The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In our last lecture we pointed to the relation between the spiritual forces which work in the beings of the kingdoms of nature on earth and what we see externally. To-day let us shortly recapitulate how that has been worked out, for it is necessary to examine more closely the things which form an essential part of our theme, as they will lead us to what is to be the culminating point of our lectures:—a comprehension of the living cooperation of the beings of the various hierarchies and their offspring, in the heavenly bodies and in the kingdoms of nature. We stated that man has the four principles of his being active on the physical plane; his physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. Further on we drew attention to the fact that in the animal, three principles are active on the physical plane; the physical, etheric, and astral bodies; while on the other hand, the group-ego is on the astral plane. Further we saw that with regard to the plants, their physical and etheric bodies alone are active on the physical plane, their astral bodies on the astral plane, and the group-ego on the Devachanic plane. With regard to the mineral, we only found its physical body on the physical plane, its etheric body on the astral plane, its astral body on the Devachanic plane, while in the region we designate as the higher Devachanic plane, dwell the group-egos of the minerals.

We will now pass on to show more in detail what all this really means. Till now I have only been able to say that the occult vision which raises itself to the first of the super-sensible worlds lying above us, does not find in the physical world with regard to the animal, what he finds there with regard to man—namely, the ego; for that which in man we call the ego, the I, can only be found for the animal on the astral plane, in the super-sensible world; there only it has the center of its activity. Occult science cannot ascribe an ego to the animal in the physical world. It does not deny an ego to the animal, but states that what can be designated as the ego of an animal, is only to be found in the astral world. Objection may easily be raised to the fact that an ego is denied to the animals, even to the higher animals, on the physical plane, whereas it might be said, and indeed often is said—that with regard to their actions animals display an extraordinary intelligence, a quite wonderful comprehension, so that much that the animals does on the physical plane can be likened to what man does. Now, those who express themselves thus have not grasped the fundamental principle of this matter. It would not occur to anyone who penetrates into these matters, to deny what we call human soul-forces to animals on the physical plane.

There is no question of that. In this sphere lies the foundation of manifold mistakes and misunderstandings. Thus, misunderstanding would at once arise if a certain materialistic Darwinism were to say in our time: “Indeed you Anthroposophists look at the matter as though man were definitely to be sought on a higher stage of spirituality than the animal; whereas we see that the animal develops intelligence, so much intelligence, so much even of a certain instinctive morality exists in the animal kingdom, that what man has in his soul-forces may well be but a sort of higher stage of what we meet with in the animal kingdom.” The point of view here involved is quite erroneous. No unprejudiced study would deny intelligence, even reason, to the animal kingdom. We need only consider such facts as that man, comparatively late in his evolution arrived at the discovery of paper. The discovery of paper by human intelligence is represented in our historical descriptions as a very great acquisition; and in a certain respect it certainly is a sign of human progress. Yet the wasps knew this art millions of years ago; for the material of which the wasps build their nests is really paper. We can therefore say: “That which the human intellect as such accomplishes, that the animal kingdom already possesses far, far down in its ranks.” It would not occur to an unprejudiced observer to deny human soul-forces, as such, to the animal; indeed in the realm of occultism we are even convinced that sagacity and intelligence in the animals is much surer, more precise, and much more free from error than in man. The essential point is that in man all those soul-forces relate to an ego in the physical world, an ego which is developing itself individually in a physical world, going through an individual development and education. Now as regards the animals belonging to any one group, we know that the circle of their development depends simply on the species, the genus, to which they belong; but the case of man who develops himself as an individual is quite different. If we direct our gaze to the animal kingdom, we find in the animal world the most varied forms, which differ far more from each other than do the human races. Certainly we find great differences in the human races, all over the earth, but if we compare these with the great difference of the animals from the imperfect up to the more perfect species, we notice how powerful is the differentiation in the animal kingdom; quite different from that in man. On what then does this depend? We can best obtain an approximate answer, if we first of all ask: What causes the variety of groups in the animal kingdom, the different species, which we find characteristically spread over the globe?

Occult vision shows us that the cause of the varieties of the animal species does not simply originate on the earth; rather does the animal species receive its forms from cosmic space, and indeed the forces which produce the one species come from a different part of cosmic space from that whence come the forces which produce another. The forces which construct the various animal-forms, stream down upon our earth-planet from the other planets of our planetary system. We may actually divide the whole animal kingdom into six or seven principal groups, and these chief groups have the highest group-egos. These have the impulse for their activity in the six or seven principal planets belonging to our System; so that the forces which form the principal groups of the animals work down spiritually from the planets. In saying this we have at the same time given the concrete explanation of what is actually meant when we speak of group-egos of the animals. It means that in the animal dwell spiritual forces, belonging to beings not to be sought upon the earth itself, but outside the earth in cosmic space, and indeed primarily in the planetary world. The Regents, as it were, of the principal group-forms of the animals live on our planets; they had to withdraw into these planets in order to work down with their forces at the right distance from the earth and from the right direction. For only from these directions in space can that come which builds up the principal animal forms in the right way. Now if the planets were only to allow these forces to stream down upon our earth, we should not actually have the multiplicity in the animal kingdom we now have, we should only have seven principal forms. Once upon a time, in far distant ages, there were only the seven principal animal forms; but these seven forms were very mobile, determinable, so soft and plastic in their formation that they could easily be transformed; one special form into another and again other forms into others; this actually occurred at a later period of time. The seven principal forms date far, far back; but then appeared other forms in addition to these, and as it were, worked either to strengthen or hinder the forces of the planets.

I shall now have to explain how these other forces came into being. If we direct our ordinary vision to the heavenly spaces we may easily believe that everything is actually of like form; but this is not the case. If we direct our gaze to a certain direction in space, occult vision perceives something quite different in one direction from what it sees in another. Space is by no means a homogeneous affair; it is not alike on all sides; for different forces work from the different directions of space. The whole of cosmic space is filled with spiritual beings of the different hierarchies working in different ways from various directions on to the earth. In those past ages when man had a certain original primitive clairvoyance, the following was clear to him: “If at a particular hour of the day I direct my gaze to one part of the heavens I encounter certain forces, while in another direction I encounter certain other forces.” And men were also aware that from certain points specially precise and definite forces worked down from cosmic space, which were of quite particular importance to the earth. These are all arranged in the stellar circle of cosmic space which has since ancient times been called the Zodiac. Men did not then speak without reason of the Zodiac or Animal Circle; they knew why it was so called. In the heavenly spaces the case is as follows. The forces which worked down from the planet Mars, for instance and brought about in the still plastic animal substance, one of the seven principal forms, worked in a different way according to whether Mars stood before one sign of the Zodiac or before another. The Zodiac was divided into Twelve Signs, which represent the constellations, and according as the Martian forces which affect one animal form, stood before Aries, or Taurus, or any other constellation, their influence varied. In this way the seven different forms were modified. A number of different animal forms were thus made possible; and if you consider that to this must also be added the fact that Mars, for instance, can work qualifyingly when he stands before Leo so that he supplants the Lion in relation to the earth; or that from the other side he works qualifyingly when the earth is between the sun and Mars; you see that there are a very great number of possibilities.

All these forces have worked together to differentiate the seven original groups of the animal kingdom; so that the whole multiplicity of our animal forms on the earth arose from the fact that the forces of the planets are actually the abode of the group-souls, the group-egos of the animals; and that these beings fulfil their tasks from these centers, for only from there can they do so. For only because that particular group-soul of an animal form which was to work down from Mars selected that position in the heavens can it exercise the corresponding result upon the earth below. Here lie the forces which brought about the multiplicity of our animals; and when we use the expression, “The animal group-ego is to be found on the astral plane,” that really means that when occult vision wishes to seek the group-ego of any animal form, he must not seek for it on earth, but on one of the planets. That which with regard to man is to be found on the earth, occult vision can only discover for the animal outside in cosmic space, amongst the planets. Just as, for instance, a man who has to accomplish something upon the earth which necessitates various standpoints, must adapt himself to these, so must the group-ego which dwells on a planet pass through cosmic space in front of the Zodiac, in order to differentiate its forces from there. If we bring the facts just stated into connection with the fact that the impulse for the animal forms is continually sought to-day in some principle of the earth itself—in the struggle for existence—or in natural selection or the like—then the facts which have come into being through the efforts of Darwin, for example, are magnificent in so far as he did not go beyond the facts. For unconsciously Darwinism has described the mobility of the original animal forms and how they were actually created from the basic forms. But, according to the whole predisposition of our times, man has looked away from the fact that the forces which create those forms work down from cosmic space; and that therefore the creators of the animal forms are to be sought in the world of the planets which belong to our planetary system, but are outside our earth.

If we now inquire how this matter stands in relation to man, we can only receive an answer by first answering that other question: Of what nature are the spirits which we have now described as the group-souls of the animals and which have their dwelling-place upon the various planets? It is then seen that these group-egos of the animals are the offspring of that category of spiritual beings to which I have referred in this course of lectures as the Spirits of Motion. Thus we must look upon the group-souls of the animals as the offspring of the Spirits of Motion. Now the Spirits of Motion actually gave out of their own substance the astral body to man, during the ancient Moon-condition. In order to complete the matter we may therefore say: This earth was preceded by the Moon-condition, during which man received his astral body from the Spirits of Motion. In other words. When the earth was Moon—the old Moon, not the present one—(the present moon is only a detached portion of the earth itself, whilst the ancient moon was an earlier incarnation of our earth)—whilst the earth was in this ancient Moon-condition, the Spirits of Motion hovered as it were, over this old Moon and allowed their own substance to trickle in, to stream in to what man had brought over from previous conditions. So that what man acquired as astral body—which was new to him, for at that time he had only his physical and etheric bodies—was derived from the Spirits of Motion. The ancient Moon has disappeared; the earth has been formed; the Spirits of Motion have developed off-spring, besides carrying on their own evolution. These are the beings we designate as the group-egos of the animals; they have not taken up their abode upon the earth but upon the other planets, in order so to work upon the earth from there as to bring forth the animal forms, in the manner we have described. This is the special point in what I have stated. That we can, in a certain sense, describe the group-egos as offspring of the beings of the Second Hierarchy.

We must now put the following question: These offspring of the Spirits of Motion work down from the planets upon the animals; do similar spiritual beings work upon man, upon the human race spread over the earth? We cannot answer this as regards those spiritual beings we have cited as the normal members of the several hierarchies; but we have mentioned a special category of spirits which we have called the Luciferic Spirits, and we have described the relation of these to the normal spirits. In our present cycle of time there are Luciferic Spirits in every category of the hierarchies. Whereas the animal group-souls are the normal and proper offspring of the Spirits of Motion, the Luciferic Spirits corresponding to the Spirits of Motion are those who resisted the normal path, and have remained in opposition to the normal Spirits of Motion. These Luciferic Spirits of Motion are grouped on the various planets in relation with the earth, just as are the normal offspring of the Spirits of Motion. They too, have their parts assigned to them, so to speak, and have their abode apportioned to them on the various planets. Just as the group-souls of the animals dwell on the various planets, so also do certain Luciferic Spirits of Motion. They have set themselves the task which really belongs to the Spirits of Motion; that of working formatively from the planets, so that groups of corresponding beings arise upon the earth. Just as seven principal animal groups were formed, which have only been specified according to the relations described, so did the Luciferic Beings of Motion work from the planets on to the earth to differentiate the human race, which was actually, in a certain sense, designed according to a single plan. Whilst in the whole cosmic plan it was intended that a single human form was to arise throughout the earth, these Luciferic Spirits of Motion worked down from the various planets and differentiated the human form all over the earth in such a way that the forms of the chief individual human races were able to arise. More details are to be found in my Christiania lectures as to the special way in which the Luciferic Spirits of Motion work to form the different races.

Thus we have to distinguish between the offspring of the Spirits of Motion and the Luciferic Spirits of Motion. But there is something else besides this! Naturally, we shall now have to ask the question: “Where then are the normal Spirits of Motion now, who, during the ancient Moon period, gave man his astral body?” Where are those who attained the goal of their evolution at the time of the transition from the Moon to that of the Earth? Those completely mature Spirits of Motion, where are they now? The peculiarity of these spirits is that they too have their actual dwelling-place, or, rather, their field of operation upon the planets of our system; so that they do not, for instance, work directly as Spirits of Motion from the Sun, in which they have their headquarters, so to speak, but first send out their rays to the planets and from these work back upon the earth. In so far as we have to do with the true Spirits of Motion, their activity comes direct from the planets of our system; but of course everything which works from the planets from those spiritual beings belongs to the super-sensible, invisible world, as such. Only the effects themselves are externalized upon the earth; the results appear on the earth. What, then, do these Spirits do for men, who at one time, upon the ancient Moon, gave him his astral body from their own substance? This astral body was preserved as a germ in the earth-existence; and, after the old Moon had disappeared and an interval had gone by, and the earth had been formed anew, then this astral body once more developed from the germ. But the Spirits of Motion themselves have developed further, to a higher activity. With regard to their offspring, we know that they have become the group-souls of the animals; those that rebelled against them took part, as we know, in the differentiation of the human races. Where, then, do the progressed, genuine, normally-developed Spirits of Motion reveal themselves? An example will make this evident.

We know that each individual man is guided by what we call his Angel; we know that nations are spiritually led by their nation-spirit or Archangel (nations are quite different from races) we know that the successive periods of civilisation are led by the Spirits of the Age, or Archai; and, finally, we know that above the Archai stand that category of the hierarchies which we call the Spirits of Form; while above them are the Spirits of Motion. We will think of them as they are upon the earth, with the time behind them when they gave to man his astral body and having themselves made their proper progress. Now in human evolution there is something which goes beyond the character of the mere Spirits of the Age; something more full of significance, more important for collective humanity than the sphere of the individual Spirits of the Age. The Spirits of the Age work upon the earth for a definite period of time; but there are spiritual developments in the evolution of humanity as a whole which embrace wider spheres than that of the Spirits of the Age. These great epochs of humanity which extend beyond the influence of the Spirits of the Age, have as their Regent the normally-developed Spirits of Motion. These so reveal themselves in their activity in the process of the growth of humanity that they stimulate the great impulses of civilisation. If we now survey the history of man, the history of human civilisation, we see that individual men are guided by the Angels or Angeloi, nations and peoples by the Archangels or Archangeloi; certain periods of civilisation are guided by the Spirits of the Age, and also certain spheres (as we shall see) by the Spirits of Form.

Then, however, we have the collective course of the different civilizations in human evolution; so that for certain long periods of time, much longer than those ruled by a Spirit of the Age, the Spirits of Motion are inspiringly active in great spheres; one Spirit of Motion working down from one planet at one time, another working down at another time from another planet. Thus these normally developed Spirits of Motion so work down from the planets that they succeed one another in the process of human evolution, and reveal themselves in the great civilisation impulses in the evolution of the earth which reach out beyond the sphere of the Spirits of the Age. Thus, for example, from that Spirit of Motion who worked down from the planet which present-day astronomy calls Venus, and which ancient astronomy called Mercury (for these two names have been exchanged), from that Spirit of Motion came originally that impulse of civilisation which was expressed in Buddhism. Other impulses of civilisation coming from beyond the mere Spirits of the Age, came from the Spirits of Motion on the other planets. Thus, while from the offspring of the Spirits of Motion come the group-souls of the animals, and from the Luciferic, Spirits of Motion the racial forms of humanity, these great impulses of civilisation come from the Spirits of Motion who have attained their normal evolution. Many other impulses also come from this direction, but it is important at present to bear in mind, from this point of view, the impulses of civilisation. Now, here you have in this development of our whole planetary system something you find mentioned among the great truths which, as every experienced student knows, are to be found in The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky. Those who know find indications of this there. On one page is written “Buddha = Mercury”—i.e., Buddha equals Mercury. That means the Individuality who was the Leader of Buddhism was traced back in occultism to the Spirit of Motion who works down from that planet. He is the inspirer; from him comes the influence expressed in that stream of civilisation. It is indeed the case that this remarkable book, The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky, brings great truths, but they must be recognized in the right way. We must not simply accept this as a book of dogmas; we must trace each single thing in it; then only shall we recognize the greatness of this book. Of all the great truths taught by the true occultist, significant intimations are to be found in The Secret Doctrine of, H. P. Blavatsky; and when, through its inspirer there was inscribed in The Secret Doctrine:—“Buddha is equivalent to Mercury”—that hinted at the great truth of which the inspirer of H. P. Blavatsky was well aware; that the individual who, in the twenty-ninth year of his life became the Buddha, was able at the time symbolically indicated as the “sitting under the Bodhi Tree,” to begin to be inspired by the Spirit of Motion enthroned in Mercury. This individual from being a Boddhisattva therewith became a Buddha. That means that his spirit was filled and inspired, not by what comes from the earth-sphere, but from universal space, from the cosmos. He was thus withdrawn from the earth-sphere to Nirvana, that is, into a sphere in which the earth-sphere no longer plays a part. H. P. Blavatsky, in her ordinary consciousness, knew nothing of many of these things, but her Inspirer knew them. These things must be drawn forth from the depths of occultism, and in these subtle and great truths things must not be confused one with another. Now it is not my intention to assert that directly a Boddhisattva is raised to a Buddha, a Spirit of Motion alone works inspiringly upon him; for the beings of the higher hierarchies work through him also. The essential point is that from that time onwards the spirits of the lower hierarchies fell away; so that he could come directly in contact, so to speak, with those beings designated as the normally-developed Spirits of Motion.

Now before we consider the process of human civilisation from another aspect, let us pass to the plant-kingdom. In that kingdom we see that the astral body is to be found on the astral plane, where also are the group-egos of the animals. This leads back to the real fact revealed to occult vision with regard to the plants; that not only in their group-egos, but already in the astral body of the plant, forces are actively working down from the planetary system, from the stars. Thus, whereas in the animal the Spirits of Motion are only active in the group-forces, in the forces which create the group-forms, that which belongs to the sphere of the Spirits of Motion works in the plant on the astral body. The offspring of the Spirits of Motion belong also to this category, only they differ from the offspring of other beings because they were formed at a somewhat different time, but as offspring of the Spirits of Motion they work not merely upon the ego, but upon the astral body of the plants.

We may, therefore, say that forces of the Spirits of Motion or their offspring work down upon the astral bodies of the plants from the planets of the planetary system. In every being the astral body is that which gives the impulse to motion. Belonging to the plants we have on the physical plane, their physical and etheric bodies. If any forces whatever were to work upon the plants from the sphere of the Spirits of Motion, these forces would, as the astral body is not in the plants, but around them, bring about movement in the plants, though not movements like those of men and animals, but such as to draw forth the plants from the earth when they first appear. When you see the forces developing in a spiral in a plant from stipule to stipule, you then have the activity of those forces which work down from the planets. And according as the forces of the offspring of the Spirits of Motion work down from this or that planet does this peculiar line which puts forth the leaves vary. This gives a certain means of studying the actual orbits of the individual planets through their reflection; and when external science has once recognized this fact, it will have to correct a great deal of the former astronomical systems. Certain plants are allotted to the forces of the Spirits of Motion who work from Mars, others to those who are on Venus, others, to those on Mercury. They work in here from their planet and according as they work in from one or the other, they impart to the plant the movement expressed in their spiral coil of leaves; it is the same movement which the corresponding planet makes; the absolute movement it makes in the heavens. If you take an ordinary convolvulus, in which the stalk itself is twisted, you have in the spiral movement of the stalk an imitation of the planetary movements which proceed from the Spirit of Motion. When the stalk is fixed, you have in the stipules images of those forces which proceed from the Spirits of Motion of the planets of the planetary system. These forces work upon the plants in cooperation with the actual group-egos, and these group-egos work in such a way that we can discover the direction of their forces simply by connecting the sun with the center point of the earth; that is to say, together with the forces which come from the Spirits of Motion, other forces work which go in the direction of the stalk of the plant, which is always striving towards the center point of the earth. Thus we have to compose the whole plant out of that which grows towards the sun or towards the center of the earth and that which winds itself round and copies in the stipules the movements of the planets. This corresponds, however, with the real fact that we have to seek the direct impulse of activity for the group-egos of the plants in the direction from earth to sun. That is, if now we do not direct our occult vision to the planet, but to the sun, we shall find the different group-egos of the plants. These group-egos of the plants are the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom, just as the group-egos of the animals are the offspring of the Spirits of Motion. Thus in the group-egos of the plants we have to recognize the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom.

Now in the course of these lectures I have stated that in the nature-spirits we have to see the offspring of the Third Hierarchy, and that in the group-egos we have to see the offspring of the Second Hierarchy. Now we come, in addition, to the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, the rulers or regulators of the epochs. We have now reached a position in which we can allude to the functions of a certain category of such Spirits of the Rotation of Time. At this point we can state that certain Spirits of the Rotation of Time unite the forces of movement coming down from the planets to the plants that work spirally with the forces which come down from the sun. Both these forces are brought together at a definite time by the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, and indeed at that time of the year when the plant progresses towards its fructification. The spiral principle of movement is united with the principle which works in the stalk.

Hence in the stamens we have the principle which works spirally, and the principle which is the direct continuation of the stalk, in the ovary, in the center of the plant. When the course of the plant is completed, that is, when the Spirits of the Rotation of Time appointed to the plants unite their activity—the activity of the planetary spirits—with the activity of the Sun-spirit—then in the now completed plant those organs which till then followed the planets spirally are arranged in a neat circle like the stamens, while the stalk itself elongates and terminates in the ovary. These two are then united; the growth of the plant is complete when to the two spiritual activities of the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom and of Motion, is added the activity of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, uniting the two spiritual beings in a sort of marriage. Thus in the plant kingdom we have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom. Further, as you may read in my Occult Science or The Akashic Records, we must assume that these offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom have been formed since the time when these Spirits of Wisdom themselves gave the etheric body to man from their own substance. That occurred when the earth was in the old Sun-condition; the etheric body of man was then derived from the Spirits of Wisdom. But now, since that time, the Sun-condition progressed to the Moon-condition, and this again progressed to the Earth-condition. During the Moon-condition the Spirits of Wisdom who had, during the Sun-period, been able to give man his etheric body out of their own substance, had already progressed so far that they no longer needed to develop the capacity of giving anything to man. On the earth they had progressed to still higher activities. Now it is not exclusively characteristic of the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom, whom we discovered as the group-egos of the plant kingdom, to give a direct impulse from the sun, that it seems to come not only from the planets but from the sun; it is also peculiar to the actual Spirits of Wisdom that they reveal themselves as coming directly down from the sun to the earth. Now how are the impulses revealed, which come down from these Spirits of Wisdom who have gone through their normal evolution?

We have seen that in such a personality as the Buddha, there is a normally-developed Spirit of Motion working down from a planet and inspiring him. We now reach the point of seeking for the normal Spirits of Wisdom. According to the whole spirit of our considerations we must seek them upon the sun. We must seek them there in the same sense that we have to seek for the normal Spirits of Motion as working from the planets, though they, too, have their real habitation upon the sun. We have to seek the impulse of the normally-developed Spirits of Wisdom as coming directly from the sun. Now, however, we come to something peculiar. Certainly with regard to the plants, if we really investigate occultly, we can distinguish a differentiation because we are concerned with the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom; but if we consider the plants on earth in relation to the Spirits of Wisdom on the sun, their movements all appear more or less as a vertical union of the sun with the center-point of the earth. In the plant-forms we can distinguish what proceeds from the spirits who have their dwelling-place in the planets; but what we perceive as proceeding from the Spirits of Wisdom flows together in a vertical line. In a similar manner—and everyone who is acquainted with the occult facts in this sphere would give precisely the same information—it is the case that in the region we enter when we direct our gaze to the sun (for we must seek the normal Spirits of Wisdom there) we can no longer distinguish any differentiations. There we perceive unity. What proceeds from the normal spirits flows together in a unity. New when we come to the question: Where is that revealed which proceeds from the unity of the Spirits of Wisdom who have their dwelling-place directly upon the sun? Where is that revealed in the activity of the earth?—we thus come to a still wider sphere.

The sphere of such a spirit as the one who inspired the Buddha (the Spirit of Motion on Mercury) is insignificant in comparison with the wider, more comprehensive sphere which, in the process of the development of mankind is directed by the Spiritual Beings of Wisdom perceived as Unity, and which is to be sought upon the sun If we go back to the civilisation of ancient India, then we find that the Seven Holy Rishis spoke of that which each one of them had to give to humanity from their occult foundations. They were conscious of having preserved that which, through seven long periods of civilisation, had been directed by the Spirits of Motion. It was just as though seven successive periods of time were all at once to unite in the evolution of the earth, and were so to work that they represented a College of great Individualities. So it came about that these seven successive activities of the Spirits of the Planets came to light in that which the Seven Holy Rishis had to say to humanity; each one speaking what he himself knew. They did not assert that what they had to give was the direct outflow of a Spirit of Motion, but they said that it was like a recollection in the soul of each of what had been given earlier by the Spirits of Motion. For the exalted wisdom which the Holy Rishis gave to humanity was the great recollection of the ancient Atlantean civilizations, only in a new form. At the same time, these seven Holy Rishis said: “above them which we have to give as the civilizations of the seven successive periods of time, lies something else which exists beyond our sphere.” That which lay above their sphere, the Holy Rishis called Vishvakarma. Thus they alluded to something which lay beyond their sphere, and which comprised a greater earth-sphere than that of the separate Spirits of Motion. As it was with the spheres of the Spirits of the Age, so did the Holy Rishis point to epochs of civilisation which lie beyond the sphere of the individual Spirits of Motion.

Then came the civilisation of Zarathustra; and Zarathustra pointed again to the same being whom the Holy Rishis had called Vishvakarma, only he alluded to him in his own way as Ahura Mazdao. The Holy Rishis knew, as also did Zarathustra, that what is meant by Vishvakarma represents the Spirit of Wisdom who streams down upon the earth and encompasses wider spheres than do the individual Spirits of Motion. Zarathustra too knew that Ahura Mazdao has wider spheres than the Spirits of Motion.

It would be a gross defection from the original spirit of the Theosophical Movement, in which so much that is great and true and important, so many occult truths have prevailed, if we were to confuse what we have been able to learn through occultism with regard to such spirits as reach their height in such a name as that of Buddha, of whom H. P. Blavatsky so plainly points out in her simple allegation that he corresponds to the Spirit of Mercury. It would be a breach with all the original starting points of the theosophical revelation, with that teaching which in its time was rightly understood and in which the spirit of Buddha was never mistaken for the Christ-Spirit—if, today, we were to confuse these different beings. It would be a breach if we did not know through our basic teaching how to distinguish between those Spirits who guide the growth of humanity in the course of successive periods of time and reached the summit in spirits such as Buddha, and that Spirit to whom all the rest, even Buddha himself, have alluded, and who is the unitary spirit of the whole earth-evolution, just as the sun is the unitary body of the whole planetary system. This unitary spirit must, in the sense of the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation, be designated as the Christ. In the solar system we cannot, in the ordinary sense, speak of two Suns and say that the Sun which at one time covers the Ram is not the same Sun which covers the Goat at another time; we must be quite clear that it is the same Sun which passes through all the signs of the Zodiac; but that there are different planets, which pass through the Zodiac. We must also be clear on the following point. When we speak of the Christ, who passes through the spheres of the different civilizations of the whole evolution of humanity on the earth, and who has always been recognized by all religions when they attain their climax, we must distinguish this Christ-Spirit from the spirits of the different spheres which reached their summit, as it were, in their great individualities, even as Buddhism reached its climax in Buddha. This shows how the objective must first be sought in these matters.

When the western occultist has to allude to this fact he ought not to be reproached with wishing to forward something which would be a lack of tolerance towards other religions; for spiritual science has the task of allowing every religion its right place. When such a reproach is made, we should not forget that what was demanded of the western occultists has already been accomplished. Did the Christ-Impulse arise in the West? Has any western nation brought forth the Christ-Impulse from its own people, its own races? No; the Christ-Impulse, as an impulse given to the whole of humanity, has been accepted, though this Christ-Impulse, in relation to its external presentation, was foreign to the peoples of the West. The western civilisation first showed that it had a comprehension of the necessary renunciation of personal possession. When the West declined the Spirit of Motion from Mars as a direct Inspirer, when it exchanged that Inspirer for the Christ-Spirit—the Inspirer corresponding to the Sun-spirit of Wisdom—it accomplished an historical and important fact. It is unfair that the West should be blamed by other religions for intolerance in respect of this matter. The great Leaders of the other religions always show that they recognize the Spirits of Wisdom as being more exalted than the Spirits of Motion. Just those who wish to make their own Spirit of Motion a sort of Leading-Spirit under another name, who do not themselves wish to take the step of ascending from their own Spirit to the Sun-spirit, they can say that intolerance is shown by those who have already practiced tolerance. Let them first exercise tolerance in other spheres, that tolerance which the West has already exercised in exchanging its Spirit of Motion for a Spirit of Wisdom.

After the statements which we were able to make in the last lecture on the cooperation of the spirits of the various hierarchies in the kingdoms of nature, there still remains the mineral kingdom to be considered. We call to mind that we described the mineral kingdom by saying that its physical part alone exists in the physical world; while that which corresponds to the etheric body of the mineral we have to seek in the so-called astral world; the astral body in the Lower Devachanic world, and the actual group-ego of the mineral kingdom on the higher Devachanic plane. Thus the mineral kingdom presents a remarkable contrast to, man. Whilst we have to say with regard to man that all four principles of his being are active on the physical plane—the physical as well as the etheric body, the astral body and the ego—we must as it were, distribute all that man has on the one plane and say: with regard to the mineral we have to seek on the astral plane that which corresponds to the etheric body of man; on the Devachanic plane the astral body; and on the higher Devachanic plane the group-ego of the mineral. Thus, that which in man is concentrated on the physical plane, is in the case of the mineral divided in its activity, among the various worlds. Again, when we trace with occult vision what is really in question, we arrive at the following result. In the sense of occultism we must, in the first place, seek only that part of the mineral kingdom on the physical plane which is perceptible to the external senses. We must be quite clear as to the fact that only what we call the forms, the shapes of the mineral kingdom, are perceptible. We know—this can only be touched upon here—that the mineral world, at any rate in part, encounters us formed, organized, in such a manner that we perceive this formation as suitable to the mineral nature. If we look at a certain body of cubic form, and at another of a different form, we know that these forms are not accidental but are connected in a certain way with the nature of the mineral. Now occult investigation teaches us that the forms in the mineral which we call crystal-forms, can be traced back to the action of the Spirits of Form. Now because occultism always starts from reality and seeks to find the origin of this or that, names are so bestowed in occultism that the name points to something characteristic. The name “Spirits of Form” was chosen for the reason that in the kingdom which we on earth describe as the mineral kingdom, the Spirits of Form display their activity; and further that the offspring of the Spirits of Form—in the sense in which we have spoken of offspring of the higher hierarchies in the course of these lectures, are above all, active there. To understand the nature of the minerals we must be quite clear that, to physical perception, generally speaking, only the forms of the minerals exist. To be sure, certain forces are evident in the mineral kingdom—such as the forces of electricity, magnetism—forces that cause the minerals to appear in certain colors; but we must be quite clear that in general only the form of the mineral kingdom is to be observed on the physical plane. Without taking the other qualities into account, let us consider the forms which we encounter, at any rate in most of the mineral kingdom, and let us be quite clear that this pure form proceeds from the mode of operation of the Spirits of Form or their offspring.

Now we come to the so-called etheric body, which we must describe as the second principle of a being of the mineral kingdom. The occult investigator cannot find what he has to describe as the etheric body of the mineral in the physical world; but he finds it in the same realm in which he must seek, if, for instance he wishes to find the astral body of the plant, or the group-ego of the animal. As we saw yesterday, he need make no other preparation with regard to his soul than that necessary for finding the group-ego of the animal. With the same condition of consciousness with which he perceives the group-ego of the animal, he also perceives the astral body of the plant, and that which lies behind the mineral kingdom as its etheric body. Now we have seen that we must extend our observations into the region of the planets of a planetary system; in our own planetary system to those planets which exist outside the earth. And we have shown that the corresponding forces externalizing themselves in the group-egos of the animals and the astral bodies of the plants, work directly from the planetary centers. Thither must we also go if we wish to seek for that which works etherically in the mineral. How a mineral is laved by life-powers can first be seen if we penetrate to that universal life which is common to all, from the earth to the rest of the planets of our planetary system. Thus the principle by which the mineral is animated, the life of the mineral, is not to be found in the physical world, or in the realm of what our earth directly offers us, but in the life-streams pouring down from the planets; stimulated constantly, to be sure, by the sun, but still streaming down directly from the planets, and permeating our earth-planet livingly; in order to permeate all that is form with their offspring, the etheric nature-spirits, of which we have spoken. Thus form has inner-being; in other words, the form of the mineral which proceeds solely from the physical plane, is not permeable but offers resistance. Were nothing active in the mineral but what is active on the physical plane, then the mineral would only make itself perceptible as form; but this form is filled with inner-being. For the mineral has also inner-being; it has the inner-being of the various mineral substances. Not only has it form, it has matter, it has substance. When we directly perceive this substance in the physical world, it appears to us as a dead, lifeless substance. To cosmic space it is not dead, to planetary space at least, it is something which is part of its own life, which is precipitated from the life of the planetary system. Just as the human or animal organism separates off hard products—the nails, for instance—so is the mineral substance put forth; but the active forces by means of which it is put forth are not to be sought upon the earth itself; hence it appears to the earth as dead. These streams of life, these life-forces, this etheric body must be sought as streaming down from the several planets. Just as in considering the group-egos of the animals we could say: In reality only the general forms are treated by the group-egos of the animals, and these are then further developed; so must we say: The streams of life sent down by the individual planets which permeate the earth from all sides, do not create forms for the minerals, for those are created by the Spirits of Form; but through these streams the minerals are permeated with inner-being. But this occurs in such a way that this inner-being gives certain main types, main substances: and each substance is thereby connected with a stream proceeding from one of the planets.

Now because the minerals at once acquired solid forms, mobile types are not created from the planets by means of these planetary streams, but types of one kind only. And then through the various positions of the planets, as I have already described with regard to the group-souls of the animals—besides the main types, and substances—other types, subordinate substances are created, which again depend on the constellation of the individual planets. But what the planets create, each through its own original nature, is expressed in the principal substances of the earth's organism. Thus we have certain mineral main substances of the earth's organism of which we can say. Here is a substance which is what it is because it is permeated by an etheric stream from one of the planets; another is permeated by a stream from another planet. Thus we have to trace back the nature of mineral substances to activities in the planetary system which externalize as etheric streams in the organism of the earth. Therefore the occult schools which have to investigate such matters have also so referred the principal substances of our earth-organism to the planets, that they have designated those substances which have been produced quite directly—not through the constellation but through the principal activity of the planet—by the same or similar names as the planets; and indeed in such a way that occult observation has been strictly adhered to. If we observe the planet Saturn in our system we find that the life stream which permeates the earth directly from him is connected with the substance we call lead: so that we have a basic substance which is inwardly animated by Saturn. From Jupiter we get tin as main substance; from Mars, iron; and in the occult sense, from Venus, copper. With regard to Mercury we must take into consideration that he was later confused with Venus. The life-activity (in the sense of true occult nomenclature) produced creatively by Mercury, on account of its greater proximity when it penetrated the earth-organism, bears a still greater resemblance to the planet itself, for Mercury stands nearer to the earth than the other planets. Therefore this substance has been given the same name as the cosmic body itself, namely, Mercury or quicksilver. These are the principal substances which are connected in their etheric body with the corresponding planets of our system. If we recollect how we had to speak of all that works from the planetary system, with regard to the group-souls of the animals and the astral bodies of the plants, we find it is always a question of the beings in connection with the Spirits of Motion, either with themselves or their offspring, who work in their totality on the earth from the planets of the system. Thus we must also reckon as belonging to the sphere of the Spirits of Motion, that which etherically permeates the mineral substances.

Now if we wish to consider what belongs to the mineral kingdom as astral body, we have to ascend, as it were, to a still higher world. In the whole sense of our past considerations it will be clear, that as we had to ascend from the astral body of the plant to the group-ego, from the planets to the sun—to the fixed star; so with regard to the mineral kingdom, if we pass from the etheric body to the astral body we must again ascend to the fixed star. That is, we can understand, and occult vision tells us, that the astral nature of the mineral works from those beings in the ranks of the hierarchies through whom comes from the sun that which is directly perceptible; from the beings we call the Spirits of Wisdom, or from that which is connected with their sphere. Thus even the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom come into consideration. What thus works in the mineral is seen by occult investigation as quite separate, outside the mineral; but it is so seen that the life just described as existing in the mineral, as the etheric body of the mineral, is pressed in from outside. Whereas the astral body in man or animal holds together the etheric body from within; the etheric body of the mineral is as it were, pushed towards it from outside, not concentrated and held together inside as in man and animal. If we consider the relation of the astral body of man to his etheric body, we see that what works as etheric body is held together by the power of attraction. In the mineral the etheric body is compressed together from outside by forces; thus in the mineral the content, the inner nature expressed in the etheric stream is, by means of active astral forces compressed into the form. The mineral is held together astrally from outside, and indeed for the reason that it is determined through the different positions of the sun to the earth in relation to this astral pressure. One might say that the etheric substance is driven into the mineral from the point from which the sun shines upon the earth.

Thus while this etheric substance is itself directed by the planet, it is driven into and held within the mineral or crystal by the sun, by the forces belonging to the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom. But now something very remarkable is seen. If we investigate occultly the activity exercised by the astral forces from the sun upon the mineral, we recognize very clearly at this point a very important fact; we learn that while all the etheric forces proceeding from the planets work upon the mineral and actually form its basic substances, other etheric streams also pass down from the sun as such to the earth. Thus, while in general, for the normal formation of the mineral, the etheric substance passes down from the planets, and is only compressed from outside by the forces proceeding from the sun, yet we cannot say that no etheric streams come down from the sun, for it is a fact that such an etheric stream does come down. What is the reason of this? Why does an etheric stream come down from the sun which can, as it were, inwardly animate the mineral? Why does this take place? It is brought about by the activity of what I have designated as the Luciferic principle. The spirits in the ranks of the higher hierarchies which work astrally upon the mineral are—as we have just said—the Spirits of Wisdom: whilst the Spirits of Motion work etherically.

Now there are Spirits of Wisdom active on the sun who have gone through their complete normal process of evolution; they work, as has been described, astrally upon the mineral. But certain of the Spirits of Wisdom have become Luciferic. We have designated this “becoming Luciferic” of certain spiritual beings of a hierarchy, as a sort of rebellion in the cosmos. This rebellion comes about because certain spirits having reached a given stage in their hierarchy, resist their brethren and work against them; work in an opposite direction. This opposition comes about simply because they do not wish to go through the evolution which the others do; so they simply remain behind at an earlier stage, just as we know in our own souls that we wish to progress, yet the ideas and habits we have acquired Will not allow us to do so because they wish to remain as a permanence. Our habits are often rebels against what we have acquired in a new epoch of life. In like manner the spiritual beings who remain behind at an earlier stage are rebels in the Cosmos. The Luciferic Spirits, the Spirits of Wisdom of the Second Hierarchy who have not gone through their development with the rest—instead of sending astral streams from the sun to the mineral, send etheric streams to the earth. This resulted in a certain basic substance being formed, which received its inner-being, not from the planets but directly from the sun; and this mineral is gold. Gold is that Luciferic mineral which as regards its inner-being is not influenced etherically by the planets, but by the sun. Hence the occultist has allotted gold to the sun. In a certain sense this mineral is therefore somewhat different from other metals.

Now you can easily grasp that because etheric streams come from the sun and work something into the earth which is actually a rebel principle, the equilibrium of the earth is thereby disturbed. The equilibrium of the earth in relation to the mineral kingdom would be maintained if all the etheric influences came from the planets, and none but astral influences came to the minerals from the sun; but there are also direct etheric forces coming from the sun and these disturb the equilibrium. Now, this equilibrium had to be re-established by the Wise Leaders of the world; for the earth could not carry out her evolution under such conditions. The hierarchies had to work in cooperation so that the equilibrium might be re-established. The stronger Luciferic forces had to be opposed by other forces which in a certain sense paralyzed them and arrested their effects. That could only come about through the etheric stream which came from the sun being opposed by another, which counteracted, and in a certain sense, balanced its effects. Thus while certain Spirits of Wisdom proved themselves Luciferic and sent down etheric currents from the sun into the mineral kingdom on the earth, other spirits took care that these were opposed by other currents. These opposing currents which re-adjusted the equilibrium, were created by a part of the disturbed equilibrium substance being detached from the earth and circling round the earth as moon. Thus the etheric streams coming from the sun came into opposition to the etheric stream which flowed from the moon to the earth from quite a different quarter, and in this way the balance was re-established. Thus because Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom on the sun had attained the possibility of sending forth etheric streams, other Spirits of Wisdom renounced their claim to working from the sun, and consented to apply their forces to restoring the equilibrium. That is, a cosmic colony, a planetary colony was founded on the moon, from which there now streamed etheric currents to the earth, so that a substance was created which had to be in the earth so that the direct power of gold might be weakened. This came about by the moon being separated from the earth; and from the Spirits of Wisdom who separated the moon, and who now, in a sense, became the opposers of the Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom from the sun, stream down to the earth those etheric forces which have produced the substance silver. Thus you see that in the universe, in the cosmos, certain things work in such a way that one might explain it by means of a certain diagram; but the peculiar thing is that the diagram would everywhere be broken through. If anyone were to prove by means of a diagram that all the etheric forces for the minerals come from the planets, he would be in error; for in reality two etheric streams come from two different sides, the one from the sun, the other from the moon; hence two basic substances are formed in a different way.

If we wish to make what I have just described, objective, perceptible to our senses, and to find an external expression for it, we can achieve it in the following way; but we must first of all be clear as to what it really is that we see when we look at the sun. We pointed out previously that only the spirits of the higher hierarchies down to the Spirits of Wisdom go through their own evolution on the fixed star; what we see when we look at the fixed star is the actual content-substance of the Spirits of Wisdom. That is the true content of the fixed star. Indeed we human beings can only gain a concept of that which is the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom, by contemplating what exists in us, as at any rate an image of this substance. What is that in us, in humanity, in the human soul, which is a symbol of the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom? Our thoughts! But we do not see our thoughts with the physical eyes, that is the point; neither can the fixed stars, in so far as they are the fields of activity for the genuine Spirits of Wisdom, be seen with physical eyes. We have now reached a point where we can point again to the enormous significance of what we find in the religious documents, which are based on occultism. You know that the Bible, in Genesis, states that man was created in a very peculiar way. We are told that Lucifer appeared to Eve and told her that if she would do as he wished, her eyes would be opened. Anyone who knows the original text will not readily be put off with a merely symbolical explanation; for what the Bible means by good and evil does not refer to moral good and evil; that belongs to quite a different part of the development of civilisation. What is here meant as good and evil is that which is seen externally, not as something spiritually-psychic, but something seen with the physical eyes:—“Your eyes shall he opened.” Till then they were not open. This must be taken quite literally. Before Lucifer approached man, man could perceive; he saw the fixed stars with the primitive clairvoyance then given to man, but his vision was such that he saw the substance of the fixed stars as the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom; he saw them spiritually. He only began to see them physically, that is, perceptible light first streamed towards him perceptibly to his physical eyes, when he himself, the human being, had yielded to the Luciferic temptation. That means that the fixed stars as directed by the Spirits of Wisdom, are not physically visible, they do not shed physical light. Physical light can only be shed if there is something underlying it which serves as a bearer to the light, when light is, as it were, held captive through a bearer. For a fixed star to become visible, something more is necessary than the mere presence of Spiritual Beings of Wisdom at work there. It is necessary that in this fixed star Luciferic Beings should work, who resist the mere substance of Wisdom and permeate it with their own principle. Thus within the fixed star is mingled that which is only visible spiritually and that which resists this merely spiritual visibility: the Luciferic element in the fixed star which carries forth the light into physical phenomena.

The fixed star would not be visible if it had not within it, in addition to the Spirits of Wisdom who have progressed normally, those who have not attained their goal, who remained at a lower stage, either at the stage of the Spirits of Motion or that of the Spirits of Form. Thus we have to recognize backward Spirits of Wisdom who have not attained their goal, as light-bearers in the lightless spiritual substance of the fixed star. Now, if we are clear as to the fact that from the fixed stars, from our own sun, physical light only reaches us because the normal Spirits of Wisdom have as companions those who have remained behind and who have become light-bearers:—Light—Lucifer—Phosphoros—we must also be clear that the same cause which makes the sun visible, which sends light to us from the fixed star, is also that which sends the etheric life-stream to the earth and produces gold. It was necessary therefore that other forces should work from the moon (which occult vision perceives as etheric currents), forces which produce silver. Now, as they are Spirits of Wisdom who oppose the moon to the sun in order to bring about an adjustment, we must say: “These Spirits of Wisdom upon the moon cannot shine;” for the Spirits of Wisdom do not shine.—Hence if occult vision searches for these spirits on the moon, it does not discover them as luminous; for these Spirits of Wisdom who founded a colony on the moon, were obliged to exclude the Lucifer Spirits from the moon, otherwise the balance would not have been maintained. That is to say, the moon cannot ray out any light of its own, only that reflected as sunlight. Quite normal Spirits of Wisdom made a sacrifice and took up their position on the moon in order to supply the earth with the necessary currents for keeping the equilibrium, in opposition to the Lucifer currents which stream from the sun. Hence the moon is excluded from having light of its own; and it is not difficult in this external fact which we encounter in the physical world, to see the symbol of a deep occult connection. The sun has its own light which appears to us, but the moon has not; and the reflected light which rays to us from the moon, and of which Lucifer is the bearer.—Lucifer—Phosphoros—tells us that the moon has no light of its own. Therefore that which is Lucifer can only appear to us in symbol, in a Maya, shining down from the moon, because the sunlight is reflected. When for instance, the crescent moon reflects the sunlight, there are then no Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom on the moon itself, but what is poured forth from the sun by the Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom is reflected as light.

Now when we turn our occult vision to the moon, that which the physical eyes perceive, the shining crescent moon, disappears, for that exists only for physical vision; but in its place occult vision sees the real being behind all visible light in the cosmos; sees the form of Lucifer, though certainly as a reflection. Thus, if we think of the image of Lucifer as seen by occult vision in the place of the crescent moon, we must say: The moon owes its origin to the circumstances that certain normal Spirits of Wisdom renounced their dwelling-place on the sun and have taken up their abode in this colony, and thence restrain that which streams forth from the Luciferic Spirits. Hence to occult vision the Spirit of Wisdom does not reveal himself here, above the crescent of the moon, but is to be seen restraining the Luciferic principle. The occult fact is thus presented symbolically to the imagination, as a normal Spirit of Wisdom holding the Luciferic principle in subjection. The occultists therefore represent a form, usually taken to be a Chief Messenger of the higher Spirits of Wisdom, of one who curbs Lucifer; and in place of the crescent they represent Lucifer chained, curbed. This is an occult picture. Among our occult pictures there is also one representing the chief Messenger curbing Lucifer. This is an allusion to profound occult mysteries. What is thus shown externally in Maya, is in reality to be ascribed to the cooperation of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. When with physical eyes we see the crescent moon shining silver bright, there is often to be seen a sort of shadow above in the dark part; then to occult vision the crescent moon is transformed into a living Being, with the restraining Spirit above it, maintaining the balance from its place on the moon. Thus you see that even to produce a phenomenon such as our earth moon, many preparations had to be made in the COSMOS. The cooperative activities of the various hierarchies in the cosmos is a very complicated matter and even in a much longer course of lectures we could still only give suggestions of it; we can only make clear the principle as to how these spiritual, hierarchies cooperate.

Please hold fast the thought just mentioned in connection with the astral body of the minerals. We have, indeed, still to consider the group-ego of the minerals; that has to be sought in a still higher super-sensible world—in a world not found in the regions where the group-egos of the animals or plants are to be found. Therefore we cannot find it upon the sun. Where then does the group-ego of the minerals reveal itself to occult vision? The peculiar thing about the group-ego of the minerals is, that, strictly speaking, it does not end anywhere when we search in cosmic space; it is in the whole widths of cosmic space and works from there. We are therefore driven to seek actually for the group-ego of the minerals outside the planetary system; we must look upon it as something which works into the planetary system from outside. Thus far this coincides with what we know from the Akashic Records, that the next higher class of beings above the Spirits of Wisdom are the Thrones, or Spirits of Will. These Spirits of Will belong to the First Hierarchy (though their offspring are not so far advanced that they can be reckoned with it), these Spirits of Will or their offspring give forth that which becomes the group-ego of the minerals, and which, in fact, works into the planetary system. This also coincides with the fact that simultaneously with the out-pouring of the substance of the Spirits of Will, begins the formation of the planetary system on ancient Saturn which was brought about by the Spirits of Will. They still work in the same way at the present time as when the first embodiment of our earth was built up out of the Universe by these beings. We can really only see these Spirits of Will when, having become Luciferic, they reveal themselves in a sense in certain phenomena which we find as minerals in the sphere of the earth, and which come, as it were, from cosmic space. The cosmic origin, the super-earthly origin of what we are now considering, is revealed by the fact that when these Spirits of Will thus work in they combine—very, very easily with that which works into the planetary system as the cometary and meteoric beings—as cometary or meteoric life.

We have pointed out what meaning this life has in the planetary system. I should like at least to indicate that in reality a comet is something which comes in from outside, but which makes certain combinations. In as much as the comet travels through the planetary system it combines with the mineral kingdom which also arises through the Spirits of Will. And the result may be that as the comet rushes through the planetary system it attaches mineral substance to itself, which is then attracted by the earth and falls down upon it. This of course is not the comet, but rather does it announce its approach to the earth by a fall of meteors taking place. These things are absolutely in accord, and if certain things appear to contradict what was represented earlier, we must always understand that these contradictions will solve themselves if everything is taken into consideration and studied. This was only an, example to show that in the planetary system we really have to do with influences working in from the cosmos. These group-souls of the minerals work in the form of rays from without inwards. And since various modes of operation come from the various aspects of space, for space is not homogeneous, these group-souls of the minerals, which belong to the sphere of the Spirits of Will, ray towards us from different sides in the most varied manner. Now through the cooperation of what comes from the planets for the minerals, what comes from the sun, and what streams in from the universe from the various directions arises the possibility that not only have those basic types already mentioned come into existence in the mineral kingdom, but all sorts of other forms, all sorts of differently modified substances of the mineral kingdom have been formed. The kind of substance a mineral exhibits simply depends on the way the forces which come from the planets are again influenced by other forces either streaming astrally to the earth from the sun, or from various directions of cosmic space. The variety and multiplicity of the mineral kingdom can be understood in this way.

If we observe our present-day Saturn, it presents itself in the first place to occult vision as the outermost planet of our System. Why? Because actually Saturn as planet, as well as ancient Saturn, the first of the successive incarnations of our earth known to us, was produced by the furthest currents coming from cosmic space. Had we been able to observe Saturn at a very early condition of our earth evolution, we should have seen that in his orbit he had a sort of nucleus and a sort of comet's tail, which passed out into cosmic space. In olden times Saturn would have revealed himself definitely with a nucleus and a comet's tail, extending into cosmic space. That is, in the primeval periods of our earth, Saturn would have been seen circling round his orbit with his tail pointing outwards. He was earlier like this (see below). The facts of the Akasha Chronicle show him thus:

The tail of ancient Saturn took the most varied directions out into space, corresponding with the currents which came in from the cosmos, directed by the Spirits of Will, who are the group-souls of the minerals. At a later period, when through the spiritual beings of other hierarchies, the planetary system was enclosed, that which had formerly gone out into cosmic space was so drawn together that the tail became an enclosed ring; through the power of attraction of the planetary system the ring was formed. To occult vision the ring of Saturn is absolutely the same phenomenon as the comet's tail. If you were to take the ring of Saturn as it circles round Saturn and open it out, you would have a comet's tail. (See Diagram.)

In this way it is possible to look back to the streaming in of the group-souls of the minerals into our planetary system; and again the Signs of the Zodiac in general give us their individual positions. It is to be noted that the two outermost planets now reckoned as belonging to our system by physical astronomy—Uranus and Neptune—did not originally belong to our Solar System; they came much later into the sphere of attraction of our system: they then joined company and remained within it. They cannot therefore be reckoned in the same sense as the other planets as belonging to our system from Saturn onwards, for they, so to speak, belonged to it from the beginning. Thus, when we consider Saturn, especially in his ancient form, we see in him a planet which, by sending forth etheric currents from his own center to our earth, creates—we can even say—the substance of lead. At the same time we see how the group-souls of the minerals stream in; we see how these group-souls are affected when a power of attraction is exercised on them from the sun, from which the astral body of the mineral streams out. From the sun the astral body of the mineral streams out into space; from outside in cosmic Space the ego of the mineral streams in. When these currents are united something takes place which, in a modified way, expresses itself, as it were, in a fructification of the group-ego by the astral body, and by this means alone does the mineral come to its perfection. Now if we go back to the comet, here, too, we have something which, in fact, streams in from cosmic space: a similar stream of beings to the group-souls of the minerals. The group-souls of the minerals belong to the sphere of the Spirits of Will; but above them lie the beings who essentially form the basis of cometary life. But as everywhere there are Luciferic Beings, so also within the comet there are such as stand at the stage of the Thrones, not of the Cherubim and Seraphim. That is why the comet acquires a mineral nature; appears as a mineral intervention in the planetary system; in other words, we have to look upon the comets as cosmic bodies which fly in from the cosmos after the planetary system is already formed and thus do not come as far as the bodies composing the system itself, but remain behind at a considerably earlier stage. It would certainly be very fascinating to trace the stages of cosmic growth; how worlds are formed by the cooperative activities of the spirits of the hierarchies in a fixed-star system; how those same spirits themselves appear when we direct our gaze back to cosmic mists and far-distant fixed stars. Whenever we direct our occult vision to a fixed star, we first of all encounter the normal Spirits of Wisdom. The whole heavens would be invisible to physical sight and only visible to clairvoyant consciousness if none but these normal Spirits of Wisdom were active; but everywhere Luciferic spirits are mingled with the normal Spirits of Wisdom, and bring physical light of its own into the world of the fixed star. When at night the starry heaven is illuminated, Phosphorus actually works down upon us from countless points: and everywhere in the universe we find the possibility of formation only through the cooperation of the opposing forces; through the combined working of the normal spirits of the hierarchies with those who are rebels—that is, those who have remained behind. Unillumined to physical eyes but visible to spiritual sight, is the starry world through the normal Spirits of Wisdom; it became luminous to physical eyes, it is revealed in Maya through Lucifer or the Luciferic spirits who are, and must be, active everywhere.

Thus, we have seen something very remarkable in the mineral kingdom also. To-day we have, so to speak, grasped the moon as a field of action from which a Spirit of Wisdom works and restrains Lucifer, because a place had to be created from which through opposition of the Luciferic activity, the balance would be restored. Now what signification had this for humanity? We have seen that in man everything is compressed into the physical plane which as it were, for the mineral, is distributed over the worlds. We have found group-souls for the minerals, plants and animals. Is there also a sort of group-soul for the human being? Oh, yes, there is. The group-souls of the minerals are to be found in the sphere of the Thrones, those of the plants in the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom, and the animals in the sphere of the Spirits of Motion; but man has so received his group-soul that with the inflowing of his ego, a group-soul was originally given him, as an emanation from the Spirits of Form. This group-soul of man was originally allotted by the Spirits of Form to be a unitary soul for the whole of humanity. What differentiated this group-soul into such variety that differences of race, differences of tribe arose? This was brought about through the action of other spirits. Man was created to be one all the world over; in this unity the primeval ego of man was to assert itself as a group-soul dwelling in all men, a group-soul which had descended to the physical plane. Just as the external form only of the minerals can be brought into being by the Spirits of Form, so by these same Spirits of Form was the group-ego created for humanity, which was then differentiated by the activity of other beings of the various hierarchies. Now the balance brought about for the mineral kingdom through the formation of the moon was also brought about for humanity; and indeed in such a way that whilst for the mineral realm in the moon there is a physical readjustment, in exactly the same way a moon-principle exists for humanity, which works against the Luciferic influence in human nature, just as in the mineral kingdom the dark moon-principle works against the Lucifer principle. Just as in the mineral kingdom something is active in the moon which keeps the balance with regard to the Luciferic forces streaming down from the sun, so does a spiritual moon-principle work from the moon against the temptation of Lucifer which man has encountered in the course of the earth evolution. As we have seen, all the planets, all the heavenly bodies stand in connection with beings of the higher hierarchies, and so, too, is it with the moon. The Spirits of Wisdom founded a colony upon the moon in order to preserve the equilibrium; and so from the direction of the moon there also Work in upon humanity compensating spirits against Lucifer, who approached man as a tempter; and just as he disseminated light, so, too, did his spiritual principle sink down into the human soul. So we can also point to the moon as the bearer of the opponent of Lucifer; as the dwelling-place of dark spirits, who yet must be there that the balance may be maintained with regard to the Light-bearers pressing forward, who, at the same time, are the tempting spirits to humanity. In fact, the secret of the moon and its spiritual principle was first revealed to humanity in the old Hebrew Records, and what we have found physically in the moon is, in its spiritual aspect, what Hebrew antiquity designated as the Jehovah principle.

According to this the moon, so to speak, is designated as the starting-point of the forces working upon humanity as the opponents of Lucifer. Jahveh, or Jehovah, is the opponent of Lucifer. The secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews looked up to the Sun, saying: In the Sun work the invisible Spirits of Wisdom who are only visible to spiritual, not to physical sight. The latter sees the principle of Lucifer raying down. What is to be seen externally as the sun principle is Lucifer; but therein works secretly, invisible to physical vision, everything attainable through the Spirits of Wisdom, who form the gateway to it. One of these Spirits of Wisdom separated and sacrificed himself, and has taken up his abode upon the moon in order through his activity there to curb the light and also to counteract the spiritual work of Lucifer. Hebrew antiquity saw in Jehovah an Ambassador of those true exalted spirits to whom vision is opened through the Spirits of Wisdom, if the sun is looked upon with spiritual sight. Hebrew antiquity justly concluded that Jehovah must continue to work from the moon until humanity has become inwardly mature enough to perceive and feel at least a little of that which gradually in the course of evolution will be both seen and understood—that from the same sun proceeds not only the physical part of Lucifer, but also the dissemination of that of which the Spirits of Wisdom are the portal. Thus to the ancient Hebrew there appeared in Jehovah that which is similar to the Spirits of Wisdom in the sun, and we can say: just as the sunlight is reflected from the moon in space, so to the ancient Hebrew who really knew, Jehovah was the reflection of that Spiritual Being Who, when man shall have become sufficiently mature, will ray down from the sun, and Whose appearance was foretold by the Holy Rishis, Zarathustra, and the worshippers of Osiris. Just as in space sunlight is reflected from the moon, so Jehovah is revealed as a reflection of the principle of the great Sun-Spirit Whom you may designate by whatever name you will—Vishvakarma, as the ancient Indians called him; Ahura Mazdao, as He was called by Zarathustra, Osiris by the ancient Egyptians, or as the Christ, as He is known to the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation—that is, the esoteric comprehension of Jehovah. He is Christ reflected by the moon-principle and because reflected in time, Christ announced prophetically. Hence in St. John's Gospel we come across a passage which otherwise can never be understood, in which it is said that Moses spoke of Christ. Actually, he spoke of Jehovah, but it is Christ, prophetically announced. This passage, in which Jehovah is mentioned is referred to because the bearer of the Christ wishes to point out that in antiquity Jehovah is but Christ foretold.

Thus we see that these things are in accord, and that what we have heard to-day is connected with what was said in the last lecture; and that in what we call the external light and its bearer we must recognize something which is in opposition to the spiritual principle which is at the normal point of its evolution, and which appears to us as the spiritual center of our planetary system. It is not a question of names, but of recognizing the whole significance of this Principle. We must recognize that in the realm of the spiritual, we speak of Christ just as in that of the physical we speak of the Sun; that in the realm of the spiritual we speak of the planetary spirits and of the planets just as in the development of earthly civilisation we speak, perhaps, of the principle of Buddha. Here again is a point concerning which you find one of the important revelations you come across in H. P. Blavatsky. What great revelations there are in The Secret Doctrine you can see by the way H. P. Blavatsky treats the conception of Jehovah. We need not recoil at this, or think things are not correct because she shows a certain antipathy towards Christ and Jehovah; the truth nevertheless presses through, and the description of Jehovah as a Moon divinity, and the presentation of Lucifer as his opponent as given by H. P. Blavatsky is—one might say—the broken expression of a truth. The presentation given from inspiration by Blavatsky is only given a subjective coloring by her, because she had a feeling that Lucifer was really a good Divinity—she felt him as such. She preferred him, in a certain sense to the Moon-god, because to her Lucifer was a Sun-god. That is correct; he is that; but we had to represent the true connection in order that the expression used in former times. “Christ is the true Lucifer,” “Christus verus Luciferus,” may be understood. It does not sound quite right to us today; but at that time when people knew from the old Secret Doctrine that the Light-Bearer manifests in the external physical light, and that, if we penetrate through the physical light to the Spirits of Wisdom, to the spiritual light, then we reach the Light-Bearer of that Light.

“Christus verus Luciferus”—I think, in spite of the incompleteness which was inevitable in our rendering of this comprehensive theme, yet what we always wish to attain in the sphere of Spiritual Science has come before your souls, that the treatment of every theme leads us to look up from the physical to the spiritual. With regard to the heavenly bodies which, as the expression of the wonders of the universe, shine forth from space, that is in many respects, very difficult; because in the heavenly bodies there is a complicated cooperation of the beings of the various hierarchies, and because everything which takes place in cosmic space can only be comprehended if, behind all matter, even behind the substance of light itself, we find the Spirit or Spirits. Behind all this Spiritual Life lies the Universal, Divine Fatherhood, an Omnipresent and ever-working All-Divine Life, which before It comes to expression in the physical, is differentiated into countless worlds of Spiritual Hierarchies. We look up to these worlds, however, and see within them, That which works down into our kingdoms of nature, and is the foundation of all the wonders of the heavens. For even in our kingdoms of nature either the hierarchies themselves are revealed or their offspring. When we thus look out into the spaces of heaven, we can, through such reflections, also gain a moral impression which must, if we allow the mighty operations of the hierarchies in cosmic space to gain a little influence over us, result in our being drawn away from the passions, desires, impulses and concepts which our physical earth-life brings to maturity. These are, in essence, that which flings down into the development of the earth that which divides humanity into factions, which makes men all over the world opponents or partisans, in the most varied directions. In a higher moral sense we attain a sense of freedom, if but for a brief time, we free ourselves from the consideration of earthly things, and contemplate the worlds of spirit in cosmic space. Then do we become free from that which otherwise plays in our egotistical impulses, which are the original cause of all the smallnesses and quarreling upon earth. Hence the most certain means of attaining the high ideals of our Anthroposophical life is to direct our gaze from time to time to the starry worlds and their spiritual guides and leaders, the hierarchies. If we investigate the different civilizations as we have tried to do and the significance of the inspiring spirits of the various religions and of the bearers of Wisdom to humanity, we shall cease to strive on earth as followers of individual systems. We shall not depend on names, nor on the creeds of the several groups of men on the earth. When men seek their knowledge there where the vision of all the humanity of the earth can he directed, and where the knowledge common to all can be obtained—knowledge which unites and does not separate—when men actually reach that heavenly language which expresses the significance of the various religious Founders and Inspirers of humanity, then will the Anthroposophical ideal of a tolerant and unbiased consideration of all religions and cosmic conceptions be really able to appear. Men will no longer quarrel when they no longer claim for their own group a particular bearer of religion or stream of civilisation, but seek for the origin of these bearers outside in cosmic space. In this sense such a contemplation may acquire great moral importance if in much which formerly brought divisions and disharmonies upon earth, peace and harmony are established. Only we must learn to read the mighty writing given us in the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies—learn to read how, in reality, not different but the same spirits, work for each single individual on earth—that they belong to all men. This might be explained by means of a physical picture. As long as we remain on the earth, a group of people may dwell in the North or in the South, East or West. But when we look upon the movement of the earth and observe how it turns its face to the stars when it changes its position—whether in short periods of time or in millions of years—how the southern half turns to the northern and the stars of our northern heavens become visible, and then the northern part of our earth turns to the south and perceives the stars of the southern heavens. Just as the earth in the course of time turns its countenance, so to speak, to all the stars which shine to us from cosmic space, so may humanity learn through the ideals of Anthroposophy to look in an unbiased manner upon all which speaks spiritually from cosmic space. Through such a positive consideration of facts this ideal will best be reached—not through a sentimental emphasis of love and peace. In a real way shall we attain love and peace and harmony, if we direct our vision away from the concerns of earth which divide humanity into races, nations, religions—to the starry heavens, where spirits speak the same language to us through all time, even through all eternity; the same language for every human soul, for every human heart, if only we understand it rightly.

In this sense I should like now, at the end of our course of lectures, to point to the moral effects of such considerations, if we take the trouble to learn to know the facts of occultism. If we learn to know them in the true occult sense, what has been learnt will so stream into our hearts that it becomes a life-force within us, a living hope; and, above all, will become moral energy, and really make us what we may call citizens of the heavenly worlds. Then through his spiritual life a man carries heaven into the concerns of earth, and thus in the course of the processes of civilisation, brings about that which, in the highest sense, we can designate as harmony, as peace. Then will man become more and more conscious that at the very beginning as well as at the end of the evolution of civilisation an undivided Spirit really governs, a Spirit of Form, Who works uniformly throughout humanity, while He is stimulated by His brothers, the other Spirits of Form, who do Him service, in order to send a uniform working through the whole of humanity. Thus through true heavenly science something uniform is brought to men, and this will promote the intellectual and moral understanding of humanity on the earth. Thus we do not wish to consider merely the abstract and theoretical; but every such consideration ought at the same time to become in us a source of power, above all, a source of moral power; and then will all our teachings, even those which appear drawn from afar, serve to forward the direct aims and ideals of Spiritual Science.

With these words, my dear friends, which should gather up the whole spirit and character of these lectures into a certain nuance of feeling, I should like at their close to take farewell of you all.

In this course of lectures we shall deal with certain questions in the realms of Spiritual Science which play a great part in life. From the different lectures which in the course of time have been given, you will have learned that Spiritual Science should not be an abstract theory, not a mere doctrine or teaching, but a source of life and aptitude for life. It only fulfils its task when by the knowledge it is able to give, it pours into our souls something which makes life richer and more comprehensible, strengthening our souls and invigorating them. When the anthroposophist sets before him the ideal we have just summed up in a few words, and then looks around him to see how far he can put it into practice, he will perhaps receive a by no means gratifying impression. For if we consider impartially what the world thinks it ‘knows’ nowadays, and what leads men to this or that feeling or action, we might say all this is so very different from Anthroposophical ideas and ideals, that the Anthroposophist is quite unable to influence life directly by what he has acquired from Spiritual Science. This would however be a very superficial view of the situation, not taking into consideration what we ourselves have gained from our world conception. If those powers which we acquire through anthroposophy really become strong enough, they will find a way to work in the world; but if nothing is ever done to make these powers increasingly stronger, then indeed will it be impossible for them to influence the world.

But there is something else which may console us, so to speak, even if after the above considerations we feel hopeless, and that is just what should come to us as the result of the observations which will be set forth in this course of lectures; studies concerning what is called human karma and karma in general. For every hour that we spend here we shall see more clearly that nothing must be spared to bring about the possibility of influencing life by means of anthroposophy; moreover, if we ourselves earnestly and steadfastly believe in karma, we must have confidence that karma itself will dictate to us what we shall each, sooner or later, have to do for our own forces. If we think we are not yet able to make use of the powers we have acquired by our conception of the world, we shall see that we have not sufficiently strengthened those powers for karma to make it possible for us to influence the world by means of them. So that in these lectures there will not only be a number of facts about karma, but with every hour our confidence in karma will be more fully awakened, and we shall have the certainty that, when the time comes, be it tomorrow, or the day after, or many years hence, our karma will bring us the tasks which we, as Anthroposophists, have to perform. Karma will reveal itself to us as a teaching which does not tell us merely what is the connection between this or that in the world, but we can, with the revelations it brings to us, make life more satisfactory, and at the same time raise it to a higher standard.

But if karma is really to do this we must go more deeply into the law referred to, and into its action in the universe. In this case, it is to a certain extent necessary that I should do something unusual for me in dealing with questions of Spiritual Science, namely, to give a definition, an explanation of a word; for usually definitions do not lead very far. In our considerations we generally begin by the presentation of facts, and if these facts are grouped and arranged in the proper way, the conceptions and ideas follow of themselves; but if we were to follow a similar course with regard to the comprehensive questions which we have to discuss during the next few lectures, we should need much more time than is at our disposal. So in this case, in order to make ourselves comprehensible, we must give, if not exactly a definition, at least some description of the conception which is to occupy us for some time. Definitions are for the purpose of making clear what is meant when one uses such and such a word. In this way, a description of the idea of ‘karma’ will be given, so that we may know what is understood when in future the word ‘karma’ is used.

From the various lectures, every one of us will have formed for himself an idea of what karma is. It is a very abstract idea of karma to call it ‘the Spiritual Law of Causes,’ the law by which certain effects follow certain causes found in spiritual life. This idea of karma is too abstract, because it is on the one hand too narrow and on the other much too comprehensive. If we wish to conceive of karma as a ‘Law of Causes,’ we must connect it with what is otherwise known in the world as the ‘Law of Causality,’ the Law of Cause and Effect. Let us be clear about what we understand to be the law of causes in the general way before we speak of spiritual facts and events.

It is very often emphasised nowadays by external science, that its own real importance lies in the fact that it is founded on the universal law of causes, and that everywhere it traces certain effects to their respective causes. But people are certainly much less clear as to how this linking of cause and effect takes place. For you will still find in books of the present day which are supposed to be clever and to explain ideas in quite a philosophical manner, such expressions as the following: ‘An effect is that which follows from a cause.’ But to say this is to lose sight entirely of the facts. In the case of a warm sunbeam falling on a metal plate and making it warmer than before, material science would speak of cause and effect in the ordinary way. But can we claim that the effect—the warming of the metal plate—follows from the cause of the warm sunbeam? If the warm sunbeam had this effect already within it why is it that it warms the metal plate only when it comes into contact with it? Hence, in the world of phenomena, in the inanimate world which is all around us, it is necessary, if an effect is to follow a cause, that something should encounter this cause. Unless this takes place one cannot speak of an effect following upon a cause. This preliminary remark, philosophical and abstract though it apparently sounds, is by no means superfluous; for if real progress is to be made in anthroposophical matters we must get into the habit of being extremely accurate in our ideas instead of being casual as people sometimes are in other branches of knowledge.

Now we must not speak of karma in a way similar to that of the sunray warming a sheet of metal. Certainly there is causality. The connection between cause and effect is there, but we should never obtain a true idea of karma if we spoke of it only in that way. Hence, we cannot use the term karma in speaking of a simple relation between effect and cause.

We may now go a little further and form for ourselves a somewhat higher idea of the connection between cause and effect. For instance if we have a bow, and we bend it and shoot off an arrow with it, there is an effect caused by the bending of the bow; but we can no more speak of the effect of the shot arrow in connection with its cause as ‘karma’ than in the foregoing case. But if we consider something else in connection with this incident, we shall, to a certain extent, get nearer to the idea of karma, even if we do not then quite grasp it. For example, we may reflect that the bow, if often bent, becomes slack in time. So, from what the bow does and from what happens to it, there will follow not only an effect which shows itself externally, but also one which will react upon the bow itself. Through the frequent bending of the bow something happens to the bow itself. Something which happens through the bending of the bow reacts, so to speak, on the bow. Thus an effect is obtained which reacts on the object by which the effect itself was caused. This comes nearer to the idea of karma. Unless a result is produced which reacts upon the being or thing producing it, unless there is this peculiar reacting effect upon the being which caused it, the idea of karma is not understood. We thus get somewhat nearer to the idea when it is clear to us that the effects caused by the thing or being must recoil upon that thing or being itself; nevertheless we must not call the slackening of the bow through frequent bending, the ‘karma’ of the bow, for the following reason. If we have had the bow for three or four weeks and have often bent it so that after this time it becomes slack, then we really have in the slack bow something quite different from the tense bow of four weeks before. Thus when the reacting effect is of such a kind that it makes the thing or the being something quite different, we cannot yet speak of ‘karma.’ We may speak of karma only when the effects which react upon a being find the same being to react upon, or at any rate that being, in a certain sense, unaltered. Thus we have again come a little nearer to the idea of karma; but if we describe it in this way we obtain only a very abstract conception of it.

If we want to grasp this idea abstractly, we cannot do better than by expressing it in the way we have just done; but one thing more must be added to this idea of karma. If the effect reacts upon the being immediately, that is, if cause and reacting effect are simultaneous, we can hardly then call that karma, for in this case the being from whom the effect proceeded would have actually intended to bring about that result directly. He would, therefore, foresee the effect and would perceive all the elements leading to it. When this is the case we cannot really call it karma. For instance, we should not call it karma in the case of a person performing an act by which he intends to bring about certain results, and who then obtains the desired result in accordance with his purpose. That is to say, between the cause and the effect there must be something hidden from the person when he sets the cause in motion; so that though this connection is really there, it was not actually designed by the person himself. If this connection has not been intended by him then the reason for a connection between cause and effect must be looked for elsewhere than in the intentions of the person in question. That is to say, this reason must be determined by a certain fixed law. Thus karma also includes the facts that the connection between cause and effect is determined by a law independent of whether or not there be direct intention on the part of the being concerned.

We have now grouped together a few principles which may elucidate for us the idea of karma, but we must include all these principles in the conception of karma, and not limit it to an abstract definition. Otherwise we shall not be able to comprehend the manifestations of karma in the different spheres of life. We must now first seek for the manifestations of karma where we first meet with them—in individual human lives.

Can we find anything of the sort in individual lives, and when can we find what we have just presented in our explanation of the idea of karma? We should find something of the sort if, for example, we experienced something in our life about which we could say. ‘This experience which has come to us stands in a certain relationship to a previous event in which we took part, and which we ourselves caused.’ Let us try in the first place, by mere observation of life, to make sure whether this relationship exists. We will take the purely external point of view. He who does not do so can never arrive at the recognition of a law of inter-dependence in life, any more than a man who has never observed the collision of two billiard balls can understand the elasticity which makes them rebound. Observation of life can lead us to the perception of a law of inter-dependence. Let us take a definite example.

Suppose that a young man in his nineteenth year, who by some accident is obliged to give up a profession which until then had seemed to be marked out for him, and who up to that time had pursued a course of study to prepare him for that profession, through some misfortune to his parents was compelled to give up this profession and, at the age of eighteen, to become a business man. An impartial observer of such an occurrence in life, like the student in physics observing the impact of the elastic balls will probably find that the business experiences into which the young man has been driven will at first have a stimulating effect upon him, so that he will carry out his duties, learn something from them, and perhaps even attain special excellence in his work. But after some time one can also observe another condition entering in, a certain boredom or discontent. This discontent will not be manifested immediately. If the change of calling took place in the youth's nineteenth year, probably the next few years would pass quietly, though about his twenty-fourth year it would become evident that something apparently inexplicable had taken root in his soul. Looking more closely into the matter we are likely to find, if the case is not complicated, that the explanation of the boredom arising five years after the change of calling must be sought for in his thirteenth or fourteenth year; for the causes of such a phenomenon are generally to be sought for at about the same period of time before the change of calling as the occurrence we have been describing took place afterwards. The man in question when he was a school-boy of thirteen, five years before the change of vocation, might have experienced something in his soul which gave him a feeling of inner happiness. Supposing that no change of profession had taken place, then that to which the youth had accustomed himself in his thirteenth year would have shown itself in later life and would have borne fruit. Then, however, came the change which at first interested the young man and so possessed his soul that he repressed, as it were, what had before occupied it; but though repressed for a certain time, it would on that account gain a peculiar strength. This may be compared with the squeezing of an india-rubber ball which we can compress to a certain point where it resists, and if it were allowed to spring back it would do so in proportion to the force with which we have compressed it. Such experiences as we have just indicated, which the young man went through in his thirteenth year, and which grew stronger until the change of profession, might also in a certain sense be driven into the background. But after a time a certain resistance arises in the soul and one can then see how this resistance becomes strong enough to produce an effect. Because the soul lacks what it would have had if the change of profession had not taken place, that which had been repressed now begins to assert itself, appearing as boredom and discontent with its surroundings.

Here then we have the case of a man who experiences something or did something in his thirteenth or fourteenth year and who later did something—changed his occupation, and we see that these causes later on in their effect react on the same person. In such a case we should have to apply the idea of karma primarily to the individual life of a man. We ought not to object to this because we have known cases in which nothing of the kind could be traced. That may be, but no student of physics examining the laws of the velocity of a falling stone would say that the law was incorrect because the stone was deflected by a blow. We must learn to observe in the right way, and to exclude those phenomena which have nothing to do with the establishment of the law. Certainly such a young man, who supposing nothing else intervenes, experiences boredom in his twenty-fourth year as the result of impressions received in his thirteenth year, would not have been thus bored if, for example, in the meantime he had married. But we are here dealing with something which has no influence on the fundamental truth of the principle. What is important is that we must find the real factors from which we can establish a law. Observation pure and simple is insufficient; only methodical observation will lead us to the recognition of the law; and therefore if we want to study the law of karma, we must make these methodical observations in the right way.

Let us start, then, with the study of the karma of one special person. Fate deals a man in his twenty-fifth year a heavy blow, which causes him pain and suffering. Now, if our observations are of such a nature that we merely say ‘This heavy blow has just broken into his life and has filled it with pain and suffering,’ we shall never arrive at an understanding of karmic connections. But if we go a little further and observe the life of this person in his fiftieth year, after he has passed through such a trouble in his twenty-fifth year, we shall perhaps come to a different conclusion which we might be able to express thus: ‘The man whom we are now observing has become industrious and active, leading an excellent life.’ Now, let us look further back into his life. When he was twenty we find that he was a good-for-nothing fellow, and thoroughly idle. At twenty-five this trouble came upon him, and had he not met with this blow we may now say that he would have remained a good-for-nothing. In this case the severe blow of fate was the cause that at the age of fifty we now find him an industrious and excellent man.

Such a fact teaches us that we should be mistaken if we considered the blow of fate at the age of twenty-five was merely an effect. We cannot just ask what caused it, and stop at that. But if we consider the blow not as an effect at the end of the phenomena which preceded it, but place it rather at the beginning of the subsequent events, and consider it as a cause, then we learn that we must entirely and essentially change the judgments we have formed by our feelings and perceptions with regard to this blow of fate. We shall very likely be grieved if we think of it only as an effect, but if we think of it as the cause of what happens later on, we shall probably be glad and feel pleasure over it. For we can say that thanks to the fateful blow the man who experienced it has become a decent fellow, and a useful member of society. So we see that our attitude is essentially different in so far as we consider an event in life as cause or as effect. Therefore it is of importance from which point of view we regard an event happening to a man—whether we consider it as a cause or as an effect. It is true that if we start our investigations at the time of the painful events, we cannot then clearly perceive the direct effect, but if we have arrived at the law of karma by the observation of similar cases, that law can itself say to us: ‘an event is painful perhaps now because it appears to us merely as the result of what has happened previously, but it can also be looked upon as the starting point of what is to follow.’ Then we can foresee the blow of fate as the starting point and the cause of the results, and this places the matter in quite a different light.

Thus the law of karma itself may be a source of consolation if we accustom ourselves to set an event not only at the end, but at the beginning of a series of events. This consolation exists only if we learn to study life methodically, and to place things in the right relationship to one another as cause and effect. If we carry out these observations thoroughly, we shall notice events in the life of a man which take place with a certain regularity; others, again, appear quite irregularly in the same life. He who observes human life carefully—not simply in a superficial way—may find remarkable connections in it. Unfortunately, the phenomena of human life are at present observed for only short periods of time, hardly even for a few years; people are not accustomed to connect what has happened after a long period of time, with what may have happened previously as the cause. There are very few at the present day who study the beginning and the end of a man's life in their relationship to each other; nevertheless this relationship is extraordinarily instructive.

Supposing we have brought up a child during the first seven years of his life without having done what generally happens, that is, without starting out in the belief that if a man is to lead a good and useful life he must unconditionally fulfil our own ideas of a good man. For in such a case we should train the child as strictly as possible in the behaviour which, according to our own ideas, is that of a good and useful man. But if at the outset we recognise that a man may be good and useful in many different ways, and that there is no necessity to determine in which of these ways the child with his individual talents is to become a good and useful man—in this case we would say: ‘Whatever may be my ideas of a good and useful man, this child is to become one through having his best talents brought out, and these I must first discover. What matter the rules by which I myself feel bound? The child himself must feel the necessity to do this or that. If I wish to develop the child according to his individual talents, I must try first to develop tendencies latent in him and draw them out, so that he may above all realise them and act in accordance with them.’

Thus we see that there are two quite different ways of influencing a child in the first seven years of its life. If we now look at the child in its later life it will be a long time before the essential effects are manifested of what we have in this way brought into the first years of its life. Observation of life reveals to us that the actual results of what was put into the child's soul in its earliest years does not manifest itself until the very evening of life. A man may possess to the very end of his life an active mind, if he has been, as a child, educated in this way; that is, if the living, inherent tendencies of his soul have been observed and naturally developed. If we have drawn out and developed his innate powers we shall see the fruits in the evening of his life displayed as a rich soul-life. On the other hand, in a starved and impoverished soul and a corresponding weakly old age (for we shall see later on how a starved soul reacts on the body), is manifested that we have done wrong in our treatment of a person is in earliest childhood. This is something in human life which in a certain way is so regular that it is applicable to everyone as a connection between cause and effect.

The same connection may also be found in the intermediate stages of life, and we will now draw attention to this. The way in which we deal with a child from his seventh to his fourteenth year produces effects in that part of his life which precedes the final stage, and thus we see cause and effect working in cycles. What existed as cause in the earliest years comes out as effect in the latest ones. But in addition to these causes and effects in individual lives which run their course in cycles, there is what may be described as a straight line law.

In our example which showed how the thirteenth year influenced the twenty-third, we see how cause and effect are so connected with human life that what a man has experienced leads to after-effects which in their turn react upon him. Thus karma is fulfilled in individual lives. But we shall not arrive at an explanation of human life if we study only the connection of cause and effect in the life of a single individual. How the idea now brought forward is to be further proved and carried out we shall show in further lectures; at present we shall only briefly touch upon what is already acknowledged, that Spiritual Science teaches how the life of a man between birth and death is the repetition of previous human existences.

If we now seek for the chief characteristic of the life between birth and death, we can describe this as being the extension of one and the same consciousness (at any rate in its essentials) throughout the whole life-time. If you call to mind the earliest parts of your life, you will say: ‘There is indeed, a point of time when my recollections of life begin, which does not coincide with my birth, but which comes somewhat later.’ Everyone who is not an initiate will allow this, and he will say, this is as far back as his consciousness extends. There is, indeed, something very remarkable in the period of time between birth and the beginning of this recollection of life, and we shall return to it again as it will throw light upon important matters. Except then for this period between birth and the beginning of memory we can say that life between birth and death is characterised by the fact of one consciousness extending throughout that period of time.

In ordinary life a person does not seek a connection between cause and effect, because he takes only short periods into consideration. So when something happens to him in later life, he does not look for the cause in his earlier life; yet he could do so if he were only observant enough and investigated everything. He could do it with the consciousness which as memory-consciousness is at his disposal, and if through recollection he strove to make the connection, in a karmic sense, between earlier and later events, he would arrive at the following conclusion: ‘I see, of course, that certain experiences that come to me would not have occurred unless this or that had happened to me in earlier life, and I must now suffer for the wrong way in which I was brought up.’ But if he also looks into the connection, not for what he has done wrong, but for the wrong done against him, that will be a help to him. He will more easily find ways and means to neutralise the harm which has been done to him. The recognition of such a connection between cause and effects in our different periods of life which we can scan with ordinary consciousness may be of the utmost use to us in life; for if we acquire this knowledge we may perhaps do something else. Without doubt if a person having arrived at the age of eighty looks back and sees that the causes of the things happening to him now are to be found in his earliest childhood it will then perhaps be very difficult for him to remedy the ill that has been done to him; and if he then begins to study the teaching it will not help him very much. But if he lets himself be taught before, and looks back in, say, his fortieth year on the wrongs that have been done to him, he might then have time to take measures against them.

Thus we see that we must be taught not entirely by our own individual life karma, but by the law of inter-dependence which karma as a whole signifies. This may be very useful in our life. What should a man do who in his fortieth year attempts to avert the effect of wrongs done to him, or wrongs which he himself did in his twelfth year? He will do everything to avert the consequences of his own misdeeds or those of others towards him. He will to a certain extent replace by another the result which would inevitably have taken place had he not intervened. The knowledge of what happened in his twelfth year will lead him to a definite action in his fortieth year, which he would not have taken unless he had known that this or that had happened in his twelfth year. What then, has the man done by looking back at his early life? He has through the knowledge thus attained, allowed a definite result to follow a cause. He has willed the cause and has brought it about. This shows now how, in the line of karmic consequences, our will can intervene and bring about something which takes the place of the karmic effects which would otherwise have followed. If we consider such a case in which a person has quite consciously brought about a connection between cause and effect in life, we could conclude that in this case karma or the laws of karma have penetrated his consciousness, and he has himself, in a certain way brought about the karmic effect. Let us now apply the same reflections to what we know about the life of man in his different reincarnations upon earth. The consciousness of which we have just spoken which extends, with the exception mentioned, throughout the period between birth and death, is due to the fact that man is able to use his brain as an instrument. When a man steps through the gate of death, a different sort of consciousness comes into play—one that is independent of the brain and works under essentially different conditions. We also know that this consciousness, which lasts until a new birth, can look back over all that has been done by the man in his life between birth and death. In this period between birth and death we must first form the intention to look back at any wrongs which have been done to us, or which we have done, if we wish to counteract these wrongs karmically. After death, in looking back over life, we see what we have done wrong or otherwise; and at the same time we see how these deeds have affected ourselves; we see how, to a certain action, our characters have been improved or debased. If we have brought suffering to anyone, we have sunk and become of less value; we are less perfect, so to speak. Now, if we look back after death we see numerous events of the sort, and we say to ourselves: ‘I have deteriorated.’ Then in the consciousness after death, the will and power arise to win back, when the opportunities occur, the value we have lost; the will, that is to say, to make compensation for every wrong committed. Thus between death and re-birth the tendency and intention is formed to make good what has been done wrong, in order to regain the standard of perfection a man should have—a standard which has been lowered by the deed referred to.

Then the man returns once more to life on earth. His consciousness is altered again. He does not recollect the time between death and rebirth, or the resolutions to make compensation. But the intention remains within him, and although he does not know that he must do such and such a thing to compensate such and such an act, yet he is impelled by the power within him to make the compensation. Now we can form an idea of what happens when a man in his twentieth year suffers bitter trial. With the consciousness he possesses between birth and death, he will be depressed by the trial; but if he could remember his resolutions made between death and rebirth, he would be able to trace the power which drove him into the position in which he suffered the trial, because he felt that only by passing through it would he win back the degree of perfection which he has lost and was now to regain. When, therefore, the ordinary consciousness says, ‘The trial is there, and you are suffering from it,’ it sees only the trouble itself, and not the effect it produces; but the other consciousness which can look back upon all the time between death and rebirth, sees the intentional seeking for the trial or other misfortune.

This, indeed, is actually shown to us when we look out over a man's life from a higher standpoint. Then we can see that fateful events occur in human life which are not the results of causes in the individual life itself, but are the effects of causes perceived in another state of consciousness, namely, the consciousness we had before re-birth. If we grasp these ideas thoroughly, we shall see that in the first place we have a consciousness which extends over the time between birth and death, which we call the consciousness of the ‘Personality.’ And then we see that there is a consciousness which works beyond birth and death of which man in his ordinary consciousness knows nothing, but which nevertheless works in the same way as the ordinary consciousness. We have, therefore, shown first of all how anyone may take over his own karma, and in his fortieth year make some compensation so that the causes of his twelfth year may not come to effect. Thus he takes karma into his personal consciousness. If, however, the man is driven somewhere where he has to suffer pain in order to compensate for something and to become a better man, this also proceeds from the man himself; not from his personal consciousness, but from a more comprehensive consciousness which operates during the period between death and rebirth. The entity included in this consciousness we will call the ‘individuality,’ and this consciousness, which is being continually interrupted by the ‘personal consciousness,’ we will call the ‘individual consciousness.’ Thus we see karma operative in relation to the individual human being.

In spite of this, we shall not understand human life if we only follow the sequence of phenomena as we have just done, if we only fix our attention on what man has within him in the way of cause and the effects which concern him. We need only bring forward a simple case to make things clearer, and we shall at once see that we cannot understand human life if we take into consideration only what has already been said. Let us take a discoverer or an inventor, for example, Columbus, or the inventor of the steam-engine, or any others: in the discovery there is a distinct action, a distinct achievement. If we examine the action and seek for the cause why the man did it, we shall always find such causes by searching along the lines just pointed out. We shall find in his individual and personal karma the reasons why Columbus sailed to America and why he determined to do so at just that particular time. But now we might ask if the cause must be sought for only in his personal and individual karma; and is the action only to be considered as an effect for the individuality working in Columbus. That Columbus discovered America had certain consequences for him. He rose by doing so, and became more perfect, and this will show itself in the development of his individuality in succeeding lives. But what effects has this achievement had on other men? Must it not also be considered as a cause which affected the lives of countless human beings?

This, again, is still rather an abstract consideration of such a question which we could study much more deeply if we could observe human life over long periods of time. Let us consider human life in the Egyptian-Chaldean age which preceded the Greco-Latin. If we examine the peculiarities of this age, especially with regard to what it has given to mankind, and what mankind then learnt in it, we shall see something curious. If we compare this epoch with our own, we shall perceive that what is happening in our own time is connected with what happened in the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation. The Greco-Latin lies between the two. In our time certain things would not happen unless other things had happened in the Egyptian-Chaldean times. If present-day natural science has brought about certain results, it has certainly done so by means of powers which have unfolded and developed out of the souls of men. The human souls who worked in our time were also incarnated in man in the Egyptian-Chaldean age, and at that time they underwent certain experiences without which they would not be able to accomplish what they do to-day. If the pupils of the old Egyptian temple priests had not learned in Egyptian astrology about the relations existing between the heavenly bodies, they would not later on have been able to penetrate into the secrets of the world, nor would certain souls in the present age have possessed the abilities to explore the regions of the heavens. For instance, how did Kepler arrive at his discoveries? He did so because within him there was a soul who in the Egyptian-Chaldean times had acquired the forces necessary for the discoveries which he was to make in the fifth age. It fills us with inner satisfaction to see in certain souls a realisation arising out of the fact that the germs of what they are now doing were laid in the past. Kepler, one of the men who has played a most important part in the investigation of the laws of the universe says of himself, ‘Yes, it is I who have robbed the golden vessels of the Egyptians to make an offering to my God far removed from Egyptian bounds. If you will forgive me, I will rejoice, but if you blame me I must bear it; here I throw the dice and I write this book. What matter if it is read to-day or later—even if centuries must elapse before it is read! God himself had to wait six thousand years for the one who recognised his work.’

Here we have a sporadic memory rising in Kepler of what he received as a germ for the work which he, in his personal life as Kepler, accomplished. Hundreds of similar cases might be given. But we see in Kepler something more than the mere manifestation of effects which were the result of causes in a previous incarnation—we see a manifestation which has its significance for the whole of mankind—a manifestation of something which was equally important for the humanity in a previous epoch. We see how a person is placed in the special position in order to do something for the whole of mankind. We see that not only in individual lives, but in the whole of humanity, there are connections between cause and effect, which stretch over wide periods of time, and we can deduce that the karmic law of the individual will intersect the laws which we may call ‘karmic laws of humanity.’ Sometimes this intersection is only slightly perceptible. Imagine what would have happened to our astronomy if the telescope had not been discovered at that particular time. If we look back at the history of the telescope we see of what tremendous importance the discovery has been. Now it is well known that the discovery of the telescope was made in the following way: Some children were playing with lenses in an optician's workshop and by chance, as one might say, they had so placed the optical lenses that someone hit upon the idea of employing this arrangement to make something like a telescope. Think how deeply you must search in order to arrive at the individual karma of the children and the karma of humanity which led to the discovery at that particular moment. Try to think the two facts out together, and you will see in what a remarkable manner the karma of single individuals and the karma of the whole of humanity intercept and are interwoven. You must admit that the whole of the development of mankind would have been different if such and such a thing had not come to pass when it did.

To ask such a question as:—‘What would have happened to the Roman Empire if the Greeks had not beaten off the Persian attack in the Persian wars at a particular time?’—is often quite futile, but to ask: ‘How did it happen that the Persian war ended in this way?’ is by no means futile. If we follow up this question and seek an answer we shall see that in the East, definite results came about because there were despotic rulers who only wanted something for themselves, and who, to gain their ends, combined with the sacrificial priests. The whole organisation of the Eastern State was at that time necessary for any given thing to be accomplished and this arrangement brought with it all the trouble which resulted in the Greeks—a differently constituted people—defeating the Eastern attack at a critical moment. How then must we consider the karma of those who worked in Greece to resist the Persian attack? We shall find much that is personal in the karma of those in question, but we shall also find that their personal karma is linked with the karma of nations and of humanity, so that we are justified in saying that the karma of humanity placed these particular persons in that particular place at that time. We see here the karma of humanity affecting the individual karma, and we must ask how these things are interwoven. But we may go still further, and consider yet another connection by means of Spiritual Science.

We can look back to a time in the evolution of our earth when there was as yet no mineral kingdom. The evolution of the earth was preceded by the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, where as yet there was no mineral kingdom in our sense of the word. It was on this earth that our minerals first took on their present forms. But because the mineral kingdom became separated in the course of the earth's evolution, it will remain a separate kingdom to the end. Before that, men, animals, and plants had developed without the mineral kingdom. In order that later the other kingdoms might make further progress, they had to separate the mineral kingdom out of themselves, but after they had done this, they could only develop on a planet which had a firm mineral form. They could have developed in no other way than this, if we admit that the formation of a mineral kingdom took place in the way we have said. The mineral kingdom is there, and the subsequent fate of the other kingdoms depends on the existence of this mineral kingdom which was formed within our earth in remote ages of antiquity. So something happened connected with the fact of the formation of the mineral kingdom which must be taken into account in all the later evolutions of the earth. What follows as the result of the origin of the mineral kingdom finds its fulfilment in later periods of what happened in earlier ones. On the earth is fulfilled what was on the earth prepared long ago. There is a connection between what happened earlier and what came to pass later—but this is also a connection which in its effects reacts upon the being which caused it. Men, animals, and plants have separated from the mineral kingdom, and the latter reacts upon them! Thus we see that it is possible to speak of the karma of the earth.

Finally, we can bring to light something, the elements of which we can find in the general principles described in my book, Occult Science. We know that certain beings remained at the stage of the old Moon evolution and that these beings did so for the purpose of giving to human beings certain definite qualities. Not only beings, but also substances, remained from the old Moon-time of the earth. At the Moon stage there remained behind beings who influenced our earth's existence as luciferic beings. As a result of this, certain effects are manifested on our earth of which the causes are to be found in the Moon life. But from the point of being of actual substance something analogous was also brought about. As we now see our solar system, we find it composed of heavenly bodies which regularly carry out recurrent movements showing a sort of inner completeness. But we find other heavenly bodies which move, indeed, with a certain rhythm, but break through, as it were, the usual laws of the solar system. These are the comets. Now, the substance of a comet does not obey the laws which exist in our solar system, but such laws as prevailed in the old Moon-existence. Indeed, the laws of that old Moon are preserved in the life of the comet. I have already often pointed out that Spiritual Science had indicated certain laws of science before they were confirmed by Natural Science. In Paris, in 1906, I drew attention to the fact that, during the old Moon-existence, certain combinations of carbon and nitrogen played a similar part to that played at the present day on our earth by combinations of oxygen and carbon, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and so on. These latter have something deadly in them. Cyanide combinations, prussic acid combinations, played a similar part during the old Moon-existence. Attention was called to these facts by Spiritual Science in 1906, and in other lectures it was shown that comets bring the laws of the old Moon-existence into our solar system, so that not only the luciferic beings remained behind, but also the laws of the old Moon-substance, which work in our solar system in an irregular way. We have always said that a comet must contain something like cyanide combinations in its atmosphere. Only much later, namely this year, 1910, was prussic acid found by spectrum analysis in the comet, proving what had already been made known by Spiritual Science. If we are ever asked to show whether anything can be discovered by Spiritual Science we have here a proof. There are more of such proofs if only one could observe them. So there is something of the old Moon-existence working in our present earth existence. Now we come to the question: Can it be maintained that something spiritual lies behind a phenomenon observed by means of the outer senses?

To one who knows Spiritual Science it is quite clear that there is something spiritual behind all material realities. If from the point of view of substance there is an action of the old Moon-existence on our earth existence when a comet shines upon it, then also something spiritual is working behind, and we can even distinguish what spiritual force is working in the case of Halley's comet. Halley's comet is the outward expression of a new impulse of materialism every time it comes within the sphere of our earth's existence. To the world of the present day this may seem superstitious, but men must remember how they themselves bring spiritual influences from the constellations. Who would deny that an Eskimo is a different sort of human being from a Hindu, because in the polar regions the sun's rays strike the earth at a different angle! Everywhere the scientists themselves refer spiritual effects on mankind to constellations. A spiritual impulse towards materialism is coincident with the appearance of Halley's comet¹ and this impulse can make itself felt. The appearance of this comet in 1835 was followed by that materialistic culture of the second half of the nineteenth century, and its appearance before that was followed by the materialistic enlightenment of the French Encyclopaedists. That is the connection. In order that certain things may enter into the earth's existence, the causes must be laid long before outside the earth; and here we actually have to deal with the world-karma. The spiritual and the material have been driven out of the old moon in order that certain effects may be reflected back upon those entities that have driven them out. It is certain that the luciferic beings have been driven out and forced to develop in a different way so that for the beings on earth, free will and the possibilities of free will could originate. Here we have something which in its karmic effect extends beyond our earth existence; here is a glimpse of the world-karma!

So we have now been able to speak of the conception of karma, of its significance for each personality, each individuality, and for all mankind. We have described its influence within our earth and beyond it, and we have found something else which we may describe as the world-karma.

Thus we find the karmic law of connection between cause and effect which works in such a way that the effect in its turn works back upon the cause; and yet in reacting it keeps its essence and remains the same. We find this law of karma ruling everywhere in the world in so far as we recognise the world as a spiritual one. We dimly sense karma revealing itself in so many different ways, in entirely different spheres, and we feel how the different branches of karma—personal karma, the karma of humanity, earth karma, world karma, etc., will intersect each other. And thereby we shall have the explanation we need in order to understand life; for life can only be understood in its details if we can find how the various karmic influences are interwoven.

• 1. The next appearance of the comet will be [was] in 1986. Its periodic visitations occur at intervals of about 76 years, and have been recorded since 240 BC. During its last visit, it passed directly between the Earth and the Sun, the Earth actually passing through the tail of the cornet. It is interesting to note that this series of lectures were being given as the comet was at its closest to the Earth, May 1910. (Ed.)

This evening we want to use to reflect on the interaction between the spiritual and physical worlds. This has already been the subject of other reflections in recent days. It will be the main point on which we will depend to further develop the topic that we have raised. But I would like to start from a more general consideration, which will show us how, in the more abstract, in the more general, the interaction of the spiritual and the physical, the unearthly and the earthly, can be thought of, can be encompassed by a simple thought. And from this more general consideration, we will then move on to what is important: the relationship of the disembodied human being, who has passed through the gate of death, to those people who are embodied in this earthly life.

Let us look at our Earth as the scene of what is expressed to our senses first. I will begin quite hypothetically, will propose thoughts and ideas that are initially just thoughts, or at least appear to be just thoughts. Let us assume that all the forces of our Earth, from a certain point of view, are concentrated and compressed into a small image of the Earth, in some way shaped. So let us assume that we have a small Earth, a small, tiny body, but one that contains in miniature the same forces as the Earth in the large. Let us visualize this schematically. Let us imagine that we have a small Earth, that is, a small, tiny body that contains within itself the same power relationships that are otherwise distributed throughout the large volume of the Earth's body. Let us imagine that this small Earth body is somehow connected to the Earth.

Now, if we imagine the earth correctly, we do not have to think of it as just any inanimate being, as it presents itself to the geologist, the mineralogist, who only imagines this earth as an inanimate being. Because if the earth were only mineral, as the geologist imagines it, it would never be able to harbor plants, animals, human beings on it. Of course the geologist is right to isolate what is dead, but he should be aware that this is only one aspect of the earth's existence. If, however, we imagine the earth as a living being, then we must also imagine that its life undergoes changes over time. So that this earth in winter — we have discussed this often — is in a very different state than in summer, just as a person is in a different state when asleep than when awake. We must not imagine that winter and summer simply brush over the earth, but that they are something that takes hold of the state of the earth, that is, the living being, just as the states of waking and sleeping take hold of us. This temporal sequence is therefore part of our earthly existence if we regard this earthly existence as a living one. But with this we also say that every being that is connected with this earth – and that includes this small earth we are talking about here – is in this changing state with the whole earth, that it shares in it.

What does this change of conditions mean for our earth? Let us say, for example, that spring is coming. When spring comes, it means that the sun's effect on the earth is quite different from that during the winter. We could also say: When spring arrives, the earth is seized by the effects of the sun. During the winter, when our little earth with the great earth was, so to speak, dependent on itself, when the sun did not care about our little earth, now our little earth is also seized by the effects of the sun, by what is outside of our earth. The sum of forces in the little earth is snatched from the earth. Our little earth is, so to speak, no longer dependent on the earth alone; it is claimed by the sun, it is snatched from the earth. Yes, when our little earth is snatched from the earth in this way, then other forces than mere earthly forces play into our little earth, then the external forces communicate with our little earth.

Now we have to imagine this small earth lined with substances. What a substance is is not considered here. From autumn to spring, this small earth is alone with itself, and so it can develop its forces within itself. But then comes the sun, which draws out the forces, so that under the influence of the sun's effect, what was first enclosed in our little earth now comes into extra-terrestrial spheres of activity. It is torn out and comes into extra-terrestrial spheres of activity. That which was compressed can expand and also acquires a relationship to the surrounding cosmic space under the influence of the sun.

Now, after a certain time, towards autumn, the effects of the sun cease again. Then this development cannot take place, and the forces of the sun's effect withdraw from the forces of the earth's effect, that is to say, this combination of forces is restored. It gathers the substance together: the earth takes back, as it were, what it had to leave to the sun for a certain period of time. The effects of the sun now cease for a while, winter comes. If this were left to the earth, the sun would completely take possession of the small earth within the great earth. During the whole of the winter the system of earth forces must be active within. Otherwise the sun would take possession of this small earth entirely for itself. It must be ensured that when the sun reappears it can take hold of this small earth; otherwise it will simply become a tiny ball that is consumed by the great earth. A force must assert itself so that the sun, when it comes, can reach this small earth again. But precautions must be taken for this.

If the earth has its own power only in this one inside it (it is drawn), then that is just a small earth. The sun has retreated, now this small earth is alone with the large earth. When the sun comes again, what should it do now with what has become mere earth? In reality, the sun must be able to reach in again – there is no difference here, whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth around the sun – the sun, when it is in a new relationship to the earth, must be able to reach in. You can imagine it in the following way: Imagine a person standing firmly in one place and using all his strength to remain standing. You approach from the side and try to push him over. If he has enough strength within him to stand, you will not be able to move him. But when it begins to move, you will be able to intervene in its direction of movement. Suppose there were a force inside it that would cause the orbiting movement of the sun, or of the earth itself, like an inner momentum; let us assume that the sun would communicate this momentum to the small earth: then the sun could in turn intervene in this movement that it has imparted. In this way, it could snatch this small Earth from the Earth, and the process could take place as described. In other words, towards spring we would have a small Earth in which the Sun intervenes through impulses of motion that it had already imparted the previous fall. The Sun intervenes, snatches the small Earth from the mere forces of the Earth, and, in accordance with the effect of the Sun, unfolds on a larger scale that which is limited only to the small Earth. The forces must contract, and the small globe of the earth must be given the momentum of the sun. You already suspect what it is: I have described in sketchy terms what happens during the growth of plants, the unfolding of plants into leaves, flowers and fruits. I have described to you here the participation of the sun's momentum: that is fertilization; the seed is fertilized and remains so until the following year, when it is again seized by the sun. The little grain that carries out the fertilization in the plant is the being in which, through the sun's maturation, the possibility is laid to convey this momentum to the earthly part.

You see, we have here a living interaction between the earthly and the extra-terrestrial. We cannot imagine that the plant's growth continues to flourish without the sun leaving it a replica of its momentum, in which it can engage again the following year. In other words, when we look at the plant, we are really not just looking at something that is connected with the workings of the earth; rather, we see in the whole cycle of the plant process an interaction between the sun and the earth. There are other planetary conditions to be considered, but we will disregard these for now in order to grasp the meaning of the whole process. We want to visualize how what we see on earth is not just an earthly product, but also a product of the sun. The fact that human knowledge is usually limited to what goes on inside and outside on earth prevents us from gaining a real insight, from truly understanding things. For with mere earthly forces, only our minerals are formed. The moment we go beyond the merely mineral into the vegetable, we must say that in the earthly itself there are no longer any forces that shape things.

The materialists always hope that one day they will be able to produce a plant seed in the laboratory, just like any other chemical composition. The point of the opposition to materialism is not this production, but rather that, by advancing from the mineral to the plant, from the chemical product to the living, the production can only take place through a supernatural process. And before they will succeed in realizing this ideal of materialism, in producing plant seeds just as they do mineral products, chemical substances, the materialists will have to learn – if I may express myself grotesquely – to believe in astrology, to believe that they must place a process that they want to bring about under the influence of the stars. Laboratories will have to be set up that work with the changing seasons and that take into account the constellation of the stars in the same way that the constellation of the stars is taken into account in nature. One must rise from the earth when one rises from the dead to the living. For the etheric-physical must also be involved in the creation of the living. This, however, is never dependent on the merely earthly, but on that which is spread throughout the whole world. When we survey our earthly surroundings, we survey what is merely physical; from the earthly point of view, we survey the physical by surveying the earthly. That which is ethereal to our earth is still exposed to the entire universe.

If we now go further to the astral, we come to an element that is no longer exposed to the visible at all. And if I were to develop this for the animal kingdom in the way I developed it for the plant kingdom, it would turn out to be more complicated; but you would see that not only the extra-terrestrial and the still visible in the starry world come into consideration, but that the supersensible comes into consideration at all, which is not even concluded in the starry world. One must go out of the realm of the visible.

I wanted to make such a consideration before you, so that you gain insight into the really deep inner mystery of what is going on in the everyday, in the daily growth of plants, so that you gain insight into how it is in the fertilizing grains of the plant , which are distributed in a circle or in some other pattern around the ovary, it is essential that they contain extraterrestrial effects, and that the seed itself is essentially a reflection of the whole earth effect, that it is a small earth. The interaction that takes place in the plant blossom through fertilization is a reflection of the process that takes place between the earth and the entire starry world of the surrounding cosmic space.

We are fundamentally surrounded by secrets everywhere, and knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge always inspire the deepest humility. Just imagine how far it is from the general view of such a thing to the concrete view of the details of all that covers the

4419 earth. The field of knowledge thus truly opens up as an infinite one. We are confronted with infinity at every point of our existence, so to speak. And it is part of the right attitude that a person should develop towards the world to have a sense that one is actually looking into an infinite existence everywhere. But through this one also feels a certain bond between the individual finite human existence and the infinite, the whole world. And this mood should actually be poured out over everything that spiritual science can bring us, because without this reverent mood towards the infinite, nothing can actually be grasped with the right feeling in spiritual science. From time to time, one must renew such a mood within oneself, so that one ceases to regard knowledge as something that is sought after on the side, as it were, in the course of life, while in fact it must belong to the most sacred spiritual that intervenes in our lives.

If we give ourselves up to such moods, then we will also receive with the right attitude that which will increasingly have to be proclaimed in our time from the sources of spiritual science for the progress that must necessarily come into the world from our present time into the future. And when we have developed such an attitude, then this attitude is something effective in our soul. It is really not just something abstract, but it takes hold of our soul, it warms and illuminates our soul. And only when this happens can the right thing emerge from spiritual science, when our soul becomes, as it were, a different one, when what can be explored through spiritual science is felt through. When we bring such an attitude into our soul, then we can approach the riddles of life in the right way, which otherwise flow past us in life without us being able to relate to them in the right way.

There is really an inner connection between the soul and these general considerations, which I have now made, and what I now want to say with regard to human life. If you look at the plant, if you see it sprouting from the earth, you can tune your soul so that you feel: What is sprouting as greenery comes from such a complicated little creature, the seed, that this little being – from certain points of view – is a reflection of the whole earth, that in what I see sprouting from leaf to flower, from flower to fruit, the whole universe is involved. When I look at a green plant leaf on its stem, I realize that in this leaf, the way it is positioned, the way it greens, what was first enclosed in the small earth is enveloped by the effects of the sun, what has been wrested from the earth until the effects of the sun have taken hold of it. Then the effects of the sun, however, leave behind their vibrational impulses, after they have made it impossible for that which was in the small earth to spread when it must contract again. We see, as it were, in the sprouting, unfolding plant an image of certain effects of the whole great cosmos. We must regard what presents itself to our senses in this way as something that reveals to us in every point secrets that permeate and interweave the whole cosmos.

In this way, human life itself is also connected with the whole cosmos and now also with what is there in relation to us of the extraterrestrially visible bodies and processes. But what appears in earthly processes is particularly significant to us when we consider, I would say, the deviations from what we see as normal earthly life, normal human life. It is true that we constantly see many more deviations than what is actually normal in life, but ordinary cognition, which is limited to the sense world, does not engage with these deviations; one might say that it does not engage with the meaning of these deviations. We live in a time in which, crowded together, many deviations present themselves to us, which at the same time are real riddle questions. Do we not see in this time of severe trial for humanity numerous of our human brothers going prematurely through the gate of death? We see them going through the gate of death not through some kind of illness, something that is in their own organism, but we see them forcibly going

go through this gate of death. Because it is something else whether a human soul goes through the gate of death so that she dies of an illness in her youth or because her organism is hit by a bullet or is forcibly taken away from the soul-spiritual in any other way. But I already spoke about it yesterday: What takes place here between birth and death is all significant in the context of life as a whole; we have to accept it as karmic connections, we have to fit into the karma as it is given. But what happens is significant.

Now let us consider the case of the physical organism being taken away from the soul-spiritual by a bullet at a relatively young age. Compared to what we have become accustomed to — that the human being consumes his own organism — this is an abnormality. It is therefore a twofold mystery. If death alone is a mystery for direct contemplation, which is revealed through spiritual science, a twofold mystery arises when the course of life is not such that the organism is taken away from the spiritual soul through inner organic processes, but when this happens through a bullet.

Facing the universe, the cosmos, an inner mood arises in the soul that is created by such simple considerations, but which, grasped in all its depth, seizes us with an inner mood in relation to the secrets of the universe. And then, when the soul is so moved, we also approach the event that I have just hinted at with the necessary reverent mood and dignity and with the necessary seriousness: that the physical-bodily is forcibly taken away from the human spiritual-soul. And then this question arises before our soul like a riddle. Because how such a question arises determines whether or not one can contribute something to its solution. If a person has just had a banquet and then rested and now sits down to his spiritual work, then he will not solve the deep riddle, then he will not find the mood that matters. But when he faces the riddle and his soul is imbued with the right attitude towards the universe, then the riddles can be solved.

When the spiritual researcher, with such a mood of the soul, faces the riddle of death, which approaches us in such a way that the physical body is violently snatched from the soul-spiritual, then all kinds of things arise in the soul that can contribute to solving the riddle. Then the right impressions come, which are needed to clarify such a matter. These impressions cannot arise from every frame of mind, but only from the right one. In order to make this vividly clear to you, I have chosen this particular path today, by showing you, as it were, how such a task presents itself to the spiritual researcher. When the spiritual researcher is in the right frame of mind, the enigmatic question arises before him. But then something quite different arises: just as thoughts usually follow each other in a lawless manner, so now an impression arises before the soul in a law-governed manner, alongside the question. And then, if one has sensed this riddle, the riddle of death, one can sense the other question as something that belongs to it: Yes, how do people actually – depending on their particular nature – accept life? And all kinds of thoughts arise, thoughts that I now want to spread out before your soul itself.

Especially in our present time cycle, people only really accept something as reality if it is not a “mere thought”. For them, thought is not really something real. And they may be right from their point of view, but it is just a certain mood of the soul. That which is real must approach man much more strongly than a mere thought. A mere thought is just that — a mere thought! But for modern man, that which is designated as being must on no account be a mere thought. What presents itself as a mere thought, that is what man today calls non-existent. That which exists must place itself firmly in the world, must not speak merely to the thought. Out of this mood, people only believe that they are standing in reality when they can speak of this reality as an existing being, when they are forced to recognize this reality through being.

Now, when we ascend from this world in which we live to the spiritual world that man inhabits when he has passed through the gate of death, the most uncomfortable thought is, one might say, the thought of the being that formed here in the physical world. A being that is like the being in the physical world disturbs the disembodied person in the spiritual world. Precisely what is here in reality called the unreal in contrast to the existing is the real in the spiritual world. If something were to approach you there as it does here in the material world, you would reject it. It would startle you and be something that does not belong in the spiritual world. This is an extremely significant thought. If one were to talk as trivially in the spiritual world as one does here, a spirit might say, when something approaches it as it does here: What am I supposed to do with it? That's not it at all! — Because in the spiritual world I must have the opportunity to experience everything that comes to me as an imagination — it is at the lowest level of knowledge in the spiritual world — that is, to be able to translate it into intuition through my own activity. While in our time people only recognize as reality what they have done nothing for, one cannot

'recognize this in the spiritual world. Rather, in the spiritual world, one must do something to help bring about what is to appear there as reality. One must always work together.

It is the case that a disembodied person in the spiritual world sees the spiritual world around them to the extent that they are active in it. And what they see when they are not active is the world beyond, the world that is our world here. When the disembodied person looks at the earth, they see what is there without them being involved. Just as we on earth call our visible world, our real world, our existing world the here and now and what cannot be seen the hereafter, it is exactly the other way round from the point of view of the spiritual world. In the spiritual world there is absolutely nothing except what we create out of nothing into the present by participating: That is then the here and now. Otherwise, this world in the spiritual world is dark and silent and desolate if we do not act spiritually and mentally in it. But the hereafter is there without us working. While we look up here to the unknown, we look from the spiritual world at what is familiar to us here, but that is precisely the hereafter, which has no reality because it is, without one doing anything to it. — One must familiarize oneself with such ideas.

Now there is something within our physical world, our physical reality, that not everyone, but certain people, accept as something meaningful, despite the fact that it is not real. It is something that individual people bring into this reality, and in contrast to this, those who have an understanding of it behave in such a way that they accept it, despite the fact that it has no real existence: These are the ideals that people have. Idealists bring something valuable into our sensual reality: the ideals by which people live, which have no material reality, and which only the coarse materialist does not accept. But at the same time, these ideals are something of immense value in this life. They are the ideals that give us the impetus for our lives, they are what we desire so that we can hold to them. In a certain respect, these ideals make life valuable in that man lives up to them. Something unreal in the materialistic sense must be carried into our sensual reality with the ideals, so that what we must characterize in the sense does not arise: mere existence would be bleak if ideals were not there, if man did not find them in them. Among those who have no ideals, there must be idealists who, as it were, develop something in our reality that is an image of the reality beyond, that is not an existing thing, that does not claim the existing and yet is a valuable thing, indeed, has an absolute value.

After the spiritual researcher has developed this impression, which is natural to him, his research leads him back to the riddle of the human being hit by a bullet in his youth. And he must now ask: Is there something for the world beyond, in which the disembodied human beings and spiritual beings live, that corresponds to idealism here on earth? Is there something similar for the beings in the hereafter as the ideals here on earth? And lo and behold, the following emerges. Take a person who was shot at a young age: his etheric body separates from the physical body, the physical body has gone in a violent way. Of course, the violence must come from outside. What I have said can never apply when it is a matter of one's own decision. The process must come from outside. The etheric body, as I have already emphasized, has forces within it that could have continued to supply life for decades, perhaps even for decades, here on earth. These forces do not disappear, they remain. The person who now discards his etheric body in this way hands over the forces of his etheric body to the general world. But he has entered the spiritual world in the manner indicated, or rather, his body has been taken from him. So he now ascends into the spiritual world as a disembodied soul. Something of him remains in the physical world that he could have used up himself but did not use up. Consider what is at hand here! The human being in question ascends into the spiritual world without having used up anything that he could have used up.

We now turn our attention to the individuality of the human being itself. The human being ascends into the spiritual world without having consumed something that he could have consumed. Thus he ascends into the spiritual world with something that could have been real down here in the physical world, but did not become real in the external sense. Those people who entered the physical world with the potential for prolonged use of the etheric body here, but did not experience this use, come up to the spiritual world differently than those who have used up this etheric body by the end of their existence. They come up having incorporated into this earth something that could have been, but did not become. But this causes a mood in them, through which they become something similar for the spiritual world as the idealists here are for the physical world. So the one who passes through the gate of death in this way enters the spiritual world by bringing in something that is idealism there for the spiritual world, which is similar to the ideals that are brought into the physical world here by the idealists. A meaningful context of life!

So in such martyrdom times as the present one, souls enter the spiritual world that have passed through a shorter existence. They have lived here on earth in such a way that something that could have come into existence did not come into being for them, and they enter the spiritual world in such a way that they represent the connection with the earthly world there in the same way that idealists here represent the connection between the earthly world and the spiritual world in their ideals. In other words, these human beings who have passed through the gate of death in this way have the task of proclaiming in the spiritual world that not everything on earth is as coarse as that which is called reality here under ordinary circumstances, that the earth also harbors something that is indeed predisposed to being, but does not live out this being in a coarse way. The fact that such an inner attitude of the soul is also carried up into the spiritual world gives rise, in the time between death and a new birth, to something similar to the idealism that exists here on earth. And if we look at such an age as ours from the standpoint of the wisdom of the world, then we look into the world in such a way that we say to ourselves: Within the whole, wisdom-filled course of the world, we also accept this in such a way that we work our way up to its understanding with reverence. We then recognize that in such ages of martyrdom the spiritual worlds are given in a great, all-embracing sense that which must live with them, just as our idealism must live on earth, so that those who, as such, go up into the spiritual world at all and live through the life between death and a new birth may find something similar in this world to what we find here in idealism. Therefore, these ages must come into being. Whether they must always arise in the future is not a matter for discussion today, because that depends on the way in which the life of knowledge of mankind on earth is spiritualized, not only whether but in what way. No one should draw from what has been said that such ages should necessarily be defended forever; but if one examines their meaning, it becomes clear what has been said for the present time of mankind.

Then we look into the wisdom-filled context of the world and say to ourselves: How does fear and terror, suffering and pain, and what those who pass through the gate of death must necessarily find in the spiritual world fit together? — We see how suffering, pain, blood and martyrdom, which present themselves to us here from one side, look from the other side. One can well imagine that there are people who want to be wiser than the gods and who therefore raise the question: Would the gods not have brought about something in the spiritual world that corresponds to idealism on earth, without having imposed on earth what is imposed on earth in such a martyr age? — Such questions are raised only by those who want to be wiser than the gods. Those who look into the human age in the right way want to understand the world because they are convinced that it must be as it is, and that anything man dreams up about something that would be better for this world could only be worse for it.

We look at the idealists, perhaps at a truly idealistic person in this world; we are perhaps tempted, if we have a sense for ideals, to say: See this man, he brings heaven into the earth, because what is not in the material sense, he brings as something valuable for the existing, as a guiding principle to people! The souls that have normally passed through the gate of death and are going through the life between death and a new birth also see in this life souls that have in some way undergone a sacrificial death, from whom the physical body has been taken from the outside by earthly necessity. They look to these souls as to those who have to proclaim to them that down there on earth there is not only coarse existence, but that, connected with the earth, there are also human tendencies that could be existence and yet do not come to full existence, but instead of consuming this full existence, pass over at an earlier point in their lives between birth and death into the spiritual world.

A significant question arises here, namely, what is the difference between such a violent death and a death caused by an early illness? For what I have said now is nothing but a statement of facts. Precisely those who have ended their physical lives in this way, as described, are, as it were, the idealists of the spiritual world, and they are idealists for the reason that, as can be seen from further observation, the physical body has been taken from them by earthly events, by events that merely belong to earthly life.

When a person undergoes an illness, the body is taken from him by forces other than earthly ones. For consider, even in the growth of plants, not only earthly forces are at work, but extraterrestrial forces also collaborate. This is of course also the case with animals and even more so with human beings. Our illnesses do not come from the earth alone. Death comes to us only from the earth in no other way than when we die a violent death. However death may come, it is never a mere earthly event, unless it be a violent death in the sense indicated. Whether death comes to us through an illness – and suicide is not an earthly event either, since it comes about through a decision of the soul – there is no death that is merely brought about by earthly forces, except that which, through sacrificial deaths, through forces that play on earth, frees the body from the soul-spiritual. So that here earthly forces and relationships enter into reciprocal relationships with that which is spiritual. Otherwise, death is always something that completely transcends the earth; it is never a mere interaction between the earth and what is in the spiritual world. The etheric body, which was early deprived of its activity, is given over to purely earthly conditions, to something that is merely earthly, that is merely earthly events. For death is such — hold what I am about to say together with some of my thoughts these days — that when viewed from the physical side, it appears quite different than when viewed from the spiritual side. I have hinted at this in various ways. But always, when death does not occur in the way I have now indicated, it is something that can be understood from the other side. If one enters the other world through a death from illness, from old age, or through suicide, then one has what is needed to understand death there. If death is caused by a bullet on the battlefield, then one must look at purely earthly conditions to understand it. It is the same with accidents. One must look down from the spiritual world to have been earthly; death is to be explained from earthly conditions. And that makes that one must look down from the here and now of the spiritual world into the hereafter of the physical world in order to understand such a death.

Just as our ideals connect us to heaven, so the heavenly ideals connect these dead to the earth. Therefore, the one who thus passes through the gate of death, in the life between death and new birth, is one who weaves into all that takes place between the human souls that come to be embodied again, that which then results in our earth in spiritual things, which results in our earth in the earth itself also consisting of our thoughts, feelings and not merely of earthly things.

It must be admitted that the characteristics of these things, which I have discussed, are difficult. But it is understandable that this must be difficult, because one speaks with words that are coined for physical conditions about that which extends far, far beyond physical conditions. In any case, it is one thing to look, I would say, dull-witted and uncomprehendingly, at the mysterious nature of such events that emerge from the bosom of history into human life, such as our present difficult time of trial for humanity, and quite another to look at them and say to oneself: What gives meaning to such an event is not only significant for our Earth, but for all life! And in this feeling one is led into the deep meaning and the wisdom of the whole. One gradually learns to sense what must all be involved in order for the human being to be placed in this world in the course of his entire life.

This is what I wanted to suggest in the second mystery drama, from the mouth of Capesius, who speaks of the fact that the thinking of many gods and the cooperation of many gods is necessary to make man appear to all the worlds as their goal. That which in this drama emerges as a world-sentiment from the soul of Capesius, can perhaps become objective if one tries to appropriate such ideas, as we have tried to put them into our souls today. In such personalities as Capesius, such moods arise tragically because they can also arise without one immediately finding the full solution to the riddle. That is one thing to be noted in this connection; the other is that we must always bear in mind how much such study calls upon us to be modest and humble, not proud, not to have human delusions of grandeur.

To appropriate human self-awareness in the right sense means to consciously visualize it inwardly. And when we begin to sense what we can extend our consciousness to, how wide the horizon of the riddles of the world is, we will take care not to fall for the proud thought: O man, how you are actually a summary of the whole cosmos! — I believe that precisely such a thought must be very far from us. On the other hand, the other thought will be close to us: How little we know in our consciousness of what is knowable! — Infinity is necessary to put together the human being; but we have never gone further than knowing a very small piece of it. Modesty and humility are what descends into our soul precisely from knowledge as it expands. One can never learn more about the spiritual world than one already knows without also learning that what can be known is infinite. And the more one knows, the more vividly one senses this infinity. And one learns to understand how a part of life consists in allowing oneself to be seized by the great, mighty riddles and secrets that pulsate through existence.

Much of what humanity must now regain was known by people in ancient times within an ancient wisdom like a heritage. What people possess today has only been gained by this inheritance disappearing from the souls. In order for human souls to acquire this wisdom again, it first had to disappear. It had to disappear so that it could become acquired wisdom. We must work our way up again in order to gain in further earthly lives, in the further existence of the earth, what has disappeared from the souls as inherited wisdom. Thus, we must look into the perspective of the human future; then we will understand the necessity of spiritual science entering the world. It is precisely this living relationship with the infinite, as it has been characterized, that enables us to truly grasp esoteric science as something that is inwardly alive, that is also active and effective in us, and that can make us true co-workers in the shaping of the earth, which we must become if the earth is to develop further.

To reinforce this, I would like to mention one more thing. There are people we should certainly listen to, because they are saying the right thing from the point of view of the present. They say: In earlier times, people did not know what a criminal is, why a person develops as a criminal in the world. Today, however, we know. If you dissect the head of a criminal, you will find that it has a certain characteristic: the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum, as it does in normal people. It was a great and significant discovery made by Moritz Benedikt, the famous criminal anthropologist, which shows how a certain simple physiology of the occiput determines whether someone is a criminal. So consider: You are a criminal because the posterior lobe does not cover parts of the brain that should be covered! There is nothing to be said against this truth. It is there, and it would be quite foolish to rebel against it, because it is a truth. But think: If you are a materialist, what do you have to say? Well, some people are born with brain lobes that are too small; they are then predestined to become criminals. Consider – I need not elaborate further – the infinite bleakness of such a view of the world! Consider how all human feeling must be changed when one knows nothing but this, and when one must say to oneself: Why do people become criminals? Because that is how nature has placed them in life, so that they cannot help but become criminals. But if one begins to know that the human being has an etheric body, then one knows something else to say about the matter, one knows something else about it. One knows that this ether body encompasses all parts, and that in the case of a person who has a occipital lobe that is too short in the physical sense, the corresponding ether parts can still attain their full development. Whatever the physical condition may be, the correction can also be achieved with the ether body. If we succeed in having a form of education that draws on spiritual science as well as physical science, we can develop an insight into a child's behaviour that enables us to recognise what is needed for its education and what we need to provide so that the ether body develops in such a way that it counteracts the effect of the underdeveloped occipital lobes. Then a person can, even if their hindbrain is not normally formed in the etheric body, still become a good person, even if they are physically predestined to be a criminal. Here you can see how spiritual science can and must practically intervene in life. Because purely physical science must let the criminal brain be a criminal brain, because it is only a science of the physical. But if you take spiritual science into consideration, you paralyze the physical defects. From this you can see what must develop in the future.

And now imagine: this spiritual science did not exist! Then there would never be the possibility of developing the etheric body in the way I have described. That means that anyone born in the future with an atrophied brain will live out their life in a way that corresponds to this brain. There will be no possibility of pedagogically improving this. The consequence of this will be that people will become what their physical organization is capable of. And this will continue forever. And people will reach the state of Jupiter, and the materialists' current dreams will become true. If spiritual science does not overcome what follows from the merely material organization, then people will gradually develop in such a way that this material organization will be decisive; people would then merely be a result of their material development. Because spiritual science intervenes in life, this will not be the case on Jupiter; the etheric body will again transform the physical body. For if in a life in which the physical brain has atrophied due to the karma of earlier lives, the etheric body is properly developed, then in the next incarnation the physical brain will develop properly. These things are all connected. So that spiritual science really becomes a reality, that it transforms humanity again.

” If you summarize these thoughts, you will be able to say to yourself: What the materialists think of man today is not yet reality, because today man is still so predisposed that the spiritual can intervene. But it could become as the materialists think, if it were up to the materialists, if spiritual science could be eradicated by the materialists. If the materialists had their way, people on Jupiter would live as a result of their material organization alone. What are materialists, then? They have a world view that does not correspond to reality today, but which could correspond to reality for people one day. These materialists are prophets, only false prophets! They dream of a world that, if it were up to them, could be created in their image. The materialists are dreamers, but mari must work against their dreams. When people realize that the materialists are dreamers, that they should be told: You go through the world and do not see reality, you dream of an existence that could at best be brought about by your lack of insight into the world, you are false prophets, you make all kinds of fantasies! At that moment materialism will be correctly assessed. So the opposite judgment of what the materialists, well, let's say, dream of themselves, that's what you'll have to have. Then the time will have come when one can really understand spiritual science. In a certain sense, spiritual science will already transform the world from this point of view.

In the last few days, I have tried to give you a few hints about this or that in the context of the physical and spiritual worlds. I have said it out of impulses that arise from the momentous events of our time. At a time when death is so present before the soul, one might say a thousand times a day, such reflections, when offered as a possibility, are indeed close to the human soul. For how could one refrain from searching for the meaning and purpose of existence in such difficult times of trial as these? The fact that we are able to talk about such questions here gives me great satisfaction and allows me to be among you again even in these difficult times. I would just like to add the comment that in the present situation, some things have to be viewed in the context of this present situation. It is not as easy as in peacetime to travel everywhere. Therefore, our members must be aware, as indeed everyone must be aware, that war times are different from normal times, and that we cannot demand everything as we would in normal times. I say this especially with regard to the fact that this is often overlooked, especially by our members, while our members should have a great deal of understanding for our present situation, and should be aware of its context. It has often been shown that our members cannot understand that one must bear in mind the difficult times in which we live and that not everything can happen with the same regularity as usual. But we must hold on to that, so that we are also loyal to our cause. What each of us can do in this time, through the individual branches of our Society working very hard and very thoroughly on our cause, is really done not only for the good of our cause, but for the good of much more.

It is natural that the community must now be looser; the work in our branches must be all the more intensive, especially with regard to deepening our souls. This is what I would like to place especially in your soul and heart at this time and today. Let us each try to remain holy and true to our ideals, especially in this time, to remain holy and true to what has been able to develop as an attitude through spiritual science in the course of time. Spiritual science must prove itself not only in easy but also in difficult times. What can be stated as a truism, but is nevertheless the keynote of all our striving, must now connect itself particularly deeply with our soul: the attempt at a comprehensive grasp of life. In contrast to so much that is now given in the outer world, in the outer world tending towards materialism – often with such one-sidedness – we want to strive for the versatility of life. We want to know that we must guard against every comfortable one-sidedness in every moment, because we face an infinity in every moment.

Some of you may have heard that in a place where our spiritual science is cultivated, it is necessary to talk about all kinds of shortcomings that have arisen here or there. If certain words have been used to offend certain people, we must not fall into the opposite extreme of one-sidedness. I am not saying this now in order to go into these things in more detail, but only as an example. If, for example, people who spoke of all kinds of occult events and experiences did not speak about these experiences in the right way, it must not be concluded from this that in our Society, for example, occult experiences are not the main thing. Of course they are, for we are striving from the external into the internal. Nor was there any need to object to occult experiences as such. But it is important to realize that within our movement, what counts is the level at which these experiences occur. For it is one thing to speak in a certain light-hearted way about occult experiences, and it is quite another to say that one does not want to hear about them at all. We have been talking about the most intimate occult experiences for three days. What is being created in our circle cannot be a mere science of thought. That is not what our society is for. We must not go from one one-sidedness to another.

I would like to draw particular attention to the intimate, to the way our spiritual science is so closely connected to the innermost part of our soul. What matters is that we do not turn our soul into something other than what it was before when we go through spiritual science. And that must also prove itself in difficult times. That is why I wanted to make such observations, which may be suitable for putting us in that reverent mood towards the spiritual life that is appropriate for the true spiritual scientist. Because basically the greatest and the smallest event in life, everything in life, is something that fills us with deep reverence if we are only able to go deeply enough into the spiritual background of this particular event. And even the painful events of life, the smallest and the greatest, can be placed in such a light through spiritual science that their contemplation helps to bring our soul into the right relationship with the wisdom that flows and weaves through the world.

From the point of view of world wisdom, we wanted to look at events in life that are connected with what is happening today in our environment, which is so great, but also so full of trials. If we feel this way about our time, then we feel right about what we wanted to suggest with the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

Today the only connection many people still have to Christmas is to light the candles on the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is, however, the most recent symbol of Christmas.⁸¹ Even in the regions where it first appeared, people have only known it for about a hundred years. It is not the ancient pagan tradition many people believe it to be. But whilst the Christmas tree is a recent development, the great festival for humanity that is about to come is old, indeed ancient. For as long as people on earth felt, had a sense of what it means to be human, and also knew of the principle that takes us beyond being human to being divinely human, taking us beyond ourselves, they have known this sublime Christmas festival. In John's gospel we find words that may be a leitmotiv for the idea of Christmas. ‘He must wax, but I must wane.’⁸² This points to the relationship between two important annual festivals. John bears witness that he himself must wane, whilst the other one, the Christ, waxes. When the length of day is greatest, it is St John's tide. But behind the external material and ephemeral phenomenon something arises which John put most beautifully into words: ‘And the light shone into the darkness’⁸³ into the days which at St John's tide begin to get shorter. Within the darkness lives the light that is more luminous, more alive than all physical light phenomena—the light of the spirit. And the content of the Christian Christmas is the life of the great light in the darkness. When the festival was celebrated in all religions in ancient times, it pointed prophetically to Christ Jesus, the great spirit and Sun hero.

Today the science of the spirit helps us to understand Christmas, which for two millennia has been felt to be the feast of great idealism. When the service begins in that holy night, in the midnight darkness, and the candles are lit, they shine out into the darkness. It means that when the time comes and everything on earth is destined to die—everything that is purely human, too, will be subject to death—the soul triumphant lives in the body, as made to come true by the Christ, and rises from the shell of the body to live in the light, even if the earth, being physical matter, will shatter into countless atoms. Out of this darkness, this death of the earth, the soul of the whole earth will rise with all the human souls that will have been received into this earth soul. And Christ Jesus was the example, the ideal, to show that not only will the earth soul achieve this but all human beings on earth shall have the same certainty.

And so it is not only the physical sun which is a reflection of the Christ spirit but indeed the waxing sun of the spirit. When all energies will be transformed and love is aglow everywhere in the earth's body, the Christ principle will flow through every part of the earth. The light of Christmas is the symbol of this.

The three kings are symbols, as are their gifts, with gold the symbol of wisdom and kingly power, myrrh the symbol for overcoming death, incense the symbol for ether substances made spiritual in which the god enters into reality who has overcome death. With the three symbols we have Christ the king, the vanquisher of death, the fulfilment of all earthly evolution. That was the experience of the birth of the God child for every esoteric initiate, foreseen in the mysteries even before the Christ came and also experienced afterwards. The mysteries were not church establishments or schools in the ordinary sense but places of training where rites were also observed, where people learned wisdom, surrender and a faith that is both knowledge and insight. There were greater and lesser mysteries. In the lesser mysteries, people admitted after going through many trials would see dramatic presentations of the eternal truths which higher initiates experience in their own hearts. The greatest elements of human evolution may be compared, on a small scale, with the experiences someone who was born blind has after an operation. A completely new world opens up. An initiate has the eyes of the spirit opened. A world of the spirit opens up in light and colour, completely new and much wider than the physical world with all its spirits and inhabitants. All things seem full of life to him. This is the moment when initiates experience the birth of their higher self. It was known as the inner Christ festival. The experiences of those chosen people, experiences that can still be had by initiates today, were an ideal for those in the lesser mysteries, something they might hope to achieve, some sooner and some later. Anyone who knows that everyone has to go through many lives may be certain that for him, too, this awakening, this initiation will be reality one day; that the awakening of the Christ will be achieved in him, the holy night when the light will shine within him. Then the words of John will be reversed: ‘And the light shall be comprehended in the darkness.’

This was also presented in the mysteries. The great Christian event was a physical recapitulation of events every initiate had known in the mysteries, as images presented in the lesser mysteries and inside the human being in the greater mysteries. In the lesser mysteries the important experience of the inner Christ was shown at a particular time of the year, when the sun gives least light to the earth, in the longest night of winter—as is still done today at Christmas. Let us consider the image which symbolized the meaning of human inner development in the lesser mysteries. The people who were about to see it would be in a solemn mood, gathering in holy night, in the utter darkness of the midnight hour. Then a strangely booming, thundering sound would be heard, gradually changing into a wonderful rhythmic harmony—the music of the spheres. A faintly illumined body, a sphere shining dimly in the darkness would appear. This was meant to symbolize the earth. Gradually rainbow-coloured rings, one merging into the other, would arise from the dimly lit earth disk, spreading in all directions—the divine iris. That is how the sun would be seen to shine in ancient Atlantis, in the Niflheim of Norse mythology. The colours would gradually grow brighter, with the seven colours slowly turning into a faint gold and a faint violet. And the form would shine more and more brightly, with the light getting stronger, until it was transformed into the most luminous of the heavenly bodies, into the sun. In the middle of this sun the name of Christ would appear, written in the language of the people who were there. It was then true to say of those who had been present that they had seen the sun at midnight. This means that a symbol of spiritual vision had appeared to them. When their spiritual eyes had been opened they found that all matter became transparent, they saw through the earth, truly seeing the sun at midnight, having overcome matter. The sun at midnight would appear in reversed colour, a violet, reddish colour. For Christians, translated into human terms, the great cosmic symbol thus seen is Christ Jesus coming to the earth. We shall all of us see the sun at midnight. This also does not contradict the New Testament.

Christ is thus the spirit who will transfigure the elements that are still connected with the lower aspect, deify anything which is still connected with worldly aspects. He is the Sun in the realm of the spirit. That is how the Christian esoteric or theosophical Christian inwardly knows him to be. Spiritual awakening comes at the time when cold and darkness are greatest on earth because initiates know that it is the time when certain powers are present in cosmic space and the constellation is most favourable for the awakening. The pupils were taught that they should not be satisfied with ordinary human knowledge but must gain an overview over the whole of humanity, the whole of earth history. Consider the time—they would be told—when the earth was still united with sun and moon. Humanity then lived in the light of the Sun. The body that was later to become the earth was filled with a power of the spirit that also shone forth in every entity. Then the time would come when the sun separated from the earth, when the light shone down on the earth from outside and human beings were in inner darkness. This marked the beginning of their evolution towards a far distant future when they would have the light of the Sun in them again. The higher human being, Sun man, would then develop in them who bears light in him and has power to illumine.

The earth thus arose out of the light, is going through darkness and will come to have the light of the Sun again. Just as the power of the sun's rays decreases as autumn comes and in winter, so does the spiritual principle recede completely during the time when human beings must learn to perceive the external things on earth, perceive matter. But the power of the spirit waxes again, and at Christmas something happens which Paul described by using the parable of the grain of wheat. If the seed that is sown does not perish there can be no new fruit.⁸⁴

At Christmas time the old life passes away, with new life arising in its womb. The sap rises in the trees from this day on, new life wells up, light begins to wax again in the darkness that has been increasing until then. A Christian thinks of this translated into terms of the spirit. Everything that draws us down in the material world must perish to make room for new growth. The Christ came into the world so that from the depths of lowness the principle could be born that will take us to the highest. The stable in the gospel tale is a transformation, a variant of what most ancient wisdom knew as a cave. The feast would be celebrated in hollowed out rock, in different ways, depending on the nation. On the next day there would be a second feast, when it would be shown how sprouting life comes from the rock. This, too, was to show how the spiritual arises from the earthly when it dies.

In all the inner sanctuaries of Egypt, in the Eleusinian mysteries and in the Orphic cult of ancient Greece, in Asia minor, among the Babylonians and Chaldeans, in the Mythraic cult of the Persians and in the mysteries of the Indians—in all of these Christmas would be celebrated in the same way. Those who took part in the lesser mysteries would have presented to them in visible form what the initiates lived through inwardly. They would be shown a prophetic vision of the birth of the Christ in man. Initiates who had already reached that level were said to have reached the sixth stage. There were seven such stages. Stage one was the raven who mediated between the spiritual and the outside world. In the Bible we read of the raven of Elijah,⁸⁵ legend tells of Wotan's raven or the ravens of Barbarossa.⁸⁶

At the second stage the initiate would be an occult individual. He would be admitted to the sanctuary and be present within it.

The third grade was that of the warrior or fighter. Those who had reached this stage were permitted to stand up for spiritual truths before the outside world.

Someone who had reached the fourth grade would be called a lion. His conscious awareness had expanded beyond his own person and become awareness of the whole tribe. Think of the lion of the house of Judah, for instance.

An initiate of the fifth grade not only had awareness for the tribe but had taken in conscious awareness of the spirit of the nation. He would therefore be given the name of his nation, being called a ‘Persian’, for instance, among the Persians. Jesus called Nathanael ‘a true Israelite’,⁸⁷ recognizing him for an initiate of the fifth grade.

The name given to someone who had reached the sixth stage refers to an important quality. Looking at the world of nature around us, we see life forms develop from the lowest ones up to the human being, and from the average human being up to the one who let the Christ be born in him. Among the lower life forms we always see rhythm in life, a rhythm imposed by the sun. Plants always flower at the same time of the year, depending on the species, and open their flowers at the same time of day, depending on the species. Animals, too, show an annual rhythm in their most important vital functions. Only man is gradually losing this regularity. He is coming free of a rhythm that originally was also imposed on him. Yet when love for everything that is awakens in him, flows through him, a new rhythm is born that is his own. This is as regular as the sun's rhythm, which never deviates even the least bit from its orbit—one can hardly imagine what the consequences would be otherwise. An initiate of the sixth degree would be seen to reflect the movement of the sun as it pours its blessings into cosmic space, an image of the Christ in man and in the world of the spirit. The sixth degree initiate would therefore be called the sun hero.

Shivers would pass through the soul of a pupil when he saw such a sun hero in whom the Christ had been inwardly born. This was an event that was felt to be a birth on a physical plane. Initiates of the early centuries put the birth of the historical Jesus at the darkest time of the year, for the soul of the spirit had then risen. It is also why the midnight mass was introduced among the early Christians, a rite held at the dark midnight hour during which a sea of lights would be lit on the altar. The highest degree would then be that of father.⁸⁸

These things, which had happened so often in the individual mysteries, far removed from the affairs of the world, took place in the open, in world history, with Christ Jesus. There can be no more sublime experience for the human soul than the events that happened in the outer, physical world with the conqueror of death who brought the pledge of life everlasting for the soul. The new life fruit that grew from a dying world the initiates of old felt to be the birth of the Christ child in the world of the spirit. Anyone who does not think of the spiritual as separate from the physical world feels a deep connection between the sun at holy night and the life of the spirit that develops out of the world's life. In that holy night we have the birth of the greatest ideal that exists for this world and will come to realization when the earth reaches its goal. Now told in prophesy, it will one day be reality. Love conquering death shines in the lights on the Christmas tree, and in future it will come alive in all of humanity. Now it is the prospect before us.

We can thus sense that the meaning of Christmas is something that comes to us from far ahead but has also been celebrated in earliest times. Seen in the right way, the feast will again have much higher significance for us. The tree, too, will become more important to us as a symbol of that tree in paradise which you all know from the Book of Genesis. Paradise is a picture of man's higher nature, with no evil attached to it. Insight could only be gained at the price of life. A legend can show us how those who had the knowledge saw it.⁸⁹ When Seth wanted to return to paradise, the cherub with the fiery sword allowed him to enter. He found that the tree of life and the tree of knowledge had intertwined. The cherub told him to take three seeds from this united tree. The tree shows what man will be one day, something which only initiates have so far achieved. When Adam died, Seth took the three seeds and put them in Adam's mouth. A flaming bush grew out of them, with the words ejeh asher ejeh appearing in it—I am he who is, was and shall be. The legend goes on to tell that Moses made his staff with magic powers of its wood. Later the gate to Solomon's temple is said to have been made of it. A piece of it is reputed to have dropped into the pool at Bethesda and given it special powers. Finally, it is said, the cross of Christ was made of it. It is an image for life that is dying, passing away in death, and has the power in it to produce new life.

A great symbol stands before us—life that has overcome death, the wood from the seed taken from paradise. This life, dying and rising again, is the Rose Cross. It was not without reason that Goethe, that great man, said:

So long as you don't have it,
this word: ‘Die and become!’
you're but a miserable guest
here on this earth.⁵¹

It is a wonderful thing to see the relationship between the tree of paradise, the wood of the cross and the new life that grows from it. To gain an inner feeling for the birth of the eternal human being in temporal life—let that be our Christ idea, our Christmas. Man must apply it to himself even now: ‘The light shines into the darkness’, and the darkness must gradually come to comprehend the light. All the souls in whom Christmas ignites the right spark will be alive to the principle that comes to birth in them at Christmas, the ability that will become a power in them to see, to feel and to will it that the gospel words are turned around to become: ‘The light shines into the darkness, and the darkness has gradually come to grasp the light.’

• 81. See also the lectures given in Berlin on 19 Dec. 1904 (GA 92) in The Supersensible in Man and World, tr. p. M. Allen, and 21 Dec. 1909 (GA 117) in Festivals of the Seasons
• 82. John 3: 30.
• 83. John 1: 5.
• 84. 1 Cor. 15:35-44.
• 85. 1 Kings 17: 4-6.
• 86. Frederick Barbarossa (redbeard) or Frederick I, Holy Roman emperor (1152–1190), king of Germany and Italy. Led the Third Crusade, during which he drowned. Legend has it that he sleeps in the Kyffhäuser mountain until the ravens come to wake him because he is needed again. Translator.
• 87. John 1:47.
• 88. See also Steiner R. An Esoteric Cosmology (in GA 94), lecture of 30 May 1906. Tr. R. Querido. St George 1978.
• 89. See also Steiner R. The Temple Legend (GA93), especially the lecture given in Berlin on 29 May 1905. Tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985.
• 51. Goethe, West-östlicher Diwan, poem ‘Selige Sehnsuch’

In the observations we are making here we have to enter more and more into the history of the age and see how cosmic forces work into the evolution of the present time and form the foundations of our human life. You have seen from our discussions yesterday that it becomes increasingly necessary to transform the rigid, abstract concepts one is accustomed to at present into flowing, mobile, living concepts if mankind is to progress. A special light is thrown upon all the facts in question by that soul force we call intelligence. The man of the present is particularly proud of his intelligence. He considers the gradual acquisition of intelligence a special mark of distinction.

If man today looks back into earlier epochs when people had pictorial thoughts, he considers their constitution of spirit and soul in that time childlike. He believes that only through his intelligence and his science can one acquire a correct knowledge of what people in earlier periods of evolution tried to comprehend through myths and legends. He looks back to those childlike stages of evolution and is very proud of having come so far, especially in the development of intelligence. Now let us consider the special characteristics of human intelligence, that soul force in which modern man takes such pride. If we speak today of intelligence we refer to a soul force of which we have a definite concept and cannot imagine it to be different. People of former epochs, however, also had intelligence, but of a different sort. If we wish to become fully acquainted with the significance of so-called intelligence for modern man, we must ask: What was the nature of former intelligence, and how did it gradually change into the intelligence of our time?

Today we shall not go back further than the third post Atlantean period, the Egypto-Chaldean, followed by the Greco-Latin, which in turn was followed by our own. We shall consider the peculiarity of the intelligence of these ancient peoples and then pass over to the special kind of intelligence that we of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch possess. You see from this that I assume it is not correct to think intelligence is intelligence, that only one kind is possible; that whoever has our intelligence is intelligent, and whoever does not have it is un-intelligent. This is not correct. Intelligence passes through metamorphoses and transforms itself. In the Egypto-Chaldean period it was different from today. This can best be described by saying, those people felt and comprehended instinctively, through their intelligence, their relationship to the entire cosmos. The Egyptians and Chaldeans thought very little, or not at all, about what modern man thinks by means of his intelligence. When they brought their intelligence into play their connection with the cosmos lived in it. They knew their relationship to this or that zodiacal constellation; they knew what kind of influence moon, sun, and planets had upon man's soul and bodily constitutions. They knew the influence of the course of the seasons upon him. All this they grasped through their intelligence. They acquired an entirely inward picture of their relationship with the cosmos.

This intelligence had become transformed by the time the Egypto-Chaldean period came to an end in the eighth century B.C. The connection with the cosmos was no longer the vital experience it had been prior to this time. It lived like an echo, a kind of memory in human souls. In its place there entered into the Greek intelligence man's reflecting on himself as an earth dweller, how he is related to the cosmos. But the Greek had a certain feeling in using his intelligence. He understood everything of the earthly world that is subject to death. He knew that if he wanted to comprehend the supersensible he had to turn to that power of perception which still existed atavistically in the pre-Christian era. Through reflection, through intelligence, he learned to know the laws which underlie all that dies on earth. Said the pupils of Plato: “If I want to understand the living I must see; by merely thinking I only grasp what is dead.”

In the Greek mystery schools something quite definite in this connection was explained. It was about like this: Everything is spiritual; spiritual processes and laws also underlie what seems to be material. There are spiritual laws that concern you in so far as you have a body. When you pass through the portal of death your body is delivered to the material powers and substances of the earth. But these powers and substances are only apparently material. They too are spiritual, but they are permeated by that spiritual force which appears to you as death. If with your intelligence you grasp any kind of laws, you see that these are the laws of death. They are the laws that are active in graves, in corpses. If you want to know the nature of the spiritual powers in which you live here on earth, or in the body-free state between death and a new birth—thus spoke the mystery teacher to his pupils—then you must be convinced of that which you see. If you are not so convinced, concepts and ideas developed only through your intelligence will merely grasp the spirit in matter, in your physical body.

Whereas the Egypto-Chaldean felt and perceived in his intelligence his relationship to the entire cosmos, the Greek perceived through his intelligence what governs the tomb. We, too, only perceive through our intelligence what governs the tomb; however, we are not conscious of it. So, we go to the dissecting laboratories, investigate the corpse, and consider the laws of the corpse that we grasp through our intelligence to be the laws of man. Yet, they are only the laws of the grave.

But again, since the middle of the fifteenth century, a gradual transformation of intelligence is taking place. Although it is still very much like that of the Greeks it is undergoing a transformation, and we are in the beginning of it. In the coming centuries and millennia this intelligence will become something very, very different. Even today it shows a tendency toward what will come in future, a tendency merely to grasp what is error, untruth, deception; a tendency to ponder only what is evil.

The mystery pupils and especially the initiates had known for some time that human intelligence approaches its development toward evil, and that it becomes more and more impossible to recognize the good through mere intelligence. Mankind finds itself today within this transition. We may say, it is still barely possible, if men exert their intelligence and do not bear especially wild instincts in themselves, to look toward the light of what is good. But human intelligence will more and more develop the inclination to plan evil, to bring error into knowledge, and insert evil into man's moral life.

This is one of the reasons initiates called themselves men of anxiety. Indeed, if one observes the evolution of mankind from this aspect as I have just done, it causes anxiety, precisely because of the way intelligence is developing. It is not for nothing that it fills modern man with pride and haughtiness. This is the pre-taste of intelligence becoming evil in the fifth post-Atlantean age, which is beginning now. If man were not to develop anything else but intelligence he would become an evil being on earth. If we want to think of a wholesome future for mankind, we must not count on the one-sided development of intelligence. In Egypt and Chaldea, it was good; later it entered into a relationship with the forces of death; and it will enter into a relationship with the forces of error, deception, and evil.

This is something about which mankind should have no illusions. In an unbiased fashion humanity should reckon with the fact that it has to protect itself against this one-sided development of intelligence. It is not in vain that precisely through the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit another element will be added by taking in what can be gained through a renewed perception of the spiritual world. This cannot be grasped by intelligence, but only if we take into ourselves what the science of initiation brings down from the spiritual world through vision.

But something quite objective is necessary here. At this point we confront a deep secret of Christian-esoteric development. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place in the course of earth evolution human beings could not avoid gradually becoming evil through their intelligence; inevitably they would fall prey to error. You know that with the Mystery of Golgotha there flowed into mankind's evolution not merely a doctrine, a theory, a world view, a religion, but a real fact. In the man Jesus of Nazareth there lived the extraterrestrial being, the Christ. Through the fact that the Christ dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth, when Jesus died the Christ-being passed over into earthly evolution. He is within it. We must only be conscious that this is an objective fact which has nothing to do with what we know or feel subjectively. We must know it for the sake of knowledge; we must take it up into our ethical culture for the sake of our morality. The Christ-being has flowed into mankind's evolution. He is within it since the resurrection. He dwells especially in our soul forces. Take this fact in its full depth!

Look at the difference between men who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha and those who lived after it. Certainly they are the same people, because souls pass through repeated earth lives. But we must differentiate between those who lived before this Mystery and those who lived after it. A general concept of God is not the Christ concept. We can arrive at a general concept of God if we observe nature in her phenomena, if we observe physical man, externally. The Christ-being is of such a nature that we can only come near it if, in the course of earthly life, we uncover something in ourselves. We can find the general concept of God by simply saying: We have come into existence out of the forces of the world. The Christ concept we must find in ourselves by advancing beyond the phenomena in nature. If, living in the world, we do not find the concept of God, this is a kind of sickness. A healthy human being is never really atheistic. If he is, he must be bodily or psychically sick in some way, and the illness expresses itself in atheism.

To be unable to recognize the Christ is not an illness but a misfortune, the neglecting of an opportunity offered by life. By reflecting upon our having been born out of nature and its forces, and pursuing this thought with a healthy soul, we may arrive at a concept of God. By experiencing in the course of our life something like a re-birth we may arrive at a concept of Christ. Birth leads to God; re-birth to Christ. This re-birth, through which Christ as a Being may be found in man, could not be attained prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. This is the difference upon which I wish you to focus your attention. Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha man could not yet experience this re-birth, could not yet recognize that Christ lives in him, because the Christ being had not yet flowed into mankind. After the Mystery of Golgotha man can recognize Him. He can find the spark of Christ in himself if he exerts himself in the way he lives.

In this re-birth, this finding of the Christ-spark in oneself, in being able to say sincerely and honestly to oneself, “Not I but the Christ in me,” lies the possibility of preventing the intellect from falling prey to deception and evil. And this, in the esoteric Christian sense, is the higher concept of redemption. We must develop our intelligence, for we must not become un-intelligent; but in striving to develop it we are faced with the temptation to fall into error and evil. We can escape this temptation only if we acquire a feeling for what the Mystery of Golgotha has brought into mankind's evolution.

It is already so, that man in his consciousness of Christ, in his union with Christ, can find the possibility of escaping evil and error. The man of Egypt and Chaldea did not need re-birth in Christ because he still felt his relationship with the cosmos through his natural intelligence. The Greek faced the seriousness of death when he surrendered to his intelligence. Now mankind lives at the beginning of an age in which intelligence would become evil if human souls would not let themselves be permeated by the Christ-power. This is a very serious matter. It shows how certain things that proclaim themselves in our time have to be taken; how we have to be aware that in our age men acquire the aptitude for evil precisely because they approach a higher development of their intelligence. It would of course be entirely wrong to believe that we should suppress intelligence. It must not be suppressed. But for the person with insight a certain courage will be needed in future in surrendering to intelligence, because it tempts one to evil and error; and because, in the permeation of intelligence with the Christ-principle, we must find the possibility of transforming intelligence. It would become completely Ahrimanic if the Christ-principle were not to permeate human souls.

You see how much of what I have just characterized is already coming to light, which is perceptible to a person with insight. As you think about it, just notice how many cruelties permeate our culture, cruelties with which the cruelties of barbarian times cannot be compared. If you consider this you will hardly doubt that the dawn of the decline in intelligence is proclaiming itself. One should not look superficially at the so-called cultural phenomena of our age. Nor should one doubt that modern men have to arouse themselves to a real comprehension of the Christ-impulse if evolution is to go forward in a healthy way. Two evidences of this can be definitely seen today: People who are very intelligent and have a decided inclination toward evil; and many others who subconsciously suppress but do not fight this inclination toward evil, merely letting their intelligence sleep. Drowsiness of the soul; or, with wakeful souls, a strong inclination toward evil and error—this may be observed at present.

Now remember what I said to you here one evening before my last journey, how different children are who were born within the last five to eight years, from those born some decades earlier. They have a trace of melancholy in their faces which is clearly discernible. This comes from the fact that souls today do not gladly descend into this world so filled with materialism. One might say that the souls have a certain fear and reluctance to enter the world in which intelligence is inclined toward evil and is in a declining development.

This also is something future educators and teachers must take into their consciousness. Children today are different from those of some decades ago. Even superficial observation shows this clearly. One has to educate and teach them differently from previous times. One must teach out of awareness that one has to bring about a salvation in the case of every individual child; that one has to steer him toward finding the Christ-impulse in the course of his life, toward finding a re-birth within himself.

Such things must not live in the teacher as mere theory; they can be introduced into one's teaching only if one is strongly taken hold of by them in one's own soul. It must be demanded of teachers especially that their souls be strongly gripped by the anxiety that arises in confronting the temptation the intellect offers. The pride that man takes today in his intellect might indeed take its revenge if it were not checked by his being consciously able to say, strongly and energetically, “The best in me as a human being of this and following incarnations is what I find in myself as the Christ-impulse.”

We must, however, be clear that this Christ-impulse must not be the dogmatism of some religious body. Since the middle of the fifteenth century religious communities, instead of bringing the Christ-impulse close to mankind, have contributed to its alienation. The religious bodies pretend this or that, but in doing so they do not bring the Christ-impulse near to man. It is necessary for a person to feel that everything in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha which can reveal itself to his inmost being is connected with what has come into the earth through that Mystery. If we experience the true meaning of the earth as inherent in that Mystery, then we must bring ourselves to say: The evolution of the earth would be meaningless if man were to fall prey through his intelligence to evil and error. Thus, if we feel wherein the real meaning of earth evolution actually lies, we also feel that this evolution would be senseless without the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must permeate ourselves through and through with this conviction if, today and in future, we wish to do something toward man's education and instruction. We require these comprehensive points of view. But you know how far people are today from such views. Therefore, nothing is more necessary than to point again and again not only to the importance of spiritual scientific teaching, but to the seriousness that must take hold of our souls through our learning to know through spiritual science the pertinent facts in the evolution of mankind. For not only our knowledge but our whole life is to receive an impulse through spiritual science. Without our feeling this seriousness we are not true scientists of the spirit.

I beg you to pay close attention to this particular revelation out of spiritual science: That human intelligence, left to itself, travels on the path toward the Ahrimanic; that it can become active for the good only through taking in the true Christ-impulse. I believe that whoever takes the full seriousness of this truth into himself will also carry the same seriousness into the relationship he forms to the various world concepts and movements of the present time. Here there is much to be done.

People who have recently come from the East of Europe tell with great horror of a fact that indeed does not testify to an advance on the path toward civilization. I refer to the coming into existence of the so-called “gun-women.” This is a special class of people, women of the East-European population, who are being used in the present revolutionary movements. In certain regions of the East young women are chosen and equipped with guns left over from the war, and their task is to shoot those people who are opposing the government in power. These female gunmen are dressed up in stolen finery and take their pleasure in carrying guns and shooting people. They consider it to be in tune with modern attitudes to brag about the fine feeling they have gradually acquired for the way the blood of young people spurts out, and how the blood of older people looks. In truth, we have arrived at a quite special configuration of our modern civilization! For the institution of gun-women is a development of the present age.

We have to point to such phenomena. They make us see the counterpart of the seriousness of our age. Of course, we need not know of these abominable excesses in our so-called progressive culture in order really to feel this seriousness which calls upon us for devoted attention to it at the present time. Such seriousness arises in us out of knowing the evolution of mankind itself. One could wish that the sleep which has taken hold of modern man may pass over into an awakening. The most worthy awakening can only consist in being gripped by the earnestness of the task given to humanity, and by seeing the danger of the intellect being one-sidedly left to itself and moving in an Ahrimanic direction. This should be the force permeating us with such earnestness.

These Monday gatherings are intended to develop into truly intimate gatherings of our Theosophical community. Those present should speak as much as possible. I believe that this is the best way to enable a real discussion, with questions and answers from the group.

I would like to talk about apocalypses because this topic is suitable for leading more and more into the whole current that we call theosophical. When we talk about apocalypses, we will have to discuss all kinds of deeper, theosophical questions. Today, only a brief introduction will be given. We will then also have the opportunity to talk about a wide range of topics.

Of all the apocalypses, the best known is the secret revelation of John, which can be found at the end of the New Testament. There are a great many interpretations of this apocalypse. If you delve a little deeper into these interpretations, you will find that they often go very deeply into theology; but some are also very shallow. I myself will try to introduce you to the Apocalypse of John from a mystical point of view and then also to other apocalypses.

You might wonder why I am touching on this topic. However, the audience should be aware that we will be delving deeply into theosophy, touching on profound theosophical questions, and we would hardly find words if, in connection with this topic, the basic questions and basic goals were to be discussed in detail.

When speaking about such a lofty topic as the Apocalypse, it must be assumed that the main basic concepts of theosophical knowledge and theosophical goals are in place, and that you are convinced that Theosophy has a place in the world and that it not only has a general human but also a good scientific basis. You cannot talk about apocalypses if you still doubt whether Theosophy is superstition or real knowledge. We need to be clear about this fundamental question. The questions that are part of preparing the ground for Theosophy will all be touched upon. I will not only give the basic concepts of Theosophy, but the related questions will also be discussed. So, by talking about apocalypses, I would like to assume that the basis of the Theosophical worldview is generally given.

What does it mean to talk about apocalypses? First of all, I would just like to note that an apocalypse is a very specific way of looking at the world. You see the world in the form of an apocalypse. The one who can express an apocalypse himself has reached a certain point of view. You can read the apocalypse of others and you will learn very deep truths from it. But one cannot, without having reached a certain level of realization, utter what is contained in an apocalypse. There have been apocalypses among all peoples and at all times. We too, in Theosophy, have apocalypses.

Who can now speak in terms of apocalypses? I will answer this question, and that will lead us deeper into the essence of the apocalypses than a definition. The path of knowledge is prescribed for us; we are told how to come to knowledge and thereby to real spiritual effectiveness. Perhaps you have followed the stages one has to go through to enter and follow the path. You know that one has to develop very specific qualities in order to gain the freedom of vision that takes us away from what is merely sensually perceived and allows us to glimpse into the spiritual world. To do this, it is necessary for the human being to learn to distinguish between the 'eternal' and the 'temporal', to direct their gaze not at the temporal, not at the passing, but at the eternal, at what remains, so that they can then change their whole perception of the world around them, namely that certain things that are extremely important to the everyday person become unimportant to them, and other things gain in importance. What the everyday person finds important, such as the satisfaction of desires and everything that our self-interest dictates to us, must become unimportant. What must become important is what we have in mind as the eternal goal of humanity. We must have a sense of the ideal, of that which cannot be determined according to all possible advantages, but from the insight that it is about the human being, for the sake of the human being. If we have a sense of the ideal, we must also develop the sense that we learn to love it. The ideal is tremendously valuable. How many can sincerely look into their hearts and say that they truly love the ideal as one loves a child or a loved one? The ideal is far too intangible for people to grasp. But we must learn to love the intangible, that which exists only in the mind.

Then another quality we have to develop is “thought control”. We must not let our thoughts drift to and fro, but must practice controlling them so that we are able to hold on to a thought for as long as necessary to gain very specific knowledge through it and to become clear in a certain way through it. Man must realize that thoughts usually control him. To control thoughts means to master thoughts. We must not let ourselves be carried away by this or that urge to do this or that action. We must be given a sure direction. We must control ourselves only through the center within ourselves.

The third thing is that we acquire a certain even-tempered attitude towards the events of everyday life, which usually make people either euphoric or sad. We must have a certain “even-temperedness” both towards events that lift us up to heaven and towards those that plunge us into the deepest sorrow. Only by maintaining our composure throughout events can we find the way to judge things perceptively.

Then we must develop what we call 'tolerance'. This is a word that is easy to pronounce but means much more than is usually thought. How often in life do we condemn without asking why this or that person has come to this or that action. We must always ask: how and why? We must not be carried away to criticize. We must understand, understand everything in the broadest sense. If we develop this attitude, we will enter into the state of mind that kindles the life of knowledge in us. Do not think that the mind has no influence on the life of knowledge. Today, people overestimate the one-sided intellect and underestimate the qualities that lie deeper in the soul. They do not believe at all that these are the things that lead to knowledge. You can be a great scholar, you can have great knowledge and still not have free judgment. It would be quite easy for a wise man to feel superior to a child in his simplicity. But it would be quite wrong for him to give in to this sentiment. The wise man rejects the thought of being wiser than a child. Those who insist that they are more understanding and clever than others can never become wise. Those who accept the judgment of others with equanimity can become wise, can learn to understand by stepping back and judging from the perspective of the other. The fact that they understand the simple – even the simplest – is uplifting and useful for real progress and is a result of their tremendous tolerance.

A further quality must then be developed, which in Theosophy is called “faith”. Those who believe that they have come to a conclusion with their knowledge will not progress. The wise man must always be in the mood to realize that he actually knows very little and that every moment can teach him something completely new, that every expression of life can be a revelation to him. The one who truly walks the path of knowledge takes it so far that he says to himself: I may experience something in the next minute that throws everything I have believed and assumed so far overboard. In ordinary life, one will not take this to the extreme, but in the moment when one approaches anything in search of knowledge, one must really take it so far as to give up belief in one's previous knowledge. The wise man will never say: 'That cannot be', but will say: 'Everything is possible'. Through what I already know, I must never allow a judgment to arise about the possibility or impossibility of anything. The belief in the possibility of progressing to ever new revelations is a quality that the pathfinder must develop.

Then there is a quality that comes by itself, a quality that is called 'objectivity' or 'balance'. This helps us to avoid the pitfalls of life that condemn us to proclaim an apparent truth everywhere. This balance is not just a sum of everything else. Those who want to become wise must remain in balance; they must not let themselves be driven off course.

Once these qualities have been developed within us, the highest that can be attained at the preliminary stage of development comes, namely that man has the 'longing' to be truly free.

The theosophical movement wants to liberate people by speaking with universal tolerance of that which can apply to all people at all times.

This is what the pathfinder develops. When he has developed these qualities to a certain degree, then he is ready for what is called discipleship.

Then comes the moment when he has a great experience of tremendous significance: from this point on, he receives impressions from the spiritual world, from a completely different world, from a world that lies behind our world and of which our world is only the effect. He enters the world of the spiritual. He then looks at the world from the other side. What we call space and time no longer apply to him. It makes no difference to him that he is living in this particular incarnation. He could just as easily be living in a different incarnation. He could have lived thousands of years ago – when he looks at what he is now seeing, he would see it in the same way. He could even be living in the future and would still experience everything in the same way.

This is the first level of discipleship. Such a person is called a homeless person; he is removed from the Heimav. In return, he also says things that no longer refer to this or that place, to this or that people, to this or that race, but he says things that refer to all races, to all times and all peoples.

The first stage enables him to see only what is nearest. At this stage, he only sees what belongs to a so-called “root race”. The disciple, then, sees what relates to our present root race, back to the time when the Atlanteans disappeared.

Then the second stage of discipleship begins, which is not attained through theory, not through concepts and ideas, but through a real insight. The Theosophical worldview teaches that man does not live only once in the world, but many times, that he embodies himself again and again and that his actions are related. The individual lives are connected by cause and effect. This can be seen by observing life. It is also possible to understand this concept in theory. Many followers of Theosophy are still at the stage of believing reincarnation and karma to be true only as a conceptual and intellectual realization. However, the second stage of discipleship has the knowledge of the truth of reincarnation and karma. The disciple does not suspect the truth of reincarnation and karma – he knows it.

Now comes the third stage of discipleship. Re-embodiment is not an eternal thing. Before the middle of the Lemurian period, there was not yet what we call reincarnation, and after the middle of the sixth root race, this kind of reincarnation will cease again. Another kind of life and re-embodiment will then be there. Up to the middle of the sixth root race, man will be reincarnated. Reincarnation will then depend on the will of the person; today it is independent of it. We can say there is a first moment before reincarnation and a last moment after it. Before that, man was one who did not incarnate, and after that he will be one who no longer reincarnates. To see beyond the realm of reincarnation is the attribute of the third level of discipleship. This disciple, this chela at the third level, is called “swan”. When he looks at the first and the last, that is, at that which is higher than all reincarnation, then he is able to write and speak of apocalypses. What is contained in any apocalypse initially comes from those initiates who not only overlook the time of reincarnation, but see from the first to the last. To show how man has come into this reincarnation and how he comes out of it again, that is the task of every apocalypse. It has to describe a distant past and a distant future, and in doing so it also encompasses the present. In the Apocalypse of John you will find a description of the seven sub-races of our fifth root race, because what is said of the seven churches refers to the seven sub-races of the fifth root race. The admonitions that the apocalyptic John addresses to the churches are the admonitions that the chela John calls out to the individual sub-races. Each sub-race is connected with a very specific constellation in heaven. Therefore, there are seven stars that represent the seven angels: they guide the genii of the seven sub-races. Then one is led to the first and to the last. The first is the human being who stands before reincarnation, and the last is he who still stands after having overcome reincarnation.

John was in a so-called initiation shell. He also says that he was in spirit. And what is revealed there is nothing other than the inspiration of a chela in the third degree of discipleship; it is an apocalypse of the swan. The swan is the one who establishes the connection between the most highly inspired and man. This is expressed in the most important legends.

So the disciple becomes homeless at the first level. Those who have become swans can attain the higher revelations. They are those who come into our world, but you are not allowed to ask them their name because they come from a world beyond. This is expressed in a great, powerful allegory that also has a deeply mystical meaning. It is a very profound truth that is expressed in the Lohengrin saga; through Lohengrin, who comes with the swan, who was thus a disciple - a chela - of the third degree. Great truths are found with him. Only he who understands the saga of Lohengrin understands world history from the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth century.

Now I have explained to you the origin of who can speak apocalyptically, who can create a picture of the world, independent of space and time. We will also talk about the distant past, the present, but also the future. This will become clear when we talk about the apocalypse revealed by Theosophy. There we will see what man can set as a great goal, because it really is a great goal.

From the question and answer session

The materialist says that we follow animality to the stage where it has become human, and now we follow the urge present in man at a certain higher level.

But this is not based on knowledge, it is based on materialistic dogma. You do not follow the laws of nature by dogmatically limiting these laws of nature to a very specific point and saying: so far and no further. You can only follow the laws if you recognize them. You have to combine the knowledge of the laws with following them.

An example of this: the religious person will not merely rely on the fact that he says: I do not lie because it puts me at a disadvantage or makes me contemptible in the eyes of my fellow human beings. He is much more convinced that lying has a broader meaning, that it is something that goes against the divine order of the world and that it brings its punishment, its effects, with it. If you support the truth, you are supporting the advancement of a certain development. If you describe events differently than they are, you do the same as if you were to suppress a plant germ: you withhold a very specific direction of development. This does not seem so bad as long as you are not aware that you can also withhold something in spiritual growth. But the occultist says: a lie is a murder. What would have developed as a living being is killed by the lie.

The division of the sexes is related to birth and death.

The second stage of discipleship resolves doubt and makes superstition impossible.

The investigation of the reincarnation of another human being must be completely impersonal. If the researcher is asked, he can get involved.

In answer to the question of which student would be able to read in the Akasha Chronicle, I would like to reply: anyone who is ready to become a disciple can read in the Akasha Chronicle. There are two types of reading in the Akasha Chronicle: the actual reading is possible as soon as one becomes a disciple at all. But one must first learn to spell. The Akasha Chronicle throws mirror images into the astral plane. It is located at the boundary between the rupa and arupa levels. But you can, for example, find Caesar's war campaign in the astral plane as a reflection of the records in the Akasha Chronicle.

Evolutionary Events in the Human Organism up to the Departure of the Moon. Osiris and Isis as Builders of the Upper Human Form.

In the preceding lectures we have brought before our eyes, in connection with the nature of man, a long series of facts related to the evolution of the earth and of the whole solar system. In the last two lectures we directed our particular attention to bringing forward those facts of the evolution of sun, moon, and earth which had a sort of resurrection in the Egyptian mysteries, and which the pupil of these mysteries, as well as the whole Egyptian people, learned to know. In his clairvoyant seeing the pupil actually learned to know all the things mentioned here, as well as those that will be brought out today.

The greater part of the people, who were unable to raise themselves to clairvoyance, learned about all this in a most significant picture. We have often touched upon this picture, which was the most important one in the Egyptian world-view. It is embodied in the myth of Isis and Osiris. We are all acquainted with this picture, and no one who knows anything believes that it is without significance.¹ It was not only a picture for these people, but it was much more. What was contained in the Isis myth was told approximately as follows.

In earlier times Osiris long ruled the earth, to the blessing of humanity. This continued up to a particular moment, later characterized as the point when the sun stood in the sign of the Scorpion. Then it was that Typhon, or Set, killed his brother Osiris by inducing him to lay himself down in a chest, which Typhon then closed and committed to the sea. Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, searched for her brother and husband, and after finding him brought him to Egypt. But the evil Typhon, still striving for the destruction of Osiris, cut him in pieces. Isis gathered the fragments together and buried them in various places. (Various graves of Osiris are still shown in Egypt.) Then Isis bore Horus, who avenged his father on Typhon. Osiris was now again admitted into the world of the divine spiritual beings and is no longer active on earth, but he aids men when they sojourn in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Therefore in Egypt the path of the dead was called the way to Osiris.

This is the myth, which is one of the most ancient components of the Egyptian conception of life. Although there were later additions and changes, this legend pervaded all the cults of Egypt as long as any life remained in the Egyptian religious views.

Having directed our attention to this myth, into which was compressed what the pupil saw as a real event in the holy secrets of the mystery schools, we must now turn our attention to what we began yesterday and try to gain a clearer understanding of what was produced in man through the influence of the various aspects of the moon. We have spoken of the twenty-eight nerves proceeding from the spinal cord, which stem from the positions of the moon during the twenty-eight days that the moon requires to return to its first form. We have probed the mystery of how, through the cosmic forces, these twenty-eight pairs of nerves were formed in man from outside. Now I beg you to heed well the following.

So far as possible in a short discourse, we shall now describe, as precisely as possible, what the Egyptian pupil learned about human evolution in a still broader sense. Those who are too strongly infected by modern anatomy will say that this description is pure nonsense from the contemporary point of view. They may say this, but they should be aware that this is the doctrine that the Egyptian neophyte not only learned, but clairvoyantly observed. I shall speak to those who are perceptive enough to be able to follow. This teaching was not only the result of the vision of the Egyptian in the mysteries, but it is also accepted as true by the modern occultist of today.

Let us recall what was said in the last lectures about how the earth, while still at the beginning of its evolution, consisted entirely of human germs, which formed the primeval earth-mist. The Indian clairvoyant, as well as the Egyptian, could see the entire subsequent human form sprout forth spiritually out of this spiritual human germ. All that later grew out of this human germ could be seen clairvoyantly at that time. But one could also look back on those parts of man that first arose out of the germ. The first that arose out of this germ, when the sun was still connected with the earth, was actually like a sort of plant, which opened its chalice upward. These forms filled, so to say, the whole earth as they shaped themselves out of the primeval mist. But in the earliest time in which this arose, like a sort of flower corolla opening itself into cosmic space, this corolla was scarcely visible; man would only have been able to perceive it by feeling its presence as a chalice-shaped warmth-body. This was present at first as a warmth-body. While the earth was still connected with the sun, the inner part of this human formation began to light up and to shine into cosmic space. If at that time one had been able to see with the eyes of today, on approaching such a light-form one would have seen a sparkling sphere, like a glittering sun, which cast its gleams into space in a regular form. Today, one can hardly form a clear picture of what existed at that time. This would only be possible if one could conceive of the pure atmosphere of our earth as completely filled with fire-flies raying their light out into cosmic space. Thus would the first beginnings of man have shone into cosmic space when the earth was still connected with the sun. But this was not all that existed. At about the same time a sort of gas-body took form, outside and around the chalice form. Many substances were present in this, in solution, just as today we find fluid and solid substances in the human and animal bodies. At that time, however, they were air-forms. Soon after all this had arisen, other germs came out of the common earth-mass, germs that were the first indications of our present animal kingdom. Thus the human kingdom came forth first; then came the germs that gave rise to the animal kingdom. The earth still consisted of an air-mass, of gleaming light-disseminating bodies, which shone into cosmic space. Within this air-mass emerged the first traces of sexless animals, which stood at the lowest stage of the present animal kingdom. We shall see that these animals, then arising in their first outlines, had a certain significance for man.

The important thing is that these animals, which then made their appearance, composed the thickest of the gas-masses, like thick clots of gas. These animals developed through most diverse forms to a certain level, and when the sun had just gone forth from the earth, the highest animal form was the fish, although not the fish of today. The form of the animals of that time was entirely different from that of the present fishes, but it stood at the same stage. In the course of evolution our fishes have retained what could be achieved while the sun was still in the earth. Now the earth condensed to a water-earth and the densest forms, the animals, swam in this water-earth. Something singular now came about. Certain of the primitive fish-forms remained animals and troubled themselves no further about the progress of evolution. Others, however, retained a certain relation to the human shapes in the following way.

At the same time that the sun went out from the earth, the earth began to turn on its axis so that at one time one side of the earth would be shone upon by the sun, and at another time it would not be shone upon; thus day and night began. But at that time, the days and nights were much longer than today. At the time when the moon had not yet split off, whenever such a human form (already considerably condensed) was on the sunny side, there was organized into this gas-mass something of such an animal form below in the water-earth. Human and animal forms were combined so that there was a human form above and an animal form below. The upper part protruded toward the sun, but the lower parts were weaker, and the animal body joined itself to them. The upper part protruded out of the water-earth, and the sun influence, proceeding through the flower-men, worked on the inner forces of earth and moon. Because here an animal form was joined to the human body, which was then at the fish level, it was said that the sun, which illuminated the human body, stood at the sign of the Fish. The first hint of this formation actually coincided with the sun's being in the sign of the Fish, but the sun passed many times through this sign before the next formation took place. The beginning of this formation, however, was the time when the sun stood in the zodiacal sign of the Fish, and this sign received its name because beings at the fish stage united themselves with man at that time.

Now, as we know, evolution proceeded in such a way that moon and earth formed one body. At the separation of the sun, Yahweh remained with the earth along with the moon forces, and among his ministers was the godly form the Egyptians called Osiris. Until the moon left the earth, evolution proceeded in a strange way.

We know that the earth was a water-earth, and the formation in the water attained an ever lower stage during the time preceding the departure of the moon. When the moon withdrew, man's lower nature was at about the stage of a great amphibian. This is what the Bible calls the serpent, and what is elsewhere called the lindworm or dragon. During the time when the moon was withdrawing, more and more of the animal kingdom had worked itself into the lower human form. When the moon finally left, man had a hideous animal-like form in his lower parts, although above he still had the last remnants of a light-form into which the forces of the sun flowed from without. It was still possible for the light-beings to work into man. He moved about in the primal ocean, floating and swimming, with this remarkable light-form protruding out of the water-earth. What was this light-form? In the course of time it had transformed itself into a powerful and comprehensive sense-organ. When the moon withdrew, this transformation was complete. When man swam in the primal ocean, if some dangerous being approached him, he could perceive it with this organ. Especially could warmth and cold be perceived with it. This organ later shriveled up, so that today it is the so-called pineal gland. At that time man moved within the earth-mass, floating and swimming, using this organ as a sort of lantern. In very young children we still find a soft place in the head, and it was from there that this organ protruded into cosmic space.

There were ever higher animal forms, which man took into himself. At one time, what had developed out of the fish was called the Water-man, because it lived in the water and contained the germ of the later man. A still higher form that developed could be called the Goat. The singular thing is that what corresponded to man in his lower members actually gave the name to the then prevailing constellation. The feet are actually the original Fish; the calves or shanks are the Water-man, which for a long time enabled man to steer while swimming; the knee we find to be related to the sign of the Goat. The animal kingdom evolved more and more, and what became the thigh was designated as the Archer. It would lead too far if I attempted to explain this expression, but we shall try to give a picture of how man looked when the animal kingdom corresponded to the Archer.

Man was an animal then, which for the first time could move about on the islands that were forming in the water. In his upper parts he became ever finer, and at the top he actually preserved the flower-form. He was illuminated from above by an organ that he carried on his head like a lantern. The then human form is rightly conceived if we see the upper part as etheric and the lower part as animal-like. In older pictures of the Zodiac, the form of the Archer is shown as an animal below and a man above. These signs portray the stage of evolution at which man then stood, even as the centaur reflects an actual stage of evolution-upward man and downward horse. The horse must not be taken literally, but as a representative of the animal kingdom. This was the artistic principle in earlier times; the artist portrayed what the clairvoyant described to him or what he himself had seen. Artists were often initiates. It is said that Homer was a blind seer, but that means that he was clairvoyant. He could look back into the Akashic Record. Homer, the blind seer, was much more seeing in the spiritual sense than were the other Greeks. Thus, the centaur was once an actual human form. When man looked like this, the moon had not yet withdrawn. The moon force was still in the earth, and in man was still what had formed itself during the sun period, the shining pineal gland, which he bore like a lantern on his head.

When the moon withdrew from the earth, sexuality appeared. The centaur-man was still sexless. Sexuality appeared when the sun stood in the sign of the Scorpion, and this is why we always connect sex with this sign. The Scorpion is what in the animal kingdom corresponds to the stage of evolution at which man stood when he had developed sexuality. In his upper half, man was turned toward the cosmic forces, but in his lower half he was a bisexual being. He had become a sexual being. When the clairvoyant pupil of the Egyptian mysteries directed his gaze toward this period of earth-evolution, he saw the earth peopled by men whose lower bodily form was becoming denser, in harmony with their baser nature, but who had a luminous human shape above.

Then began the time when, through the forces of the moon, the nerve-filaments appeared in the region where the spine now is. The formation above the spine, the present head-region, had condensed and changed itself into the human brain; that was the completely transformed light-organ. Attached to this was the spine, from which the nerves proceeded, and attached to this in turn was the lower man whom we have described. This was revealed to the Egyptian pupil, and it became clear to him that any being wishing to incarnate on the earth would have to assume the corresponding human form. Osiris, as spirit, often visited the earth and incarnated as a man. Men felt that a god had descended, but he had a human form. Every exalted being who visited the earth appeared in the shape that man then had. This shape was then such that one still, saw that light-body, that remarkable head-ornament, the lantern of Osiris,² which has been described in a pictorial way as the eye of Polyphemus. This is the organ, the lantern, which at first was outside the human body, and which then transformed itself into an inner organ in the brain. Everything in early art is a symbol of actual forms.

When the Greek initiates became acquainted with these mysteries of the Egyptians, they had already learned many things. Basically, they had learned the same things as the Egyptian initiates, but they gave them different names in their language. The initiates of the Egyptians had developed the clairvoyant gifts to a high degree, so that many of their pupils could look back clairvoyantly into those most ancient times. The Egyptian initiate had a direct connection with those mysteries, hence the Greek priests seemed to him to be only childish stammerers. This is illustrated by the words that an Egyptian priest once spoke to Solon, “O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes remain always children, and there is not an old man among you. In spirit you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you from ancient tradition, nor any science that is hoary with age.³ Thus did the Egyptian point out that his wisdom stood infinitely far above anything that can be experienced materially. Only in the Eleusinian mysteries did the Greeks progress equally far, but only a few participated in them.

In his study of earth-evolution, the Egyptian initiate saw that the god Osiris had separated himself from the sun and had gone to the moon, whence he reflected the light of the sun. What this god did was also sacred to the Greeks. They too knew that it was this god, Osiris, who formed the twenty-eight moon-aspects, and thereby laid the groundwork for the twenty-eight nerves in man. Through Osiris, the nervous system is built onto the spinal column, thereby forming the whole upper body of man. For what appears as muscle can maintain its form only because the nerves are its shapers. All we have as muscles, cartilage, and other organs such as heart and lungs, maintains its form only through the nerves. Thus through the earlier sun-activity appeared what took form as brain and spinal column, and on this spinal column the twenty-eight aspects of Isis and Osiris work from outside. Isis and Osiris are the shapers of all this, and in the tentacles that the brain sends down into the spinal column, Osiris works upon the spine. The Greeks experienced this also, and as they became acquainted with the Egyptian mysteries they recognized that Osiris was the same as the god whom they called Apollo. They said that the Egyptian Osiris was Apollo, and that, like Osiris, Apollo worked upon the nerves so as to achieve a soul-life within man.

Now in a simple way, let us try to view this formation. Let us think of the brain as it might be sketched. This continues itself into the spine, and there the twenty-eight arms of Osiris enter in; there Osiris with his twenty-eight hands plays upon the spine as upon a lyre. The Greeks had a significant image for this—the lyre of Apollo. We need only think of it as transposed. The lyre is the brain, the nerves are the strings on which the hands of Apollo play. Apollo plays on the cosmic-lyre, on the mighty work of art that the cosmos has formed, and that causes to resound in man the tones that compose his soul life. For the Eleusinian initiate, this was what the Egyptians had given in their pictures.

From such a picture we can see that these things should not be expounded too rigidly, or we shall merely be forcing fantasies into them. For as a rule, our experience should be that these pictures are actually much deeper than anything we can dream into them by means of the intellect. If the Greek clairvoyant spoke of Apollo, he had before his mind the mystery of Osiris-Apollo and the human musical instrument. Osiris stood before the Egyptian pupil when he was initiated into the mysteries of earth-existence. Thus we must say that these symbols, these pictures, which have been preserved for us and which characterize what has been taken from the primeval mysteries, mean much more than can be expounded by the intellect. This lyre was seen, the hands of Apollo were seen. The important thing is that we should relate every symbol to some actual vision, to something really seen. There are no symbols, no legends, that have not first been seen.

The Egyptian pupil could penetrate to such mysteries only after a long time. He was first prepared through a definite course of instruction, which was somewhat similar to basic theosophy. Then only was he admitted to the real exercises. There he experienced a sort of ecstatic condition which, although not yet true clairvoyance, was more than a dream. In this condition he beheld what he was later to see in the form of pictures. The pupil actually beheld in a mighty living dream the departure of the moon, and of Osiris with it, and Osiris's working upon the earth from the moon. He dreamed the Osiris-Isis legend. Every pupil dreamed this Osiris-Isis dream. He had to dream it, for otherwise he would not have been able to come to a perception of the true facts. The pupil had to go through the picture, the imagination. The legend of Isis and Osiris was inwardly experienced. This ecstatic soul-condition was a preliminary to the true vision, a prelude to his seeing what takes place in the spiritual world. What has been described today could be read by the pupil in the Akashic Record only when he had reached a high degree of initiation. Tomorrow we shall speak further of this, and also of the other signs of the Zodiac and their significance.

• 1. In classical antiquity this feeling of baffling importance was already present. See Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris.
• 2. Pictures of this ornament may be found in E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London, P. L. Warner, 1911), pages 42 and 49.
• 3. See the opening passages of Plato's Timaeus.

Easter is felt by many to be associated on the one hand with the deepest feelings and sensibilities of the human soul, and on the other, with cosmic mysteries and enigmas. The connection with cosmic mysteries becomes clear when we consider that Easter is a so-called movable feast, the date of which is fixed each year with reference to a specific constellation in the heavens. We will have more to say about this in the lectures to come. As for Easter's connection with the human soul, if we examine the customs and rites that have become associated with it through the centuries, we cannot fail to observe the great significance with which a large part of mankind has come to invest this festival.

For Christianity, Easter was not important initially, but it became so during the first few centuries. It is linked to Christianity's basic tenet, the Resurrection of Christ, and to the fundamental impulse to become a Christian provided by that fact. Easter is therefore a celebration of the Resurrection, but as such it points back to times and festivals predating Christianity.

These earlier festivals centered around the spring equinox, an event which, though not identical with Easter, enters into the calculation of its date, and celebrated nature's reawakening in the new life burgeoning forth from the earth. And this leads us directly to the heart of our subject, which is the Easter festival as a stage in the evolution of the Mysteries.

For Christians Easter commemorates the Resurrection. The corresponding pagan festival in a sense celebrated the resurrection of nature, the reawakening of what, as nature, had been asleep throughout the winter. However, there the similarity ends. It must be emphasized that with regard to its inner meaning, the Christian Easter festival in no sense corresponds to the pagan equinox celebrations. Rather, a serious examination of ancient pagan times reveals that Easter, in the Christian sense, is related to festivals that grew out of the Mysteries and that were celebrated in the fall.

This most curious fact demonstrates what serious misunderstandings regarding matters of the highest importance have occurred in the course of humanity's development. In the early Christian centuries, nothing less happened than the confusion of Easter with a completely different festival, with the result that Easter was moved from fall to the spring.

With this we touch upon something of enormous importance in the development of humanity. Consider for a moment the essential content of Easter. First, the figure central to Christian consciousness, Christ Jesus, experiences death, as commemorated by Good Friday. He then remains in the grave for three days, symbolizing his union with earthly existence. Christians observe this interval, the one between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, as a period of mourning. Finally, on Easter Sunday, the central being of Christianity arises from the grave. In essence, then, Easter involves Christ's death, lying in the grave, and resurrection.

Let us now turn to one of the many forms of the corresponding pagan festival, for only in doing so can we grasp the relation of Easter to the Mysteries.

Among many ancient peoples we find celebrations whose rituals enact a content strongly resembling that of the Christian Easter festival. One of these was the festival of Adonis, which was observed by certain Near Eastern peoples over long spans of pre-Christian antiquity. At the center of this festival stood a likeness of the god Adonis, who represented all that manifests itself in human beings as vigorous youth and beauty.

The ancients in many respects undoubtedly confused the god's image with what is represented; hence their religions frequently bordered on fetishism. Many indeed took the image of Adonis to be the actually present god, the god of beauty and youthful strength, of an unfolding seminal power that reveals in splendorous outer existence all the inner nobility and grandeur of which humanity is capable.

To the accompaniment of songs and rites portraying humanity's deepest grief and sorrow, the god's likeness was immersed for a period of three days in the sea if the Mystery site was near the sea, in a lake if it was near a lake, or otherwise in an artificial pond that was dug nearby. For three days a profound and solemn silence took hold of the entire community. When after that time the idol was lifted from the water, the laments gave way to songs of joy and hymns to the resurrected god, the god who had come back to life.

This was an external ceremony, one that profoundly stirred the souls of a great number of people. Even as it did so, however, it hinted at what happened within the sacred Mysteries to every person aspiring to initiation.

In those times every candidate for initiation was led into a special chamber. It was dark and gloomy and its walls were black. The chamber contained nothing but a coffin or at least something like it. Laments and dirges were sung around this coffin by those who had led the neophyte into the chamber. The latter was treated as if he were about to die. His teachers made it clear to him that by being laid in the coffin he was to undergo the experience of death and of the three days following. The candidate was to achieve total inner clarity regarding those experiences.

On the third day, in a spot visible to the occupant of the coffin, a branch appeared, signifying life's renewal. The earlier laments gave way to hymns of joy, and the initiate arose from his grave with transformed consciousness. A new language, a new script were revealed to him, the language and script of the spiritual world. He was permitted to see, and did see, the world from the viewpoint of the spirit.

Compared with these procedures enacted deep within the Mysteries, the external, public rites were symbolic, resembling in their form the initiation ceremonies of the select few. At the proper time these rites, of which the Adonis festival may be taken as typical, were explained to their participants. The rites took place in the fall, and participants were instructed in somewhat the following way:

“Behold, autumn is now upon us; the earth loses its mantle of plants and leaves. All is withering. In place of the greening, burgeoning life that began to cover the earth in spring, snow will now come, or at least a desolating drought. Nature is dying. And as it dies all around you, you shall experience that part of yourself that is similar to nature. Human beings die as well. Each of us has his autumn. And although when life comes to an end it is fitting that the souls of those remaining should be filled with deep sorrow, it is not enough to meet death only when it actually happens. In order that you be confronted with death's full solemnity, that you be able to remind yourselves of death again and again, you are shown each fall the death of that divine being who stands for beauty, youth, and human grandeur. You see that he too goes the way of all nature. Yet, precisely when nature becomes barren and begins to die, you must remember something else. You must remember that although human beings pass through the portal of death, although in this earthly existence they experience only things that are like those that die in autumn, at death they are drawn away from the earth and live their way out into the vast cosmic ether, where for three days they feel their being expand until it encompasses the whole world. Then, while the eyes of those on earth are focused only on death's outer aspect, on what is transitory, in the spirit world the immortal human soul awakens after three days. Three days after death it arises, born anew for the spirit land.”

In a process of intense inner transformation, the candidate for initiation into the Mysteries actually experienced this dying and reawakening within his own soul. The profound shock inflicted upon people by this old method of initiation—we shall see that in our day completely different methods are necessary—awakened within them latent powers of spiritual vision. They knew henceforth that they stood not merely in the world of the senses, but in the spiritual world as well.

What the students of the Mysteries received as timely instruction might be summed up in the following words: “The Mystery ritual is an image of events in the spiritual world, of what occurs in the cosmos; the public rituals in turn are a likeness of the Mysteries.” No doubt was left in the students' minds that the Mysteries encompassed procedures representing what human beings experience in forms of existence other than the earthly, that is, in the vastness of the astral and spiritual cosmos.

Those who could not be admitted to the Mysteries because they were deemed not mature enough to receive directly the gift of spiritual vision were taught appropriate truths in the cultic rituals, which symbolized what occurred in the Mysteries. These rituals, such as the Adonis cult, that took place amid autumn's withering, when all of nature seemed to speak only of the transience of earthly things, of the inexorability of death and decay, served to instill in people the certainty, or at least the idea, that death as experienced by nature in the fall must also overtake human beings, overtake even the god Adonis, representative of all the beauty, youthfulness, and grandeur of the human soul. The god Adonis also dies. He disappears into the earthly representative of the cosmic ether, into water. But just as he is lifted out of it, so too is the human soul raised from the waters of the world, the cosmic ether, about three days after it has passed through the portal of death.

The secret of death itself was thus portrayed in the ancient Mysteries through the corresponding autumnal festivals. These festivals coincided in their first half with the withering and decay of nature, and in their second half with the opposite, namely, with the eternal essence of the human being. Humanity was to contemplate the dying of nature in order to recognize that human beings die as well, but that in accordance with their inner nature they arise anew in the spiritual world. The purpose of these ancient pagan Mystery festivals was thus to reveal the true meaning of death.

As humanity developed, the time came when a particular being, Christ Jesus, carried down into bodily nature the process of death and resurrection that the candidate for initiation had achieved in the Mysteries only on the level of the soul. People familiar with the ancient Mysteries can peer into them and perceive that neophytes were led through death to resurrection within their souls, that is, they awakened to a higher consciousness. It is important to note that their souls, not their bodies, died and that they did so in order to rise again on a higher level of consciousness.

What aspirants to initiation experienced only in their souls, Christ Jesus passed through in the body, that is, on a different level. Because Christ was not of the Earth, but rather a sun-being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, he could undergo on Golgotha in the entirety of his human nature what initiates had formerly experienced only their souls.

Those who still possessed intimate knowledge of the old Mystery initiation, from that time on to our own, understood the event at Golgotha most profoundly of all. They knew that for thousands of years people had gained knowledge of the spiritual world's secrets through the death and resurrection of their souls. During the process of initiation body and soul had been kept apart, the soul being led then through death to eternal life.

What a number of select people had thus undergone in their souls was experienced all the way into the body by the being who descended from the sun into Jesus of Nazareth at the time of his baptism in the Jordan. An initiation process repeated over many, many centuries became in this way a historical fact.

That was the essence of what people familiar with the Mysteries knew. They knew that because a sun-being had taken possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth what had formerly occurred for the neophyte only at the level of the soul and its experiences could now take place on the plane of the body as well. In spite of Christ's bodily death, in spite of his dissolution into the mortal earth, the Resurrection could be brought about because Christ ascended higher in soul and spirit than was possible for a candidate for initiation. The neophyte was incapable of bringing the body into such profoundly subsensible regions as Christ did, so that he could not rise as high in resurrection. Except for this difference in cosmic magnitude, however, it was the ancient initiation process that appeared in the historic deed on sacred Golgotha.

In the first Christian centuries very few people knew that a sun-being, a cosmic being, had lived in Jesus of Nazareth, or that the earth had actually been made fruitful by the coming of a being previously visible only in the sun for students of initiation. And for those who accepted it with genuine knowledge of the old Mysteries, Christianity consisted essentially in the fact that Christ, who could be reached in the old Mysteries by ascending through initiation to the sun, had descended into a mortal body. He had come down to earth, into the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

A mood of rejoicing, even of holy elation, filled the souls of those who understood something of this Mystery when it occurred. Living awareness then gradually gave way, through developments we shall discuss presently, to a festival in memory of this historical event on Golgotha.

While this memory was taking shape, awareness of Christ's identity as a sun-being grew dimmer and dimmer. Those familiar with the ancient Mysteries could not be mistaken about that identity. They knew that genuine initiates, by being made independent of the physical body and experiencing death in their souls, had ascended to the sphere of the sun and there found the Christ. From the Christ they received the impulse to resurrection. Having raised themselves up to him, they were cognizant of his true nature. From the events on Golgotha they knew that the being formerly accessible only in the sun had descended to mankind on earth.

Why? Because the old rite of initiation, through which neophytes had risen to Christ in the sun, could no longer be performed. Over time human nature had changed. Evolution had progressed in such a way as to make initiation by means of the old ritual impossible. Human beings on earth could no longer find Christ in the sun. For this reason he came down to enact a deed to which earthly humanity could now turn its gaze. This secret is among the holiest things of which we may speak here on earth.

What was the situation then for those living in the centuries immediately following the Mystery of Golgotha? If I were to draw it, I would have to sketch something like this:

In the old initiation center (red, at right), neophytes gazed up to the sun and through initiation became aware of the Christ. To find him they looked out into space, so to speak. In order to show later developments, I must here represent time in terms of the earth proceeding along a line from right to left—its subsequent positions from year to year represented by arcs beneath the line—even though the earth does not actually move this way through space. At the left, let us say, is the eighth century; the Mystery of Golgotha (cross, at center) had already taken place. Human beings, instead of seeking Christ in the sun from a Mystery temple, now look back toward the turning point of time, to the beginning of the Christian era. They look back in time (yellow arrow in figure) toward the Mystery of Golgotha, and there find Christ performing an earthly deed.

The significance of the Mystery of Golgotha was that it changed a previously spatial perception into perception through time. Furthermore, if we reflect upon what transpired in the Mysteries during initiation, remembering that initiation was an image of human death and resurrection, and then consider the form taken by the cult—the festival of Adonis, for example—which was itself a picture of the Mysteries, then these three things appear raised to the ultimate degree, unified and concentrated, in the historical deed on Golgotha.

The profoundly intimate rites of the Mystery sanctuaries now stood forth as an external, historical event. All humankind now had access to what was previously available only to initiates. No longer was it necessary to immerse an image in the sea and symbolically resurrect it. Instead human beings were to think of, to remember, what actually took place on Golgotha. The physical symbol, referring to a process experienced in space, was to be supplanted by the internal, immaterial thought, by the memory of the historical deed on Golgotha experienced within the soul.

A remarkable development began to take place during the centuries that followed. Human beings were less and less cognizant of spiritual realities, so that the substance of the Mystery of Golgotha could no longer gain a foothold in their souls. Evolution tended toward the development of a sense for material reality. Human beings could no longer grasp in their hearts that precisely where nature presents itself as ephemeral, as dying and desolate, the spirit's vitality can best be witnessed. The autumnal festival thus lost its meaning. It was no longer understood that the best time to appreciate the resurrection of the human spirit was when outer nature was dying, that is, during the fall.

Autumn simply became an unsuitable time for the festival of resurrection, for it could no longer turn people's minds to spiritual immortality by underscoring nature's transience. People began to depend upon material symbols, upon enduring elements of nature, for their understanding of immortal things. They focused upon the seed's germinating force, which, though buried in the fall, sprouts forth again in spring. People adopted material symbols for spiritual things because matter could no longer stimulate them to perceive the spirit in its reality. Human souls lacked the strength to receive autumn's revelation of the spirit's permanence in contrast to the impermanence of nature. Help from nature, in the form of an outwardly visible resurrection, was now necessary. People needed to see plants sprouting from the ground, the sun gaining strength, light and warmth increasing, in other words, a resurrection of nature, in order to celebrate the idea of resurrection itself.

But this meant that the immediate connection to the spirit present in the festival of Adonis, and potentially present in the Mystery of Golgotha, disappeared. An intense inner experience that was possible in ancient times at every human death gradually faded out. In those times people had known that although a departed soul's first experiences beyond the gate of death were indeed a matter for solemn reflection, after three days the living could rejoice, for they knew that then the departed soul arose out of earthly death into spiritual immortality.

Thus the power inherent in the festival of Adonis disappeared. It lay in humanity's nature that this power should at first arise with great intensity. Ancient peoples beheld the death of the god, the death of human beauty, grandeur, and youthful vigor. This god was immersed in the sea on a day of mourning. The mood was somber, for people were at first to develop a feeling for the ephemeral. This mood, however, was to yield in turn to a different one, to that evoked by the human soul's super-sensible resurrection after three days. When the god—or rather his likeness—was raised out of the water, rightly instructed believers saw in it an image of the human soul as it exists a few days after death. The fate of departed souls in the spiritual world was placed before them in the image of the risen god of beauty and youth.

Thus each year in the fall human minds were awakened to a direct contemplation of something deeply connected with human destiny. At that time it would have been deemed inappropriate to convey this by means of outer nature. Truths that could be experienced spiritually were represented in the cult's symbolic rituals. However, when the time came for the ancient, physical idol to be replaced with the inner experience of the unseen Mystery of Golgotha, a Mystery that embodied the same truth, humanity at first lacked the strength, for the spirit had retreated into deeply hidden regions of the human soul.

The need to look to nature for symbols of the spirit has continued into our own time. Nature, however, provides no complete image of our destiny in death; and while the idea of death has survived, that of resurrection has increasingly disappeared. Even though resurrection is spoken of as a tenet of faith, the fact of resurrection is not a living one for people of more recent times. It must, however, once more become so through anthroposophical insight that awakens a feeling for the true concept of resurrection.

If, therefore, as has been said on appropriate occasions, we as anthroposophists must cherish the Michael idea as a heralding thought, and must deepen our understanding of the Christmas idea, so too must our experience of the Easter idea be particularly festive. For it is anthroposophy's task to add to the thought of death that of resurrection, to become an inner celebration of the resurrection of the human soul, imbuing our philosophy with an Easter mood. Anthroposophy will be able to achieve this when people understand how the ancient Mystery concepts can live on in the true concept of Easter, and when once again a proper view prevails of the body, soul, and spirit of the human being and of the fates of these in the physical, soul, and divine-spiritual worlds.

[ 1 ] This book will indicate new possibilities for the science and art of Medicine. It will only be possible to form an accurate view of what is described if the reader is willing to accept the points of view that predominated at that time when the medical approach outlined here came into being.

[ 2 ] It is not a question of opposition to modern [homogenic] medicine which is working with scientific methods. We take full cognizance of the value of its principles. It is also our opinion that what we are offering should only be used in medical work by those individuals who can be fully active as qualified physicians in the sense of those principles.

[ 3 ] On the other hand, to all that can be known about the human being with the scientific methods that are recognized today, we add a further knowledge, whose discoveries are made by different methods. And out of this deeper knowledge of the World and Man, we find ourselves compelled to work for an extension of the art of medicine.

[ 4] Fundamentally speaking, the [homogenic] medicine of today can offer no objection to what we have to say, seeing that we on our side do not deny its principles. He alone could reject our efforts a priori who would require us not only to affirm his science but to adduce no further knowledge extending beyond the limits of his own.

[ 5 ] We see this extension of our knowledge of the World and Man in Anthroposophy, which was founded by Rudolf Steiner. To the knowledge of the physical man which alone is accessible to the natural-scientific methods of today, Anthroposophy adds that of spiritual man. Nor does it merely proceed by dint of reflective thought from knowledge of the physical to knowledge of the spiritual. On such a path, one only finds oneself face to face with more or less well conceived hypotheses, of which no one can prove that there is anything in reality to correspond to them.

[ 6 ] Before making statements about the spiritual, Anthroposophy evolves the methods which give it the right to make such statements. Some insight will be gained into the nature of these methods if the following be considered: all the results of the accepted science of our time are derived in the last resort from the impressions of the human senses. However far man may extend the sphere of what is yielded by his senses, in experiment or in observation with the help of instruments, nothing essentially new is added by these means to his experience of the world in which the senses place him.

[ 7 ] His thinking, too, in as much as he applies it in his researches of the physical world, can add nothing new to what is given through the senses. In thought he combines and analyses the sense-impressions in order to discover laws (the laws of nature), and yet, as a researcher of the material world he must admit: this thinking that wells up from within me adds nothing real to what is already real in the material world of sense.

[ 8 ] All this immediately changes if we no longer stop short at that thinking which man acquires through his experience of ordinary life and education. This thinking can be strengthened and reinforced within ourselves. We place some simple, easily encompassed idea in the centre of consciousness and, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, concentrate all the power of the soul on such representations. As a muscle grows strong when exerted again and again in the direction of the same force, so our force of soul grows strong when exercised in this way with respect to that sphere of existence which otherwise holds sway in thought. It should again be emphasized that these exercises must be based on simple, easily encompassed thoughts. For in carrying out the exercises the soul must not be exposed to any kind of influences from the subconscious or unconscious. (Here we can but indicate the principle of such exercises; a fuller description, and directions showing how such exercises should be done in individual cases, will be found in the books, such as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Occult Science, and other anthroposophical works.

[ 9 ] It is tempting to object that anyone who thus gives himself up with all his strength to certain thoughts placed in the focus of consciousness will thereby expose himself to all manner of auto-suggestion and the like, and that he will simply enter a realm of fantasy. But Anthroposophy shows how the exercises should be done from the outset, so that this objection loses its validity. It shows the way to advance within the sphere of consciousness, step by step and fully wide-awake in carrying out the exercises, as in the solving of an arithmetical or geometrical problem. At no point in solving a problem of arithmetic or geometry can our consciousness veer off into unconscious regions; nor can it do so during the practices here indicated, provided always that the anthroposophical suggestions are properly observed.

[ 10 ] In the course of such practice we attain a strengthening of a power of thought, of which we had not the remotest idea before. Like a new content of our human being we feel this power of thought holding sway within us. And with this new content of our own human being there is revealed at the same time a world-content which, though we may perhaps have divined its existence before, was unknown to us by actual experience until now. If in moments of introspection we consider our everyday activity of thought, we find that the thoughts are pale and shadow-like beside the impressions that our senses give us.

[ 11 ] What we experience in the now strengthened capacity of thought is not pale or shadow-like by any means. It is full of inner content, vividly real and graphic; it is, indeed, of a reality far more intense than the contents of our sense perceptions. A new world begins to dawn for the man who has thus enhanced the force of his perceptive faculty.

[ 12 ] He, who until now was only able to perceive in the world of the senses, learns to apperceive in this new world; and as he does so he discovers that all the laws of nature known to him before hold good in the physical world only; it is of the intrinsic nature of the world he has now entered that its laws are different, in fact, the very opposite to those of the physical world. In this world for instance the earthly force of gravity does not apply, on the contrary, another force emerges, working not from the centre of the earth outwards but in the reverse direction, from the circumference of the universe towards the centre of the earth. And so it is in like manner with the other forces of the physical world.

[ 13 ] Man's faculty to perceive in this world, attainable as it is by exercise and practice, is called, in Anthroposophy, the imaginative faculty of knowledge. Imaginative not for the reason that one is dealing with “fantasies”, the word is used because the content of consciousness is filled with pictures, instead of the mere shadows of thought. And as in sense perception we feel as an immediate experience that we are in a world of reality, so it is in the activity of soul, which is here called imaginative knowledge. The world to which this knowledge relates is called in Anthroposophy the etheric world. This is not to suggest the hypothetical ether of modern physics, it is something really seen in the spirit. The name is used in keeping with older, instinctive presentiments with regard to that world. Against what can now be known with full clarity, these old presentiments no longer have a scientific value; but if we wish to designate a thing we have to choose some name.

[ 14 ] Within the etheric world an etheric bodily nature of man is perceptible, existing in addition to the physical bodily nature.

[ 15 ] This etheric body is also to be found in its essential nature in the plant-world. Plants too have their etheric body. The physical laws really only hold good for the world of lifeless mineral nature.

[ 16 ] The plant-world is possible on earth because there are substances in the earthly realm which do not remain enclosed within, or limited to the physical laws, but can lay aside the whole complex of physical law and assume one which opposes it. The physical laws work streaming from the earth; the etheric work from all sides of the universe streaming to the earth. It is not possible for man to understand how the plant world comes into being, till he sees in it the interplay of the earthly and physical with the cosmic-etheric.

So it is with the etheric body of man himself. Through the etheric body something is taking place in man which is not a straightforward continuation of the laws and workings of the physical body with its forces, but rests on a quite different foundation: in effect the physical substances, as they pour into the etheric realm, divest themselves to begin with of their physical forces.

[ 17 ] The forces that prevail in the etheric body are active at the beginning of man's life on earth, and most distinctly during the embryonic period; they are the forces of growth and formative development. During the course of earthly life a part of these forces emancipates itself from this formative and growth activity and becomes the forces of thought, just those forces which, for the ordinary consciousness, bring forth the shadow-like world of man's thoughts.

[ 18 ] It is of the greatest importance to know that man's ordinary forces of thought are refined formative and growth forces. Something spiritual reveals itself in the formation and growth of the human organism. The spiritual element then appears during the course of life as the spiritual force of thought. [ 19 ] And this force of thought is only a part of the human formative and growth force that works in the etheric.

The other part remains true to the purpose it fulfilled in the beginning of man's life. But because the human being continues to evolve even when his growth and formation have reached an advanced stage, that is, when they are to a certain degree completed, the etheric spiritual force, which lives and works in the organism, is able to emerge in later life as the capacity for thought.

[ 20 ] Thus the formative or sculptural force, appearing from the one side in the soul-content of our thought, is revealed to the imaginative spiritual vision from the other side as an etheric-spiritual reality.

If we now follow the material substance of the earth into the etheric formative process we find wherever they enter this formative process these substances assume a form of being which estranges them from physical nature. While they are thus estranged, they enter into a world where the spiritual comes to meet them transforming them into its own being.

[ 21 ] The way of ascending to the etherically living nature of man as described here is a very different thing from the unscientific postulation of a “vital force” which was customary even up to the middle of the nineteenth century in order to explain the living entities. Here it is a question of the actual seeing—that is to say, the spiritual perception—of a reality which, like the physical body, is present in man and in everything that lives. To bring about spiritual perception of the etheric we do not merely continue ordinary thinking nor do we invent another world through fantasy. Rather we extend the human powers of cognition in an exact way; and this extension yields experience of an extended universe.

[ 22 ] The exercises leading to higher perception can be carried further. Just as we exert an enhanced power in concentrating on thoughts placed deliberately in the centre of our consciousness, so we can now apply such an enhanced power in order to suppress the imaginations—(pictures of a spiritual-etheric reality)—achieved by the former process. We then reach a state of completely emptied consciousness. We are awake and aware, but our wakefulness to begin with has no content. (Further details are to be found in the above-mentioned books.) But this wakefulness does not remain without content. Our consciousness, emptied as it is of any physical or etheric pictorial impressions, becomes filled with a content that pours into it from a real spiritual world, even as the impressions from the physical world pour into the physical senses.

[ 23 ] By imaginative knowledge we have come to know a second member of the human being; by the emptied consciousness becoming filled with spiritual content we learn to know a third. Anthroposophy calls the knowledge that comes about in this way knowledge by inspiration. (The reader should not let these terms confuse him, they are borrowed from the instinctive ways of looking into spiritual worlds which belonged to more primitive ages, but the sense in which they are here used is stated exactly.) The world to which man gains entry by “inspiration” is called the “astral world”. When one is speaking in the sense explained here of an “etheric world”, we mean those influences that work from the circumference of the universe towards the earth. If we speak of the “astral world”, we proceed, as is seen by the perception of inspired consciousness, from the influences of the cosmos towards certain spiritual beings which reveal themselves in these influences, just as the materials of the earth reveal themselves in the forces that radiate out from the earth. We speak of real spiritual beings working from the distant universe just as we speak of the stars and constellations when we look out physically into the heavens at nighttime. Hence the expression “astral world”. In this astral world man bears the third member of his human nature, namely his astral body.

[ 24 ] The earth's substances must also flow into this astral body. Through this it is estranged from its physical nature.—Just as man has the etheric body in common with the world of plants, so he has his astral body in common with the world of animals.

[ 25 ] What essentially raises the human being above the animal world can be recognized through a form of cognition still higher than inspiration. At this point Anthroposophy speaks of intuition. In inspiration a world of spiritual beings manifests itself; in intuition, the relationship of the discerning human being to the world grows more intimate. He now brings to fullest consciousness within himself that which is purely spiritual, and in the conscious experience of it, he realises immediately that it has nothing to do with experience from bodily nature. Through this he transplants himself into a life which can only be described as a life of the human spirit among other spirit-beings. In inspiration the spiritual beings of the world reveal themselves; through intuition we ourselves live with these beings.

[ 26 ] Through this we come to acknowledge the fourth member of the human being, the essential “I”. Once again we become aware of how the material of the earth, in adapting to the life and being of the “I”, estranges itself yet further from its physical nature. The nature which this material assumes as “ego organization” is, to begin with, that form of earthly substance in which it is farthest estranged from its earthly physical character.

[ 27 ] In the human organization, that which we thus learn to know as the “astral body” and “I ” is not bound to the physical body in the same way as the etheric body. Inspiration and intuition show how in sleep the “astral body” and the “I” separate from the physical and etheric, and that it is only in the waking state that there is the full mutual permeation of the four members of man's nature to form a human entity.

In sleep the physical and the etheric human body are left behind in the physical and etheric world. Yet they are not in the same position as the physical and the etheric body of a plant or plant-like being. For they bear within them the after-effects of the astral and the Ego-nature. Indeed, in the very moment when they would no longer bear these aftereffects within them, the human being must awaken. A human physical body must never be subjected to the merely physical, nor a human etheric body to the merely etheric effects. Through this they would disintegrate.

[ 28 ] Inspiration and intuition however also show something else. Physical substance experiences further development of its nature in its transition to living and moving in the etheric. It is a condition of life that the organic body is snatched out of the earthly state to be built up by the extraterrestrial cosmos. This building activity however brings about life, but not consciousness, and not self-consciousness.

The astral body must build up its organization within the physical and the etheric; the ego must do the same with regard to the ego organization. But in this building there is no conscious development of the soul life. For this to occur a process of destruction must oppose the process of building. The astral body builds up its organs; it destroys them by allowing the soul to develop an activity of feeling within consciousness; the ego builds up its “ego-organization”; it destroys this, in that will-activity becomes active in self-consciousness.

[ 29 ] The spirit within the human being does not unfold on the basis of constructive material activity but on the basis of what it destroys. Wherever the spirit is to work in man, matter must withdraw from its activity.

[ 30 ] Even the origin of thought in the etheric body depends not on a further development but, on the contrary, on a destruction of etheric being. Conscious thinking does not take place in the processes of growth and formation, but in the processes of deformation, fading, dying which are continually interwoven with the etheric events.

[ 31 ] In conscious thinking, the thoughts liberate themselves out of the physical form and become human experiences as soul formations.

[ 32 ] If we consider the human being on the basis of such a knowledge of man, we become aware that the nature of the whole man, or of any single organ, is only seen with clarity if one knows how the physical, the etheric, the astral body and the ego work in him. There are organs in which the chief agent is the ego; in others the ego works but little, and the physical organization is predominant.

[ 33 ] Just as the healthy man can only be understood by recognizing how the higher members of man's being take possession of the earthly substance, compelling it into their service, and in this connection also recognizing how the earthly substance becomes transformed when it enters the sphere of action of the higher members of man's nature; so we can only understand the unhealthy man if we understand the situation in which the organism as a whole, or a certain organ or series of organs, find themselves when the mode of action of the higher members falls into irregularity. We shall only be able to think of therapeutic substances when we evolve a knowledge of how some earthly substance or earthly process is related to the etheric, to the astral and to the ego. Only then shall we be able to achieve the desired result, by introducing an earthly substance into the human organism or by treatment with an earthly process of activity, enabling the higher members of the human being to unfold again unhindered, or by the earthly substance (of the physical body) finding, in what has been added, the necessary support to bring it into the path where it becomes a basis for the earthly working of the spiritual.

[ 34 ] Man is what he is by virtue of physical body, etheric body, soul (astral body) and ego (spirit). He must, in health, be seen and understood from the aspect of these his members; in disease he must be observed in the disturbance of their equilibrium, and for his healing we must find the therapeutic substances that can restore the balance.

[ 35 ] A medical approach built on such a basis is to be suggested in this book.