirely unknown, something indeterminate.

As I stated, this feeling of anxiety does not exist for the ordinary sleeper; it is not in his consciousness, but he does pass through it, nevertheless. That which constitutes anxiety, for instance, in every-day physical existence is expressed in certain processes, even though they be subtle processes of the physical body: when man senses anxiety, certain vascular activities in the physical body are different from what they are when he feels no anxiety. Something occurs objectively besides what the human being feels as anxiety, restlessness, etc., in his consciousness. This objective element of a soul-spirit anxiety man experiences while he enters through the portal of sleep into the sleep state. But with the feeling of anxiety something else is connected: a feeling of deep longing for a Divine-Spiritual Reality that streams and weaves through the cosmos.

If man should experience in full consciousness the first moments after falling asleep—or even hours, perhaps, in the case of many persons—he would be in this state of anxiety and of longing for the Divine. The fact that we feel religiously inclined at all during the waking life depends first of all upon the fact that this feeling of anxiety and this longing for the Divine which we experience in the night have their after-effects upon the mood of the day. Spiritual experiences projected, so to speak, into physical life fill us with the after-effect of that anxiety which impels us to crave to know the Real in the world; they fill us with the after-effect of the longing we bear while asleep, and they express themselves as religious feelings during the waking hours of the day.

But such is the case only during the first stages of sleep. If sleep continues, something peculiar occurs; the soul exists as though split, as though split up into many souls. If the human being should experience this condition consciously—which only the modern initiate can completely behold—he would have the sensation of being many souls and consequently think that he had lost himself. Every one of these soul beings, which really are merely shadowy images of souls, represents something in which he has lost himself. In this state of sleep the human being has a different appearance according as we observe him before or after the Mystery of Golgotha. Namely, the human being requires cosmic aid from without in regard to this condition, if I may so express it, of being split into many soul reflections.

In olden times, preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, the initiates, the old initiates, gave to the people indirectly through their pupils, through the teachers whom they sent out into the world for mankind, certain religious instructions which evoked feelings during their waking life. And these instructions, which were expressed by the people in ritual acts, strengthened their souls so that the human being carried, in turn, a sort of after-effect of this religious mood over into his sleep life.

You can see the reciprocal action between being asleep and being awake! On the one hand the human being, in his longing for the Divine during the first stage of sleep, experiences that which induces him to develop religion during waking life. If this religion is developed during the waking life—and it was developed through the influence of the initiates—it has its effect again upon the second stage of sleep: through the after-effect of this religious mood the soul has then sufficient strength to bear the sensation of being split—at least to exist at all amidst this plurality.

This truly is the difficulty that irreligious people have: they have no such aid during the night in regard to this being split into many souls and thus they carry these experiences over into the waking life without the strength that religion affords. For every experience we have during the night has its aftereffect in the waking life. It has not yet been a very long time since irreligion and non-religiousness began to play so large a, part among mankind as it did during the last century, the 19th century. People still experienced the aftereffect of the influence of what earlier, more sincere, religious times meant to the human being. But, since the irreligious times continue, the ultimate result will be significant: people will carry the after-effect of this splitting of their souls from their sleep state over into their waking life, and this will principally contribute to the fact that they will not have the forces of coherence in their organism to distribute properly the nourishing effect of the food in their organism. And mankind will be afflicted with significant diseases in the near future as a consequence of this irreligion.

We must, indeed, not think that the spirit-soul part of our being has no bearing upon the physical! Its relation is not such that irreligious development will be immediately punished with disease by some kind of demoniacal gods—life does not run its course in such a superficial manner—but there does exist, nevertheless, an intimate relation between our experience in the realm of soul and spirit and our physical constitution. In order to possess health during the waking hours of the day, it is essential that we carry into our sleep life the feeling of our unity with the divine-spiritual Beings, in whose realm of activity we immerse the eternal kernel of our own being. And it is only by a right existence within a spirit-soul world between falling asleep and awakening that we can produce the right and health-bringing forces of a spirit-soul element, so necessary for our waking life.

During this second stage of sleep the human being acquires, not a cosmic consciousness, but a cosmic experience in lieu of the ordinary physical consciousness. As stated before, only the initiate goes through this cosmic experience consciously, but everyone has this experience in the night between falling asleep and waking up. And in this second stage of sleep the human being is in such a state of life that his inner nature carries out imitations of the planetary movements of our solar system. During the days we experience ourselves in our physical body. When we speak of ourselves as physical human beings, we say that inside of us are our lungs, our heart, our stomach, our brain, etc. ... this constitutes our physical inner nature. In the second stage of sleep the movement of Venus, of Mercury, of the sun, and of the moon constitute our inner spirit-soul nature. This whole reciprocal action of the planetary movements of our solar system, we do not bear it directly within us, not the planetary movements themselves; but facsimiles, astral facsimiles of them then constitute our inner organism. To be sure, we are not spread out into the entire planetary cosmos, but we are of extraordinary size, compared with our physical size in the daytime. We do not bear within us the real Venus each time that we are in the state of sleep, but a facsimile of its movement. In the second stage of sleep, between falling asleep and awakening, that which occurs in the spirit-soul part of our being consists of these circulations of the planetary movements in astral substance, just as our blood circulates through our physical organism during the day, stimulated by the movement of breathing. Thus through the night we have circulating within us as our inner life, so to speak, a facsimile of our cosmos.

Before we can experience this circulation of the planetary after-effects we must first experience the splitting of the soul. As I said before, the people of olden times, previous to the Mystery of Golgotha, received instructions from their initiates, in order that they might be able to bear this splitting of the soul and that the soul should find its way within these movements which now constituted its inner life. Since the Mystery of Golgotha something else has taken the place of this old teaching. Namely, something has occurred which the human being can now appropriate inwardly to himself as a feeling, a sentiment, a soul life, and a soul mood, when he really feels himself one with the deed which was accomplished for mankind by the Christ Being through the Mystery of Golgotha here on earth. The individual who truly feels his unity with the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha to the degree that in him are fulfilled the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me”, he has, through this unity with the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, developed something in his feeling which has its after-effect in sleep, so that he now has the strength to overcome the splitting of his soul and the power to find his way in the labyrinth of the planetary orbits which now constitute his inner self. For we must find our way, even though we are not conscious in our inner being of that which constitutes for the soul the planetary circulation in place of the blood circulation during the day, which now continues in the physical body we have abandoned.

After this experience, we enter the third stage of sleep. In this third stage we have an additional experience—of course, the experiences of the preceding stage always remain and the experiences of the next stage are added thereto—in the third stage is included, what I should like to call the experience of the fixed stars. After experiencing the circulation of the planetary facsimiles we actually experience the formations of the fixed stars, that which in former times, for instance, was called the images of the Zodiac. And this experience is essential to the soul aspect of the human being, because he has to carry the after-effect of this experience with the fixed stars into his waking life in order to have the strength at all to control and vitalize his physical organism at all times through his soul.

It is a fact that, during the night, every human being first experiences an etheric preliminary state of cosmic anxiety and longing for the Divine, then a planetary state, as he feels the facsimiles of the planetary movements in his astral body, and he has the experience of the fixed stars in that he feels—or would feel if he were conscious—that he experiences his own soul-spiritual inner self as a facsimile of the heavens, of the fixed stars.

Now, my dear friends, for the one who has insight into these different stages of sleep, a significant question arises, I might say, every night. The human soul, the astral organism, and the ego being, leave the physical body, their inner self is filled with facsimiles of the planetary movements and of the constellations of the fixed stars. The question arising now is this: “How is it that every morning, after each sleep, the human being returns to his physical body again?”

And it is here where the science of initiation discovers that the human being would actually not return if, on entering the planetary movements and the constellations of the fixed stars, he did not also live his way into the forces of the moon while expanding outward into the facsimiles of cosmic existence. He lives his way into the spiritual forces of the moon, into those cosmic forces which are reflected in the physical moon and in the moon-phases.

While all other planetary and fixed star forces actually draw the human being out of his physical body, it is the lunar forces which again and again return him, when he wakes, to his physical body. The moon is connected in general with all that brings the human being from his spiritual life into the physical life. It, therefore, makes no difference—the physical constellation is not the thing to be considered, although a certain significance attaches thereto—whether we have to do with new moon, full moon, the first or last quarter of the moon; in the spiritual world the moon is always present. It is the lunar forces which lead the human being back into the physical world, into his physical body.

You can see, my dear friends, that, as I briefly describe to you the experience the human being has between falling asleep and awakening, I am, upon the whole, giving you something of a general description of his sojourn in the spiritual world. And this is the state of the matter. Fundamentally, we experience every night a reflection of the life between death and a new birth. If we look into pre-earthly life with the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive consciousness, we see ourselves first of all as spirit-soul human beings in a very early state of pre-earthly existence. We see ourselves possessed of a cosmic consciousness. Our life there is not a reflection of the cosmos, as is our sleep life, but we are actually diffused through the real cosmos. About the middle of our life between death and a new birth we feel ourselves as spirit-soul beings, fully conscious—in fact with a much clearer and more intensive consciousness than we could possibly have anywhere upon the earth—surrounded by divine-spiritual Beings, by the divine-spiritual Hierarchies. And, just as we work with nature's forces here on earth, just as we use external objects of nature as tools, so in the same way does work take place between us and the Beings of the higher spiritual Hierarchies.

And what manner of work is this? This work consists in the fact that the spirit-soul human being, conjointly with an enormous number of sublime spiritual Beings of the cosmos, is weaving the cosmic spirit-germ of his physical human body in the spiritual realm. However peculiar this may seem to you—to weave the physical human body as spiritual germ out of the whole cosmos—it is the greatest, the most significant piece of work conceivable in the cosmos. And not only does the human soul in the state described work at this, but the human soul works at it conjointly with whole hosts of divine-spiritual Beings. For, if you visualize the most complicated thing that can be formed here on earth, you find it primitive and simple in contrast with that mighty fabric of cosmic vastness and grandeur which is woven there and which, compressed and condensed through conception and through birth, becomes permeated with physical earth matter and then becomes the human physical body.

When we refer to a germ here on earth, we think of it as a small germ which afterwards becomes relatively large. But, when we refer to the cosmic spirit-germ in relation to the human body as a product of the spiritual, this germ is of gigantic size. And from that moment on, which I have pointed out to you, when the soul is coming towards its birth, the soul-spiritually magnificent human germ is gradually diminishing. The human being continues to work at it with the aim constantly in view that this will be woven together, pressed together, condensed into the physical human body.

It was really not without reason that the older initiates—through a kind of clairvoyance which, to be sure, is no longer suitable to us, although the more recent science of initiation shows the same fact—that the older initiates called the human body the Temple of the Gods. It is the Temple of the Gods, for it is woven out of the cosmos by the human soul conjointly with divine Beings each time between death and a new birth. Later on—in a manner still to be described—the human being is given his physical form. While the human being is weaving the spirit-germ of his physical body at the stage indicated, he is, as regards his soul being, in a condition, in a mood, that can only be compared with what the modern initiates call intuition. The human being lives with his soul within the activity of Gods. He is wholly diffused in cosmic-divine existence. In this state halfway between death and a new birth he is participating in the life of the Gods.

But then, as the human being proceeds on his way, as he comes closer to conception or birth, a change takes place. In a certain way, his consciousness is then impressed with the fact that the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are withdrawing from him. And there appears to him only something like a revelation, like a reflection, as if the Gods had withdrawn and only their nebulous images were still standing before the human soul, and as if a kind of veil were being woven as a nebulous imitation of that which in reality had been woven before. The intuitive consciousness he formerly possessed now changes to a cosmic inspired consciousness. The human being lives no more with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; he lives with their manifestation. But in place of this an inner ego develops more and more within the soul consciousness. During the climax, I might say, of life between death and a new birth, the human being lives entirely with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; the ego has no inner strength; it becomes conscious again of its inner self only when the Gods withdraw and only their manifestation remains. The glory of the Gods, their radiation, enters a kind of inspired consciousness; but, as a recompense, the human being feels himself as a self-existent being. And that which now awakens first in him is, I might say, an eager desire, a kind of craving.

Midway between death and a new birth, the human being works at the spirit-germ of his physical body, so to speak, out of a deep inner satisfaction. Although he realizes that the ultimate goal will be his physical body in his next earthly life, he is not permeated with an eager desire, but only—we might say—with admiration for this physical human body, considered from a universal standpoint. At the moment when the human beings is living no more in divine worlds, but only in the manifestations of divine worlds, the eager desire arises in him to reincarnate upon the earth. Just while the ego consciousness is becoming continually stronger does this eager desire awaken. We withdraw, so to speak, from the divine worlds and come closer to what we shall become as earthly human beings. This eager desire becomes continually stronger, and what we see around us is also undergoing a change. Prior to this, we were living in nothing but Beings, in the divine-spiritual Hierarchies; we knew ourselves to be one with them. When we spoke of our inner self we were really speaking of the cosmos—but the cosmos itself consisted of Beings, Beings in sublime stages of consciousness with whom we were living. Now an outer glory is to be seen, and in this outer glory the first images gradually appear of that which, ultimately, are the physical reflections of the divine-spiritual Beings. This glory emanates from the Being which man knew there beyond as the Sublime Solar Being, and in this glory appears, so to speak, the sun as seen from without, or as seen from the world. Here on earth we look up to the sun. There, while descending to the earth, we at first see the sun from the other side. But the sun emerges, the fixed stars emerge, and behind the fixed stars the planetary movements emerge. And with the emergence of the planetary movements a quite definite kind of forces emerges: the spiritual forces of the moon; they now take control of us. It is these lunar forces which, little by little, carry us back into the earthly life.

Such is actually the aspect of things which the human being beholds on his descent from cosmic worlds to earthly existence: that, after an experience of divine-spiritual Hierarchies, he proceeds to images of them. But these images of Beings gradually become star-images, and the human being enters into something which, I might say, he first sees from behind: he enters that which is manifest from the earth as the cosmos. The details of what the human being there consummates can be discerned, and the modern science of initiation can penetrate quite deeply into what man there experiences.

Just through details in this domain do we begin to become acquainted with life. For no one knows life who is able to see the human being in connection with earthly existence alone. What great value does our connection with the earthly existence have for us then? During the enormously long stretches of time between death and a new birth the earth, at first, really means nothing to us, and that which gleams towards us, as the external, so to speak, is transmuted into entire worlds of Gods, in which we live during these long stretches of time and which appear externally to us again as stars only when we are nearing the earth for another earthly existence.

What the human being at first wove, as the spirit-germ of his physical body, he knows, for the time being, to be one with the whole universe, with the spiritual universe. Later, when he sees only the manifestation of the divine-spiritual worlds, this germ gradually becomes his body, which is now also a facsimile of the cosmos. And out of this—his body—arises the eager desire for an earthly existence, for an ego consciousness in his body.

This body now still contains much which is untouched by the earthly existence, for it is a spirit body. As regards this body, the fact still remains entirely undetermined at a certain stage whether, for instance, the human being will be a male or a female personality in his next earthly existence. For, during this whole time between death and a new birth, up to a very late stage, before we are born upon the earth, there is no meaning in the question of man or woman. The conditions there differ entirely from those that are reflected on earth as man and woman. There are also conditions which occur in the spiritual existence and are reflected on the earth; but that which appears on earth as man and woman acquires significance only relatively late, prior to our descent to earth. When the human being, according to certain former karmic connections, thinks it best to experience his next incarnation on earth as a woman, we can trace in detail how, on his descent to the earth in order to unite with the physical embryo, he chooses that time which is known here on earth as the time of full moon.

We can say, therefore, when we are looking from any region here on earth at the full moon, that we then have the time which the beings choose for their descent to the earth who desire to become women, for then only is this decision made. And the time of new moon is the time which beings choose who wish to become men.

Thus, you see, the human being enters his earthly existence through the portal of the moon. But the force which the male requires in order to enter life on earth is then flowing out into the cosmos; we move toward it as we come in from the cosmos, and this force is radiated by the moon when it is known as new moon for the earth. The force which the female requires is radiated from the moon when it is the full moon; then its illuminated side is turned toward the earth, and its unilluminated side is toward the cosmos—and this force, which the moon can send out into the cosmos from its unilluminated side, the human being requires if he wishes to become a woman.

What I have now been describing to you shows that the ancient concept of astrology, which nowadays has been brought to a complete decadence by the ordinary astrologers, was well grounded. Only, we must be able to achieve an inner view of the connection of things. We must not look merely at the physical constellation in a calculating manner, but must see into the corresponding spiritual element. There it is really possible to enter into details.

As you know, the human being descends from the cosmos in a definite state. From the spiritual cosmos he enters the etheric cosmos. Now I am still speaking of the etheric cosmos alone; the physical aspect of the stars is, in this connections, taken less into consideration, as is, likewise, the physical aspect of the moon. The essential moment when the human being decides to descend to the earth depends, as I have stated, upon the phase of the moon during this descent, and thus it may happen that he exposes himself to a decisive new moon in order to become a man, or to a decisive full moon to become a woman. But then—since the descent is not made so very rapidly, but he remains exposed for some time—if he is descending through the new moon as a man, he may still, for one reason or another, decide to expose himself to the coming full moon. Thus he has made the decision to descend as a male; he has made use to this end of the forces of the new moon; but, during his descent, he still has at his disposal the remainder of the moon's cycle, the phase of the full moon. He then fills himself with lunar forces in such a way that they do not affect his condition as man or woman, but rather the organization of his head, and what is connected with the organization of his head from without, from the cosmos, if that constellation occurs of which I have just spoken. Thus, after the human being has made the decision; “I shall become a man through the time of the new moon”, and continues living in the cosmos, so that he has not passed completely through the lunar influence but is still exposed to the next full moon, then, through the influence of the lunar forces in this condition he will, for instance, have brown eyes and black hair. Thus we may say that the manner in which the human being passes the moon determines not only his sex, but also the color of his eyes and hair. If, for instance, the human being has passed the full moon as a woman and is later exposed to a new moon, the result may be a woman with blue eyes and blond hair.

Grotesque as this may seem, we are absolutely predestined by the manner of our experience through the cosmos, as to the way in which our soul-spirit organism works its way into our physical and our etheric organism. Prior to this time there has been no decision made as to our becoming a blond or a brunette; this is determined only by the lunar forces as we pass them, on our descent from the cosmos into earthly existence.

And just as we pass by the moon, which really guides us into earthly existence, so do we pass by the other planets. It is not immaterial, for example, whether we pass Saturn in one or another way. We may pass by Saturn, for instance, when the constellation is such that the force of Saturn and the force of Leo in the Zodiac co-operate. Because of our passing the region of Saturn just as its force is being increased through Leo in the Zodiac, our soul will—conditioned, of course, by our preceding karma—acquire the strength to meet intelligently the outer contingencies of life so that they do not defeat us over and over again. If, however, Saturn is being dominated more by Capricorn, we shall become weak human beings that do succumb to the outer contingencies of life.

All these experiences we bear within us as we prepare from the cosmos our earthly existence. Of course, we can overcome this through an appropriate training, but not by voicing the opinion of the materialists that all this is nonsense, that we need not pay any attention to it at all. On the contrary, it can be overcome by the fact that we develop these forces, really develop them. And in the future mankind will learn again, not only to insure that a child shall have good milk to drink and good food to eat—although no objection is to be made to this—but mankind will learn again to observe whether this or that person has within him forces of Saturn or Jupiter active under this or that influence.

Let us suppose that we find that a human being has within him, through his karma, forces of Saturn under the most unfavorable influence—of Capricorn or of Aquarius, for instance—so that he is exposed to all life's difficulties. Then, in order to strengthen him we shall search most carefully for other forces within him. For instance, we shall ask ourselves whether he has experienced the passage through the sphere of Jupiter, of Mars, or through any other sphere. And we shall always be able to correct and annul one condition by means of the other.

We shall simply have to learn to think of the human being not only in relation to what he begins to eat and drink in the earthly existence, but we shall have to consider him in relation to what he becomes, because of his having passed through the cosmic worlds between death and a new birth.

When the human being is close to his earthly course of life, then he experiences a sort of loss of his being. You know from my description that he was connected with what he has woven as the spirit-germ of his physical body. Into this spirit-germ he has woven, besides, the experiences during the descent through fixed stars and planets. At a definite stage, actually quite close to conception and birth, this spirit-germ is no longer there. It has, in the meanwhile, descended with its forces as a system of forces to the earth. It has fallen from the human being. It has united itself on the earth independently with the physical substance of heredity which the ancestors, father and mother, afford. What is being woven there in the organism descends to the earth sooner than the human being himself as a spirit-soul being. And then, when the human being realizes that he has actually surrendered to the parents that which he himself had woven in the cosmos, he is able, in the last stage prior to his earthly existence, to take to himself from the etheric world what is essential for his own etheric organism—since there is no longer a necessity to do any more weaving on his physical body, which is essentially complete and has been surrendered to and been made a part of the flow of heredity. Now he draws together his etheric organism; and, together with this latter, he unites with that which he himself has prepared through his parents. He takes possession of his physical body, in which all this cosmic fabric of the spirit-germ is drawn together, and which is interwoven with what the human being himself united with it as he descended through this or that stellar region. It is, indeed, not arbitrarily that he passes through new moon or full moon and causes himself to become man or woman, or to have black or blond hair or blue or brown eyes, but all this is intimately connected with the results of his preceding karma.

This shows you that, whereas the human being in the sleep state experiences as his inner nature merely facsimiles of the planetary world, the world of the fixed stars, he now passes through these worlds in their reality between death and a new birth. He passes through these worlds; they become his inner nature. And it is always the lunar forces which bring us back to the earth. They differ essentially from all other stellar forces in this respect, in that they bring us back to the earth. In the sleep state they bring us back to the earth; they bring us back also after we have experienced all that I have briefly described, in order to enter once more a life course on the earth.

But let us consider once again that which is there outside of the physical body, in the form of astral body and ego organization, between falling asleep and awakening. It is not fabricated from physical bones and physical blood; it is a spirit-soul entity. But our whole moral intrinsic quality is woven into it. Just as we consist, when awake, of bones, blood, and nerves, so does that which leaves us during sleep and returns on awakening consist of the actualized judgments of our moral deeds. If I have accomplished a good deed during the day, its effect is reflected in my sleep body within the spirit-soul substance that leaves me during sleep. My moral quality lives within this. And, when the human being passes through the Portal of Death, he takes with him his whole actualized moral evaluation. It is a fact that, between birth and death in the earthly life, the human being creates within himself a second being. This second human being, who leaves the body every night, is the result of our moral or immoral life, and we take it with us through the Portal of Death. This result, which is merged with our eternal essential being, is not the only element we possess within the spirit-soul substance which passes out of us during the night. Just after death, however, when we are first in the ether body and then in the astral body, we hardly see anything in ourselves but this moral entity of our being. Whether we were good or bad, this is what we behold; we are this. Just as here on earth we are a, human being in whom the skin forces, or the nerve forces, or the blood forces, or the bone forces predominate, so, after death, we are, to our own perception, what we were, morally or immorally.

And now after death we proceed on our way, first through the sphere of the moon, then through the sphere of the fixed stars... until the time arrives when we can begin to work with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies on the spirit-germ of our future physical body. But, if we were to take this moral element up into the highest worlds, where we are to weave our future physical organism in its spirit-germ, this physical organism would turn out to be a monstrosity. For a certain length of time between death and a new birth, the human being must be separated from what constitutes his moral quality. Indeed, he leaves his moral quality behind in the moon sphere.

It is an actual fact that, when leaving the moon sphere, we leave our moral and immoral human being in the moon sphere and enter into the pure sphere of the Gods, where we can weave our physical body.

I must now revert again to the difference between the times prior to the Mystery of Golgotha and those following it, including the present. The older initiates made very clear to their pupils—and through them to all mankind of the civilization of that time—that, in order to be able to find the transition from the world which I called in my book Theosophy the soul-world, and which we really experience in its entirety while still in the moon sphere, into the world which I called the spirit-land, the human being must develop on earth the feelings that enable him to be led upward by the spiritual Sun Being, after having left behind the whole bundle of his moral after-effects in the moon sphere.

All that history relates to us in regard to the first three Christian centuries, and even the fourth century, is fundamentally a falsification; for in those centuries Christianity was quite different from the thing described. It was something quite different for the reason that within it there held sway the conception which came from understanding the ancient science of initiation. From this wisdom of initiation it was known that, in the life after death, the sublime Sun Being led the human being out of the moon sphere, after he had left behind his moral bundle, and, on his return, led him back again into the moon sphere. This gave the human being the strength—which he could not have had through himself—to make this moral being a part of himself, at a certain time before his birth, in order to fulfill his destiny on earth within his soul, and to prevent it from entering his body. For otherwise, the human being would be born a monstrosity and be utterly diseased in his body. This moral bundle had to be taken over again in the moon sphere, during the descent, in order that it should not enter into the body.

Those initiates who were living at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and even in the three or four centuries following thereafter, said to their pupils: Previously the sublime Sun Being was only above in the spiritual worlds. But, as mankind progressed, the ego consciousness has become so bright upon the earth that it becomes all the more obscured in the spiritual world. In other words, the brighter our ego consciousness is by means of the physical body only, here below on the earth, the darker is it above. The human being would no longer come into contact with the Sun Being, he would not find through his own power the transition after death from the moon sphere to the higher spheres, had the Christ not descended and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Being whom the human being met formerly after death only in the spiritual world has now descended; He has lived here upon earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha; and now the human being can establish a relation to Him according to the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me”. In this way the human being takes strength from the earth with him, strength given to him by the Christ here on this earth, which enables him to leave behind in the moon sphere his moral being which he creates within himself and to proceed to higher spheres, there to work on the spirit-germ of his physical body. It also gives him the strength on his descent through the moon sphere to take up his karma again of his own free will, take up the after-effects of his good and evil deeds. In the course of historical evolution, we have become free human beings. But the reason we have become such is that the Christ force we have acquired has enabled us through free inner strength to take over our karma on our descent through the moon sphere. No matter whether we like this or do not like it here on earth, we do this at the stage I have described, if we have become true Christians on earth.

I have been endeavoring, my dear friends, to show you a little of the way in which the modern science of initiation can see into worlds which we might call the concealed aspects of human existence, to show you how really everything pertaining to the human being can be elucidated only as we are able to see into these concealed aspects. And at the same time I tried to show you in connection therewith what the Christ Impulse means to mankind of the present time; for we will have constantly to revert to it. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we cannot be a whole human being, unless we find the way to this Christ Impulse. Therefore it is necessary that Anthroposophical spiritual science shed light more and more upon the Christ Impulse in the right way. For the manner in which light was shed on the Christ Impulse in the past, when man's consciousness was obscured, would, if continued, deprive a large part of mankind—just think of the Orientals, think of the inhabitants of other continents—of the possibility of embracing Christianity. But that Christianity which is rooted deeply in Anthroposophical spiritual science will actually—if once the essence of spiritual science, as it is here intended, is understood thoroughly—be eagerly grasped particularly by the Orientals, who are endowed with an ancient spirituality, even though it is in decadence.

In this way only can that peace prevail on earth which must proceed from the soul and spirit of men, and which is so indispensable to the earth, as every impartial person feels today. We shall have to be much more convinced of the fact that all present-day thinking concerning outer institutions is really worthless, and that it is very necessary on the other hand, to appeal directly to human souls. But we can appeal to the souls only if we are able to say something to them about the true home of the soul, about the experiences of the human being that lie beyond his physical existence, in those states of consciousness I have been describing to you today. Even if those states of consciousness do not exist during the earth life, their effects do exist. Oh, my dear friends, the one who has insight into life sees in the countenance of every human being a reflection of cosmic destinies which the individual has experienced between death and a new birth!

I have described to you today how destiny—whether one has become a man or a woman—can be understood by means of the cosmos, even how the color of the eyes and hair can be understood only when we can look into cosmic existence. Nothing in this world is comprehensible unless it can be understood by means of the cosmos. The human being will feel himself to be truly a human being only when we can inform him through true spiritual knowledge of his relation with that which is back of the sensuous-physical existence. Even though the human beings on earth are not yet aware of it, mankind unconsciously thirsts for such a knowledge. What is developing convulsively today in all domains, be it the domain of the spiritual, the externally juridical, or the economic life, all is ultimately a result of the spiritual. Only as the human being learns again to know of his relation with extra-physical existence, can all this be transformed from forces of decadence into upward moving forces. For physical existence is meaningless unless seen in connection with super-physical existence. The physical human body becomes significant only then when we can see it, so to speak, as the confluence of all those sovereign forces that are woven between death and a new birth. This is the tragic character of materialistic knowledge of the world that, in the final analysis, it does not know matter itself. We lay the human body upon the dissecting table; we examine it most carefully as to its tissues and its individual physical component parts. This is done in order to acquire a knowledge of matter. But we do not learn to know it in this way, for it is the product of spirit, and only as we are able to trace it back to those stages where it is woven out of spirit do we know it. Human beings will comprehend precisely this physical-material existence only when their souls are led cosmically into the realm of soul and spirit.

If we permeate ourselves with the consciousness that we should comprehend more and more our connection with the spirit-soul realm of the cosmos, we then become true Anthroposophists. And you, my dear friends, will surely not ridicule me when I say that the world is in need today of true Anthroposophists who will bring about an ascent for humanity through that consciousness which results from experiencing the spiritual, even though at first we should only grasp it as a reflection and not ourselves have attained to clairvoyant knowledge. We need not be clairvoyant in order to work beneficently after we possess spiritual knowledge. Just as little as a person needs to know what constitutes meat when he is eating it and it nourishes him, just as little does a person need to be clairvoyant in order to be efficacious through his work and through his whole association with the life of the higher worlds. If we accept spiritual science before we are clairvoyant, it is as though we were consuming it. Fundamentally, clairvoyance adds nothing to what we can become for the world through spiritual knowledge. It satisfies merely our knowledge. This knowledge must, indeed, exist. Of course, there have to be people who examine the composition of meat, but this knowledge is not required in order to eat. Likewise there must be clairvoyant persons today who can investigate the nature of man's connection with the spiritual world; but, in order to bring about that which is essential to mankind, it is necessary that we be healthy human souls. If they are informed of the science of the spirit, they will sense the digestive power of the soul nature; they will appropriate this spiritual science, digest it, and assimilate it into their work. And this is what we need today throughout the civilized world: external human work which is spiritualized through and through in the right and true sense.

Appendix

In connection with this lecture that Rudolf Steiner gave on November 5, 1922, in The Hague, he addressed the members of the Anthroposophical Society in the following words:

“And now, my dear friends, after these explanations permit me to add some remarks to today's lecture which are, to a certain degree, connected with the lecture itself. Pardon me for speaking of my own anxieties. These anxieties of my own, to be brief, have to do with the possibility of being able to go on with the building of the Goetheanum, in Dornach.

My dear friends, the fact is that since the building of the Goetheanum has been begun, and it is in large part completed, it must be continued to completion. What if this could not be done? This is bound up with the very fact that this Goetheanum is a symbol today for that spiritual movement which is to be born into the world through Anthroposophy. If there had never been a circle of friends through whom the beginning of the building of the Goetheanum could be brought to realization, then Anthroposophy would have had to find some other avenue of expression. Today the building of the Goetheanum cannot simply be discontinued without damage. And it is this, my dear friends, that weighs heavily on my soul; for, if the results of what I have said in this regard remain the same as they have thus far, it will not be months, but only weeks for the moment to arrive when we shall come to a complete stoppage in Dornach.

Naturally, I cannot make such a statement without remembering with heartfelt gratitude that in this very country individual friends have made sacrifices in a most devoted manner for what has been accomplished thus far in building the Goetheanum. My thanks for this are profound and heartfelt, and I know that many of our friends have done their utmost in this matter. This I must, naturally, presuppose. But, on the other hand, I cannot do otherwise than to emphasize the fact—without wishing to criticize anything—that the worry weighs heavily on my soul over the fact that we shall not be able to continue with the building of the Goetheanum unless we receive abundant help on the part of a greater number of our friends, and that this Anthroposophical Movement, which has been active these last years at all possible points of the periphery, will tie without a center.

Therefore, my dear friends, I cannot but tell you what is at stake. Anthroposophy as such has spread very much in the world; and I assure you that, even here in Holland, the dear friends present today are only a very small part of the people who are in touch with Anthroposophy. We can judge this by the sale of our literature and we can see how, in many ways, Anthroposophy has become important to many persons.

On the other hand, something different can be observed—we can voice this without malice, even though we may create an impression of malice—we know that, on the other hand, the enemies of truth have made their appearance. And these, my dear friends, are well organized. Among them exist strong international ties. The enemies of Anthroposophical work are as well organized as our Anthroposophical Movement—pardon me for saying this—is badly organized! This is something we have yet to realize.

How is it that we have to say today that, in a few weeks, the Goetheanum may be without any means for its progress toward completion? You may have everything possible on the periphery—Waldorf Schools, etc.—all this is naturally void of power if there is no center. But for this center the right heart is lacking among the membership!

Let it be understood that I am not saying that this or that person is not giving all he has or, perhaps, does not have; it is not in the least my intention to go into such details. But, if our souls possessed the same enthusiasm for Anthroposophy which our opponents of all shades have today for anti-Anthroposophy, we should be very differently established. Then it would not be so difficult to collect the pennies, trivial in comparison with the wealth of the world—in spite of the impoverished world of today—to finish the Goetheanum. But the right heart for this is really lacking, my dear friends; yet we cannot do otherwise than to save this symbol in Dornach from failure. It can be saved from ruin if we can combine a strong enthusiasm with all our longing for Anthroposophical knowledge.

In these remarks I am not referring to any individuals. But, on the whole, the prevalent spirit within our circles is to start things with great apparent enthusiasm. The building of the Goetheanum was begun with enthusiasm. This enthusiasm has vanished, particularly in those who in the beginning displayed great enthusiasm. And these very persons have left this problem of going on to me alone. It has in many instances become characteristic, my dear friends, that people cannot remain enthusiastic; that something flares up—and those who shared in this sudden blaze leave the fire and do not keep feeding it. The warmth of heart dies out. And then come those worries. And, in view of the seriousness of the matter, my dear friends—why should I not call attention in this intimate circle to such a thing? The seriousness of the cause demands it. On the other hand there really exists the necessity to extend spiritual science as such. Be assured, a heavy responsibility rests on the one who is able to state at all that it depends on the conditions of the cosmos, in one way or another, whether a human being becomes a man or a woman, whether he has blue eyes and blond hair or brown eyes and black hair. I mention this only as an example. A statement like this cannot he made carelessly. It requires years of research before one arrives at the point of making such a statement, for one who does this without being conscious of his responsibility will usher disaster into the world. But it is necessary today, on the one hand, to extend this spiritual science; on the other hand, my dear friends, new cares spring up because of the developments in the periphery, when the enthusiasm does not persist, through the very fact that these things are there. New establishments are founded, and they have to be cared for. The worries have to be borne. These two things do not coincide unless the Society, as bearer of the Anthroposophical Movement, is a reality built on firm inner ground. Societies, that are realities built on firm ground, can surely accomplish great things! But it is imperative to observe that along with the need to deepen spiritual science more and more, there moved along, at the same time, an increasingly badly organized Society, a will displaying less and less enthusiasm for making the Society itself an instrument.

And the first thing for which I repeatedly beg our friends, since we are confronted by urgent necessity, is that they shall make the Society into a living, active being in the world.

This is highly essential, my dear friends. It is greatly to be desired that the center in Dornach shall not crumble, but that friends shall be found who will give us help.

There is, for instance, the wonderful possibility of gradually achieving significant results in the field of medicine, of therapeutics through the discoveries of remedies, based on spiritual science. But all this depends on the existence of the center in Dornach. The moment the Dornach center breaks down everything breaks down, and it is this that I want our friends to be conscious of, for it has in many instances disappeared from their consciousness. And I must say, it has really become an extremely heavy burden for me, a crushing burden.

I am saying this for the reason, my dear friends, that you may find the opportunity to think with me about these things in your good heart; for these things have to be thought out.”

So far we have attempted to see the human being in relation to the universe as regards form and as regards life. We found that human beings relate in different ways to the universe at the head end and at the limb end. All these things essentially hold true for the period of human evolution in which we are today, i.e. the post-Atlantean period, and it has to be understood that anything we are able to say about the phenomena of this world always applies only for specific periods, for the world is in a process of evolution and changes radically from one stage of evolution to the next.

We saw that human beings tear themselves away, as it were, from the relationship to the zodiac. Unlike the animal head, which lies within the zodiac, the human head has been lifted out of it, going through an angle of about 90 degrees. The head end of the human being is fully in a way of life that inclines towards inorganic, lifeless nature. Here life is more or less in decline; it is dying. Both form and life tear themselves away from their connection with the cosmos, and because of this enter into a kind of frozen state, the beginning of lifelessness.

Essentially we are the outcome of previous development in this area. Think of the individual aspect of the human being and the fact that the human head is the metamorphosis of the other person who lived on earth before, and you will recall that the head points to the past, whilst the limbs point to the future.

The head part of the human being also points to the cosmic expanses of the past in another way. As you know, the head is the principal bearer of the sense organs and these had their origin on ancient Saturn. The most highly developed senses—other senses developed on ancient sun and moon—go back to the earliest stages of cosmic earth evolution. Everything connected with the human head therefore points to the past and in some respects it would be right to say: The mineral world evolved in the course of earth existence, and the human head, being the oldest part, is more than any other part involved in this process of mineralization.

Tearing themselves away from the cosmos, human beings keep the form that is no longer connected with the cosmos during their life between birth and death, and they also keep the life that is dying and becoming mineralized. We may also say that if human beings had kept the animal form, that is, if their heads had maintained the orientation given by the zodiac and therefore the weightier life that is to be found in the animal head, they would be entirely the outcome of earlier times in their heads. The head would have something that would immediately make it apparent that it has arisen out of the whole past cosmic evolution. By tearing the head away from this, human beings are in a way destroying their cosmic past.

It is tremendously important that we consider the things that were presented yesterday and the day before and realize that in the development of the head human beings essentially destroy their cosmic past. In fact, they go beyond the actual mineralization process, entering into a process in which matter is finely dispersed to an extraordinary degree. Organic forms are of course also to be found in the head, and embedded in the organic element is a process in which matter is reduced to dust to a degree that actually goes beyond the mineral level. Fig. 18.

If we look at the human head in the right way we have to say it is the focus of a process in which matter as such is reduced to nothing and it is this which makes it the bearer of a distinct inner life. The generally accepted materialistic view is entirely wrong when it comes to the form of the human head. Thanks to the head being part of the organism, human beings have a life of thoughts and ideas. This becomes possible because the material life is reduced to dust in a strange process which you may be able to picture as follows.

Imagine—as I said, it is a picture, but it will give you some idea of the extremely subtle process involved—imagine, then, a painting, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, for example. For the painting to exist in this world, it is necessary for it to have physical substance. Imagine that the physical substance falls to dust, but a fine etheric tissue would remain. So now the Sistine Madonna has turned into dust, but everything that was painted by using physical paints, including the nuances of colour, continues to exist in etheric form and someone with etheric perception would be able to perceive the etheric form that remains.

That is what the thinking process is like, the process of forming ideas. When we become conscious of a thought or an idea, this is due to the fact that because the head has been taken out of the wholeness of the cosmos, as we have seen yesterday and the day before, matter loses all significance and human beings face the constant need to let their heads come alive again because they are always disintegrating, and dying in every detail. The etheric aspect of their heads lifts out of it in the process (Fig. 18, red line on the outside) and thoughts evolve. Matter turns to dust and falls away, as it were, and the etheric remains and that is how people become aware of their ideas.

You’ll remember me saying that in the senses we already have something of a physical apparatus. The eye is a physical apparatus, except that the human ether body is active in it. There it already is the way I am now also going to describe for the rest of the head, for nerve tissue. Please take careful note of what I am going to say now. In the senses, and especially in the senses connected with the head, a separate etheric principle is active in the process of perception. In the sphere of the senses, therefore, we have a kind of independent etheric process.

Take the eye. It is a physical apparatus, but the etheric is active in it. Independent etheric life is to be found in an organ that is all the time tending to disintegrate and is really a mechanical, if not sub-mechanical, object. This is the situation in the sphere of the senses.

In the sphere of the nerves, which is an inward continuation of the sphere of the senses, the situation is such that the ether body is more closely bound up with the physical substance, but the whole of our life of the nerves wants all the time to become life of the senses. Imagine, therefore, that you are seeing a coloured surface. The ether body moves independently in this process of sensory perception. If you now leave this process aside and give yourself up to the life of the nerves, the whole sphere of the nerves becomes sphere of the senses and you have a idea of the coloured surface in your mind. We may say that in so far as human beings are nerve human beings, they become entirely sphere of the senses in their mental images or ideas.

Now comes the reaction. The senses are geared towards the physical and are able to take things in continually. The organism of the nerves takes in what the senses present to it. It changes into sphere of the senses and in doing so it partly dies. It seeks to become all eye, or all ear, for instance. To prevent this happening, the vital principle, the principle of life, enters from the rest of the organism and pervades it and the human individual lets the idea go, as it were.

To sum up, we may say that towards the head end, human beings destroy their past. They thus become human beings with nerves and senses that hold images and they have a living experience of images that moves in the etheric realm. You see if we base ourselves on the spiritual science of anthroposophy it is perfectly possible to describe the life of ideas that arises in the conscious mind.

As human beings develop their head end with regard to form, they do so in a way that in the present age exposes them to the influence of forces that evolve in the cosmos when the sun is in the Fishes, the Ram, the Bull, and so on, but they lift their heads out of this, as far as the form is concerned. The result is that the head does not become an animal head but assumes what we may call the “human vertical”, whilst the animal remains within the zodiac.

With regard to life we are able to say that towards the head end, life evolves under the influence of the outer planets Saturn and Jupiter, as we saw yesterday. But human beings lift their life out of this, and thus the following happens: If those planets were never blocked out by the sun, the whole life of the nerves would increasingly become life of the senses. People would perceive with their eyes, or their ears, but this would continue on into the life of nerves. The life of the twelve senses would be in total, inorganic chaos in their life of nerves. Due to the fact that those outermost planets are blocked out, the life of nerves is torn out of the life of senses, and human beings are able to be conscious and act with deliberation in the life of ideas—entering into sensory function and leaving it again by deliberately suppressing ideas, and so on.

Thus an independent etheric principle is active in the senses during sensory perception and a reduced life of senses that is bound to the physical body is active in the nerve organism.

The whole has image quality because by going into the vertical human beings destroy the principle that would give them not image quality but the quality of physical substance. Animals remain within the zodiac and have only dream images and not the conscious images that human beings have. Dream images grow out of the vital principle of the organism; conscious images are lifted up into an etheric life that has become independent of the physical body. It is important to realize that human beings develop an independent etheric life towards the head end because they raise that part out of both the zodiac and the movements of the planets. Then the astral body and the I enter into the independent etheric life and are able to take part in the thought and idea activity of the ether body.

We thus see that the nature of the soul principle can be understood if we know that human thought life has soul quality, that is, it does not take part in material life.

We have seen how human beings develop with regard to both form and life at the other extreme. The day before yesterday we saw that human beings become active in the world through their limbs; going back to ancient Greek times we saw how they became hunters, animal breeders, tillers of the soil and traders who sailed the oceans. Human beings continue in these activities by withdrawing from the influence of the relevant images in the zodiac. Animals remain fully under the influence of Archer, Goat, Water Carrier and Fishes and therefore develop forms that relate to the earth. A study of the zodiac will show why animal limbs have developed in a particular way. Human beings develop their system of limbs in such a way that they relate it to the earth when those zodiacal images are beneath the earth, when the earth is at that point in the zodiac in the northern hemisphere for a time. This is also why the geography of the earth offers different living conditions. Human beings are however able to transfer something they have developed in one place to another. I am speaking of things that apply to earlier times; today the different human forms mingle on the globe and the study of geography will no longer give a real idea of the way human beings relate to the macrocosm.

Here, then, human beings tear themselves away from the line of the zodiac in a different way, entering into the “human vertical” in the opposite direction. They remain fully exposed to the constellations of the zodiac with regard to form and to the outer planets with regard to the head, but withdraw from both influences by standing on the earth and letting the earth cover up the other side. Saturn and Jupiter influence human beings by letting their light shine on the earth. Living in images in their heads, human beings also receive the images of those starry worlds, just as they receive images of the planetary movements by developing the principle of life towards the head end. Images from the cosmos, the macrocosm, are taken up into the life of images that human beings develop.

At the other end, images are taken up and thus the forms develop that I showed you the day before yesterday—the limbs, forms that are the opposite of those seen in the head. Human beings also develop activities that are beyond the influence of the macrocosm, that do not allow those influences to enter.

At the head end, therefore, human beings destroy their past. The opposite is the case at the limb end. If we stood on a transparent earth so that both zodiac and planetary movements could influence us from the other side as well, we would not be able to act freely and independently but only under the influence of the life of the planets and fixed stars. Freedom of action is only possible because the earth blocks out the life of the planets and fixed stars. Furthermore, if we were fully exposed to them, then in view of the special nature of the human life span, with repeated earth lives, the life of our limbs would grow wooden, it would harden in itself. We would be unable to let matter fall to dust, and our organic substance would become cornified (horn-like) before it matured. Human limbs would be cornified in a way that is utterly different from the hoofs of horses or cows—almost all the way up. We are protected from this horny development because as human beings we are lifted out of the zodiac.

The process which results from this is the opposite of the process of reducing to dust in the head, where the past is destroyed and matter turns to dust. Development of the limb end is such that matter is not allowed to reach full cosmic maturity. It is held back. We have fingers and toes because we do not allow our limbs to reach their full growth potential. If they did, we would not just have nails but our arms and legs would be completely stiffened and cornified. By holding our limbs back we are able to develop the will in them, and this provides the basis for future lives on earth. If we allowed the limb person to reach full maturity, life would consist of one life on earth only. We preserve the basis for our future by not letting the limb person grow to maturity.

Thus we have a complete contrast: When it goes in the direction of thought, our inner life becomes a life in images; when it goes in the direction of our limbs, life becomes material, it is flesh and organic matter—“young”, I’d say. It does not cornify and grow old and because of this it is possible for the flesh to fall away and the image of youth to go through death and into the next life on earth.

There (Fig. 19) the will is able to develop, and we may say that the “will-end” of the human being is organic development not taken to its conclusion. At the head end we were able to speak of image quality, and here we must speak of something else. Organic development not taken to its conclusion remains germinal, an embryo capable of further development. At the head end we have something like an oyster shell, pure matter that has been secreted out. At the limb end we have something that is embryonic.

Here (above) we can say we have living inner experience of a purely etheric principle—the image. Here (below) we live not in the image but in germinal life and we know ourselves to be bound up with matter, which is also why we are able to move our limbs. We do not have much physical movement in the head, except in so far as our senses are transformed into limbs, so that in the head, too, we are human beings with limbs. One thing is also always to be found in the other, that is a basic principle. In a sense our eyes are also hands, in so far as they are able to move. Nevertheless, the head is largely immobile, and the lobes of the brain and similar structures in particular are incapable of voluntary movement. Even the outside of the head does not show much mobility; it is quite rare even for people to be able to move certain ear muscles; if they can, it provides them with an excellent opportunity for showing off.

Life experienced in organic substance does not allow conscious awareness to arise and this makes it possible for us to develop the will. (Up) here, then, we destroy physical matter, and (down) here we retain, in embryo, the powers for our next life on earth when physical substance falls away from us at death.

Between the two lie the life of breathing and the life of circulation, as we called them yesterday. We also saw that with regard to form this area relates to the constellations of the zodiac that lie between the upper and the lower ones.

If we consider the present-day fixed stars to be Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer, Goat, Water Carrier and Fishes, we need to relate these four (Fishes, Ram, Bull, Twins) to the head. Under their influence and in accord with the planetary movements that are above the earth, the head is given a dying life that offers experience of life in images, an inner life of ideas. The four opposite constellations—it would have been slightly different in ancient Greece—would be Virgin, Scales, Scorpion and Archer. The constellations that lie between the upper and lower ones would relate to the rhythmical aspect of the human being, just as in planetary life Mars and Mercury hold a middle position. Here, we may say, the human being swings to and fro between image and embryo. The life of breathing and of the blood illustrates this quite beautifully. We take in oxygen which gives life and is connected with the limb organism and with everything that is mobile in us. We combine the oxygen with carbon, a substance that initially has a stimulant effect on the life of the nerves and senses, bringing in an element of death, and is then cast out as a dying element. Here we have in physical, material terms the continuous contrast of extreme life in oxygen and extreme death in carbon: dying and enlivening, dying and enlivening. Life swings to and fro between these extremes.

At the level of soul life it is like this: we have inward experience of something that on the one hand is still purely etheric, like the life of thoughts; but the ether body takes hold of certain glandular structures and these glands secrete matter. At the physical level, therefore, the ether body acts on the glands. Glands do not make a connection with etheric life, the way muscles do—which are essentially part of the limb organism but secrete matter when etheric life takes hold of them. Etheric life and physical, material life therefore do not fuse completely, and we have a stage of transition. Matter is taken hold of but it also resists and is secreted out. If you study muscles and bones, the elements of the limb system, you find that matter is rigorously taken hold of by the human ether body, most of all in the bones. Nothing falls to dust and is dispersed, everything stays fresh and alive. In the head, none of the matter is taken hold of, but as the head develops, matter falls to dust. Unbound, etheric activity develops to become the life of thought. When the ether body takes hold of the glands, it unites with them but they resist. Muscle tolerates the ether body and take it into itself. Glands do not tolerate it; they immediately secrete matter and drive out the ether. At the soul level this is the life of feeling.

We can now get a real idea of the life of thought. Matter is not put to use, it only goes as far as the etheric, and conscious awareness lives in this etheric element. In the life of feeling, the ether body takes hold of glandular life, which does not tolerate it. Yet for the time that the ether body vanishes into glandular life, before secretion actually comes into effect, human beings are without their ether body, which has vanished into the glands. At that point they find themselves only in their I and astral body, and that is how it is when we feel.

idea—ether body, astral body, I
realm of feeling—astral body, I
life of will—I

If we take the ideas that come in the life of thought—the life of the physical body is cast off; human beings experience themselves in ether body, astral body and I. In the human head the I is active in the astral and the ether bodies and rejects the physical element; the I is thus able, with the aid of the astral body, to experience thoughts, thinking, in the ether body. In the realm of feeling human beings have the ether body taken away from them when it takes hold of glandular life; it is withdrawn from them until the gland has taken the secretory activity to its conclusion. The ether body is therefore in the physical body and human beings have only the astral body and I available for conscious inner life. Experience is at the level of feelings and dream-like in quality, because we enter into the physical body.

In their life of will, human beings enter completely into organic matter with the ether body. When we are awake, the ether body takes the astral body with it, and this enables us to move our limbs. The astral body is also taken into matter and is therefore withdrawn from us so that we have conscious awareness only of the I.

Thus we find that the inner life and the physical life are related at every level. Basing ourselves on the science of the spirit we merely need to have a clear picture of the way in which I, astral body and ether body are involved in the physical body and we perceive the difference between the inner life of thought, the inner life of feeling and the inner life of will. We find that the inner life of thought is in the dying part of the organism which has torn itself away from the upper part of the world of the fixed stars and the upper world of the planets, and become a life in images by reducing the past to dust. We find that in the middle, or rhythmical region we are able to share in life relating to the past and therefore also to the macrocosm, which has evolved out of the past; yet we also react to this because there is a continuous rhythmical element—on the one hand the rhythm of oxygen combining with carbon, and on the other that of glands being taken hold of and responding with secretion. When the macrocosmic life in us is taken hold of and takes hold, the microcosm, that is, the individual human being, reacts. We live in rhythm not only inside ourselves but with the world; we open up to the cosmos and take it back into ourselves. We are half-way individual beings and move rhythmically to and fro between macrocosm and microcosm, and this is where we are alive and active in our feelings. Here we can see exactly how the physical, material aspect of the organism interacts with the element of soul and spirit. In the life of the will, physical matter is most strongly taken hold of and this is where we are most of all mere microcosm, withdrawing entirely from macrocosmic activity in becoming active ourselves.

Living in the northern hemisphere, we withdraw from the other fixed stars and planets in our own way; people living in the southern hemisphere do the same in a similar way, and the whole does, of course, rotate. In our limbs we are therefore entirely microcosm between birth and death, in a world of our own which therefore is also able to take itself forward into a future. We are today developing the will as the youngest element in the inner life. This is still entirely dependent on the physical body for support; it allows only the I to find to itself, with the astral body and the ether body caught up in the physical body.

We shall never understand the inner life unless we are able to differentiate between I, astral body and ether body. Anyone who does not have a real, inner grasp of these will never be able to understand the life of thought, the life of feeling and the life of will. What happens when people refuse to grasp this reality today?

What happens is that people who carry some authority stand there and tell people that it is not really possible to know anything about the inner life, though certain phenomena suggest that something exists that has soul quality, which they call “psychoid”. Giving an explanation of the way Descartes¹⁵ and Spinoza¹⁶ endeavoured to discover the nature of this interaction, they are unable to be anything but abstract—the body on one side, the soul on the other. It will never be possible to get at the truth in this way, because the relationship between soul and body is different in the life of thought, the life of feeling and the life of will. People will not get to the truth if they insist on making one big muddle of the whole inner life and talk of a “psychoid” element rather than giving real consideration to the way the I, astral body and ether body are related in real life. It is as if someone were to refuse to look at the real human being and talk about an “anthropoid” in order to avoid speaking of the anthropos¹⁷ That kind of science is anthropoid-sophy rather than anthroposophy; it is psychoidology.

If we give real consideration to the life of soul and spirit, we can give full detail of the “interactions” and so on, as people call them. There will be no need to cut out bits of the liver, or the brain, and present them neatly as abstract tissues, the way anatomists do. Instead we must know that the relationship of the human being to the cosmos is different at the head end and the limb end. At the head end we reduce it to dust, destroying the past. At the limb end we do not allow growth to reach its full potential but remain embryonic.

The worst thing is when people leave truth aside and speculate on the nature of the physical body as well as of soul and spirit. Using worn-out old words and making them into -oids, they fail to grasp the real truth. There are people nowadays who have no notion of how to get from a word to a concept. Someone called Arthur Drews¹⁸ has been giving lectures to non-conformist religious and monist congregations in Germany today, both of which live on the dregs of the materialistic science that goes back to the 1860s and 70s. He has studied Hartmann’s philosophy¹⁹—as a young man he would always dance attendance on him—but he really only took in the words, which roll about in his head like the balls in a pin-ball machine, and he has no idea of how to get from word to concept. And he uses these words from Hartmann’s philosophy, words that whizz around in his head as if in a pinball machine, to criticize anthroposophy!

Those are the fruits of education in our modern civilization, where people refuse to give serious consideration to the methods available for gaining real insight into the relationship between human being and cosmos. These enable us to describe the human form and human life on the basis of the cosmos and to understand that because human beings are specifically torn away from the cosmos they have dying life at one end, which enables them to develop an inner life of ideas based on images, and a life that remains embryonic at the other extreme, which allows the will element to develop.

These things sound incomprehensible to the people involved in the official science of today, and as a rule—not always but as a rule—we cannot expect them to gain access to them, for essentially they have lost all real understanding with their kaleidoscope of words. For anyone who knows the real situation, those lectures about psychoids are essentially no more than word kaleidoscopes; the things said about Descartes, Spinoza and so on, right up to Fechner,²⁰ have no inner connection and are kaleidoscopes of words. The scraps of words that whirl around in confusion can only gain inner meaning through insight into I, astral body, ether body, and so on. It seems a pity that one has to talk about the present time like this; but when it comes to the “intellectual life”, as it is called, we have to speak about the present age like this. The philosophers have no longer been able to get their bearings because decades ago their words have lost all meaning.

The latest thing is to appoint modern scientists as professors of philosophy. They are asked to hand down philosophy. It started with Mach,²¹ and today Driesch²² is one of the main representatives of the species. Scientists are being appointed as professors of philosophy because the philosophers no longer have anything meaningful to say, whilst scientists at least still have the faculty of external observation. What they say about philosophy is, of course, even more empty of meaning than the things said by philosophers, who at least still had the words. This really has been a strange development. We have seen philosophy, which still had meaningful content in the first half of the 19th century, evaporate completely in the wordy works of someone like Kuno Fischer,²³ for instance. But in his day the chairs of philosophy were still held by philosophers, even if their philosophy no longer had inner meaning.

It is absolutely necessary that we realize this clearly and that there are at least a few people in the world who see through all the glitter of those “psychoids” and know that we are deeply in decadence, particularly in the field of academics. You can’t know this strongly enough, and I think it will be good for you to enter deeply into the things I have tried to put before you in these three lectures.

We have seen that on the one hand man appeared to be connected with the universe in outer form and in the way of life, but that he has renounced the universe at the head end and at the limb end, so that we are only wholly given up to the rhythm of the universe in so far as we are rhythmical human beings; renounced in order to develop the life of thoughts as life in images, that is, independent of physical matter, at one end, and at the other end to develop the life of will by keeping matter at an embryonic level, not letting it assume the rigid form that the macrocosm is able to impose. The limb end is thus kept mobile and has the potential to evolve and progress from earth to existence on Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan.

Hold on to these things and you can see that the insight gained in anthroposophy really wants to take hold first of all of our sense of truth, secondly of our sense of aesthetics—when you study the human form as it arises out of the macrocosm—and thirdly also in the direction of what is good and of religious life. These three lectures are particularly able to show the profound justification of the statement that has been made so many times here, in courses and also on other occasions, that we must look for a synthesis, bringing together in harmony religion, art and science. This cannot be achieved unless we come to a genuine cosmology which clearly shows the reality of the human form and of human life.

Something else we need is a theory of independent activity in the inner life, a theory that shows us the true nature of man, who has torn himself away from the cosmos at either end. And we also need to know the qualities which human beings develop independently, relating to future worlds which will take the place of the earth within the macrocosm. This will lead to deeply religious inner responses and feelings.

If human civilization is to show true progress we need a cosmology that includes the human being and does not leave humanity aside the way our present-day cosmology does. We also need a theory of independent activity and we need ethics that are able to show that the potential for good which they hold is the seed for worlds. We need ethics that have reality, their values not abstract but having the power in them to come to realization. Cosmology, a theory of independent activity and ethics—these are the things humanity will need to be able to rise to something higher.

• 15. René, Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher and mathematician.
• 16. Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), Dutch-Jewish philosopher and theologian.
• 17. Anthropos, Greek for “human being”.
• 18. Arthur Drews (1865–1935), a professor of philosophy who gave a number of lectures against anthroposophy in the autumn of 1921. See his Metaphysik und Anthroposophie, Berlin 1922, esp. the chapter on perception of the supersensible.
• 19. Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), German philosopher
• 20. Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–87), German philosopher and psychologist.
• 21. Ernst Mach (1839–1916) Austrian physicist and philosopher.
• 22. Hans Driesch (1867–1914), German zoologist and philosopher.
• 23. Ernst Kuno Fischer (1824–1907), German philosopher who wrote a major history of modern philosophy, books on logic and metaphysics and on Kant, Descartes, Goethe, Lessing and Schiller.

We will spend the first part of the time today in answering questions which do not belong to the general category of which I have already spoken. We will then continue the theme of yesterday's lecture in order, tomorrow, to come to the esoteric conclusion.

Most of the questions fit into what I have said to you in general. There are only a few questions which call for a specific answer and we will take these more or less at random.

Question: Are there definite exercises for strengthening the so-called magnetic healing forces, and what are these exercises?

This, of course, necessitates a few words about the nature of the forces of magnetic healing. The magnetic healing forces are forces which play, essentially, between the etheric body of the one person and the etheric body of the other. You must picture to yourselves that the efficacy of what goes by the name of healing magnetism is based on the following—suppose somebody has a very strong character, that is to say, it is possible for him to unfold his will very strongly. Indications can be given to such a person. I can, for instance, say to him when he is suffering from some illness or other; every morning at eleven o'clock you should think about the sun; think that the sun warms your head first, and then that the warmth of your head passes to your upper arm, lower arm, hands, so that your own power is strengthened; then, when you have strengthened your own power, try to make a clear mental picture of what you feel about your illness, in order, then, through the power of your will, to get rid of it. This procedure may help, when the illness is not connected with damage to a specific organ, whereby the damage can naturally extend itself to all four parts of the elemental body: the solid, fluid, aeriform, and warmth elements. Although I do not say that it will invariably help, for there is always something problematic about these things.

Through the indications given him, the astral body of the patient has been stimulated. The indication which he has put into practice, this picturing of the sun, the warmth in his head, and so on, which has still further strengthened his will—this has worked upon his astral body. The astral body has worked upon his etheric body and the etheric body in turn has worked in a healing way on his physical body and has been able to adjust, to nullify the trouble which is not a deep, organic one. It cannot be said that such healing can only occur in what modern medicine calls “functional” disturbance in contrast to organic disturbance where there is an actual disturbance of the organs themselves. This difference is, as a matter of fact, quite inexact. It is impossible to say where functional disturbances cease and organic disturbances begin. In functional diseases there are always slight organic disturbances as well, only these latter cannot be proved by the crude methods of physiology and pathology today. In a case like that which I have described, we are not applying the forces of magnetic healing, but we are calling upon the patient's power to heal himself and this method, when it can be used, is the best, under all circumstances. We thereby strengthen the patient's will, as we make him well.

The following is also possible. Out of our own astral body, without the patient exerting his own will, we can influence our own etheric body in such a way that our own etheric body works upon the etheric body of the patient in the same way as, in the previous case, the astral body worked. It is in this that healing magnetism consists. The magnetic healer does this unconsciously; he influences his own etheric body with his astral body. Instinctively, he can then so direct the forces he unfolds that as he passes them on to the patient they strengthen the patient's forces. You must realize that if it is to be a question of healing, the magnetic healer must use means that are able, somehow, to bring it about. If we have a patient who is weak, of whose will we can expect nothing, the forces of healing magnetism may sometimes be applied. But I want to say, with emphasis, that magnetic healing forces are pretty problematical and are not equally useful in all cases. The instinctive faculty of activating one's own astral body in order thereby to influence one's own etheric body and then work over into the etheric body of the patient—this instinctive faculty is an individual one. There are people in whom it is strong, others in whom it is weak, others who do not possess it at all. There are people who are, by nature, magnetic healers—certainly there are. But the important thing is this, that the faculty is, as a rule, of limited duration. The natural magnetic healers have this magnetism, as it is called. When they begin to apply it, it may work very well; after a time it begins to wane, and later on it often happens that magnetic healers, after this faculty has died down in them, go on acting as if they still had it, and then charlatanism begins.

This is the precarious element when magnetic healing becomes a profession. This kind of healing really cannot be made into a profession. That is what must be said about it. The process of magnetic healing—when a person has the faculty for it—is only unconditionally effective when it is carried out with genuine compassion for the patient, a compassion that goes right down into one's organism. If you practice magnetic healing with a real love for the patient, then it cannot be done as a profession. If real love exists it will always be able to lead to something good, if no trouble arises from another side. But it can only be done on occasions, when karma leads us to a person whom we are able, out of love, to help; then the outer sign may be a laying on of the hand, or a stroking and then what is happening is that the astral body is passing on its forces to the etheric body which then works upon the ether body of the other person.

Something must still be said from another aspect about what goes on here. The healing always proceeds from the astral body, either from the patient's own astral body or from the astral body of the magnetizer. The reverse is the case in therapy where medicaments are used. When you give medicaments you introduce into the physical body substances which then work partly upon the inner forces and partly upon the rhythm of the physical body in such a way that the etheric body of the patient is influenced. The healing always proceeds from the etheric body. If you influence the etheric body from the astral body—which is a psychical healing—this lies in the realm of magnetic healing and is somewhat problematic, having a humanitarian, social element in it, something to do with the relations of one human being to another. Rational therapy must proceed from intervention by means of medicaments which proceed from the physical body and pass into to the etheric body. Always, however, the healing proceeds from the etheric body. It is a complete illusion that the physical body, when it has become ill, can itself bring about any healing. The physical body has, precisely, the basis of illness within it, and the cause of healing must always come from the etheric body.

Question: What relationships are there between the heart and the uterus and its position on the one hand, and experiences of the soul such as pain or joy, on the other?

There are direct relationships. In the first place, even though they are not in physical contact, heart and uterus belong together as closely as sun and moon. Sun and moon belong together in such a way that both of them throw the same light on an object. Sometimes the sun throws the light directly, at other times by the indirect way of passing first to the moon and being reflected back from there. The organ of the heart contains direct impulses for the human organism. It is the organ of perception for the blood circulation which goes on in the normal organism. The uterus is so constituted that it is the organ of perception for the circulation that comes about after fertilization. That is its purpose. It is just like the moon reflecting the sun's light; the uterus reflects what the heart perceives in the blood circulation; it radiates it back. They belong together as sun and moon inasmuch as what these organs perceive are like direct and reflected influences. When a human being is once in existence, he needs the heart forces; when he first begins to develop he needs reflected heart force and this comes from the uterus.

These organs, together with certain others—lungs bring it more down to the etheric-physical body—these organs, heart and uterus, are, physically, nothing else than that which, seen from the spiritual, is the soul nature of the human being. Perhaps I may put it as follows—suppose you develop imaginative cognition. When you have developed imaginative cognition and look at a human being, you actually get the picture of sun and moon when you look at heart and uterus. That is the corresponding spiritual reality which the human being experiences in his soul. There is a real correspondence between what goes on in the heart and in the uterus—goes on, that is, in the half-unconscious region of the soul, for generally speaking, the life of soul is otherwise influenced by thoughts. A delicate process is unveiled in imaginative cognition, namely, an intimate connection of heart and uterus. But those who can only observe a little, can see how, half-consciously or half-unconsciously, shall I say, the activity of the heart develops under the influence of the physical environment. A person whose life is such that he constantly
receives shocks through his profession, let us say, has in his subconsciousness an exact counterpart in his life of soul of the heart activity which is there set up, and this reflects itself—in the case of woman—in the uterus. We can then see how what takes place there is transferred to the constitution of the embryo.

Question: Here is a question that is difficult to answer because it must either be answered superficially, that is to say as a mere communication, or one must go into it thoroughly. The question is: How does the wearing of pearls and precious stones work upon individual organs?

There is an effect, certainly, but the effect can only be judged when one is able to look into the spiritual world; the effect has to be judged according to the individual. It can quite well be said, for example: Sapphire works upon a certain temperament, upon a choleric temperament, but really only in an individual case. There certainly are effects but to answer the question completely one would have to enter into deeper things than is possible today.

Question: This next question: “How can one get insight into karma in cases of individual illness?” can only be answered out of what I have said in the lectures.

Much will have resulted from what has been said and much will come out of what I still have to say.

Question: Here is another: Are there favorable connections between the degree and length of time of the post-mortem processes of decay (Verwesungsvorgänge = processes of decay) and the destiny of the individual in the spiritual world?

There are really no connections which would have any significance for us as human beings. The process of decay is not, of course, the purely physical process which it is usually considered to be by chemistry. There is something deeply spiritual connected with it. This was felt in the days of the old, instinctive knowledge. It was said: The innermost kernel, or essence, of a thing is the real or essential being (Wesen) and the prefix ver always means the movement towards something. If, for example, you say, “to have a sudden rapid movement (zucken),” that is a movement. But if you say verzücken, that is the tendency, the movement towards a sudden rapid movement. If you say verwesen (to decay), this means a movement towards Wesen, towards real being, a rising into real being.

Man is not an entirely self-enclosed being. Spiritual beings work and create in him. Spiritual beings are within our physical, etheric and astral bodies. It is only in the ego organization that we are free. These spiritual beings within the physical, etheric, and astral bodies are bound up with what happens in the physical body after death. The question of cremation and decay is closely connected with this. But all these things are bound up with human karma. One can only say this: So far as the individual human being as such is concerned the question is really not of very great importance.

Question: Has a post-mortem examination any influence on the destiny of the dead from a certain point of time after death?

It has no influence at all upon the destiny of the dead.

Most of the questions have been answered in the lectures. But here is still one that has a certain importance.

Question: Are the healing faculties possessed by a physician of a purely personal nature or are they affected by community, that is to say, not only by connections between physician and patient but by community among physicians? Is it conceivable that the individual physician could acquire, through such community, powers that cannot be his if he works all by himself? Does not this happen, for example, in the communities of priests?

This is certainly the case, as it is with all communities of human beings. Forces can flow to an individual from every community of human beings, only the community must be real—it must be felt, experienced. What I have described to you and shall do more clearly still tomorrow is of such a nature that it can build a community among you in connection with us here, even if for the present we can only communicate by means of correspondence. It is meant to unite you in such a way that when you are alone, you will feel that forces flow to you not only by way of the intellectual, but also by way of the spirit.

Question: Is there any value in iris diagnosis, graphology, chiromancy?

The ideal would be that you should be able to observe the general state of a human being from a small piece of his finger nail which you cut off. This is quite possible—a very great deal can be learned from this. Equally you can learn a great deal from one hair of a human being. But here you must remember how different, how individual is the hair of each person. Some of you are fair, some of you have black hair. What underlies this? Those of you who are dark have in the blackness of the hair an iron process which is going on in the hair. Blondeness comes from a sulfur process which is particularly strong in those people who have red hair. These things are of the very greatest interest. I have actually known people of whom it could be said that they were really fiery, with their bright red hair. A very strong sulfur process is present here, whereas in black hair there is a comparatively strong iron process. You must remember that this emanates from the whole human organism. A person who has red hair is always producing something that is a highly combustible substance—sulfur—and his hair is permeated with it. The other person who has black hair secretes iron—a substance that is not combustible but of a different character. This reveals a deep-seated difference between the two people in their whole organization. In individual cases, much can be learned about the whole human being from the kind of hair he has.

If this is so, why should it not be possible to learn about a person from the constitution of his iris? But you must remember that a very high form of knowledge is required for these things, not the nonsensical knowledge which the diagnosticians possess about the iris. That, of course, is dilettantism. The way to real knowledge of these things which rest on true foundations comes only at the end, just as the way to astrology comes only at the last stages of spiritual knowledge. Before that stage has been reached, astrology is terrible dilettantism. The same applies to chiromancy and graphology.

For graphology, genuine inspiration is necessary. The way a human being writes is entirely individual. At the very most there are indications, but they are quite crude. Inspiration is necessary before anything about a human being can be deduced by graphology. The strange thing about graphology is that from the handwriting of a person we can more or less get at the condition he was in seven years previously. Anyone, therefore, who wants to know something about a person as he is now, will have to take a circuitous path; he gets at the inner conditions which were there seven years previously and then, if he has the necessary vision, from what he perceives of seven years ago, he can arrive at a more fundamental knowledge than would otherwise be possible. So, you see, something can actually be accomplished.

As it is with the hair and the iris, so it is with chiromancy. For that you must have inspiration—not the superficial principles that are customarily given. A very special talent which someone or other may possess is necessary in order to be able to get to the bottom of the lines in the hand. The lines are, it is true, closely connected with the development of a human being. You need only compare your own hands and look at the lines in the left hand and in the right. Even in ordinary life there is a difference, for one person writes with his right hand, another with his left. With inspiration we can read the karma of a person from the lines in his left hand. In the right hand one usually sees the personal capacities and industriousness which a person has acquired during this life. His destiny has fashioned this earth life and his capacities lead him on into the future. None of these things is without foundation, but it is exceedingly dangerous to represent them in public because here we come to a region where seriousness and charlatanism border very closely upon each other.

At the end of the lecture yesterday, I said that out of the very nature of the world processes, medicine must be bound up with deep-seated morality of the soul. For I told you that real, true knowledge of a medicament to a certain extent deprives the knower himself of the power of this medicament; there is something in the knowledge of the medicament which excludes from the knower the possibility of being healed by its means. Naturally, the purely chemical working is not excluded, but that is not real knowledge. Just think of the following—the muscular system of man is understood through imagination, as I said yesterday. We learn to know what is working in a muscle when we attain to pictorial, imaginative cognition. But if we want to know what has a healing effect in some organ that is of the nature of a muscle, then the therapeutic knowledge must also be imaginative. True knowledge of an inner organ is of the nature of inspiration; that is the real knowledge; it is not chemical knowledge. If you really know that some medicament works upon the muscular system in a certain way, then you have this knowledge through imagination. Yes, but imaginative knowing is not like the knowing which we usually visualize today. The latter kind of knowing does not go very deeply into the human being. It really exists only in the head, whereas imaginative knowing simultaneously takes hold of the muscular system. Therapeutic knowledge that is also imaginative is of such a nature that you actually feel this knowledge in your muscles. What matters is that you shall take these things in real earnestness.

In order that you may fully understand, I want to say something paradoxical on this subject, but the paradox here happens to be the truth. My Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has been little understood because people have not known how to read it. They have read it just as they would read any other book. But the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is not the same as other books. It weaves in thoughts, but in thoughts that are truly experienced. Abstract, logical thoughts such as are current in science today are experienced in the brain. The thoughts to which I have given expression in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—and here comes the paradox—are experienced by one's whole being, in the bony system. And let me say something still stranger. It has happened—only people have not noticed it because they did not connect the two things—it has happened that when people have really understood this book that often in the course of reading, and especially when they have finished the book, they have more than once dreamed of skeletons. This is connected in the moral sphere, with the position of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in regard to the freedom of the world.

Freedom, or spiritual activity, consists in this: that from out the bones the muscles are moved in the external world. The unfree person follows his impulses and instincts; the free person directs himself in accordance with the demands and exigencies of the world which he must first love. He must acquire a relationship to the world. This expresses itself in the imagination of the bony system. Inwardly, it is the bony system that experiences the thoughts when they are truly experienced. They are experienced with the whole being, with the whole of the earthy man. Thoughts, then, that are truly experienced, are experienced with the bony system. There have been people who wanted to paint pictures after reading my books and they have shown me all kinds of things. They have wanted to bring the thoughts in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity into the form of pictures. If one really wants to paint what it contains, one would have to produce dramatic scenes, performed by human skeletons. Free spiritual activity is something in which we must get rid of everything that is purely instinctive; similarly, what a person experiences when he has the thoughts of free spiritual activity is something in which he must unburden himself of his flesh and blood; he must become a skeleton, he must become of the earth. The thoughts must become earthy in the true sense. This means that one must free oneself by dint of hard work.

I mention this in order that you may realize that even ordinary thoughts generate something that lays hold of the whole being of man.

If we pass on from thoughts to imagination, we experience imagination in the muscular system. Inspiration is experienced when we experience our own inner organs. When it is a matter of inspirations, however, we must not forget the saying: Naturalia non sunt turpia (the natural is not despicable). For under certain circumstances, the most wonderful inspirations are experienced with the kidneys or with other organs in the lower part of the body.

Higher knowledge, therefore, is something that involves the whole being of man, and those who have no knowledge of imaginations and inspirations do not know that the activity of imagination is a labor that is quite like physical labor because it puts a strain on the very muscles. Real imagination is like actual physical labor. There is a relationship between physical labor and imagination. If I may be allowed to say something personal, I have always found that imagination was helped a great deal by the fact that when I was a boy, I used to hack wood, dig potatoes, work with a spade, sow seed, and such things. I do not want to blow my own trumpet by saying this, but to have done these things did help to exert the muscles and so made imagination easier. If you have exerted the muscles in youth, imagination will be easier for you in later life. But remember this: movements that do not involve exertion, that are not real labor, are of no use, play is of no use at all for imagination. I am not saying anything against play in itself, for you need only read what I say about educational subjects to find that I have nothing whatever against play. What imagination does is to bring the resting muscle—for this must naturally take place while the muscle is at rest—to bring the resting muscle to an experience that is similar to actual physical labor.

If you embark on the medical path in association with us here, you will learn about these strange things and you will realize that the knowledge of these therapeutic matters takes hold of your muscular system; and this will be of significance in your own karma.

Let us take a specific case. I will construct quite an idealistic one—the true therapy of smallpox. Real smallpox calls up a very strong inspiration, with intuition as well. And the knowledge that comes to you here, when you are real therapists in this domain, works much more strongly upon you—when it is real knowledge—does a vaccination; in a different sense it works much more strongly, and in studying the therapy of smallpox as a physician you will bring about a kind of healing in yourself in advance, prophylactically, and will therefore be able, when you understand the connection, to go among smallpox patients without fear, and full of love.

Of course all these things have their other side too. As I have said, if the knowledge of a medicament is a true imaginative or inspired knowledge, then the healing forces are there; it need not even be one's own imagination, it may be that of someone else. In itself it has healing forces. Even to have the idea of a medicament has an effect, and it works. But it works only so long as you are without fear. Fear is the opposite pole to love. If you go into a sick room with fear, none of your therapeutic measures will help. If you can go into a sick room with love, without thought of yourself, if you can direct the whole of your soul to those whom you have to heal, if you can live in love, in your imaginative and inspired knowledge, then you will be able to place yourselves within the process of healing not as a knower who is a bearer of fear, but as a knower who is a bearer of love.

Thus medicine is impelled into the realm of the moral not only from without but also from within. This is true to a high degree in the sphere of medicine, as it is true in all spheres of spiritual knowledge. Courage must be developed. I have told you that courage is all around us. Air is an illusion; it is courage that is everywhere around us. If we are really to live in the world in which we breathe, we need courage. If we are timid or cowardly, if we do not live together with the world but exclude ourselves from it, we breathe only in semblance. What is above all things for medicine is courage, the courage to heal. It is indeed so: if you confront an illness with the courage to heal, this is the right orientation which in ninety percent of cases leads you right. These moral qualities are most intimately connected with the process of healing.

Thus it should be as I have said: A first course for medical students should consist in creating a basis through knowledge of nature and of the being of man, knowledge of the cosmos as well as of man. Then, in a second course, there would come the esoteric deepening, the deepening of esoteric knowledge of the working of the healing forces, so that medicine would be regarded as I described in the fourth lecture and will speak of again tomorrow. A final course would aim at bringing therapy into connection with the development of the true moral faculties of the physician. If such a final course were able to produce these moral qualifications, then diseases would become, for the physician, the opposite of what they are for the patients; they would become something that he loves—not, of course, in order to be enhanced and cultivated so that the patient may remain ill as long as possible—but loved because illness only acquires its meaning when it is healed. What does this mean?

To be healthy means to have the so-called 'normal' qualities of soul and spirit within one; to be ill, to have some illness, however, also means that one is being influenced by some spiritual quality. I know, of course, that learned men of the modern age will say, on hearing this: "Ah, now comes the old doctrine of being possessed." Yes, but it is really a question whether the old doctrine of being possessed is worse than the new. Which is worse—to be possessed by spirits or by bacilli? It is a matter there of examining the relative values. Modern physicians with their theories acknowledge the fact of such "possession"—only their mentality is more suited to preach a materialistic kind of possession.

The truth is that when a person has an illness, he has a spiritual quality within him which, in the ordinary course of his life, is not present. Yet it is a spiritual quality. Here again I must voice a paradox. I am going to speak now of a reality in connection with the Zodiac: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Now there is a colossal difference between these upper seven constellations and the five lower constellations. If you can reach to imagination, you get a picture of a male being in the cosmos for these seven upper constellations, and the picture of a female being for the five lower constellations. So that in imaginative vision, male-female in an enclosed serpent form is spread over the Zodiac.

Nobody can have this imagination without going through the following experience. Think of the illness of smallpox which reveals itself in physical symptoms. But suppose you were able to do the following: picture to yourselves a person suffering from smallpox who in his astral body and ego organization had the power today to draw out the whole illness and to experience it only in the astral body and in the ego, so that in that moment his physical and etheric bodies would be well. Suppose such a thing were hypothetically possible. What I have said cannot actually happen, but if you want to have this imagination you must do the same thing as I have described as a hypothetical case, without your physical body and etheric body having smallpox. In the astral body and ego organization, free from the physical and etheric bodies, you must experience the illness of smallpox. In other words: you must experience, spiritually, a spiritual correlate of physical illness. The illness of smallpox is the physical image of the condition in which ego organization and astral body are when they have such an imagination. You will realize now that in smallpox there is proceeding, but in this case from the human being himself, the same influence out of which, in spiritual knowledge, the heavenly imagination comes.

You see, my dear friends, how closely illness is related to the spiritual life—not to the physical body; illness is closely related to the spiritual life. Illness is the physical imagination of the spiritual life and because the physical imagination is in the wrong, because it ought not to imitate certain spiritual processes—therefore that which in the spiritual world may be something very sublime, is, under certain circumstances, illness in the physical organization.

In trying to understand the nature of illness we must say to ourselves: Were it not possible for certain spiritual beings to be brought down into a realm where they do not rightly belong, then these beings would not be present even in the spiritual world. The close relationship of true spiritual knowledge with illness is clear from this. When we have spiritual knowledge we have knowledge of illness. If one has a heavenly imagination such as that of which I spoke, one knows what smallpox is, because it is only the physical projection of what is experienced spiritually. And so it is, really, with all knowledge of illness. We can say: If heaven, or indeed hell, take too strong a hold of the human being, he becomes ill; if they only take hold of his soul or his spirit, he becomes wiser, or cleverer, or a seer.

These are things which you must inwardly digest, my dear friends, and then you will realize what the task of Anthroposophy is in connection with medicine, for Anthroposophy reveals the true, divine archetypes of the illnesses which are their demonic counterparts. But this can lead you more and more deeply to the recognition that what is necessary today as a reform of medical study is to be sought in the domain of Anthroposophy.

[ 1 ] In a second period, Man passes from the domain of the Archai into that of the Archangels. With these, however, he is not bound up in such a bodily-spiritual manner as he was with the Archai. With the Archangel Hierarchy his connection is a more spiritual one. It is nevertheless so intimate that one still could not speak at this period of Man's being in any way detached from the spiritual world.

From the Archangel Hierarchy Man receives for his ether-body what, in this body, corresponds to the Form in the physical body, which he owes to the Archai. Even as the physical body is adapted by its form to the Earth, to be the vehicle on Earth for Man's Self-consciousness, so is the ether-body adapted to the conditions of extra-earthly, cosmic forces. In the physical body lives the Earth; in the ether-body lives the Star-world. All that Man bears within him of inner forces, so that, while being upon Earth, he yet frees himself from the Earth in posture, movement and gesture—all this he owes to the creation of the Archangels in his ether-body. As the Earth-forces live, by means of its formation, in the physical body, so in the ether-body there live those forces, which from all sides, from the circumference of the cosmos, stream in towards the Earth. The Earth-forces that live in the physically apparent formation of the body are such as make the form a comparatively fixed and final one. The outlines of the man remain—with some subordinate changes—fixed for this entire earth-life; his aptitudes for movement harden into set habits, and so on. With the ether-body, all is in continual motion, reflecting the changes in the constellations of the Stars during human earth-life. Even with such changes in the heavens as day-and-night, the ether-body adapts its form accordingly; but also in accordance with the particular changes which take place between its own birth and death.

[ 2 ] The adaptation of the ether-body in this manner to the heavenly forces is in no contradiction to what has been spoken of elsewhere as the gradual detachment of the starry heavens from the divine Spirit-Powers. It is true that in very olden times there dwelt in the stars the living will of Gods, the living intelligence of Gods, whereas in later times all this passed over into the ‘Calculable.’ The gods no longer act directly upon Man through what has now become their finished work. Man however gradually comes through his ether-body into a relation of his own with the stars; just as through his physical body he comes into a relation of his own with the gravity of earth.

[ 3 ] What Man collects and fits into himself when he comes down out of the spirit-world to be born upon earth—his ether-body, which gathers into itself the cosmic forces from beyond the earth, was created by the Archangel Hierarchy during this second period.

[ 4 ] A very important thing which Man acquires through this hierarchy, is that he belongs to a group of people upon earth. Men are differentiated over the face of the earth. When one looks back into this second period, one does not find the differentiation of to-day, into races and nations, but a somewhat other and more spiritual one, arising from the fact that upon various parts of the earth the star-influences fall in various constellations. In the relative distribution of land and water, in climate, in vegetation, etc., the starry heavens are living and acting upon earth.

In so far as Man has to adopt himself to these relations—which are heavenly relations upon earth—the necessary adaptations belong to his ether-body, and the formation thus given to it is the creation of the choir of Archangeloi.

[ 5 ] This however is the very time—during the second period—when the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers come into Man's life, and in a special way. It is necessary for them to come into it, although at first sight it appears as though Man would thereby be driven down, below the level of his manhood.

[ 6 ] For Man to develop the consciousness of Self in earth-life, he must become much more thoroughly detached from the divine spiritual world which gave him his origin, than can be done by that world of itself. It takes place during the time when the Archangels are at work upon him, because his link with the spiritual world is then no longer such a strong one as it was during the time when the Archai were at work. Lucifer and Ahriman are more of a match for the purely spiritual forces which proceed from the Archangels than for the sturdier forces of the Archai.

[ 7 ] The Luciferic Powers give the ether-form, in all its tendencies, a much stronger inclination towards the star-world than it would have if only those divine spirit-Powers were at work, who were connected with Man from his origin. And by the Ahrimanic Powers the form and configuration of the physical body becomes more deeply entangled with the weight of earth than would be the case if these Powers were unable to exert an influence.

[ 8 ] Hereby the seed is laid in Man of future full Self-consciousness and free will. For though the Ahrimanic Powers detest free will, yet their effect upon Man, by tearing him away from this proper world of divine spirit, is to implant the first seed of free will in him.

[ 9 ] The immediate result, however, is that in this second period all that has been accomplished in Man by the various hierarchies—from the Seraphim to the Archangeloi—is pressed more deeply into the physical and ether-bodies, than could have been done without the influence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers. But for their influence, the action of the hierarchies would remain more in the astral body and the I.

[ 10 ] Thus the grouping of Mankind which arises on earth is not that more spiritual one for which the Archangels are striving.

[ 11 ] Impressed into the physical body, the spiritual forces are turned into their opposite. Instead of the more spiritual one, comes the differentiation into races and nations.

[ 12 ] Were it not for the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, men would see themselves and one-another upon earth differentiated from the heavens above. The various groups would live, one with another, in the relation of beings who share in love a spiritual treasure, freely giving and freely taking, each from each. In races and nations is seen the down-drag of earth, manifested in Man's body. In that other spiritual grouping there would have been seen a reflected image of the divine spiritual world.

[ 13 ] Yet along with all this the first dispositions had to be laid in human evolution for the future, full consciousness of Self. This again meant that—mitigated, it is true, but still with a certain distinctness of form—those original, primeval differentiations of mankind were retained, which had existed when in ancient days Man passed over from the Hierarchy of the Exusiai to that of the Archai.

[ 14 ] Man went through this stage of his evolution as through a cosmic school, alive to it all in a state between feeling and seeing. He had not as yet evolved any conscious knowledge that this was all an essential preparation for his own future Self-consciousness; but the ‘feeling vision,’ at that period, of the forces engaged in his evolution was nevertheless important for the engrafting of Self-consciousness in the astral body and the I.

[ 15 ] In respect to Man's Thinking, what happened at that time was that the Luciferic Powers gave him a bent which inclined him still to remain immersed in the old forms of spiritual life, and not to adapt himself to its new forms. For Lucifer's endeavour is always to preserve for Man the earlier forms of life.

[ 16 ] And so it came about in the development of Man's Thinking. Little by little, in his life between death and new birth Man evolved and elaborated the faculty which in primeval times had endowed his inner life with Thoughts. In those primeval times, this faculty had been able to behold the Spiritual in things, though it was very like the way man now takes hold of the world in mere sense-perception. For in those days the Physical wore the Spiritual on its surface. To-day, however, this Thinking faculty conserved from the earlier age can only act like sense-perception. The faculty to rise in the act of thought to the spirit gradually declined and died away. And this became fully manifest when in the age of the Spiritual Soul the spiritual world became veiled for Man in complete obscurity. So then it came about that in the nineteenth century the best of the natural scientists, who could not become mere materialists, said to themselves: ‘Nothing remains for us, but to explore that world alone which admits of being explored by the senses and in terms of measure, number and weight. We have however no right to deny the existence of a spiritual world behind this sensible one.’ They were thus indicating that there may be a world of light, unknown to Man, where he is staring into darkness only.

[ 17 ] As Man's Thought was put out of time and place by Lucifer, so by Ahriman his Will. This latter became endowed with a tendency to a kind of freedom to which it should only have attained later. Freedom of this sort is no real freedom, but only the illusion of it. Mankind lived for a long while in this illusion of freedom. It gave men no possibility of evolving the true spiritual idea of freedom in their minds. They wavered to-and-fro between the various opinions, that Man is free or that he is caught in the meshes of hard and fast necessity. And when with the dawning Age of Consciousness the real freedom came, men failed to understand it, because their understanding had been too long engaged with the illusion of freedom.

[ 18 ] Everything which had implanted itself in Man's inner being during the evolution of his lives between death and new birth in this second stage, was carried on by him as a cosmic memory into the third stage, in which he is still living in this present time. In this stage he holds a relation to the Hierarchy of Angeloi, similar to that which he held in the second to the Archangeloi. Only, the relation to the Angeloi is one which enables him to attain to complete, self-dependent individuality. For the Angeloi—not now the whole choir, but one Angelos for one man—confine themselves to effecting a right connection between his lives between death and new birth and his earth-lives.

[ 19 ] A fact here worthy of notice is that in the second stage of Man's evolution during the lives between death and new birth, the whole hierarchy of Archangeloi are at work for each single man. Later on, the guidance of the various nations and tribes devolves upon this hierarchy; and here, for one nation there is one Archangel, as Spirit of the Nation. In the races of men, the Primeval Powers (the Archai) remain active. Here again, for one race, there is one being at work out of the hierarchy of the Archai, as Spirit of that Race.

[ 20 ] Thus the man of the present age retains within him, during the life also between death and new birth, a cosmic memory of what he has learnt from this life in its previous stages. And even where, in the physical world, spiritual guidance manifests itself in such a form as in races and nationalities, there too this cosmic memory is plainly present.

Leading Thoughts

[ 21 ] In a second period of evolution in the lives between death and new birth, Man passes into the domain of the Archangeloi. During his period the seed of later Self-consciousness is planted in the human soul, the predisposition for it having already been created in the first period, in the shaping of the human Form.

[ 22 ] Man, during the second period, is driven by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences deeper into the physical world than would have happened without their influence.

[ 23 ] In the third period, Man comes into the domain of the Angeloi, whose influence however is only exerted in the astral body and the I. This period is the present. What took place in the first two periods lives on in human evolution, and explains the fact that in the age of the Spiritual Soul—during the nineteenth century—Man is left staring into the spiritual world as into total darkness.

[ 1 ] In a second period man passes from the realm of the Archai to that of the Archangeloi. With these, however, he is no longer united in so bodily-spiritual a way as he was with the Archai. His union with the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi is more purely spiritual. But it is still so intimate that he cannot yet be said to have been severed in this period from the Divine-Spiritual world.

The Archangeloi Hierarchy gives to man for his etheric body that which corresponds in it to the form in the physical, which he owes to the Archai. The physical body, through its form, is adapted to the Earth in such a way as to become on Earth the vehicle of self-consciousness. In like manner the etheric body is adapted to the extra-earthly cosmic forces and relationships of forces. In the physical body lives the Earth; in the etheric the world of the stars. All the inner forces which man bears within him in such a way that while he is on Earth he does at the same time, in his posture, movement and gesture, emancipate himself from the Earth, he owes to the creation of the Archangeloi in his etheric body. As the Earth forces are able to live in the physical body through its formation, so in the etheric body there live the forces which stream down on all sides from the encircling Cosmos to the Earth. The Earth-forces living in the physically visible formation of the body are those which make the form of man relatively complete, hard and fast within itself. Subject to a certain metamorphosis, the main outlines of man remain hard and fast throughout his earthly life. His faculties of movement, too, have hardened into permanent habits and the like. In the etheric body on the other hand, there is perpetual mobility, mirroring the constellations of the stars as they change during the earthly life of man. The etheric body shapes itself even in accordance with the changes in the heavens as between day and night; and it does so also with the changes that take place between the birth and death of the man concerned.

[ 2 ] This adaptation of the etheric body to the heavenly forces is not in contradiction to the gradual severance of the starry heavens from the Divine-Spiritual Powers, mentioned in earlier studies. It is true to say that in very ancient times Divine Will and Divine Intelligence were living in the stars, and that in later times the stars passed over into the “calculable”. Through what has now become their finished work, the Gods are no longer working upon man. Nevertheless, through his etheric body man gradually achieves a relationship of his own to the stars, just as he does through his physical body to earthly gravity.

[ 3 ] What man incorporates into his nature when at birth he descends from the Spirit-world on the Earth—namely the etheric body which absorbs the extra-earthly, cosmic forces—is created in this second period by the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi.

[ 4 ] One of the essential features which man receives through this Hierarchy is his membership of a group of human beings on the Earth. Humanity is differentiated over the face of the Earth. Looking back into this second period, it is not, however, the present differentiation of races and nations that we find, but a somewhat different—a more spiritual one. It is due to the fact that the starry forces strike the different places of the Earth in varying constellations. For on the Earth itself—in the distribution of land and water, in climate, vegetation and the like—the starry heavens are indeed active. Inasmuch as man must adapt himself to these conditions, which are really there as heavenly conditions on the Earth, such adaptation belongs to his etheric body; and the forming of the latter is a creative work of the choir of Archangeloi.

[ 5 ] But now it is just in this second period that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers enter the life of man in a peculiar degree. Their entry is necessary, albeit to begin with it may seem to be driving man beneath the level of his true nature.

[ 6 ] If man is to develop self-consciousness in his earthly life, he must get loose from the Divine-Spiritual world from which he originally proceeded, in greater measure than that world itself can bring about. This is what takes place in the time when the Archangeloi are at work upon him. For his union with the Spirit-world is no longer as firm as it was when the Archai were at work upon him. Lucifer and Ahriman are more able to grapple with the spiritual forces proceeding from the Archangeloi, than with the stronger forces of the Archai.

[ 7 ] The Luciferic Powers permeate the etheric formation of man with a more intense inclination towards the starry world than it would have if the Divine-Spiritual Powers, originally united with man were alone at work. The Ahrimanic Powers entwine his physical formation more tightly in the realm of earthly gravity than would have been the case if they were unable to exert their influence.

[ 8 ] By this means the seed of full self-consciousness and of free will is planted into man. Much as the Ahrimanic Powers hate free will, in man—by tearing him loose from his Divine Spiritual world—they bring about the germinal beginnings of free will.

[ 9 ] To begin with, however, during the second period itself, that which the various Hierarchies from the Seraphim down to the Archangeloi have brought about in man, is impressed into his physical and etheric bodies more deeply than would have been possible without the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence. For without this influence, the working of the Hierarchies would remain more in the astral body and the Ego.

[ 10 ] Thus it happened that the more spiritual grouping of mankind over the face of the Earth, which the Archangeloi were striving for, did not take place.

[ 11 ] Being pressed down into the physical and etheric body, the spiritual forces are transformed into their opposite. In place of something more spiritual, the differentiation of races and nations comes about.

[ 12 ] Without the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence, human beings on Earth would see themselves differentiated by forces working downwards from the heavens. The different groups would be to one another in their life like beings who willingly with love, give to one another of the spiritual and receive in turn. In races and nations it is earthly gravity which appears through the human body; in the spiritual groupings a mirrored image of the Divine-Spiritual world would have appeared.

[ 13 ] With all this, the beginnings of what afterwards became the full self-consciousness of man had to be implanted in his evolution already at that time. And this meant that—in a mitigated form, it is true, but yet in a certain way—the primeval differentiation of humanity which existed when man passed over from the Hierarchy of the Exusiai to that of the Archai remained preserved.

[ 14 ] Man—as it were in a cosmic school—experienced this stage in his evolution, contemplating it with inner feeling. True, he did not yet develop a knowledge of the fact that this was an essential preparation for his subsequent self-consciousness. But his feeling vision of the forces of his evolution at that time was none the less important for the incorporation of self-consciousness into his astral body and his Ego.

[ 15 ] With respect to Thought, the following took place. By the Luciferic Powers man was informed with the tendency still to immerse himself in the old forms of the Spiritual, instead of adapting himself to the new. Lucifer indeed always has this striving to conserve for man the earlier forms of his life.

[ 16 ] By this means human Thinking was evolved. In the life between death and a new birth man gradually developed that faculty which in primeval times had formed the thoughts in him. It was a faculty which at that time could behold the Spiritual, though it was like what is now mere sense perception. For at that time the Physical still carried the Spiritual upon its surface. Today, however, the faculty of thought preserved from that time can only work as restricted sense-perception. Man's power to lift himself in thought to the spiritual world gradually declined. This became fully evident at length when in the age of the Spiritual Soul the spiritual world was veiled for man in complete darkness. Thus in the nineteenth century it came about that the best men of science, unable to become materialists, declared: We have no alternative but to limit our research to that world which can be investigated by measure, number and weight and by the senses. We have, however, no right to deny a spiritual world, hidden beneath this world of Nature. In such words they indicated that there might be a world full of light, unknown to man, where man can only stare into an empty darkness.

[ 17 ] And as Thought in man was misdirected by Lucifer, so was Will by Ahriman. Man's will was endowed with a tendency to a kind of freedom which he should have entered only at a later stage. This freedom is not real; it is but the illusion of freedom. Men lived in this illusion of freedom for a long time, and thereby became unable to evolve the idea of freedom in a truly spiritual way. They vacillated to and fro, between the one opinion and the other: that man is free, or that he is involved in a sphere of rigid necessity. And when with the spiritual Age of Consciousness true freedom came, they were unable to recognise it, because their powers of perception had too long become entangled in the illusion of freedom.

[ 18 ] All that had sunk into the being of man during this second stage in the evolution of his lives between death and a new birth, he carried as a cosmic memory into the third, in which he still lives today. In this third stage he is related to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi as in the second to that of the Archangeloi. Only, this relationship to the Angeloi is such that through it the full independent individuality comes into being. For the Angeloi—not the chorus this time, but one Angelos for one human being—restrict themselves to the task of bringing about the right relation of the life between death and a new birth and the life on Earth.

[ 19 ] A fact that may seem remarkable to begin with is this. For the individual human being in the second stage in the evolution of his lives between death and a new birth the whole Hierarchy of Archangeloi was working. Afterwards the guidance of nations and tribes becomes the task of this Hierarchy, and there is then one Archangelos as the Folk-Spirit for one nation. In the races the Primal Forces or Archai remain at work. Here again, for one race, one Being of the Hierarchy of the Primal Forces works as the Race-Spirit.

[ 20 ] Thus the man of present time contains, in the life between death and a new birth also, the cosmic memory of earlier stages of his life. And in the physical world too, where something of spiritual guidance appears as it does in the races and nations, this cosmic memory is most distinctly present.

(New Year, 1925)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with respect to the foregoing study [Part two]: What is revealed when one looks back into former Lives between Death and a new Birth?)

[ 21 ] 150. In a second period of evolution of the lives between death and a new birth, man entered the domain of the Archangeloi. The seed of his later conscious Selfhood—prepared for, in the first period, in the forming of the human figure—was now implanted in the nature of his soul.

[ 22 ] 151. During this second period he was driven by Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences more deeply into the physical than would have happened without their intervention.

[ 23 ] 152. In the third period, man enters the domain of the Angeloi, who only wield their influence, however, in the astral body and the Ego. This third period is the present; but what took place in the two former ones still lives on in human evolution and explains the fact that in the nineteenth century—within the age of the Spiritual Soul—man stared into the spiritual world as into vacant darkness.

The time from Christmas until about now is actually an important, a significant time of the year, also in occult terms. It is called the time of the thirteen days. And the remarkable thing is that this period of thirteen days is sensed in its importance by those people who, in their entire soul disposition, have retained something of the old connection of the human soul with the spiritual world, of which we have often spoken. We know that more than the person of today's urban population has retained from the connection with the spiritual world that once existed in ancient times, the primitive person who lives out in the countryside or in a population that is even less affected by our urban culture. And there we find much that is related in folk poetry about the experiences of the soul, about experiences of the soul during the period from Christmas to Epiphany, January 6.

This is the time when, after the annual eclipse has most befallen the earth, immediately after the winter solstice, when the sun begins its victorious course again, with nature's deepest immersion and release and redemption, the human soul can also undergo very special experiences if it still has special connections with the spiritual world. Those people who no longer have the old clairvoyance but are still connected to the spiritual world in their soul feel a difference in the abnormal world of dreams at this time of year. What the soul can experience there becomes meaningful, because the soul, if it is still receptive, can really get most involved in the spiritual world then. For the modern man, the year really is such that he no longer particularly distinguishes the individual seasons, because while the snow storms outside, darkness already begins at four o'clock in the afternoon and it only gets light late, the city dweller feels the same as in the summer months, when the sun can unfold its full power. Man is torn out of the old connection with the cosmos in which he lived when he was outside in nature. But for those who have retained a connection with nature, it is not the same thing that falls during the Christmas season as what happens at another time, for example, at midsummer. While in midsummer the soul is most emancipated from what is connected with the spiritual world, in the time when nature is most dead, it is most connected with the spiritual world and used to experience special things during this time.

Now there is a beautiful folk tale in the old Norwegian language, a tale that was rediscovered only recently and has quickly become popular again due to the peculiar understanding of the Norwegian population. It is about a man who still had a connection to the spiritual world, about Olaf Åsteson. What Olaf Åsteson experiences in the time between Christmas and Epiphany is beautifully depicted in this poem.

At the New Year's celebration in Hannover in 1912, I first tried to put this folk tale of Olaf Åsteson into German lines so that it could also be performed before our souls. Tonight's program will begin with the Song of Olaf Åsteson, which contains Olaf Åsteson's experiences during the thirteen nights.

It was followed by a recitation by Marie von Sivers.

The poetry itself is old. But, as I said, it has recently been rediscovered by the Norwegian people as if by magic and is spreading rapidly. The fact that something like this is spreading will, among many facts prevailing at present, also be one that proves how it is pushing towards an understanding of the mysteries that anthroposophy can bring us today. For that something like what is described here is taking place in a soul, or at least could take place relatively recently, is not just a 'fiction'. This writing is not just fantasy, but reality, it is real. And with Olaf Åsteson, it is pointed out to people of those Nordic regions who, in the Middle Ages, around the middle of the Middle Ages, still had the opportunity, one might say, to literally experience something as it is expressed here.

When our Norwegian friends gave me this poem during my penultimate visit to Kristiania and wanted to hear something about it from me, it was initially this fact, interesting from a general spiritual scientific point of view, that was emphasized, that pushed itself into the soul. But what led to our wanting to include this poem in our spiritual scientific program, so to speak, is that one can also go into the details more and more. Through anthroposophical understanding, one finds oneself delving ever deeper into what comes to light in the poem. For example, it was significant to me that Olaf — which is an old Norwegian name — has the epithet Åsteson: Åsteson. The son of what? Of Äste. And I tried to find out what kind of mother this son actually is. Of course, one can argue about the meaning of the word “Äst” in many different ways, and there are also things that can be disputed. It is not possible today to sort out everything that comes into question. But if we take into account everything that is in question, then a name such as Olaf Åsteson means: he who is still a son of that soul that goes down from generation to generation and is connected with the blood that runs from generation to generation. But we have traced this name back to what we have so often discussed in the field of anthroposophy, that in ancient times, ancient clairvoyance was connected with the kinship of the blood that runs through the generations. And one would be able to translate Olaf Åsteson as: Olaf, born of many generations and still carrying the characters of many generations in his soul.

If we now go into the experiences, it is extremely interesting to see what the sleeping Olaf Åsteson goes through from Christmas Eve through thirteen days, during which he does not wake up, that is, is in a kind of psychic state. If one allows the individual verses to take effect, which allow the individual experiences to arise before the soul with a broad, folksy comfort, one is reminded of certain descriptions of the first stages of initiation, where it is said that such and such a one has been led to the threshold of death. The poem shows that Olaf Åsteson comes to the gates of death. And it will be particularly vivid when he feels like a corpse himself – except for the earth that he feels between his teeth. If we remember that the etheric body of the person to be initiated grows beyond the boundaries of the skin and the person becomes bigger and bigger, so that the person lives into wide cosmic spaces, then we are pointed to in this poem how the person descends deeply, empathizes with the depths of the earth and ascends to cloud heights. What a person has to go through after death, for example in the sphere of the moon, is also what Olaf Åsteson has to go through. It is poetically described how the moon shines brightly and how the paths stretch far and wide. Then the gulf that has to be crossed in the world is shown, the one that lies between the human and the one that leads out into the cosmic expanse. And the bridge of heaven connects what is human with what is cosmic. Then our attention is drawn to the interplay of the beings that find expression in the constellations of Taurus and Ophiuchus. But for those who can see into the world spiritually, the constellations are only the expression of what is present in the spiritual realm in the vastness of space. And then the world of Kamalokaw is depicted in the description of 'Brooksvalin'. It is shown how a kind of retribution takes place, how people there go through - but in a compensatory way - what they have not acquired here on earth. But one does not need to interpret all the details of this poetry, one should not do that at all with such poetry. But one should feel that they emerged from such an atmosphere, which is closely related to what was present in such a people for much longer than in peoples who lived more in the interior of the continents or came into contact with big city culture. The Norwegian people, who still have much in their vernacular that comes close to the boundary of occult secrets, had the possibility for longer to keep the souls connected with what lives and moves behind the outer material phenomena.

Do you remember how I have dealt with the way the course of the year has its spiritual parallel series of facts? How in spring, when plants sprout from the earth, when everything comes to life, when the days get lighter, we have to recognize what we can call a kind of falling asleep of the elementary and higher spirits that are connected to the earth. In spring, when the earth awakens outwardly, in spiritual contemplation we are dealing with a kind of falling asleep of the earth. When outer nature dies down again, we are dealing with the awakening of the spiritual nature of the earth. And when outer nature is asleep around Christmas time, then that is the time when the spiritual of the earth, which is connected with earthly existence both through elemental, less significant beings and through great, powerful beings, is most active. It only appears so when viewed superficially, as if we had to compare spring with the awakening of the earth and winter with its falling asleep. For occult observation, it is the other way around. The spirit of the earth, which consists of many spirits, awakens in winter and sleeps in summer. Just as in the human organism the organic and vegetative are most active during sleep, as the forces play up into the brain, and as the purely organic activity is killed off during waking, so it is with the earth. When the earth is most active, when everything has sprouted, when the sun is at its highest around Midsummer, the spirit of the earth sleeps. And it is not without connection to these occult truths that Christmas, the festival of the awakening of the spirit, has been moved to the winter season. The things that have come down to us as customs from ancient times correspond in many ways to these occult insights.

Those who know how to live with the spirits of the earth do not just celebrate Midsummer in the summer. For the celebration of St. John's Day in summer is already a kind of materialistic celebration. One celebrates what external materialistic revelation shows. But he who has the connection with the spirit of the earth, with that which lives spiritually in the earth, awakens to his inner self, that is, he sleeps for his outer self, like Olaf Åsteson, best at Christmas time during the thirteen days. This is also an occult fact, which means exactly the same for occultism as, for example, the fact of the external position of the sun for external materialistic science. Of course, materialistic science will take it for granted that within astronomy it describes the activity of the sun in summer and in winter in a certain purely external way; it will consider it foolishness what is a fact for the occultist that the spiritual position of the sun is most intense in the winter time and that therefore the conditions are most favorable for those who want to come close to a deepening of the soul, which is connected with the spirit of the earth and with all spiritual. Therefore, for someone who wants to seek a deepening of their soul, it may turn out that they can have the best experiences during the thirteen days of the Christmas season, when, without us realizing it, the experiences arise from the soul, although the modern person is already so emancipated from external events that the occult experiences can come at any time. But in so far as the external can nevertheless have an influence, the time between Christmas and New Year is the most important.

Thus we are reminded in a very natural way by this poem how much of what we could mention when discussing the time between death and the next birth was still quite close to certain areas of the world relatively recently, as some people still knew from direct experience.

[ 1 ] In accordance with what has been said in the preceding chapters, the spiritual guidance of the course of human evolution may be sought for amongst those beings who went through their stage of humanity during the previous embodiment of the Earth-planet, during the ancient Moon period. This guidance stood contrasted with another which checked, and yet in a certain sense furthered it, and which was carried out by those beings who had not completed their own evolution during the Moon-period. Reference is made in both these cases to those guiding beings immediately above man; to those who lead humanity forward, and to those who provoke resistance, thereby strengthening and confirming the forces arising through the progressive beings, by bestowing on them balance and individuality. In Christian Esotericism, these two classes of superhuman beings are called Angels (Angeloi). Above these beings in ascending order, stand those of the higher hierarchies, the Archangels, the Archai, and so forth, who likewise take part in the guidance of humanity.

Within the ranks of these different beings there are all possible gradations in regard to perfection. At the beginning of the present Earth-evolution, some in the category of the Angels stand high, while others are less developed. The former have progressed far beyond the minimum of their Moon-development. Between these and those who had just reached this minimum when the Moon-evolution had come to an end, and the Earth-evolution had begun, are all possible gradations. Conformably with this gradation of rank, the beings in question entered during the Earth-period upon the leadership of human evolution. Thus the evolution of the Egyptian civilization was effected under the guidance of beings who had become more perfected on the Moon than those who were the leaders of the Graeco-Roman period, and these again were more perfect than those who have the leadership at the present time. In the Egyptian as also in the Greek Period, those who later on assumed the direction, were meanwhile developing, and making themselves ready to guide the civilization of later periods.

[ 2 ] Since the time of the great Atlantean catastrophe, seven consecutive epochs of civilization have to be differentiated; the first is the ancient Indian epoch, and it is followed by the ancient Persian.¹ The third is the Egypto-Chaldæic, the fourth is the Graeco-Roman, and the fifth is our own, which, since about the twelfth century, has been gradually developing and in which we are still living. And since the separate periods overlap, we see already in our times those early events preparing which will lead over into the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And a seventh epoch will succeed the sixth in due course. On closer observation we find the following evidence with regard to the guidance of mankind. It was during the third epoch of civilization, the Egypto-Chaldæic, that the Angels (or lower dhyanic beings according to Oriental mysticism) were to some extent independent leaders of humanity. They were not so during the ancient Persian civilization. For then they were subject to a higher direction in a much greater degree than in the Egyptian times, and had to regulate everything in conformity with the impulses of the hierarchies immediately above them. In this way everything was under the immediate guidance of the Angels, who themselves submitted to the rulership of the Archangels. And in the Indian epoch when post-Atlantean life had reached such a height in spiritual matters as has never been attained since—a natural height under the direction of great human teachers—the Archangels themselves were subject in a similar sense to the guidance of the Archai or Primal Powers. [ 3 ] Thus if we trace the evolution of humanity from the Indian epoch through the ancient Persian and Egypto-Chaldæic civilizations, we may say that certain beings of the higher hierarchies withdrew ever more and more from the direct guidance of humanity. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Graeco-Roman, man bad become quite independent. The guiding superhuman beings were certainly intervening to develop humanity, but only in such a way that the reins were tightened as little as possible, and also that the spiritual leaders themselves might profit as much through the deeds of men as men profited through them. Hence arose that peculiar and quite “human” civilization in the Graeco-Roman time in which man was made to rely entirely on himself. For all the distinctive characteristics of art and political life in Greek and Roman times are traceable to the fact that man had to live out his own life in his own way.

[ 4 ] So, when we look back to the most ancient times of civilization, we find evolution guided by beings who, in earlier planetary conditions, had accomplished their development as far as the human stage. But the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization was intended as a time when man should be put to the test as much as possible. Consequently the whole spiritual guidance of humanity had to be reorganized. We are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization. The leading beings of this period belong to the same hierarchy as that which ruled the ancient Egyptians and Chaldæans. In fact those beings who then took the lead, have again begun to be active in our times. As has been stated certain of these beings remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, and are to be found manifest in the materialistic feelings and perceptions of our own period.

[ 5 ] Now the progress made by the two classes of Angels or lower dhyanic beings—the class which leads mankind forward and that which obstructs—consisted in their being able to be leaders among the Egyptians and Chaldæans. They achieved this by means of those qualities which they had acquired in primordial times, and which they had further developed by their work as leaders. The progressive angels are intervening to guide the fifth post-Atlantean civilization by means of capacities which they themselves had won during the third or Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. Through the progress they make they are acquiring for themselves quite special capabilities, for they are qualifying themselves to receive the influx of forces emanating from the most important Being in the whole evolution of the Earth.The power of the Christ is working in them; for that power works not only on the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth, but also in the spiritual worlds upon the super-human beings. The Christ exists not only for the earth but also for these beings. The beings who guided the old Egypto-Chaldæic civilization were not under the direction of the Christ. It is only since that period that they have placed themselves under His guidance. Their progress consists in their following Him in the higher worlds, so that they may guide our fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization in accordance with His influence. Those beings who operate as obstructive powers remain behind because they failed to put themselves under the leadership of the Christ. Thus they continue to work independently of Him. More and more in human evolution will become evident a materialistic movement under the guidance of these backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits. This movement will have a materialistic character and the greater part of contemporary science is under its influence. There are, for example, people today who say that our earth in its final essence consists of atoms. Who instills this thought into men's minds? It is the super-human angel beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. But, side by side with this movement, there is another making itself felt, the one which has as its goal the eventual finding of the Christ-principle by man in all that he does.

[ 6 ] Now what will those beings teach who attained their goal in the old Egypto-Chaldæic sphere of civilization, and who then learned to know the Christ? They will be able to instill into man other thoughts than those that assert that there are only material atoms; they will be able to teach that, even to the minutest particle of the world, the substance is permeated with the Spirit of the Christ. And, strange as it may seem, there will be in the future chemists and physicists who will not teach chemistry and physics as they are now taught under the influence of the backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits; but who will teach that ‘matter is built up in the way in which the Christ gradually ordained it,’ The Christ will be found working even in the very laws of chemistry and physics. It is a spiritual chemistry and spiritual physics that will come in the future. Today such a statement may appear to many people as fanciful or worse. But often the sense of the future seems folly to the past. [ 7 ] The factors which enter into the evolution of human civilization are there for the careful observer. But be will know quite well the objections which may, with apparent justice, be urged against such alleged folly from the modern scientific or philosophic point of view.

[ 8 ] From such hypotheses we are able to understand the advantage the guiding super-human beings have over man. Humanity learned to know Christ in the fourth civilization period of the post-Atlantean times, the. Graeco-Roman epoch, for it was in the course of this civilization that the Christ-event found its place in evolution, and it was then that man learned to know the Christ. The guiding super-human beings, however, learned to know Him during the Egypto-Chaldæic times, and worked themselves up to Him. Then during the Graeco-Roman civilization they had to leave man to his own fate in order that, later on, they might re-enter the sphere of human evolution. And if nowadays anthroposophy is cultivated, this constitutes recognition of the fact that the super-human beings who formerly guided humanity are now continuing their task as leaders in such a way as to be themselves under the direct guidance of the Christ. Thus it is with other beings also.

[ 9 ] In the ancient Persian epoch, the leadership of humanity was apportioned to the Archangels. They put themselves under the direction of the Christ earlier than did the beings in the rank next below them. Of Zarathustra it can be said that pointing to the sun, he spoke to his followers and his people in some such words as these: “In the sun there lives the great Spirit Ahura Mazdao, who will one day come down to the earth.” For the beings out of the region of the Archangels who guided Zarathustra, pointed to the great sun-leader who had not at that time come down upon the earth but had only begun his journey thither in order, later on, to enter directly into the earth evolution. And the guiding beings who directed the great teachers of the Indians, also pointed out to these the Christ of the future; for it is a mistake to think that these teachers had no foreknowledge of the Christ. They said that He was “beyond their sphere” and that they “could not attain” unto Him.

[ 10 ] As now in our fifth period of civilization, it is the Angels who bring down the Christ into our spiritual evolution, so the sixth period of civilization will be directed by beings belonging to the ranks of the Archangels who guided the ancient Persian civilization. And the spirits of Personality—the Primal Powers—or Archai—who guided humanity during the ancient Indian epoch will have to guide humanity in the seventh period of civilization. In the Graeco-Roman period the Christ descended from the heights of the spirit-world and revealed Himself in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He then came down as far as the physical world. It will be possible to find Him in the world immediately above ours when humanity shall have become sufficiently ripe. It will not be possible in the future to find Him in the physical world, but only in the world immediately above, for human beings will not always remain the same. Having become more mature, they will then find the Christ in the spiritual world, as Paul found Him in his experience before Damascus, which event prophetically foreshadowed the future means of finding the Christ. And since in our times the same great teachers who have already guided mankind through the Egyptian civilization are working, so also in the twentieth century it will be these same teachers who will lead men out to behold the Christ as Paul beheld Him. They will show mankind how the Christ not only works upon the earth, but how He spiritualizes the whole solar system. And those who will be the reincarnated holy teachers of India in the seventh period of civilization will proclaim the Spirit Who was foreshadowed by the undivided Brahma. To such teaching, however, the right content and meaning can only be given through the Christ, as the great, the immense Spirit, of Whom these teachers formerly said He hovered above their sphere. Thus will humanity be led upwards from stage to stage into the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] To speak in this way about the Christ—how He is the leader of the higher hierarchies also in the successive worlds, is to teach the science which, under the sign of the Rose Cross, has endured in our civilization since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If from this aspect we observe more closely the Being Who lived in Palestine, and Who consummated the Mystery of Golgotha, we shall find the following: [ 12 ] up to the present time many ideas concerning the Christ have found expression. There was for instance the idea of certain Christian Gnostics in the first centuries who said that the Christ Who lived in Palestine was not present in any physical body of flesh at all; that He had only an apparent body—an etheric body which had become physically visible; so that His death on the Cross had been no real death but only an apparent one. Then we find diverse disputes among those who professed Christianity, as for example, the well-known controversy between the Arians and Athanasians, and the most varied explanations concerning what the Christ really was. Indeed, right up to our own times people express and have expressed the most different ideas concerning the Christ.

[ 13 ] Now spiritual science must recognize in Christ not merely an earthly but also a cosmic Being. In a certain sense man is, taken as a whole, a cosmic being. He lives a twofold life—one in a physical body from birth to death, another in the spiritual worlds between death and a new birth. When he is incarnated in a physical body, he is living in dependence on the earth, because the physical body is restricted by the forces and conditions of existence belonging to the earth. The human being, however, does not only take the substances and forces of the earth into himself, but is joined to the whole of the earth's organism. When he has passed through the gate of death, he no longer belongs to the forces of the earth; but it would be incorrect to imagine that he belongs to no forces at all, for he is then connected with the forces of the solar system and the more distant star-systems. In this way, between death and a new birth, he lives in the domain of the cosmic, just as in the period between birth and death he lived in the domain of the earthly. From death to a new birth he belongs to the cosmos, as on the earth he belongs to the elements—Air, Water, and Earth. Accordingly, while he is passing through a life between death and a new birth, he comes into the region of cosmic influences. For the planets send forth not merely the physical forces of what astronomy teaches, such as gravitation and others, but also spiritual forces. With these spiritual powers of the cosmos man is connected, each person in a special manner according to his own individuality. If he is born in Europe, he lives in a different relation to warmth conditions, and so forth, than if he had been born, let us say, in Australia. Similarly, during his life between death and a new birth, one person may stand more closely related to the spiritual powers of Mars, another to those of Jupiter, others again to those of the whole planetary system in general, and so on. It is also these forces which bring man back again to the earth. Thus before he is born he is living in connection with the collective whole of stellar space.

[ 14 ] According to the way in which a man stands individually related to the cosmic system, so are the forces directed which lead him to this or that set of parents and to this or that locality. The impetus, the inclination to incarnate here or there, in this or that family, in this or that people, at this or that time, depends on how the person was organically connected with the cosmos before birth. [ 15 ] In former times, in that territory where the German tongue was spoken, a specially apt expression was used to indicate a person's entrance into the world through birth. When a person was born, people said that in such and such a place he had “become young” (junggeworden). Therein lies an unconscious reference to the fact that man in the time between death and a new birth continues at first to be subject to the powers which had made him old in a previous incarnation, but that before birth there come iii their place such forces as again make him “young.” Thus Goethe in “Faust” still uses the expression “to become young in Nebelland.”—Nebelland being the old name for mediaeval Germany.

[ 16 ] The truth underlying the casting of a horoscope is that those who know these things can read the forces which determine a person's physical existence. A certain horoscope is allotted to a person because, within it, those forces find expression which have led him into being. If for example in the horoscope Mars stands over Aries (the Ram), this signifies that certain of the Aries forces are not allowed to pass through Mars, and are weakened. Thus is a man put into his place within physical existence, and it is in accordance with his horoscope that he guides himself before entering upon earthly existence. This subject, which in our times seems so much a thing of chance, should not be touched upon without our attention being called to the fact that nearly everything practised in this connection today is simply dilettantism. It is pure superstition, and for the external world the true science of these matters has been for the most part completely lost. Consequently, the principles expressed here are not to be judged according to that which nowadays frequently leads a questionable existence under the name Astrology.

[ 17 ] Now it is the active forces of the stellar world that impel a man into physical incarnation; and when clairvoyant consciousness observes a person, it can perceive in his organization how this has resulted from the cooperation of cosmic forces. We may now attempt to illustrate this hypothetically, but in a form corresponding entirely with clairvoyant observation. [ 18 ] If a person's physical brain were extracted and its construction clairvoyantly examined, so that it might be seen how certain parts are situated in certain places and how they send out appendages, it would be found that each individual's brain is different from that of every other. No two people have brains alike. Let us imagine further that such a brain could be photographed in its complete structure so that one would have a kind of half sphere in which every detail was visible. In a series of such pictures each would be different according to the brains of the different individuals. And if one were to photograph a person's brain at the moment of birth and then photograph also the heavens lying exactly over the person's birthplace, this latter picture would be of exactly the same appearance as that of the human brain. As certain centers were arranged in the latter, so would the stars be in the photograph of the heavens. Man has within himself a picture of the heavens, and every man has a different one, according to whether he was born in this place or that, and at this or that time. This is one indication that man is born from out of the whole cosmos.

[ 19 ] When we keep this clearly in view we can rise to the idea of how the macrocosm manifests itself in each separate individual, and then, starting from this point, we can attain a conception of how it showed itself in the Christ. But if we were to imagine the Christ after the Baptism of John as though the macrocosm had then been living in Him in the same way as in other people, we should be mistaken.

[ 20 ] Let us first consider Jesus of Nazareth. His conditions of existence were quite exceptional. At the beginning of our era two boys were born and named Jesus. The one came through the Nathan line of the house of David,¹ the other through the Solomon line of the same house.² These two children were not born quite at the same time, but nearly so. In the Jesus descended from Solomon, described in the Gospel of St. Matthew, there was incarnated the same individuality who had formerly lived on the earth as Zarathustra, so that in this Child Jesus there appears the re-incarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The individuality of Zarathustra grew up in this Child until, as St. Matthew says, His twelfth year. In that year, Zarathustra left the body of this Child and passed over into that of the other Child Jesus Whom the Gospel of St. Luke describes. In consequence of this the latter Child became suddenly quite different. The parents were astonished when they found Him in Jerusalem in the temple after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered into Him. This is intimated when it is said that the Child, after having been lost and found again in the temple, so spake that his parents did not recognize Him. They only knew Him, the Child descended from Nathan, as He had been up to this time. But when He began to reason with the doctors in the temple, it was possible for Him to speak as He did because the spirit of Zarathustra had come into Him. Until the thirtieth year did the spirit of Zarathustra live in the Jesus who was descended from the Nathan line of the house of David. In this body He ripened to a still higher perfection. The following remark must here be added: as regards this personality in which the spirit of Zarathustra now lived, an extraordinary feature was that into his astral body the Buddha rayed forth his impulses from the spiritual worlds.

[ 21 ] The oriental tradition is correct which says that the Buddha was born as a “Bodhisattva” and only during his time on earth, in his twenty-ninth year, rose to the dignity of a Buddha. [ 22 ] When the Gautama Buddha was a little child, the Indian sage Asita came weeping into the royal palace of his father, Suddhodana. He wept because, as a seer, he knew that this King's son would become the Buddha, and because as an old man, he felt that he would no longer be living to see that event take place. Now this sage was born again in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. It is he who is brought before us in the Gospel of St. Luke as the priest of the temple who saw the revelation of the Buddha in the Child Jesus descended from Nathan. And seeing this he was able to say: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace for I have seen my Master,” What he had not been able to see previously in India, he saw through the astral body of the Boy Jesus, Who comes before us in St. Luke's Gospel: the Bodhisattva become Buddha.

[ 23 ] All this was necessary in order that that body might be produced which received the baptism of St. John in the Jordan. At that moment the individuality of Zarathustra left the threefold body, the physical, the etheric and the astral body of that Jesus Who had grown up in so complicated a manner, in order that the spirit of Zarathustra might be able to dwell in Him. The reincarnated Zarathustra had to pass through two possibilities of development which were given in the two Jesus children. Thus there stood before the Baptist the body of Jesus of Nazareth and in it from that time onwards there acted the cosmic individuality of the Christ. Now, as we have shown, in the case of any other human being, the cosmic spiritual laws work upon him only in so far as they give him a start in earth-life. Afterwards there appear in opposition to these laws, others which arise out of the conditions of the earth-evolution. In the case of the Christ-Jesus, after the baptism of John the cosmic-spiritual forces alone remained effective without being influenced in any way through the laws of the earth evolution.

[ 24 ] Thus in Palestine during the time that Jesus of Nazareth walked on earth as Christ-Jesus—during the three last years of his life, from his thirtieth to his thirty-third year, the entire Being of the cosmic Christ was acting uninterruptedly upon Him, and was working into Him. The Christ stood always under the influence of the entire cosmos—He made no step without this working of the cosmic forces into and in Him. That which here took place in Jesus of Nazareth was a continual realization of the horoscope, for at every moment there occurred that which otherwise happens only at a person's birth. This could be so only because the whole body of Jesus descended from Nathan had remained open to the influence of the sum total of the forces of the cosmic spiritual hierarchies which direct our earth. If thus the whole spirit of the cosmos worked into the Christ Jesus, who was it that went, for example, to Capernaum? He who went about as a being upon the earth appeared quite like any other man. The forces active within Him, however, were the cosmic forces, coming from the sun and stars; and these directed His Body. And it was always in accordance with the collective Being of the whole Universe with whom the earth is in harmony, that all which the Christ Jesus did took place. It is because of this that in the case of the acts of the Christ-Jesus there is so often some slight hint given in the Gospels about the relative grouping of the stars at the time. We read in St. John's Gospel how the Christ finds His first disciples. There we are told: “It was about the tenth hour,” because in this fact the spirit of the whole cosmos found expression in conformity with the appointed moment of time. Such intimations are less clear in the other Gospel passages, but he who can truly read the Gospels finds them everywhere. [ 25 ] From this point of view also the miracles are to be judged. Let us take one passage—the one that runs thus: “When the sun was set, they brought the sick unto Him, and He healed them.” What does that mean? The evangelist is drawing attention to the fact that this healing was connected with the whole position of the constellations and that, at the time in question, the constellations throughout the heavens stood as they only could have when the sun had set The meaning is that, at the time, the requisite healing forces could make themselves felt after sun-set, and the Christ Jesus is represented as the intermediary Who brought the sick into connection with the forces of the cosmos which, just at that time, could work curatively. These forces were the same as those which worked as Christ in Jesus. It was through the presence of Christ that the healing took place. Only thus could the sick person be exposed to the healing forces of the cosmos which could only work as they did when they were in the right relationship to time and space. Thus these forces worked on the sick person through their representative, the Christ. [ 26 ] But it was only just during the time of Christ on earth that they could so work. It was only then that such a connection existed between the cosmic constellations and the powers of the human organism that for certain illnesses, healing could intervene when through the instrumentality of the Christ Jesus the cosmic grouping of the same forces was able to work on men. A repetition of this relationship in the evolution of the cosmos and the earth is as little possible as is a second incarnation of the Christ in a human body. Regarded in this way, the life of the Christ Jesus appears as the earthly expression of a definite connection between the cosmos and the forces of man. The tarrying of a sick person by the side of Christ means that through the proximity of Christ this sick person found himself in such a relation with the macrocosm that the latter could work upon him curatively.

[ 27 ] Herewith the points of view have been stressed which enable us to discern how the guidance of humanity has come under the influence of the Christ. The other forces, however, which had remained behind in the Egypto-Chaldæic times worked on side by side with those that are permeated by the Christ. This is evident even in the attitude frequently adopted today towards the Gospels. Literary works appear in which great pains are taken to show that the Gospels can be understood through an astrological interpretation. The greatest opponents of the Gospels employ this astrological interpretation to prove, for example, that the way taken by the Archangel Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary signifies merely the progress of the sun from the constellation of Virgo to another. This, in a certain sense, is correct, except that these thoughts were poured in this manner into our age by the beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. Under such an influence people are induced to a make-belief that the Gospels present only allegories in the place of definite cosmic relations. The truth really is that in the Christ the whole cosmos finds expression. Therefore one can express the life of the Christ by connecting its separate events with the cosmic relations which work into earth existence unceasingly through the Christ. A right understanding of this matter will thus lead to a full recognition of the Christ as having lived on earth. Whereas if the interpretation were true that the Christ life as expressed in the Gospels is only a matter of constellations being treated allegorically, then we should have to conclude that there was no real earthly Christ at all.

[ 28 ] If a comparison were to be used, we might think of each human being as represented by a spherical mirror—which, if it were set up, would give pictures of all its surroundings. Let us suppose we were to trace with a pencil the outline of all that is shown from the surroundings. We could then take the mirror and carry the picture about with us wherever we went. Let this be a symbol for the fact that when a person is born, he brings with him a copy of the cosmos in himself, and afterwards carries about with him all through his life the effect of this one picture. The mirror might, however, be left untouched by the pencil, so that wherever the person carried it, it would depict the immediate surroundings. It then would always be giving a picture of the collective environment. This would be a symbol of the Christ from the baptism of St. John up to the Mystery of Golgotha. That which, in the case of any other person, passes into his earthly existence only at birth, flowed into the Christ-Jesus at every moment. And when the Mystery of Golgotha was consummated, that which had been radiating from the cosmos passed over into the spiritual substance of the earth, and has from that time forward been united with the spirit of the earth.

[ 29 ] When St. Paul became clairvoyant before Damascus, he could recognize that That Which had formerly been in the cosmos has passed over into the spirit of the earth. Of this every one can be convinced who can bring his soul into such a condition that he can have the same experience as had St. Paul. It is in the twentieth century that those people will first appear who will have St. Paul's experience of the Christ event in a spiritual way.

[ 30 ] Whereas up to our times this event could be experienced only by such persons as had gained clairvoyant powers by means of an esoteric training; hereafter to look upon the Christ in the spiritual sphere surrounding the earth will be possible for the advanced powers of the soul in the course of the natural evolution of humanity. This—as a repetition of the experience of the event before Damascus—will be possible for some people from a certain point of time in the twentieth century. The number of such people will afterwards increase, until in the distant future, it will be a natural faculty of the human soul.

[ 31 ] With the entrance of Christ into the evolution of the earth an entirely new impulse or direction was given to this evolution. External facts of history also express this. In the early times of post-Atlantean evolution men knew very well that above them there was not merely a physical Mars, but that what they saw as Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn was the expression of a spiritual being. In later times this perception was completely forgotten. The heavenly bodies became, according to human ideas, mere bodies to be estimated according to their physical condition. In the Middle Ages people saw in connection with the stars what only the eyes can see—the sphere of Venus, the sphere of the Sun, the sphere of Mars and the other planets, up to the sphere of the fixed stars. Then came the eighth sphere like a solid blue wall behind. Later Copernicus appeared and broke down the idea that only that which is perceptible to the senses can be authoritative. The modern physical scientists may indeed say: “It is madness to declare that the world is Maya, or illusion, and that you must look into a spiritual world in order to see the truth, for in spite of all you say true science is that which relies on the senses and records what these senses tell.” But when did astronomers rely only on the senses? Surely at the very time when that astronomical science was dominant which is attacked by the science of today! It was at that time when Copernicus began to think out what exists in the cosmic space beyond the evidence of the senses, that our modern astronomy as a science began. And so it is in every domain of science. Wherever science, in the most modern sense of the word, has arisen, it has done so in opposition to what had been apparent to the senses. When Copernicus declared “what you see is Maya or deception; rely on what you cannot see”—that was the moment when the science came into being which is recognized as such today. It might thus be said to the representative of modern science “your science itself only became ‘science’ when it was no longer willing to depend upon the senses only.”

[ 32 ] Giordano Bruno came as philosophical interpreter of the teachings of Copernicus. He led the gaze of man out into cosmic space, and announced that what people had called the limitations of space, what they had placed there as the eighth sphere limiting everything in space—was in reality no limitation; it was Maya, or illusion; for an infinite number of worlds had been poured forth into cosmic space. That which was formerly considered to be the boundary of space was shown to be only the boundary of the sense-world of man, and if we direct our gaze beyond the sense-world, we shall no longer see the world only as known to the senses, but we shall also recognize Infinity.

[ 33 ] From this it is apparent that in the course of human evolution man originally started from a spiritual view of the cosmos and in time lost it. In its place there came a mere sense-perception of the world. Then there came into evolution the Christ Impulse. Through this, mankind was led to stamp the spiritual view once more upon the materialistic. At that moment when Giordano Bruno burst the fetters of sense illusion, the Christ evolution was so far advanced that the soul power which bad been kindled by the Christ Impulse could then become active within him. An indication is thus given of the whole significance of the manner in which the life of Christ penetrates all human evolution, at the mere beginning of which humanity stands today.

[ 34 ] To what then does spiritual science now aspire? [ 35 ] It completes the work begun for external science by Giordano Bruno and others in that it says: that which external science is able to perceive is Maya, or illusion. Just as formerly one looked to the “eighth sphere” and thought that space was thereby bounded, so contemporary human thought believes that man is shut in or enclosed between birth and death. Spiritual science, however, expands man's vision by directing his attention out and beyond the limits of birth and death.

[ 36 ] There is a continuous chain in human evolution which such ideas as these make us recognize. And in the true sense of the words, that which resulted in the conquest of sense illusion through Copernicus and Giordano Bruno proceeded from the inspiration arising from that spiritual current now working in the modern spiritual science of anthroposophy. What one might call the newer esotericism worked in a mysterious manner on Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler and others. Those therefore who now base their thought on foundations laid by Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and do not wish to accept anthroposophy, are unfaithful to their own traditions in desiring to hold fast to sense illusion. As Giordano Bruno forced a way through the blue firmament of heaven, even so does spiritual science break down the barriers of birth and death for man by showing how he originates from out of the macrocosm, lives in a physical existence, passes through death, and reenters macrocosmic life. And what we see in a limited degree in each individual meets us unrestrictedly and in a larger sense in the representative of the spirit of the cosmos—in the Christ-Jesus. Once and once only could that impulse be given which the Christ gave. Once only could the whole cosmos be thus reflected, for the conjunction of the stars which then took place can never be repeated. In order to give an impulse to the earth, this conjunction was obliged to work through a human body. As it is true that this same grouping cannot occur a second time, so it is equally true that the Christ was only once incarnated. Only if one did not know that the Christ is the representative of the whole universe and only if it were impossible to win one's way to this Christ-Idea, the elements for which are given through spiritual science—only then would it be possible to maintain that Christ could appear more than once upon the earth.

[ 37 ] Thus we see how an idea of Christ arises out of the new spiritual science, which reveals to man in a new form his connection with the whole macrocosm. Certainly, in order to gain a true knowledge of the Christ, those inspiring forces are absolutely necessary which are now being bestowed by the same super-human beings who formerly guided the Egypto-Chaldæic epoch and who have now put themselves under the Christ. There is need of a new inspiration of this kind, of an inspiration which the great esoteric teachers of the middle ages had prepared from the thirteenth century onwards, and which from this time forth must ever come more and more into publicity. When man, according to the meaning of this science, prepares his soul aright for the knowledge of the spirit-world, he can then hear clairaudiently and he can see clairvoyantly what is revealed by the old Chaldæic and Egyptian angel beings who are now again acting as spiritual leaders under the guidance of the Christ. That which humanity will some time later actually gain thereby, could only be prepared in the first centuries of Christianity and up to our times.

Consequently we may say that in the future there will live in the hearts of men an idea of the Christ incomparable in greatness with anything which humanity has so far recognized. That which arose as a first impulse through the Christ, and has lived as an idea of Him up to the present time—even in the case of the best representatives of the Christ-principle—is only a preparation for the true understanding of the Christ. It would be strange indeed if, against those who in the West gave expression in such a way as this to the Christ-idea, it were brought as a reproach that they do not stand on the foundation of western Christian tradition. But it is quite possible, for this western tradition does not by any means suffice to help us to comprehend the Christ of the near future.

[ 38 ] From the hypothesis of western esotericism we can see the spiritual direction of humanity gradually flowing into what may be in a real, true sense called the guidance which comes from the Christ-impulse. That which is appearing as the new esotericism will flow slowly into the hearts of men, and the spiritual guidance of men and of humanity will ever more and more be consciously seen in such a light. We realize within ourselves how at first the Christ-principle flowed into the hearts of men because the Christ had gone about Palestine in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Because men by that time were gradually surrendering themselves to reliance on the world of sense, they could receive the impulse which corresponded to their perception. Afterwards that same impulse so worked through the inspiration of the new esotericism that such spirits as Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo were inspired, and Copernicus, for instance, was enabled to make this assertion: “That which is evident to the senses cannot teach the truth about solar systems; if we want to find the truth we must investigate behind sense appearances” At that time men, even spirits like Giordano Bruno, were not yet ripe enough to join consciously to the new esoteric stream. The spirit of the movement had to work in them unconsciously. Yet powerful and magnificent was the announcement of Giordano Bruno: “When a human being enters into existence by means of birth, then it is something macrocosmic that concentrates itself as a monad; and when a human being passes through death the monad spreads itself out again; that which was enclosed within the body spreads itself out in the cosmos in order to draw itself together again in other stages of existence, and again to spread itself out.” There Bruno gave expression to mighty conceptions which, even if expressed in stammering tongue, were in entire accord with the sense of the new esotericism.

[ 39 ] The spiritual influences which lead humanity need not work in such a way that man is always conscious of them. For example, they put Galileo in the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands had seen the old church lamp there, but they had not seen it as did Galileo. He saw the church lamp swinging; compared the time of its oscillation with the beat of his own pulse; found that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm resembling his pulse-beat; and from this discovered the laws of the pendulum in the sense of modern physics. Anyone acquainted with contemporary physics knows that this science would not be possible without Galileo's principle. In this way the force was then working which is now appearing as spiritual science; Galileo was placed in the cathedral of Pisa before the oscillating church lamp, and modern physics gained its principles. In such a mysterious way do the guiding spiritual forces of humanity perform their work.

[ 40 ] We are now approaching the time when people are to become conscious of these guiding powers. We shall always come to a better and better understanding of what has to happen in the future if we rightly understand what is working inspirationally as the new esotericism. We must recognize that those same spiritual beings indicated as their gods by the ancient Egyptians when the Greeks asked them about their teachers, are now again assuming control through having placed themselves under the leadership of the Christ Ever more and more will men feel how they can cause to reappear in a brighter lustre, in a nobler style and on a higher level, that which was pre-Christian. The consciousness necessary for the present time, which must be an intensified consciousness, ought to give us a feeling of our high duty and great responsibility in reference to the recognition of the spiritual world. This can only penetrate our souls when we have recognized, in the sense indicated, the task of spiritual science.

• 1. By “ancient Persian” is not meant “Persian” in the usual historic sense, but a pre-historic Asiatic (Iranian) civilization which developed in that land over which, later on, the Persian Kingdom extended.
• 1. Luke III, 23–38.
• 2. Matthew 1, 1–17. See also Appendix.

Today's subject, the Rosicrucians, is one which few people are able to connect even remotely adequate ideas. And indeed, it is not easy to arrive at anything conclusive about what the name implies. For most people it remains extremely vague. If books are consulted, one is informed that the Rosicrucians are thought to be some Und of sect that flourished in the early centuries of German culture. Some say that it is impossible to verify whether anything serious or rational ever existed behind the fraud and charlatanry associated with the name. On the other hand, some learned books do proffer a variety of information.

If what is written about Rosicrucianism is true, one could only come to the conclusion that it has consisted of nothing but idle boasting, pure fraud or worse. Even those who have attempted to justify it, do so with an air of patronage, though they may have found that Rosicrucianism is able to throw light on certain subjects. But what they have to say about it, for example, that it is involved with alchemy, with producing the philosopher's stone, the stone of the wise, and other alchemical feats, does not inspire much confidence.

However, these feats were for the genuine Rosicrucian nothing but symbols for the inner moral purification of the human soul. The transformations represented symbolically how inner human virtues should be developed. When the Rosicrucians spoke of transforming base metals into gold, they meant that it was possible to transform base vices into the gold of human virtue.

Those who uphold that the great work of the Rosicrucians is to be understood as being symbolic are met with the objection that in that case Rosicrucianism is simply trivial. It is difficult to see the need of all these alchemical inventions, such as the transformation of metals, simply to demonstrate the obvious fact that a human being should be moral and change his vices into virtues.

However, Rosicrucianism contains things of far greater import. Rather than further historical description, I shall give a factual account of Rosicrucianism. The historical aspect need concern us only insofar as we learn from it that Rosicrucianism has existed in the Occident since the fourteenth century, and that it goes back to a legendary figure, Christian Rosenkreuz,¹ about whom much is rumored, but history has little to say.

One incident that appears as a basic feature of various accounts can be summed up by saying that Christian Rosenkreuz—that is not his real name, but the one by which he is known—made journeys at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. On journeys through the East he became acquainted with the book M————, a book from which, so we are mysteriously told, Paracelsus, the great medieval physician and mystic, gained his knowledge. This account is true, but what the book M————actually is, and what study of it signifies, is known only to initiates.

External information about Rosicrucianism stems from two writings that appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the so-called Fama Fraternitatis in 1614, and a year later the Confessio, two books much disputed among scholars. The disputes were by no means confined to the usual controversy about books, that is, whether Valentin Andreae,² who in his later years was an ordinary normal clergyman, was really the author. In this case it was also disputed whether the author meant the books to be taken seriously or whether they were meant as satire, mocking a certain secret brotherhood known as the Rosicrucians. These two publications were followed by many others proffering all kinds of information about Rosicrucianism.

Someone without knowledge of the true background of Rosicrucianism, who picks up the writings of Valentin Andreae, or indeed any other Rosicrucian document, will find nothing exceptional in them. In fact, right up to our own time, it has been impossible to gain even elementary knowledge of this spiritual stream that still exists, and has done so since the fourteenth century. Everything published, written or printed is nothing but fragments, lost through betrayal into public hands. Not only are these fragments inaccurate; they have undergone all kinds of distortions through charlatanry, fraud, incomprehension and sheer stupidity. As long as it has existed, genuine Rosicrucianism has been passed an by word of mouth to members sworn to secrecy. That is also why nothing of great importance has found its way into public literature.

We shall speak today about certain elementary aspects of Rosicrucianism that can now be spoken of in public, for reasons which at the moment would take us too far to explain. Only when they are known can one make any sense of what is found in the often grotesque, often merely comic, but also often fraudulent, and seldom accurate information.

Rosicrucianism is one of the methods whereby what is called "initiation" can be attained. What initiation is has often been a subject of discussion in our circles To be initiated means that faculties slumbering in every human soul are awakened. These faculties enable a person to look into the spiritual world that exists behind our physical world. The physical world is an expression of the spiritual world of which it is a product. An initiate is someone who has applied the method of initiation, a method as exact and as scientifically worked out as those applied in chemistry, physics or any other science. The difference is that the method of initiation is not applied to begin with to anything external, but only to the human being; he is the instrument, the tool through which knowledge of the spiritual world is attained. An individual who genuinely strives to attain knowledge of the spirit recognizes the deep truth contained in Goethe's words:

Mysterious by Day's broad light,
Nature retains her veil, despite our clamors,
and what she won't reveal to human mind or sight
Cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws or hammers.

( Faust, Part I, Night. trans. Bayard Taylor. )

Deep indeed are the secrets nature holds, but not as impenetrably deep as those maintain who are too comfortable to make the effort. The human spirit is certainly capable of penetrating nature's secrets: not, however, through the soul's ordinary faculties, but through higher ones, attained when its hidden forces have been developed through certain strictly circumscribed methods. A person who gradually prepares will eventually reach a point where knowledge attainable only through initiation is revealed to him; to speak in Goethe's sense: The great secret is revealed of what “ultimately holds the world together”—a revelation that is truly a fruit of initiation.

It has often been explained that the early stages of initiation can be embarked upon by anyone without any danger whatever. A prerequisite for the higher stages is the very highest conscientiousness and devotion to Truth in spiritual research. When an individual approaches the portals through which he looks into quite different worlds, he realizes the truth of what is often emphasized: that it is dangerous to impart the holy secrets of existence to great masses of people. However, to the extent that modern humanity is able, through inner preparation, gradually to find their way to the highest secrets of nature and the spiritual world, to that extent can they also be revealed.

The spiritual scientific movement is a path that guides human beings to the higher secrets. A number of such paths exist. That is not to say that the ultimate truth attainable takes different forms. The highest truth is one. No matter where or when human beings ever lived or live, once they reach the highest Truth, it is the same for all. It is comparable to the view from the mountaintop, which is the same for all who reach it, no matter what different paths they choose to get there. When one stands at a certain spot an the mountainside, when a path is available, one does not walk round the mountain for another path. The same applies to the path of higher knowledge, which must be in accordance with a person's nature. What comes into consideration here is too often overlooked, that is, the immense differences in human nature. The people of ancient India were inwardly organized differently from modern people. This difference in the higher members is apparent to spiritual research, though not to the external science of physiology or anatomy. It is thanks to this fact that we have preserved up to our own time a wonderful spiritual knowledge, and also the method whereby initiation was achieved—the path of yoga. This path leads those who are constituted like the people of ancient India to the summit of knowledge. For today's European it is as senseless to seek that path as it would be to first walk to the opposite side of the mountain and use the path there rather than the path available where one stands. The nature of today's European is completely different from that of the Oriental. A few centuries before the Christian era began, human nature was different from what it was to become a few centuries later. And today it is different again.

As we have seen, initiation is based upon awakening in human beings certain forces. Bearing this in mind, we must acknowledge that a person's nature must be taken into account when methods are developed whereby he becomes the instrument able to perceive and to investigate the spiritual world.

The wonderful method developed by the Rishis, the great spiritual teachers in ancient India, is still valid for those belonging to the Indian race. At the beginning of the Christian era the right method was the so-called Christian-Gnostic path. The human being who stands fully within today's civilization needs a different method. That is why in the course of centuries and millennia the great masters of wisdom who guide mankind's evolution change the methods that lead to the summit of wisdom.

The Rosicrucian method of initiation is especially for modern people; it meets the needs of modern conditions. Not only is it a Christian path, but it enables the striving human being to recognize that spiritual research and its achievements are in complete harmony with modern culture, and with modern humanity's whole outlook. It will for long centuries to come be the right method of initiation into spiritual life. When it was first inaugurated, certain rules were laid down for its adherents—rules that are basically still valid, and because they are strictly observed, Rosicrucians are not recognized by outsiders. Never to let it be known that one is a Rosicrucian is the first rule that only recently has been slightly modified. While the wisdom is fostered in narrow circles, its fruits should be available to all humanity. That is why until recently no Rosicrucian divulged what enabled him to investigate nature's secrets. Nothing of the knowledge was revealed; no hint was given theoretically or otherwise, but work was done that furthered civilization and implanted wisdom in ways hardly noticeable to others.

That is the first basic rule; to elaborate it further would lead too far. Suffice it to say that today this rule has been partly relaxed, but the higher Rosicrucian knowledge is not revealed. The second rule concerns conduct, and may be expressed as follows: Be truly part of the civilization and people to which you belong; be a member of the class in which you find yourself. Wear the clothes that are worn generally, nothing different or conspicuous. Thus, you will find that neither ambition nor selfishness motivates the Rosicrucian; he rather strives wherever possible to improve aspects of the prevailing culture, while never losing sight of the much loftier aims that link him with the central Rosicrucian wisdom.

The other basic rules need not concern us at the moment. We want to look at the actual Rosicrucian training as it still exists and has existed for centuries. What it is possible to say about it deals only with the elementary stages of the whole system of Rosicrucian schooling. Something ought to be said about this training that applies to spiritual scientific training, namely, that it should not be embarked upon without knowledgeable guidance. What is to be said about this subject you will find in my book Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.

The preliminary Rosicrucian training consists of seven stages that need not be absolved in the sequence here enumerated. The teacher will lay more emphasis on one point or another, according to the pupil's individuality and special needs. Thus, it is a path of learning and inner development, adapted to the particular pupil. These are the seven steps:

1. Study, in the Rosicrucian sense of the word
2. Acquisition of imaginative knowledge
3. Acquisition of the occult script
4. Bringing rhythm into life, this is also described as preparing the philosopher's stone. This has nothing in common with the nonsense written about it.
5. Knowledge of the microcosm, that is, of man's essential nature
6. Becoming one with the macrocosm or great world
7. Attaining godliness (Gottseligkeit).

The sequence in which the student passes through these preliminary stages of Rosicrucian training depends on the students personality, but they must be absolved. What I have said about it so far, and also what I am going to say, must be looked upon as describing the ideal. Do not think that these things can be attained from one day to the next. However, one can at least learn the description of what today may seem a far distant goal. A start can always be made provided it is realized that patience, energy and perseverance are required.

The first stage or study, suggests to many something dry and pedantic. But in this case what is meant has nothing to do with erudition in the usual sense. One need not be a scholar to be an initiate. Spiritual knowledge and scholarship have no dose connection. What is here meant by study is something rather different, but absolutely essential; and no genuine teacher of Rosicrucianism will guide the pupil to the higher stages if the student has no aptitude for what this first stage demands. It requires the student to develop a thinking that is thoroughly sensible and logical. This is necessary if the pupil is not to lose the ground under his feet at the higher stages. From the start it must be made clear that, unless all inclination towards fantasy and illusion is overcome, it is all too easy to fall into error when striving to enter spiritual realms. A person who is inclined to see things in a fanciful or unreal light is of no use to the spiritual world.

That is one reason; another is that though a person is born from the astral world, that is from the spiritual world next to the physical, as much as he is born from the physical world, what he experiences there is completely different from anything seen with physical sight or heard with physical ears. One thing, however, is the same in all three worlds—in the physical, the astral or spiritual, and the devachanic world—and that is logical thinking. It is precisely because it is the same in all three worlds that it can be learned already in the physical world, and thus provide a firm support when we enter the other worlds. If one's thoughts are like will-o-the-wisps so that no distinction is made between what is merely depicted and reality, then one is not qualified to rise into higher worlds. This happens for example in modern physics when the atom, which no one has even seen, is spoken of as if it were a material reality.

However, what we are discussing now is not what is generally meant by thinking. Ordinary thinking consists of combining physical facts. Here we are concerned with thinking that has become sense-free. Today there are learned people, including philosophers, who deny the existence of such thinking. Modern philosophers of great renown tell us that human beings cannot think in pure thoughts, only in thoughts that reflect something physical. Such a statement simply shows that the person concerned is not capable of thinking in pure thoughts. However, it is the height of arrogance to maintain that something is impossible just because one cannot accomplish it oneself. Human beings must be able to formulate thoughts that are not dependent on what is seen or heard physically. A person must be able to find himself in a world of pure thought when his attention is completely withdrawn from external reality. In spiritual science, and also in Rosicrucianism, this is known as self-created thinking. Someone who resolves to train his thinking in this direction may turn to books on spiritual science. There he will not find a thinking that combines physical facts, but thoughts derived from higher worlds, which present a self-sustaining continuous thinking. And as anyone can follow it, the reader is able to rise above the ordinary trivial way of thinking.

In order to make accessible the elementary stages of Rosicrucianism, it was necessary to make available in print and through lectures, material that had for centuries been guarded in closed circles. However, what has been released in recent decades is only the rudiments of an immeasurable, far-reaching world knowledge. In the course of time more and more will flow into mankind. Study of this material schools the pupil's thinking. For those who seek a still stricter schooling, my books Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom are particularly suitable. Those two books are not written like other books; no sentence can be placed anywhere but where it stands. Each of the books represents, not a collection of thoughts, but a thought-organism. Thought is not added to thought, each grows organically from the preceding one, like growth occurs in an organism. The thoughts must necessarily develop in like manner in the reader. In this way a person makes his own thinking with the characteristic that is self-generating. Without this kind of thinking the higher stages of Rosicrucianism cannot be attained. However, a study of the basic spiritual scientific literature will also school thinking; the more thorough schooling is not absolutely necessary in order to absolve the first stage of Rosicrucian training.

The second stage is the acquisition of imaginative thinking. This should only be attempted when the stage of study has been absolved, so that one possesses an inner foundation of knowledge and has made one's own thoughts that follow one another out of inner necessity. Without such a foundation it is all too easy to lose the ground under one's feet. But what is meant by imaginative thinking?

Goethe, who in his poem, The Mysteries, showed his profound knowledge of Rosicrucianism, gave a hint at what imaginative thinking was, in the words uttered by the Chorus Mysticus, in the second part of Faust: “All things transitory but as symbols are sent.” The knowledge that everything transitory was mere symbol was systematically cultivated wherever a Rosicrucian training was pursued. A Rosicrucian had to acquire an insight that recognizes in everything, something spiritual and eternal. In addition to ordinary knowledge of what he encountered an his journeys through life, a Rosicrucian had to acquire imaginative knowledge as well.

When someone meets you with a smiling face, you do not stop short at the characteristic contortion of his features, you see beyond the physiognomic expression and recognize that the smile reveals the person's inner life. Likewise you recognize tears to be an expression of inner pain and sorrow. In other words, the outer expresses the inner; through the physiognomy you perceive the depths of soul. A Rosicrucian has to learn this in regard to the whole of nature. As the human face, or the gesture of a hand, is the expression of a person's soul life, so, for the Rosicrucian, everything that takes place in nature is an expression of soul and spirit. Every stone, plant and animal, every current of air, the stars, all express soul and spirit just as do shining eyes, a wrinkled brow or tears. If you do not stop short at today's materialistic interpretation that regards what the Earth-Spirit says in Goethe's Faust as poetic fantasy, but recognize that it depicts reality, then you know what is meant by imaginative knowledge.

In the tides of life, in action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth and the Grave,
An eternal sea.
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowing,
Thus at time's humming loom 'tis my hand prepares
The garment of Life which the Deity wears!

If for you these words of the Earth-Spirit depict spiritual reality, then you will know that you possess a deeper logic, and can calmly accept being called a fool by materialists who only think they understand. As the human physiognomy expresses the life of the human soul, so does the physiognomy of the earth express the life of the Earth-Spirit. When you begin to read in nature, when nature reveals its mysteries, and different plants convey to you the Earth-Spirit's cheerfulness or sorrow, then you begin to understand imaginative knowledge. Then you will also recognize that it is this that is presented as the purest and most beautiful expression of the striving for imaginative knowledge in Rosicrucianism, and also in what preceded Rosicrucian¬ism, the ideal of the Holy Grail.

Let us look for a moment at the true nature of the Holy Grail. This ideal is always found in every Rosicrucian school. The form it takes I shall describe as a conversation which, however, never took place in reality because what I shall summarize could only be attained in the course of long training and development. However, what I shall say does convey what is looked up to as the Quest of the Holy Grail:

Look how the plant grows out of the earth. Its stem strives upward; its roots are sunk into the ground, pointing towards the centre of the earth. The opening blossom contains its reproductive organs, which bear the seeds through which the plant continues beyond itself. Charles Robert Darwin,³ the famous natural scientist, is not the first to point out that, if a person is compared to the plant, it is the root, not the blossom, that corresponds to his head. This was said already by esoteric Rosicrucianism. The calyx, which chastely strives towards the sun, corresponds to the reproductive organs that in human beings are situated downwards. Human beings are inverted plants. A person turns downwards and covers up in shame the organs that the plant chastely turns upward to the light.

To recognize that the human being is the plant inverted is basic to Rosicrucianism, as indeed to all esoteric knowledge. Human beings turn their reproductive organs towards the centre of the earth; in the plant they turn towards the sun. The plant root points towards the centre of the earth; human beings Lift their heads unfettered towards sunlit spaces. The animal occupies a position between the two. The three directions indicated by plant, animal and human are known as the cross. The animal represents the beam across, the plant the downward, the human being the upward pointing section of the vertical beam. Plato, the great philosopher of antiquity, stated that the World¬Soul is crucified on the World-Body. He meant that human beings represent the highest development of the World-Soul, which passes through the three kingdoms of plant, animal and human. The World-Soul is crucified on the cross of plants, animal and human kingdoms. These words of Plato are spoken completely in the sense of spiritual science and present a wonderful and deeply significant picture.

The pupil in the Rosicrucian school had repeatedly to bring the picture before his mind of the plant with its head downward and the reproductive organs stretching towards the beam of the sun. The sunbeam was called the “holy lance of love” that must penetrate the plant to enable the seeds to mature and grow. The pupil was told: Contemplate man in relation to the plant; compare the substance of which man is composed with that of the plant. Man, the plant turned upside down, has permeated his substance, his flesh, with physical cravings, passion and sensuality. The plant stretches in purity and chastity the reproductive organs towards the fertilizing sacred lance of love. This stage will be reached by an individual when he has completely purified all cravings. In the future, when earth evolution has reached its height, a person will attain this ideal. When no impure desires permeate the lower organs, a person will become as chaste and pure as the plant is now. That individual will stretch a lance of spiritual love, the completely spiritualized productive force, towards a calyx that opens as does that of the plant to the holy lance of love of the sunbeam.

Thus, the human being's development takes him through the kingdoms of nature. He purifies his being until he develops organs of which there are as yet only indications. The beginning of a future productive power can be seen when human beings create something that is sacred and noble—a force they will fully possess once their lower nature is purified. A new organ will then have developed; the calyx will arise on a higher level and open to the lance of Amfortas, as the plant calyx opens to the sun's spiritual lance of love.

Thus, what the Rosicrucian pupil depicted to himself represents on a lower level the great future ideal of mankind, attainable when the lower nature has been purified and chastely offers itself to the spiritualized sun of the future. Then human nature, which in one sense is higher, in another lower than that of the plant, will have developed within itself the innocence and purity of the plant calyx.

The Rosicrucian pupil grasped all of this in its spiritual meaning. He understood it as the mystery of the Holy Grail⁴—mankind's highest ideal. He saw the whole of nature permeating and glowing with spiritual meaning. When everything is thus seen as symbol of the spirit, one is on the way to attain imaginative knowledge; color and sound separate from objects and become independent. Space becomes a world of color and sound in which spiritual beings announce their presence. The pupil rises from imaginative knowledge to direct knowledge of the spiritual realm. That is the path of the Rosicrucian pupil at the second stage of training.

The third stage is knowledge of the occult script. This is no ordinary writing, but one that is connected with nature's secrets. Let me at once make clear how to depict it. A widely used sign is the so-called vortex, which can be thought of as two intertwined figure 6's. This sign is used for indicating and also characterizing a certain type of event that can occur both physically and spiritually. For example, a developing plant will finally produce seeds from which new plants similar to the old one can develop. To think that anything material passes from the old plant to the new is materialistic prejudice without foundation and will eventually be refuted. What passes over to the new plant is formative forces. As far as matter is concerned, the old plant dies completely; materially its offspring is a completely new creation. This dying and new coming-into-being of the plant is indicated by drawing two intertwining spirals, that is, a vortex, but drawing it so that the two spirals do not touch.

Many events take place, both physical and spiritual, that correspond to such a vortex. For example, we know from spiritual research that the transition from the ancient Atlantean culture to the first post-Atlantean culture was such a vortex. Natural science only knows the most elementary aspects of this event. Spiritual science tells us that the space between Europe and America, which is now the Atlantic Ocean, was filled with a continent on which an ancient civilization developed, a continent that was submerged by the Flood. This proves that what Plato referred to as the disappearance of the Island of Poseidon is based on facts; the island was part of the ancient Atlantean continent. The spiritual aspect of that ancient culture vanished, and a new culture arose. The vortex is a sign for this event; the inward-turning spiral signifies the old civilization and the outward-turning the new.

As the transition took place from the old culture to the new, the sun rose in spring in the constellation of Cancer—as you know the sun moves forward in the course of the year. Later it rose in early spring in the constellation of Gemini, then in that of Taurus and later still in that of Aries. People have always felt that what reached them from the vault of heaven in the beams of the early spring sun was especially beneficial. This is why people venerated the ram when the spring sun rose in the constellation of Aries; it is also the reason for legends such as “The Golden Fleece” and others. Earlier than that the sun rose in spring in the constellation of Taurus, and we find in ancient Egypt the cult of the bull Apis. But the transition from Atlantis to post-Atlantis took place under the constellation of Cancer, whose sign is the intertwining spirals—a sign you find depicted in calendars.

There exist hundreds and thousands of such signs that the pupil gradually learns. The signs are not arbitrary; they enable those who understand them to immerse themselves in things and directly experience their essence. While study schools the faculty of reason, and imaginative knowledge the life of feelings, knowledge of the occult script takes hold of the will. It is the path into the realm of creativity. If study brings knowledge, and imagination spiritual vision, knowledge of the occult script brings magic. It brings direct insight into the laws of nature that slumber in things, direct knowledge of their very essence.

You can find many who make use of occult signs, even people like Eliphas Levi. This can provide an idea of what the signs look like, but not much can be learned, unless one is knowledgeable about them already. What is found in books an the subject is usually erroneous. The signs used to be regarded as sacred, at least by the initiates. If we go back far enough, we find that strict rules concerning their secrecy were imposed, incurring severe punishment if broken, to ensure they were not used for unworthy purposes.

The fourth stage is known as the preparation of the philosopher's stone (the stone of the wise). What is written about it is completely misleading; often it is such grotesque nonsense that if true anyone would be entitled to be scornful. What I am going to say will give you a great deal of insight into the truth of the matter.

At the end of the eighteenth century there appeared in an earnest periodical a notice concerning the philosopher's stone. It was clear from the wording of the notice that its author had some knowledge of the matter, yet gave the impression that he did not fully understand. The notice read: The philosopher's stone is something that all are acquainted with, something they often handle, and is found all over the world. It is just that people do not know that it is the philosopher's stone. A peculiar description of what the philosopher's stone was supposed to be, yet word for word quite correct.

Consider for a moment the process of human breathing. The regulation of the breath is connected with the discovery, or preparation of, the philosopher's stone. At present human beings inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, that is, what is exhaled is a compound of oxygen and carbon. A person inhales oxygen, life-giving air, and exhales carbon dioxide, which is poisonous to both human and animal. If animals, who breathe like human beings, had alone populated the earth, they would have poisoned the air, and neither they nor humans would be able to breathe today. So how does it come about that they are still able to breathe? It is because plants absorb the carbon dioxide, retain the carbon and give back the oxygen for human and animal to use again.

Thus, a beautiful reciprocal process takes place between the breath of humans and animal, and the breath, or rather assimilation, of the plant world. Think of someone who every day earns five shillings and spends two. He creates a surplus, and is in a different position than someone who earns two shillings but spends five. Something similar applies to breathing. However, the significant point is that this exchange takes place between human beings and the vegetable kingdom.

The process of breathing is indeed quite amazing, and we must look at it in a little more detail. Oxygen enters the human body; carbon dioxide is expelled from it. Carbon dioxide consists of oxygen and carbon; the plant retains the carbon and gives a person back the oxygen. Plants that grew millions of years ago are today dug out of the earth as coal. Looking at this coal we see carbon that was once inhaled by the plants. Thus, the ordinary breath, just described, shows how necessary the plant is to a person's life. It also shows that when humans breathe they accomplish only half the process; to complete it they need the plant that possesses something they lack to transform carbon into oxygen.

The Rosicrucians introduce a certain rhythm into the breath, detail of which can only be imparted directly by word of mouth. However, certain aspects can be mentioned without going into details. The pupil receives definite instruction concerning rhythmic breathing accompanied by thoughts of a special nature. The effect must be thought of as comparable to the persistent drip of water that wears away the stone. Certainly even the most highly developed person will not attain, by breathing in the Rosicrucian manner, a complete transformation of the inner life processes from one day to the next. However, the gradual change wrought in the human body leads eventually to a specific goal. At some time in the future a person will be able to transform within his own being carbonic acid into oxygen. Thus, what today the plant does for human beings—transforming the carbonic acid in the carbon¬will be done by man himself when the effect of the changed breath has become great enough. This will take place in an organ he will then possess, of which physiology and anatomy as yet know nothing, but which is nevertheless developing. An individual will accomplish the transformation himself. Instead of exhaling carbon a person will use it in his own being; with what he formerly had to give over to the plant he will build up his own body.

All this must be thought of in conjunction with what was said about the Holy Grail: that the purity and chastity of the plant nature would pan over into human nature. When a person's lower nature has reached the highest level of spirituality, it will in that respect be once more at the level of the plant as it is today. The process that takes place in the plant, a person will one day be able to carry out in his own being. He will more and more transform the substance of his present body into the ideal of a plant body, which will be the bearer of a much higher and more spiritual consciousness. Thus, the Rosicrucian pupil learns the alchemy that eventually will enable a person to transform the fluids and substances of the human body into carbon. Thus, what the plant does today—it builds its body from carbon—human beings will one day accomplish. He will build a structure from carbon that will be a person's future body. A great mystery lies hidden in the rhythm of the breath.

You will now understand the notice about the philosopher's stone alluded to earlier. But what is it that human beings will learn in regard to building up the human body in the future? They will learn to create ordinary coal—which is also what diamonds consist of—and from it build their body. Human beings will then possess a higher and more comprehensive consciousness. They will be able to take the carbon out of themselves and use it in their own being. They will form their own substance, that is, plant substance made of carbon. That is the alchemy that builds the philosopher's stone. The human body itself is the retort, transformed in the way indicated.

Thus, behind the rhythm of the breath lies hidden what is alluded to as the search for the philosopher's stone; though what is usually said about it is pure nonsense. The indications given here have only recently reached the public from the School of the Rosicrucians; you will not find them in any books. They represent a small part of the fourth stage: The quest of the philosopher's stone.

The fifth stage, or knowledge of the microcosm, the small world, points to something said by Paracelsus to which I have often referred, namely, that if we could draw an extract out of everything around us, it would prove to be like an extract taken from mankind. The substances and forces within us are like a miniature recapitulation of what exists in the rest of nature. When we look at the world around us we can say: What is within us is like a copy of the great archetype that exists outside. For example, take what light has brought about in human beings: ft created the eyes. Without eyes we would not see the light; the world would remain dark for us, and likewise for the animals. Those animals that wandered into dark caves to live, in Kentucky, lost the ability to see. If light did not exist we would not have eyes. The light enticed the organs of sight out of the organism. As Goethe said: “The eye is created by the light for the light, the ear by the sound for the sound.”

Everything is born from the microcosm. Hence, the secret that under certain instruction and guidance it is possible to enter deeply into the body, and investigate not only what pertains to the body, but to the spiritual realm, and also to the world of nature around us. A person who learns under certain conditions to immerse himself with certain thoughts meditatively in the inner eye will learn the true nature of light. Another area of great significance is between the eyebrows at the root of the nose. By meditatively sinking into this point one learns of important spiritual events that took place as this part of the head was formed from the surrounding world. Thus, one learns the spiritual construction of the human being. He is completely formed and built up by spiritual beings and forces. That is why he can, by delving into his own form, learn about the beings and forces that built up his organism.

A word must be said about delving into one's inner being. This penetrating down from the “I” into the bodily nature, and also the other exercises, ought only to be undertaken after due preparation. Before a start is made the powers of intellect and reason must be strengthened. That is why in Rosicrucian schools the training of thinking is obligatory. Furthermore, the pupil must be inwardly morally strong; this is essential as he may otherwise easily stumble. As a student learns to sink meditatively into every part of his body, other worlds dawn in him.

The deeper aspects of the Old Testament cannot be understood without this sinking into one's inner being. However, it must be done according to certain directions provided by a spiritual scientific training. Everything that is said here in this respect is derived from the spiritual world and can only be fully understood when one is able to discover it again within oneself. Man is born out of the macrocosm; within himself as microcosm he must rediscover its forces and laws. Not through anatomy does man learn about his own being, but through looking into his being and inwardly perceiving that the various areas emit light and sound. The inward-looking soul discovers that each organ has its own color and tone.

Human beings will have direct knowledge of the macrocosm when they learn to recognize, through a Rosicrucian training, what it is in their own being that is created from the universe. Once they know their inner being through meditatively sinking into the eye, or into the point above the root of the nose, human beings can spiritually recognize the laws of the macrocosm. Then, through their own insight, they will understand what it is that an inspired genius describes in the Old Testament. An individual looks into the Akasha Chronicle and is able to follow mankind's evolution through millions of years.

This is insight that can be attained through a Rosicrucian training. However, the training is very different from what is customary. Genuine self¬knowledge is neither reached by aimless brooding within oneself nor in believing, as is often taught nowadays, that by looking into oneself the inner god will speak. The power to recognize the great World-Self is attained by immersing oneself in the organs. It is true that down the ages the call has resounded: “Know thyself,” but it is equally true that within one's own being the higher self cannot be found. Rather, as Goethe pointed out, one's spirit must widen until it encompasses the world.

That can be attained by those who patiently follow the Rosicrucian path and reach the sixth stage, or becoming one with the macrocosm. Immersing oneself in one's inner being is not a path of comfort. Here phrases and generalities do not suffice. It is in concrete reality that one must plunge into every being and phenomenon and lovingly accept it as part of oneself. It is a concrete and intimate knowledge, far removed from merely indulging in phrases like: “Being in harmony with the world”; “being one with the World-Soul,” or “melt together with the world.” Such phrases are simply valueless compared with a Rosicrucian training. Here the aim is to strengthen and invigorate human soul-forces, rather than chatter about being in tune with the infinite and the like.

When a human being has attained this widening of the self, then, the seventh stage is within reach. Knowledge now becomes feeling; what lives in the soul is transformed into spiritual perception. A person no longer feels that he lives only within himself. He begins to experience himself in all beings: in the stone, plant and animal, in everything into which he is immersed. They reveal to him their essential nature, not in words or concepts, but to his innermost feelings. A time begins when universal sympathy unites him with all beings; he feels with them and participates in their existence. This living within all beings is the seventh stage, or attaining godliness (Gottseligkeit), the blessed repose within all things. When the human being no longer feels confined within his skin, when he feels himself united with all other beings, participating in their existence, and when his being encompasses the whole universe so that he can say to it all: “Thou are that,” then the words which Goethe, out of Rosicrucian knowledge, expresses in his poem The Mysteries will have meaning: “Who added to the cross the wreath of roses?”

However, these words can be spoken not only from the highest point of view, but from the moment that “the cross wreathed in roses”—what this expresses—has become one's ideal, one's watchword. It stands as the symbol for a human being's overcoming the lower self in which he merely broods, and his rising from it into the higher self that leads a person to the blissful experience of the life and being of all things. He will then understand Goethe's words in the poem: West-East Divan

And until thou truly hast
This dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

Unless one can grasp what is meant by the overcoming of the lower, narrow self and the rising into the higher self, it is not possible to understand the cross as symbol of dying and becoming—the wood representing the withering of the lower self, and the blossoming roses the becoming of the higher self Nor can the words be understood with which we shall dose the subject of Rosicrucianism—words also expressed by Goethe, which as watchword belong above the cross wreathed in roses symbolizing sevenfold man:

The power that holds constrained all humankind,
The victor o'er himself no more can bind.

Von der Gewalt, die alle Wesen bindet
Befreit der Mensch sich, der sich überwindet.

• 1. Christian Rosenkreuz (15th century) was the founder of Rosicrucianism, a group of secret brotherhoods claiming esoteric wisdom in the late Middle Ages.
• 2. Valentin Andreae (1586–1654) theologian, wrote about Rosicrucianism.
• 3. Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) the English naturalist who first formulated the theory of evolution.
• 4. Holy Grail, a cup or chalice, associated in medieval legend with unusual powers, especially the regeneration of life and water, and later with Christian purity. Became identified with the cup used at the Last Supper and given to Joseph of Arimathea.