The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From what has been said about the relation of sleeping to waking in man, and also about the membering of his organism, it can be seen that in sleep he experiences a profound cleavage in his earthly existence. We know that a distinction has to be made between the part of man which is materially perceptible to the senses, his physical body, and the part that can be seen only through Imagination, his etheric or formative forces body. This formative forces body embraces also the living forces which enable a man to grow, underlie his nutritive processes and generally build him up. As we have seen, the formative forces body includes also the whole system of a man's thoughts. Intermingled with his formative forces body and his physical body are two higher members, which we may call the astral body and the Ego-organisation.

In a man's life during the day these four members of his being are in active inner relationship with one another. But when he passes into the sleeping state, his physical and etheric bodies separate from the Ego and astral body. They remain—if one may put it thus—in bed, while the astral and Ego organisations enter a purely spiritual world. So that, from his falling asleep until he wakes, a man's being is split in two—on the one hand there are his physical organisation and the etheric that holds his world of thought; on the other, the Ego and the astral organisation.

I believe someone in the course of these days has voiced the misgiving: If in sleep a man's whole thought-world remains in the etheric organisation, then he must be unable to carry effectively into the sleeping state the thoughts which he can grasp only while he is awake. This shows a certain anxiety lest wishes for one's fellow-men, for example, or thoughts relating to an absent one, should lose all power because they cannot be taken over into the life of sleep. I should like to reply with a picture.

You are not very likely to have heard of anyone who, wanting to shoot at a target, thought he had to throw his gun at it. While still holding the gun he lets the charge do the work, and you cannot say that nothing reaches the target because the gun remains in the man's hands. It is just the same in the case we are considering. The effects of our thinking life when we are awake do not cease during sleep because the thoughts remain in the physical and etheric bodies. It is particularly important with these subtle matters that we should be precise in our thinking—precise to a degree unnecessary in the physical world, where the things themselves provide immediate corrections. From what has been said in these last few days, however, you will see that a much more intimate relation exists between the physical body and the etheric body than between the etheric body and the astral organisation. For throughout the whole of an earthly life the physical body and the etheric remain together, never separating even when, in sleep, the etheric body and the astral body have to part company.

There is a close connection, on the other hand, between the Ego and the astral organisation, for neither do they ever part from one another during life on Earth. But the connection between the astral and the etheric bodies is looser, and it is there that the split can occur. This has a quite definite effect on a man's earthly life, and also on his life beyond the Earth. In our waking state we give life to our senses through our Ego, and through the astral body to our nervous system; and what is brought about in this way we send down into the etheric and physical bodies, as we must do if we are to live in the physical world. Hence, because everything has to be imprinted into the physical body, in order to become manifest in life from birth or conception until death, a materialist supposes that the physical body can make up the whole of a man's being.

This work of incorporating the experiences of earthly existence into the etheric body and the physical body does not proceed, however, without meeting obstacles and hindrances. We are never able to send down straight away into the organs of these bodies our experiences and the thoughts embodied in our nervous system, for anything we absorb from the external physical world is at first in a form moulded by that world. If, for example, we perceive something angular, an experience of this angular quality forms itself in our Ego and our astral body. This cannot be taken up immediately into the etheric body, for the etheric body struggles against absorbing anything experienced in the external world of the senses. Imaginative knowledge alone is able to throw light on this situation. No ordinary sense-observation, no material experiment, no intellectual reflection, will help us to a view of this necessary re-forming, re-shaping, of what we perceive with the senses, so as to fit it for living in the etheric body and physical body in such a way that we can separate from it in sleep. It is only when we are able to observe the actual relation between waking and sleeping in earthly man that we come to realise the continuous conflict that goes on in life. Thus—in the case of the crude example already mentioned—if I have to take my experience of an angular object into my etheric and physical bodies, I must first round off its angles and give the object a form suited to those bodies. It has to be completely transformed.

This transforming of anything having as volatile a life as that of the Ego and astral body themselves, and giving it a plastic form capable of living in the etheric body and of continuing its existence as plastic movement in the physical body—this transformation creates an inner struggle not perceived by ordinary consciousness to-day, but anyone who has Imaginative knowledge can perceive it. Generally it lasts two or three days. We have to sleep on an experience for two or often three nights for it to unite with the other experiences already imprinted in the etheric and physical bodies. The dream-world is an actual expression, but only an outward expression, of this struggle. While a man is dreaming, his Ego and his astral body flow into his etheric and physical bodies and come to a sudden stop—as already explained. This check is an expression of the struggle I am now picturing; it goes on for two or three days. Until the experience has been slept upon more than once, it has not gone sufficiently far down into the etheric body, so that where the connection is loose, as it is between astral body and etheric body, a continuous interweaving is to be seen.

If we have here the etheric body and the astral is there asleep, then on the verge of waking or of going to sleep a continuous struggle takes place, a movement full of life, expressed outwardly in the dream, but signifying inwardly this weaving of experiences into the etheric and physical bodies. It is only when a man has slept on some experience two or three times—perhaps more often—that the experience is united with the memories already bound up with his etheric and physical bodies. The point is that the experience has to be transformed into memory, which is left lying in bed during sleep, for a memory is essentially the expression in thought of the physical and etheric bodies.

For Imaginative cognition, perceiving this is an extraordinarily interesting experience. The very form of its expression is significant. We give our ordinary earthly experiences definite outlines in conformity with natural laws. These laws, however, no longer hold good when the experiences merge with the etheric; everything firmly outlined becomes soft and plastic. Whatever was at rest begins to move; anything angular becomes rounded. Intellectual experience passes over into the experience of the artist.

That is the deeper reason why, in those ancient days when people still had instinctive vision, art was rooted in life in a quite different way from anything we have to-day. Even as late as the Renaissance, in the searching back to earlier art there was still in Raphael and other painters at least a tradition of that conversion of the intellectual into the artistic. For the intellectual loses its form, and takes on the nature of art, directly we rise to the super-sensible. The fact that in art to-day people are so strongly inclined to naturalism, wanting models for all their work, shows that they no longer realise its true nature. Humanity must find its way again into the true realm of art.

Human life as I have described it is thus made up in such a way that it is always possible to say: I am experiencing something which will take three days to flow into the etheric body. A day later, the experience of the previous day will flow in. Hence it takes a man two, three, or even four days to complete this uniting of an experience with the etheric body.

Now when a man passes through the gate of death, the etheric body detaches itself from the physical body—something that never happens during earthly life. And now, when the etheric body is free of the physical, all that has been interwoven into the etheric body is gradually dispersed, and this process lasts for about as long—two, three or four days—as the interweaving did. Imagination, which can judge rightly of these matters, shows how during life the physical body holds together, through its resistance, the experiences that have gradually penetrated into the etheric body. When the physical body is laid aside at death, it can be seen how in the first few days afterwards the memories woven into the etheric body pass out into the universal cosmic ether, and dissolve. And so, for two, three or four days after death, a person experiences this dissolving of his accumulated store of memories. This may be called the laying aside of the etheric body, but it involves an ever-increasing enhancement of the memories; they lose the third dimension and become two-dimensional, entirely picture-like. After the gate of death is passed, the person is faced with the whole tableau of his life, taking its course in vivid pictures for two, three or four days, the time varying with each individual.

But just as a student of botany recognises in a seed the plant that will develop from it, so anyone with Imaginative cognition does not see only at death this passing over of the etheric, of the whole memory system, to the cosmos; he has seen it already in picture form, for as a picture it is always present in human beings. Those who can grasp rightly the interweaving that goes on in the course of three days or more see already, in this incorporation of experiences in the etheric body, a picture of the inward experience that is lived through for three or four days after death. Whereas in earthly existence, before acquiring Imaginative cognition, a man experiences more or less unconsciously this blending of his experiences into the memories held together by the physical body, immediately after death he experiences the reverse process, the unwinding, as it were, of his memories and the passing away of them into the Cosmos. Our treasured thoughts, left behind whenever we fall asleep, unite directly after death with the whole Cosmos. This is what in dying we have to yield up to cosmic existence.

These things must not be grasped only intellectually, but also with heart and soul. For in face of them a man feels that his life is not to be taken egoistically, but that he is placed in the world as a thinking being. He will feel that his thoughts are not something he can preserve, for after his death they will flow out into the Cosmos and will go on working there as active forces. If we have had good thoughts, we surrender them to the Cosmos, and if we have had bad thoughts, we surrender them also. For a man does not exist on earth merely to develop himself as a free being. This he certainly should do, and he can do it precisely if he takes something else into consideration. He is here also as a being on whom the Gods themselves may work, in order to lead the Cosmos on from epoch to epoch. Moreover I would say this: What the Gods are to weave into the Cosmos as thoughts has to be prepared by them through all that can be thought and produced during individual human lives. Here is the nurturing-place where the Gods have to tend the thoughts they need for the continuing evolution of the world—thoughts they then incorporate into the Cosmos as active impulses.

During sleep, a man lives with his Ego and astral organisation outside his physical and etheric bodies. While in this state as a being of soul and spirit, as Ego and astral organisation, he is interwoven with the spiritual forces pervading the whole Cosmos. He is in the world that is, figuratively speaking, outside his skin—the world of which the only impressions he receives in waking life come through his senses. During sleep, therefore, he enters right into the things that in waking life show him only their outer side. But it is only what is experienced by the astral organisation, when outside the physical and etheric bodies, that can be brought back into the thoughts of the etheric body, not what is experienced out there by the Ego. Hence, during the whole of our existence on Earth, the experiences of the Ego in sleep remain subconscious for ordinary consciousness, and even for Imaginative consciousness. They are revealed only to Inspired consciousness, as already described.

So this may be said: In sleep a man gathers up sufficient strength to imprint on the etheric body those experiences that can be put into thoughts. But during his life on Earth he lacks the power to deal with the wishes and desires which during sleep are experienced by the Ego in connection with earthly affairs—for these also are gone over during sleep. In our epoch, therefore, only the part of sleep-life that can be transformed into thoughts, imprinted in thoughts, passes over into the conscious waking life of earthly men; while the sleep-experiences of the Ego lie hidden behind the veil of existence.

Imaginative and Inspired consciousness bring to light here things which can be perfectly well understood by any impartial person with a healthy mind, but in our present civilisation they encounter tremendous prejudice. Even the fact that when the three-dimensional in the physical world is imprinted in the etheric body, it changes from the plastic to a picture form, from three to two dimensions—even to grasp this calls for an unprejudiced approach. Directly we rise to Imagination, we no longer have to do with three dimensions, any more than with four, as a misguided science believes, but with two only. The difficulty of picturing what is then experienced comes from our being accustomed in earthly experience to reckon with three dimensions and to form our concepts accordingly. And so, when we should be finding our way over to two dimensions, we say: “Yes, but two dimensions are included in the three; the two dimensions of a plane can lie in such a way that there might still be a third.”

That, however, is not the point. As soon as we enter the Imaginative world, the third dimension no longer concerns us at all, and the position of a plane is immaterial. On our entering the etheric world of Imagination, the third dimension ceases to have any meaning. Hence—and I add this for mathematicians—all equations for the ether must be transformed so as to correspond with the two-dimensional world.

Now if we would pass on to the world accessible to Inspiration, in which we are as Ego between going to sleep and waking, we come to one dimension only; we then have to do with a one-dimensional world. This transition to a one-dimensional world, taken for granted by the faculty of Inspiration—the faculty, that is, of actually perceiving the spiritual in which we live between going to sleep and waking—this understanding of a world with only one dimension has always been part of Initiation-knowledge.

I have already described how the hidden forces of the Sun—not the forces of the external physical sunlight—are revealed to men of the Jacob Boehme type. These hidden Sun-forces do not spread out three-dimensionally, but are perceived in one dimension only. An older, more instinctive Initiation-knowledge could, and did, come to perceive this through Inspiration, but without a clearly conscious knowledge of what it was. Much that is still handed down in the ancient records of long past epochs of mankind is to be understood only when one knows: This refers to the spiritual world that is one-dimensional, the world we find through Inspiration; as regards our earthly life it refers to the hidden forces of the Sun and Stars. Between going to sleep and waking we do not live in Sun-forces that are outwardly displayed, but in those that are hidden.

These hidden forces of the Sun can, for example, pass through certain kinds of stone which are impenetrable to physically perceptible Sun-forces, and by passing through them become one-dimensional. If anyone has acquired Inspirational vision, then, although he may not perceive the physical light, he can see the hidden Sun-forces penetrating the otherwise opaque stone; thus the stone is permeable for the Sun's hidden forces and also for the forces of Inspiration.

In very ancient periods of human evolution on Earth, such expedients were not needed. But when the old instinctive clairvoyance, which in those days was the basis of Initiation-knowledge, was on the wane, these aids were adopted as a short cut—we might say—to the perception of things no longer perceptible through instinctive Inspiration. People had recourse to such measures in the following way, for example. Imagine a number of stones set up beside one another, with other stones laid across the tops of them. If this is so arranged that on certain occasions the penetrating rays of the Sun fall on the covering stone, then the physical rays of the Sun will be held up by the stone and the hidden rays will pass through.

When anyone trained to it places himself so that he can look into this structure from the side, he will see the spiritual, one-dimensional rays of the Sun shining through and vanishing into the earth. If, when all this was no longer perceived through instinctive clairvoyant powers, a short cut of that kind were taken, it enabled anyone looking from the side into the shadow-zone to perceive the world of spiritual Sun-rays which we experience every night during sleep. Hence in such contrivances, to be met with in this very district, we can see by what means, during a long transitional period, certain wise leaders of mankind tried to penetrate to the hidden forces of the Sun, which a man such as Jacob Boehme could do instinctively through simply beholding earthly things.

Although such collections of stones can be seen to-day in appropriate places, their real significance can be brought out only through what Spiritual Science reveals. Otherwise people are left with a superficial explanation which misses the real point.

Such stones can of course be distributed in the circle so as to show how the spiritual rays of the Sun differ according to particular constellations of the stars.

I have been trying to make clear to you the world in which our Ego lives during sleep. This world is not held together by the inherent forces of the physical and etheric bodies. These bodies, however, are alone responsible for the clear consciousness of earthly man; they are the source of the judgments we form, in accordance with our feelings and our will, on our own actions, our inward experiences and thoughts. Hence, when we are awake, we judge our external life according to the thoughts we have been able to imprint in our physical and etheric bodies. But it is not only a human being himself who has something to say about his experiences; his experiences and actions are the concern of the whole spiritual Cosmos. The Cosmos judges whether an action, a thought or feeling is to be declared good or bad. Between waking and sleeping we are left to form our own opinions about ourselves. As I have sufficiently shown during these lectures, the spiritual content of the Cosmos takes the moral as its natural law, and what the Cosmos has to say about our true nature and our actions is experienced by the Ego during sleep. Inspired cognition shows how the Ego, even during the shortest sleep, experiences over again everything the individual has gone through from his last moment of waking until his present sleep—however long or short this period may be. So a man, in the successive states of waking, sleeping, waking, sleeping, experiences again in sleep whatever he went through during his last waking time, especially where his own activities were concerned.

As far as this is the experience of the Ego, it remains outside ordinary consciousness, but Inspiration can call it up. Then the particular nature of the experience is disclosed, and we find it is gone through in reverse order to our experience by day. Whereas by day you go through your experiences—leaving short sleeps aside—from morning to evening, during the night, in sleep, you live through these experiences backwards—from evening to morning. This is in order that we may experience whatever the spiritual Cosmos has to say about the way we have lived through the day.

During earthly life, however, a man cannot normally call this experience up into consciousness. Yet he must become conscious of it, or his human existence would fall out of connection with cosmic existence. Inspired cognition shows that as soon as a man after death has watched his life-tableau, which, as I have said, lasts two, three, or four days, and as soon as his memories have dissolved into the Cosmos, spreading themselves out there—after this experience, often referred to as the freeing of the etheric body—a time comes when the man is able to look back on his earthly life again, but in a different way.

If we look at those few days after death, we come to a mighty panorama of our life, but at first it embraces daytime experiences alone. In reality, however, a man goes through not only his waking experiences but also those he has had during sleep. When in earthly life you look back on your ordinary memories, you always leave out your periods of sleep, as if your only experiences had been those lived through by day. And so it goes on right back to the time after birth when your memories cease.

In fact it is like this with the panorama that appears during those two or three days after death. Then, later, comes a period when soul and spirit have gained sufficient strength to experience in the spiritual world all that could manifest only unconsciously, in picture form, while we were asleep at night during our life on Earth. It now comes before us as experience. A man then passes through a period—lasting about one-third of his life on Earth, approximately the time normally spent in sleep—when he experiences his nights again, but in a backward direction. So he lives through his last night first, then the night before, and so on right back to the time of his birth and conception.

From other points of view I have described this going back through a quite different world after death in my book, Theosophy, when I was speaking of man, as a being of soul and spirit, passing through the soul-world.

Now when after death a man has gone thus through the soul-world, taking about seven years for it if he has lived twenty-one years, or, if he has lived to sixty, perhaps twenty years—always the length of time he has slept in earthly life—he has then to experience the total effect he has had upon Earth-existence—an existence created by the Gods in order to carry the world, with the help of the human race, a little further on its progress. Up to the end of this backward survey of his nights after death, a man has been gaining knowledge of what he has himself become, of his significance for the Cosmos. He now has to experience how the Earth itself has been affected by his life. This takes a long time—half the time, indeed, between earthly death and a new earthly life. Tomorrow we shall have to speak of this in greater detail.

After going backwards through our nights, we come to our birth; and having arrived there, after this backward journey through the soul-world, we have to find the way back to our previous earthly life. This enables a man to bring over with him that previous life for the shaping of his next life on Earth.

Here we enter the realm of the old Initiation-knowledge (which must be renewed to-day in a way suited to men's present faculties.) The old Initiation-knowledge led people over to religious experience. For Initiation-knowledge is always true knowledge, but of a kind that leads out from the world of the senses into the spiritual, so that the human will is stirred to take a religious form. At the stage of Initiation which leads to the Intuitive-knowledge already described, it has always been recognised as of the utmost importance that when a man goes back to his previous life on Earth, he should meet on the way a being who can become his guide after death.

In a certain region of the Earth a man would say to himself: In my earthly life I must absorb the teaching of the last Bodhisattva to appear on earth. The man may have lived three hundred years after the appearance of this Bodhisattva. But when after death he went back to his previous life on Earth, he arrived at the time when the last Bodhisattva was living on Earth. In the old Initiation-knowledge, this meeting with the last Bodhisattva to appear on the Earth was regarded as enabling the man to make a real contact with his own previous earthly life—which means finding the necessary strength for eternal life, for this can be found only when real contact with the previous earthly life is achieved.

Any possibility of this meeting with the Bodhisattvas, who descend to Earth from certain spiritual regions, ceased at a definite time in human evolution, in world-evolution. And to-day a man would have been unable, when after death he had gone back to his last birth and conception, to go further and make contact with his previous earthly lives. The way to this could be found by a man during the first millennia of earthly evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, in going back, he came to the time of the last Bodhisattva. Today, however, he will find the way only if he makes the journey under the leadership of that Being who united Himself with the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha; if, in other words, he enters into such a relation with the Mystery of Golgotha that Christ can become his guide. For the Christ gathers into Himself all those powers of leadership for life between death and rebirth which used to belong to the Bodhisattvas who appeared on Earth.

Thus the event of the Mystery of Golgotha, with its particular bearing on our experience between death and rebirth, is one of the most important facts in the whole evolution of the Earth. If anyone wishes to learn about the spiritual evolution of the Earth and the place it takes in the spiritual evolution of the Cosmos, and if moreover he wishes to understand what a man goes through in connection with this spiritual evolution of Earth and Cosmos during his life between death and a new birth, then he must give the Mystery of Golgotha its right place in the whole evolution of the world. For people to-day, therefore, a way must be found that will lead attention over from the evolution of man to the evolution of the world, so that the Mystery of Golgotha is seen in all its fundamental significance for the course of events in the evolution of the Earth and in the evolution of man within the earthly.

With these matters, as far as modern Initiation-knowledge can reveal them—matters relating to the later experiences of human beings after death, when they have gone back in memory through their night-experiences—we will deal further tomorrow, in connection with the evolution of the world.

All of our medieval stories—Parsifal, the Round Table, Hartmann von Aue—reveal mystical truths in esoteric form, even though they are usually only understood in their outward aspect. Where do we search for their origin? We must look to a time before the spread of Christianity. Into Christianity was blended what had lived in Ireland, Scotland ... [Gap in the notes.] We are led to a particular centre whence this spiritual life was disseminated. The spiritual life [of Europe] emanated from a mother lodge in Scandinavia, ‘Drottes’ Lodge. Druids = Oak. For this reason the Germanic peoples were said to receive their instructions beneath oak trees.

‘Drottes’, or Druids, were ancient Germanic initiates. They still existed in England till Elizabethan times. All that we read in the Edda or can find in the ancient German sagas refers back to the temples of the ‘Drottes’ or Druids. The author of these tales was always an initiate. The sagas not only have a symbolical or allegorical meaning, but something else as well.

Example: We know the saga of Baldur. We know that he is the hope of the gods, that he is killed by the god Loki with a branch of mistletoe. The God of Light is killed. This whole story has a deep mystery content which all who underwent initiation not only had to learn, but had to experience.

The Mysteries. Initiation: the first deed was called the search for the body of Baldur. It was supposed that Baldur was always alive. The search consisted of a complete enlightenment about the nature of man. For Baldur was the human being who has gone astray. Once upon a time the human being was not as he is today, he was undifferentiated, not bowed down by passionate experiences, but composed of finer ephemeral substance. Baldur, the radiant human being. When truly understood, all things which appear to us in the form of symbols must be understood in a higher sense. This human being who has not descended into what today we call matter, is Baldur. He lives in each one of us. The Druid priest had to search for the higher self within him. He had to become clear about where this differentiation took place, between the higher and the lower ... [Gap]

The secret of all initiation is to give birth to the higher human being within oneself. What the priest accomplishes more quickly, the rest of mankind must undergo in long stages of development. To become leaders of the rest of mankind, the Druids had to receive this initiation.

Man who had descended deeper now had to overcome matter and regain his former higher level. This birth of the higher human being takes place in all the Mysteries in a similar sort of way. The man who had become submerged in matter had to be reawakened. One had to make a series of experiences—real experiences—which were unlike any sense experiences one can have on the physical plane.

The stages. The first step was that one was led before the ‘Throne of Necessity’. One stood in front of the abyss: really experienced through one's own body what lived in the lower kingdoms of nature. Man is both mineral and plant, but the man of today is unable to experience what is undergone by the elementary substances and yet the enduring, the constraining things in the world are due to the fact that we are also mineral and plant in our nature.

The next step led the human being to all that lived in the animal kingdom. Everything which existed in the form of passions and desires was beheld in swirling and interweaving movement- All this had to be observed by the candidate for initiation so that his eyes would be opened to what lay behind the veil of the senses. Man is not aware that what swirls around in astral space is hidden behind the physical sheath. The veil of maya is really a sheath which must be penetrated by him who is to be initiated—the sheaths drop away, the human being sees clearly. That is a very special moment: the priest becomes aware that the sheaths had dammed back the impulses which would have been frightful if they had been let loose.

The third step led to a vision of the elemental nature forces. That is a step which man finds difficult to comprehend without previous preparation. That powerful occult forces are residing in these nature forces and through them express elemental passions, is something which makes man aware that there are powers quite outside the scope of anything he can experience as his own suffering.

The next trial is called the ‘Handing over of the Serpent’ by the hierophant. One can only explain it by means of the effects which it brings about. It is elucidated in the Tantalus saga. The privilege of being allowed to sit in the Council of the Gods can be abused. It signifies a reality which certainly raises man above himself, but dangers accompany it which are not exaggerated in the story of the Tantalus curse. As a rule man says he is powerless in face of the laws of nature. These are thoughts. With that kind of thinking, which is only a shadowy brain-thinking, nothing can be achieved. In creative thinking, which builds and constructs things of the world, which is productive and fruitful, the passive kind of thinking is replaced by a thinking permeated by spiritual force. The blown skin of a caterpillar is the empty sheath of the caterpillar; when filled with [productive] thinking it is the living caterpillar. Into the sheath-thoughts, living active power is poured so that the priest is enabled, not only to see the world in vision, but to work in it through magic. The danger is that this power can be abused. He can ... [Gap]

At this stage the occultist acquires a certain power, whereby he is enabled to deceive even the higher beings. He must not only repeat truths but experience them and decide whether a thing is true or false. That is what is called ‘The Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant’. [it denotes the same thing on a spiritual level that the rudimentary stages in the formation of the spinal cord signify on the physical level. In the animal kingdom we pass through the fishes, amphibians and so on till we reach the brain of the vertebrates and man. See notes.] We have a spiritual backbone, too, which determines whether we are to develop a spiritual brain. Man goes through this process at this stage of his development. He is lifted out of Kama (feelings, passions, desires) and endowed with a spiritual backbone so that he can be raised up into the spiraling of the spiritual brain. On a spiritual level, the windings of the labyrinth are the same as the convolutions of the brain on the physical level. Man gains access to the labyrinth, to the windings within the spiritual realm.

Then he had to take the oath of silence. A naked sword was presented to him and he was obliged to swear the most binding oath. This was that he would henceforth keep silence about his experiences where it concerned people who had not been initiated as he had. It is quite impossible to reveal the true content of these secrets without preparation. He, [the initiate] however, could create these sagas so that they became the expression of the eternal. One who could give utterance to things in this way of course had great power over his fellow men. The creator of a saga of this kind imprinted something into the human spirit. What is thus spoken is then forgotten and only the merest vestige of it survives death. Eternal truths remain longest after death. Of less elevated scientific thought hardly anything remains. The eternal does so and appears again in a new incarnation.

The Druid priest spoke out of the higher plane. His words, though simple, being the expression of higher truths, sank into the souls of his hearers. He spoke to simple folk but the truth sank into their souls and something was incorporated into them which would be reborn in a new incarnation. At that time men experienced the truth through fairy stories; thus today our spirit bodies have been prepared and if we are able to grasp higher truths today it is because we have been prepared.

Thus this time, which came to an end in 60 A.D., had prepared the spiritual life of Europe, had provided the soil on which Christianity could build. These teachings have been preserved and whoever searches will be able to find access to what was taught in these Lodges.

After he [the Druid] had given his oath on the sword he had to drink a certain draught—and this he did from a human skull. The meaning of this was that he had transcended what was human. That was the feeling which the Druid priest had to develop concerning his lower bodily nature. He had to look upon all that lived within his body with the same objective, cool attitude as he felt towards a containing vessel. Then he was initiated into the higher secrets and shown the path to higher worlds. Baldur ... [Gap] He was led into an immense palace which was roofed by flashing shields. He encountered a man who cast forth seven flowers. Cosmic Space, Cherubim, Demi-urge [Maker of the World]. Thus he became truly a Priest of the Sun.

Many people read the Edda and are unaware that it is an account of what really took place in the ancient ‘Drottes’ mysteries. An immense power lay at the disposal of the ancient ‘Drottes’ priests, a power over life and death. It is true that everything becomes corrupt in time. It was once the highest, the holiest of things. At the time when Christianity was spreading, much had degenerated and there were many black magicians, so that Christianity came as a redemption.

The study of these old truths alone is able to give an almost complete survey of the whole of occultism.

Unlike our present practice, not one stone was laid upon another in the building of a Druid temple without the use of exact astronomical measurement. Doorways were built according to astronomical measurement. The Druid priests were the builders of humanity. A faint reflection of this is preserved today in the views which the Freemasons hold.

Learning to penetrate astral substance, viewing the sun at midnight: First initiation.

Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant: Second Initiation.

The journey into the Labyrinth: Third Initiation.

Note on Lecture III

The only source for this lecture was the short notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers. Sentences enclosed in square brackets are the amendments of the editor, where the text seemed insufficiently clear.

Further source material has been appended below, gleaned from the writings of Charles William Heckethorn on the subject of the Druids and the Scandinavian Mysteries. A copy of Heckethorn's book in German translation was in Rudolf Steiner's private library, and from marginal notes in Rudolf Steiner's handwriting it appears to have been used by him in connection with this lecture and other lectures included in this volume. (Charles William Heckethorn Geheime Gesellschaften, Geheimbünde und Geheimlehren, Leipzig, 1900. Original English edition: The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries, London,1875.)

From Charles William Heckethorn
The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries
Chapter VIII. The Druids.

The Druids, the Magi of the West.
The secret doctrines of the Druids were much the same as those of the Gymnosophists and Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia, the priests of Egypt, and of all other priests of antiquity. Like them they had two sets of religious doctrines, exoteric and esoteric. Their rites were practised in Britain and Gaul, though they were brought to a much greater perfection in the former country, where the Isle of Anglesey was considered their chief seat. The word Druid is generally supposed to be derived from “an oak,” which tree was particularly sacred among them, though its etymology may also be found in the Gaelic word Druidh, “a wise man” or “magician.”

Temples.
Their temples, wherein the sacred fire was preserved, were generally situate on eminences and in dense groves of oaks, and assumed various forms—circular, because a circle was an emblem of the universe; oval, in allusion to the mundane egg, from which, according to the traditions of many nations, the universe, or according to others, our first parents, issued; serpentine, because a serpent was the symbol of Hu, the Druidic Osiris; cruciform, because a cross is an emblem of regeneration; or winged, to represent the motion of the divine spirit. Their only canopy was the sky, and they were constructed of unhewn stones, their numbers having reference to astronomical calculations. In the centre was placed a stone of larger dimensions than the others, and worshipped as the representative of the Deity. The three principal temples of this description in Britain were undoubtedly those of Stonehenge and Avebury in the south, and that of Shap in Cumbria. Where stone was scarce, rude banks of earth were substituted, and the temple was formed of a high vallum and ditch. The most Herculean labours were performed in their construction; Stukeley says that it would cost, at the present time, £20,000 to throw up such a mound as Silbury Hill.

Places of Initiation.
The adytum or ark of the mysteries was called a cromlech, and was used as the sacred pastos, or place of regeneration. It consisted of three upright stones, as supporters of a broad, flat stone laid across them on the top, so as to form a small cell. Kit Cotey's House, in Kent, was such a pastos. Considerable space, however, was necessary for the machinery of initiation in its largest and most comprehensive scale. Therefore, the Coer Sidi, where the mysteries of Druidism were performed, consisted of a range of buildings, adjoining the temple, containing apartments of all sizes, cells, vaults, baths, and long and artfully contrived passages, with all the apparatus of terror used on these occasions. Most frequently these places were subterranean; and many of the caverns in this country were the scenes of Druidical initiation. The stupendous grotto at Castleton, in Derbyshire [Peak Cavern], called by Stukeley the Stygian Cave, as well as the “Giants Caves” between Luckington and Badminton [in Wilts.], certainly were used for this purpose.

Rites.
The system of Druidism embraced every religious and philosophical pursuit then known in these islands. The rites bore an undoubted reference to astronomical facts. Their chief deities are reducible to two,—a male and a female, the great father and mother, Hu and Ceridwen, distinguished by the same characteristics as belonged to Osiris and Isis, Bacchus and Ceres, or any other supreme god and goddess representing the two principles of all being. The grand periods of initiation were quarterly, and determined by the course of the sun, and his arrival at the equinoctial and solstitial points. But the time of annual celebration was May-eve, when fires were kindled on all the cairns and cromlechs throughout the island, which burned all night to introduce the sports of May-day, whence all the national sports formerly or still practised date their origin. Round these fires choral dances were performed in honour of the sun, who, at this season was figuratively said to rise from his tomb. The festival was licentious, and continued till the luminary had attained his meridian height, when priests and attendants retired to the woods, where the most disgraceful orgies were perpetrated. But the solemn initiations were performed at midnight, and contained three degrees, the first or lowest being the Eubates, the second the Bards, and the third the Druids. The candidate was first placed in the pastos bed, or coffin, where his symbolical death represented the death of Hu, or the sun; and his restoration in the third degree symbolized the resurrection of the sun. He had to undergo trials and tests of courage similar to those practised in the mysteries of other countries, and which therefore need not be detailed here.

The festival of the 25th of December was celebrated with great fires lighted on the tops of the hills, to announce the birth-day of the god Sol. This was the moment when, after the supposed winter solstice, he began to increase, and gradually to ascend. This festival indeed was kept not by the Druids only, but throughout the ancient world, from India to Ultima Thule. The fires, of course, were typical of the power and ardour of the sun, whilst the evergreens used on the occasion foreshadowed the results of the sun's renewed action on vegetation. The festival of the summer solstice was kept on the 24th of June. Both days are still kept as festivals in the Christian church, the former as Christmas, the latter as St. John's Day; because the early Christians judiciously adopted not only the festival days of the pagans, but also, so far as this could be done with propriety, their mode of keeping them; substituting, however, a theological meaning for astronomical allusions. The use of evergreens in churches at Christmas time is the Christian perpetuation of an ancient Druidic custom.

Doctrines.
The Druids taught the doctrine of one supreme being, a future state of rewards and punishments, the immortality of the soul and a metempsychosis. It was a maxim with them that water was the first principle of all things, and existed before the creation in unsullied purity, which seems a contradiction to their other doctrine that day was the offspring of night, because night or chaos was in existence before day was created. They taught that time was only an intercepted fragment of eternity, and that there was an endless succession of worlds. In fact, their doctrines were chiefly those of Pythagoras. They entertained great veneration for the numbers three, seven, nineteen (the Metonic cycle), and one hundred and forty-seven, produced by multiplying the square of seven by three. They also practised vaticination [prophecy], pretending to predict future events from the flights of birds, human sacrifices, by white horses, the agitation of water, and lots. They seem, however, to have possessed considerable scientific knowledge.

Political and Judicial Power.
Their authority in many cases exceeded that of the monarch. They were, of course, the sole interpreters of religion, and consequently superintended all sacrifices; for no private person was allowed to offer a sacrifice without their sanction. They possessed the power of excommunication, which was the most horrible punishment that could be inflicted next to that of death, and from the effects of which the highest magistrate was not exempt. The great council of the realm was not competent to declare war or conclude peace without their concurrence. They determined all disputes by a final and unalterable decision, and had the power of inflicting the punishment of death. And, indeed, their altars streamed with the blood of human victims. Holocausts of men, women, and children, inclosed in large towers of wicker-work, were sometimes sacrificed as a burnt offering to their superstitions, which were, at the same time, intended to enhance the consideration of the priests, who were an ambitious race delighting in blood. The Druids, it is said, preferred such as had been guilty of theft, robbery, or other crimes, as most acceptable to their gods; but when there was a scarcity of criminals, they made no scruple to supply their place with innocent persons. These dreadful sacrifices were offered by the Druids, for the public, on the eve of a dangerous war, or in the time of any national calamity; and also for particular persons of high rank, when they were afflicted with any dangerous disease.

Priestesses.
The priestesses, clothed in white, and wearing a metal girdle, foretold the future from the observation of natural phenomena, but more especially from human sacrifices. For them was reserved the frightful task of putting to death the prisoners taken in war, and individuals condemned by the Druids; and their auguries were drawn from the manner in which the blood issued from the many wounds inflicted, and also from the smoking entrails. Many of these priestesses maintained a perpetual virginity, others gave themselves up to the most luxurious excesses. They dwelt on lonely rocks, beaten by the waves of the ocean which the mariners looked upon as temples surrounded with unspeakable prodigies. Thus the island of Sena or Liambis, The Saints, near Ushant, was the residence of certain of these priestesses, who delivered oracles to sailors; and there was no power that was not attributed to them. Others, living near the mouth of the Loire, once a year destroyed their temple, scattered its materials, and, having collected others, built a new one—of course a symbolical ceremony; and if one of the priestesses dropped any of the sacred materials, the others fell upon her with fierce yells, tore her to pieces, and scattered her bleeding limbs.

Abolition.
As the Romans gained ground in these islands the power of the Druids gradually declined; and the were finally assailed by Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain under Nero, A.D. 61, in their stronghold, the Isle of Anglesey, and entirely defeated, the conqueror consuming many of them in the fires which they had kindled for burning the Roman prisoners they had expected to make—a very just retaliation upon these sanguinary priests. But though their dominion was thus destroyed, many of their religious practices continued much longer; and so late as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute, it was necessary to forbid the people to worship the sun, moon, fires, etc. Certainly many of the practices of the Druids are still adhered to in Freemasonry; and some writers on this Order endeavour to show that it was established soon after the edict of Canute, and that as thereby the Druidical worship was prohibited in toto, the strongest oaths were required to bind the initiated to secrecy.

Chapter IX. Scandinavian Mysteries

Drottes.
The priests of Scandinavia were named Drottes, and instituted by Sigge, a Scythian prince, who is said afterwards to have assumed the name of Odin. Their number was twelve, who were alike priests and judges; and from this order proceeded the establishment of British juries. Their power was extended to its utmost limits, by being allowed a discretionary privilege of determining on the choice of human victims for sacrifice, from which even the monarch was not exempt—hence arose the necessity of cultivating the goodwill of these sovereign pontiffs; and as this order, like the Israelitish priesthood, was restricted to one family, they became possessed of unbounded wealth, and at last became so tyrannical as to be objects of terror to the whole community. Christianity, promising to relieve it from this yoke, was hailed with enthusiasm; and the inhabitants of Scandinavia, inspired with a thirst for vengeance on account of accumulated and long-continued suffering, retaliated with dreadful severity on their persecutors, overthrowing the palaces and temples, the statues of their gods, and all the paraphernalia of Gothic superstition. Of this nothing remains but a few cromlechs; some stupendous monuments of rough stone, which human fury could not destroy; certain ranges of caverns hewn out of the solid rock; and some natural grottos used for the purpose of initiation.

Rituals.
The whole ritual had an astronomical bearing. The places of initiation, as in other mysteries, were in caverns, natural or artificial, and the candidate had to undergo trials as frightful as the priests could render them. But instead of having to pass through seven caves or passages, as in the Mithraic and other mysteries, he descended through nine—the square of the mystic number three—subterranean passages, and he was instructed to search for the body of Baldur, the Scandinavian Osiris, slain by Loki, the principle of darkness, and to use his utmost endeavours to raise him to life. To enter into particulars of the process of initiation would involve the repetition of what has been said before; it may therefore suffice to observe that the candidate on arriving at the sacellum had a solemn oath administered to him on a naked sword, and ratified it by drinking mead out of a human skull. The sacred sign of the cross was impressed upon him, and a ring of magic virtues, the gift of Baldur the Good, delivered to him.

Astronomical Meaning Demonstrated.
The first canto of the Edda, which apparently contains a description of the ceremonies performed on the initiation of an aspirant, says that he seeks to know the sciences possessed by the Aesas or gods. He discovers a palace, whose roof of boundless dimensions is covered with golden shields. He encounters a man engaged in launching upwards seven flowers. Here we easily discover the astronomical meaning: the palace is the world, the roof the sky; the golden shields are the stars, the seven flowers the seven planets. The candidate is asked what is his name, and replies Gangler, that is, the wanderer, he that performs a revolution, distributing necessaries to mankind; for the candidate personates the sun. The palace is that of the king, the epithet the ancient Mystagogues gave to the head of the planetary system. Then he discovers three seats; on the lowest is the king called Har, sublime; on the central one, Jafuhar, the equal of the sublime; on the highest Tredie, the number three. These personages are those the neophyte beheld in the Eleusinian initiation, the hierophant, the daduchus or torchbearer, and the epibomite or attendant on the altar; those he sees in Freemasonry, the master, and the senior and junior wardens, symbolical personifications of the sun, moon, and Demiurgus, or grand architect of the universe. But the Scandinavian triad is usually represented by Odin, the chief deity; Thor, his first-born, the reputed mediator between god and man, possessing unlimited power over the universe, wherefore his head was surrounded by a circle of twelve stars; and Freya, a hermaphrodite, adorned with a variety of symbols significant of dominion over love and marriage. In the instructions given to the neophyte, he is told that the greatest and most ancient of gods is called Alfader (the father of all), and has twelve epithets, which recall the twelve attributes of the sun, the twelve constellations, the twelve superior gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Among the gods of the Scandinavian theogony there is Baldur the Good, whose story, as already hinted above, formed the object of the initiatory ceremonies. Baldur is Mithras, the sun's love. He foresees the danger that threatens him; he dreams of it at night. The other gods of Valhalla, the Scandinavian Olympus, to whom he reveals his sad fore-bodings, reassure him, and to guard against any harm befalling him, exact an oath from every thing in nature on his behalf, except from the mistletoe, which was omitted on account of its apparently inoffensive qualities. For an experiment, and in sport, the gods cast at Baldur all kinds of missiles, without wounding him. Hoder the blind [that is, Fate], takes no part in the diversion; but Loki [the principle of evil, darkness, the season of winter] places a sprig in the hands of Hoder, and persuades him to cast it at the devoted victim, who falls pierced with mortal wounds. For this reason it was that this plant was gathered at the winter solstice by the Druids of Scandinavia, Gaul, and Britain, with a curved knife, whose form symbolised the segment of the zodiacal circle during which the murder of Baldur took place. In the Edda of Snorro we have another legend of Odin and Freya, the Scandinavian Isis or Venus, giving an account of the wanderings of the latter in search of the former, which, of course, have the same astronomical meaning as the search of Isis for Osiris, of Ceres for Proserpine, etc. One of the chief festivals in the year, as with the Druids, was the winter solstice; and this being the longest night in the year, the Scandinavians assigned to it the formation of the world from primeval darkness, and called it “Mother Night.” This festival was denominated “Yule,” and was a season of universal festivity.

The course of lectures on the basic elements of theosophy which I announced some time ago will have to come later, at a time when numbers will perhaps be greater.¹⁵ I have put off the date for those lectures and decided to use the next few Thursdays to develop some aspects of cosmology, or world evolution, that is, the teaching in theosophical terms on the origins of the world and the creation of man within this world.

I am, of course, well aware that I am proposing to deal with one of the most difficult chapters in theosophical teaching, and it is probably right to tell you that in some lodges the decision has been made not to treat the subject for the time being, as it is too difficult. I have nevertheless decided to do it, for I believe that with the indications I am able to give, this will be useful to some of you. We may not be able to go into the whole of such a difficult subject immediately, but it should be possible to give encouragement, so that at a later time we may enter more deeply into the matter.

Those of you who have been in the theosophical movement for some time will know that questions as to how the world did actually come into existence, and how it has gradually evolved up to the present time when entities such as ourselves are able to inhabit it, have been the very first to be considered in the theosophical movement. Not only did one of the first books which drew the western world’s attention to ancient views of the world, H. P. Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled,¹⁶ deal with such questions of the origin and evolution of the world, but the book to which we are probably indebted for the greatest number of our adherents, Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism,¹⁷ has done the same. How does a solar system evolve, and the planets and constellations? How did the Earth evolve, what stages has it gone through and what would still lie before it? These questions are considered in full in Esoteric Buddhism. Then Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine appeared in the late ’80s, and in the first volume she, too, considered the question as to how the human race developed in Earth evolution.

Now I need just refer to a single point to show the whole problem. If you open volume 1 of Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine you will find that some of the statements made in Sinnett’s Buddhism are said to be erroneous and are in part corrected by her.¹⁸ The theosophical writers had partly misunderstood these things and partly presented them in a way that led to misunderstanding. Mrs Blavatsky therefore had to put them right. She said that a kind of Babylonian confusion of tongues had arisen with regard to theosophical cosmology,¹⁹ and that leading figures [in the Theosophical Society] certainly were not immediately well informed on these matters.

You all know that the contents of the Secret Doctrine were given by great, sublime masters who were far ahead of our average level of development. Before it was published, a book had appeared in which Sinnett, author of Esoteric Buddhism, published a number of letters by a mahatma.²⁰ We can thus see the problems which arise with understanding this secret doctrine, and we can understand that people who, like Sinnett and Blavatsky, were endeavouring to receive those doctrines were literally sighing, as it was so difficult to understand the doctrines that were given to them. ‘Oh,’ one teacher said, ‘being used to grasp things with a different set of mind, you cannot understand what we have to say, however much you endeavour to gain understanding of it.’ If we consider these words, the problems will be evident. Views that could be misunderstood arose wherever people spoke of cosmology.²¹ This is therefore well established, and I hope I may ask your forbearance as I try to say something on this doctrine.

Let me say something to begin with that will clarify the relationship of theosophical cosmology to modem science and its methods. Someone might come and say: ‘Consider the advances made by astronomers; we owe this to the telescopes, to the mathematical and photographic methods which have given us knowledge of distant stars.’ Modern science with its careful methods appears—in the opinion of scientists—to have the one and only right to establish anything about the evolution of the cosmic system. It appears that in modern science it is acceptable to disapprove of anything others say about the evolution and origin of the cosmic system. Many an astronomer will object: ‘What you theosophists are telling us about cosmology are ancient doctrines taught by the Chaldeans or Vedic priests and part of the oldest wisdom known to humanity; but what significance can anything said millennia ago have, since the teaching of astronomy has only gained reasonable certainty since Copernicus?’ It merely seems, therefore, that the contents of the first volume of Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine confounds the things astronomers armed with telescopes and so on explain to us. But a theosophist need not be in conflict with anything an astronomer says. There is no need for this, though there are theosophists who believe they must fight against modem astronomy in order to make room for their own doctrines. I know only too well that leading figures in the theosophical movement think themselves able to teach the astronomers. A simple example may serve to demonstrate the standpoint some theosophists take against astronomers.

Take a poet whose works give pleasure and edification. Perhaps someone else will be his biographer and will try to make the soul and spirit which lives in the poet understandable and explain it. There is also another way of looking at a person, and that is the physiological or scientific way. Let us assume a scientist studies the poet. He will of course only consider the physiological and physiognomic aspects which are of interest to him. He will tell us about anything he is able to see in the poet and combine with his scientific thinking. As theosophists we would say the scientist is describing and explaining the poet from the standpoint of the physical plane. The scientist won’t say a single word, however, about the poet’s biography, as we call it, or about his soul and spirit. We thus have two approaches that run side by side, though they need not collide. Why shouldn’t there be a scientific study and parallel to it one which considers soul and spirit, with each valid in its own way? Neither is interfering with the other.

The same applies to scientific cosmology, with the information astronomers give us on the cosmic edifice and the evolution of the cosmic system. They will tell us what can be accessible to the ordinary senses. At the same time, however, it is possible to consider the matter in terms of spirit and soul, and if we take the cosmic edifice in this way, we’ll never collide with astronomy; both ways of looking at things will sometimes substantiate one another, for they run side by side and are independent of one another.

For instance, when the scientific physiology of the brain was still far from where it is today, people were already providing biographies of great minds. An astronomer cannot object, therefore, that the occult approach is out of date and impossible since Copernicus put astronomy on a different basis. The occult sources are completely different from this; they existed long before the eye was trained to study the heavens through telescopes, and before photography had reached the point where it was possible to photograph stars. Copernican science offers something very different from occult research; and the one power in the human soul is not at all dependent on the other. The power which gives us insight into the element of spirit and soul goes back such a long way that no historian is able to tell us where this way of looking at the cosmic edifice did have its beginnings. It is not possible to establish how the great minds came to develop these occult insights.

Occult schools existed in Europe before the Theosophical Society was established in 1875. However, the knowledge we now present in popular form was then only shared within closed groups. The law not to let it go beyond these schools was strictly observed. People wanting to join such a school had to do serious work on themselves before the first truths were given to them. The view was that people had to make themselves ready before they could receive such truths. They had many degrees in those schools through which people would progress, degrees of trial; and when anyone was found to be unready they would have to continue to prepare themselves. If I were to describe the degrees to you, it would make you dizzy to think of the strictness that was applied. Matters concerning world evolution were considered to be among the most important and only taught at the highest levels. In the 17^th century, which has had a great influence on civilization, this knowledge was in the hands of the Rosicrucian movement.²² Originally this had come from knowledge held in the East, and European followers were given it at many different levels.

By the end of the 18th and above all the beginning of the 19^th century, those occult schools vanished from Europe’s culture. The last of the Rosicrucians withdrew to the Orient. This was the age when humanity had to organize conditions of life according to external knowledge; the invention of the steam engine came then, and the scientific study of cells and so on. Occult wisdom had nothing to say to this, and the individuals who had reached the highest peak of that wisdom, people of the highest degree, withdrew to the Orient. Occult schools existed also after this, but they are of little interest to us; I must mention them, however, for Mrs Blavatsky and Mr Sinnett went to the source springs when they received their cosmological knowledge from Buddhist Tibetan occult schools.

A long period of cultural development in Europe had brought the European brain, the European ability to think, so far that difficulties arose in grasping occult truths. These could only be grasped with difficulty. When this early knowledge of theosophical cosmology came to public awareness, partly through Esoteric Buddhism and partly through The Secret Doctrine, the followers of occult schools pricked up their ears,²³ and it seemed wrong to them that the strict rule of not letting anything go outside their schools had been broken. The followers of the theosophical school knew, however, that it was necessary to make some of it known.

Western science could not do anything with such knowledge, however, for no one was able to check the truth of what Mrs Blavatsky and Mr Sinnett had written. Above all people did not know what to do with the glorious cosmological song which consists of the Stanzas of Dzyan and was published at the beginning of Mrs Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine.²⁴ The verses tell the history of the universe. Their authenticity was put in doubt; no scientist could do anything with them; initially they appeared to go against anything European scholars knew. There was one man, Max Müller, the orientalist, whom I respect most highly; he spoke energetically in favour of Oriental wisdom.²⁵ Everything he could get hold of in this sphere was made accessible to Europeans by Max Mueller. But neither he nor other European academics knew what to do with the things Mrs Blavatsky made known. At the time people merely said anything said in Secret Doctrine was mere fantasy. The reason was that the academics had never found any of it in the Indian books.

Mrs Blavatsky said that great riches of ancient literature were still to be found in the place from which her secrets had come, but that the most important thing about that wisdom had been kept from the eyes of European scholars. European thinking was such that even the little which it had been possible to tell could not be understood; commentaries were lacking that held the key to understanding. The books which showed how individual statements should be taken were in the safekeeping of native Tibetans who had received the teaching; at least that is what Mrs Blavatsky said.

However, others who have reached advanced levels also said that this literature provides historical evidence that there was an original wisdom which in things of the spirit went far beyond anything people in the world know today. The Oriental sages say that this original wisdom exists in books which are in their safekeeping, and that it did not come to us from human beings like ourselves, but from divine sources. The Orientals speak of an original divine wisdom.

Max Mueller said in a lecture to his students that following certain investigations it was impossible to maintain that there had been such original wisdom. Having heard Max Mueller’s opinion through Mrs Blavatsky, a great Brahmin Sanskrit scholar said: ‘Oh, if Max Mueller were a Brahmin and I were able to take him to a particular temple, he would be able to see for himself that there is such ancient divine wisdom.’²⁶ The things Mrs Blavatsky presents in the Stanzas of Dzyan partly come from such hidden sources which she opened up. If she had invented those verses herself we would be looking at an even greater miracle.

We do not, however, have to depend on getting the occult knowledge of world evolution from the old writings. Powers exist in the human being which enable him to perceive and explore the truths himself, if he develops these powers in the right way. Anything we are able to learn in this way agrees with the knowledge Mrs Blavatsky brought with her from the Far East. It emerges that in Europe, too, occultists preserved knowledge that was passed from teacher to pupils and was never entrusted to books. The occultists were therefore able to test the knowledge Mrs Blavatsky presented in her Secret Doctrine against their own knowledge, and above all against things they had gained out of their own powers. Someone trained in the European way can also check the information given in Mrs Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine. And it has been checked and confirmed,²⁷ but it is nevertheless difficult for European occultists to cope with it. Let me say just one thing. European occult knowledge has been influenced in a quite specific way by Christian and cabbalistic elements which have given it a certain bias. If we ignore this, however, and go back to the basis of this knowledge, it is possible to have complete agreement with the knowledge which Mrs Blavatsky uncovered for us.

Although it has been possible in a way to check the cosmology Mrs Blavatsky had brought for us, it is difficult to explain to scholars what we mean when we speak of the origin of the world, doing so from occult knowledge. It is, of course, remarkable what they achieve in deciphering ancient records, making great efforts to decipher Babylonian cuneiform writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs; but Max Mueller himself has said that nothing they have discovered from those records does as yet give them a picture of the history of the world’s origin. We see the scholars labouring on the shell, as it were, without penetrating to the kernel. This is not to say anything against the careful work and fine bits of detail the scholars have been labouring over. I would merely draw attention to the books published relating to the Bible and Babel dispute.²⁸ All this is piecemeal; the scholars do not get beyond the shell. You feel they have no idea of the ways that take one to the key to these secrets. It is just like when someone begins to translate a book from another language into his own. Initially it is imperfect. That is how it is with the translation of ancient creation myths by today’s' scholars. They are shards of ancient wisdom taught from generation to generation in the mystery schools. Only people who had reached a certain degree of initiation could know something about it. I’ll come back to this again at the end of these lectures.

It is the initiates, therefore, who are able to come to these things in their own experience. You will ask: ‘What is an initiate, actually? People often speak of ‘initiates’ in theosophy and occult societies.’ An initiate is someone who has developed powers that lie dormant in every human being and are capable of development,²⁹ having done so to a high degree. The initiate has developed them to such a degree that he is able to understand the nature of those powers in the cosmos, in the cosmic edifice, which come into consideration for what I want to discuss with you. Well, you’ll say: ‘People always say that such powers lie dormant in the human being, but there’s no certainty of this.’ This is simply due to a misunderstanding. The mystic or occultist is not saying anything which any scholar may not also say in his field. Imagine someone tells you a mathematical truth. If you have never learned mathematics yourself, you will not have the knowledge to test this truth. No one would deny that one needs to have the necessary abilities before one can judge a mathematical truth. No authority can decide the issue, only the individual who has experienced it can judge it. In the same way only someone who has himself experienced, lived through an occult truth, can judge it. People of our time are, however, demanding that occultists should prove anything they have to say immediately and for any average level of understanding. They will quote the words: ‘Anything which is true must be capable of proof, and anyone should be able to understand it.’ Yet occultists say nothing else but what any other scholar would also say in his field, and they do not ask for more than any mathematician would also demand.

We may ask why occult truths are being presented today. Until now, occult schools have followed the principle that the knowledge should not go beyond a small number of people. Those on the ‘right’ still follow the principle today.³⁰ Yet anyone who has the experience and is able to read the signs of the times will know that this is no longer appropriate today. And this very fact, that it is no longer appropriate, has given rise to the theosophical world movement. Today, the rational mind is most highly developed. Associative thinking in conjunction with the senses has led to advances in industry and technology. This rational, intellectual thinking had its greatest triumphs in the 19th century. External intellectual thinking has never been as highly developed as it is today. 1 spoke of Oriental sages having original wisdom, and this was very different in form from our thinking today. Even the greatest masters among them did not have this acuity of logical thinking, this pure logicality; nor did they need it. Because of this it was also difficult to understand them. They had intuition, inner vision. True intuition does not come with logical or associative thinking; what happens is that a truth presents itself directly to the mind of the individual concerned. He will know it and there will be no need for proof.

The teachers in the theosophical movement now have the right to present part of the occult wisdom. We have the right to express the wisdom which has been given to us in form of intuition, putting it in the thought forms of modern life. A thought is a power like electricity, a power like steam power, like heat energy; and the thoughts presented within the theosophical movement are power for anyone who takes them in, giving himself up to them and not meeting them with immediate distrust. Hearing them, one will not notice it immediately, for the seed will only germinate later. No theosophical teacher asks anything but that people should listen to him. He is not asking for blind faith, only that people should listen. Neither acceptance as a matter of belief nor unbelieving rejection are the right attitude. Listeners should merely think the thoughts through for themselves, leaving aside belief or doubt, yes or no. They need to be ‘neutral’ and let the teaching come alive in their minds just to ‘try it out’. If you let theosophical thoughts be alive in you in this way, you will not just have thoughts in you, but a spiritual energy will pour in, to be active in you and bear fruit.

Western European civilization has developed thinking to such a high degree that people find it easiest to come to anything through thinking. Even the most faithful church-going Christians cannot now imagine the kind of faith people had in the past. That source spring of conviction has dried up. We have to make our thoughts fruitful in a very different way today. In the past, thinking was not widespread and spiritual knowledge could therefore only be presented in occult schools. Today we must turn to the power of thought with the things of the spirit; we then fire the thoughts so that they come alive in us. A spiritual speaker speaks to his listeners in a way that is very different from that of other speakers. He speaks in a way that makes a kind of spiritual atmosphere, spiritual powers, flow from him. Listeners should receive a thought without accepting or rejecting it, as something wholly objective, live with that thought, meditate on it and let it come alive in them. The thought will then generate energy or power in us.

Today we must make the occult truths concerning the origin and evolution of the world known in form of European thoughts and the modern scientific approach. The lectures will thus concern the conditions that preceded the beginnings of our own world. We will go back to long-ago times when the entity evolved from the greyest twilit darkness which was later to become human. We will go back to the stage where this human being was received by earthly powers, surrounded with earthly matter, up to the point where we are today. We’ll get to know the pre-earthly and earthly evolution of our world edifice and see how theosophy opens up a prospect on the future. We will see the direction in which our world evolution is going to continue. All this will be shown without going against the ideas of modem astronomy. Awakening the powers that lie dormant in us we will ourselves perceive the great goal towards which we are moving—to gain cosmological wisdom. Let us consider this cosmological wisdom in the sessions that follow.

• 15. The following announcement appeared in the German journal Vahan No. 9, March 1904: ‘In April and May Dr Steiner will be giving lectures on the basic concepts of theosophy at Motzstr. 17 every Thursday at 8 p.m.’ The lectures were put off until the autumn, however; they have been published (in German) in Ursprung und Ziel des Menschen. Grundbegriffe der Esoterik (GA 53).
• 16. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna (1831–91). Isis Unveiled, New York 1877; The Secret Doctrine, London 1888.
• 17. Sinnett, Alfred Percy (1840–1921). Esoteric Buddhism, 1883. See also Rudolf Steiner’s references to this work in a lecture given in Berlin on 12 December 1912 (in German, in GA 62), in the lecture course The Occult Movement in the 19th Century, tr. D. S. Osmond, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1973 (in GA 254) and in Rudolf Steiner’s biography, chapter 7.
• 18. See introduction to the 1st volume of The Secret Doctrine.
• 19. In The Secret Doctrine, Mrs Blavatsky wrote that it had been difficult to find the right terminology. ‘In these early letters [of the mahatmas], in which terms had to be invented and words coined, the “Rings” very often became “Rounds” and the “Rounds”, “Life-Cycles”, and vice versa. To a correspondent who called a “Round” a “World-Ring”, the Teacher wrote: “I believe this will lead to a further confusion. A Round we are agree to call the passage of a Monad from Globe A to Globe G or Z. ... The ‘World-Ring’ is correct ... Advise Mr... strongly, to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further.’” [page 191] See also Note 4.
• 20. In The Occult World, London 1881.
• 21. In the series of essays ‘Aus der Akasha-Chronik’ (later Cosmic Memory. Atlantis and Lemuria, GA 11), we read: ‘... that the inspirations of the great teacher mentioned in Esoteric Buddhism [by Sinnett] do not contradict what I am presenting here, but that the misunderstanding only arose because the author of that work translated the wisdom of those inspirations, which is difficult to put in words, into the human language of today, doing so in his own way.’
• 22. See lecture given in Berlin on 4 November 1904 on the Rosicrucian Mystery in The Temple Legend, GA 93, tr. J. M. Wood; London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1997.
• 23. See lecture given in Domach on 10 October 1915 in The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, GA 254, tr. D. S. Osmond; London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1973.
• 24. David Reigle, Tibetologist, has since identified the stanzas as coming from the books of the Kiu-Te, probably also as the fifth, esoteric part of the Kalachakra Tantra entitled Jnana. See Life and Work of Helena Blavatsky by Sylvia Cranston. See also what Rudolf Steiner said about Tibet in his talk with the workmen at the Goetheanum on 20 May 1924 in From Beetroot to Buddhism, GA 353, tr. A. R. Meuss; London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1999.
• 25. Max Müller (1823–1900), well-known expert on the Orient, language and religion in the 19lh century. Member and protagonist of the Theosophical Society for as long as it based itself on purely Indian philosophy.
• 26. See Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, vol. 1.
• 27. Clearly referring to C. G. Harrison’s The Transcendental Universe, lectures on occult science, theosophy and the catholic faith, London 1893/94.
• 28. Friedrich Delitzsch (1850–1922) professor of Assyriology and Semitic languages, had established a connection between certain Old Testament passages and Babylonian writings about the creation (Bibel und Babel, Leipzig 1902). Lectures he gave on the subject in 1902 and 1903 triggered serious disputes, and there were a number of published refutations. Rudolf Steiner wrote about this in an essay on the supersensible world which was published in Lucifer-Gnosis, GA 34, in May 1904.
• 29. Soon after this lecture Rudolf Steiner published the series of essays on how to gain knowledge of higher worlds in Lucifer- Gnosis.
• 30. See also lectures of 10-15 October 1915 in The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century (see Note 22), and on 1 and 7 November 1915 [in German] in Die okkulte Bewegung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, GA 254.

Eight days ago, we followed man through the various stages of the so-called spirit land, the Devachan. We saw how man's destiny unfolds in the spirit realm, in the Devachan, between two embodiments. We have seen that, depending on the degree of their development, human beings are able to soar ever higher and higher or ever longer and longer into the realms of this land of causes, in order to bring abilities into this earthly world from this land of causes for ever higher and higher development. The actual causes lie in his work and creativity in this spiritual realm. For those whose minds are open and awakened, in order to observe the spiritual conditions that always surround us, which I have described to you, during their embodiment, the three parts of the human being whose destiny we have come to know, always lie open before the mind's eye. These three parts of the human being, of which I have spoken as gradually enveloping themselves, as it were, leaving the earthly, the carnal shell – the one in so-called Kamaloka, the place of desires, of wishes ; the second in Devachan or the spiritual realm; and the third in the uppermost region of Devachan, where the deepest self is able to develop and unfold, in order to then return with increased power. These three parts of man are his so-called astral body, the body that encompasses all his desires, wishes and passions, everything that man has in common with the animal, everything that forms the mediation, so to speak, between his own spiritual nature and the sensual nature, everything that he lays aside in the land of purification, of cleansing, in Kamaloka.

And then he ascends to the land of the actual spirit, to the land of the spirits or to the Devachan, in order to discard his second body there as well, the body of the world of ideas, of the higher human abilities, which still chains him to the human and inhibits him, in order to then, as it were, be freed of the body, depending on the state of development, to linger for a longer or shorter time in the actual disembodied state of mind. We call that body of man, who rises up to these uppermost regions of the spiritual realm, who spreads his wings to unfold, we call this body the cause-bearer or causal body. This causal body, which we preserve between two incarnations, which we bring with us again and again, this body, which forms the cause of what we have brought upon ourselves, which carries us from one incarnation to the next, that is the one that lives in the uppermost region of Devachan. The other is the one who is in the second region of Devachan, who then immerses himself in the realm of desires, and that is the astral body, in order to then move into the carnal body. Every human being has these three bodies within them.

I have already spoken about the so-called aura. I have already said that the human being visible to physical eyes is enveloped in a cloud of light, in an oval shape that presents the most diverse light phenomena to those who are receptive to it. The egg is smaller and larger depending on the degree of development. It is small in the one who is still at the lowest level of spiritual development. In this case the aura is only a faint glow of light that spreads around the body, but it grows larger and larger the more incarnations the person has undergone and the higher and later the person's stage of development. Then this aura shows the most diverse light and color phenomena. This aura is threefold, and the view for this aura can also be threefold.

There are people with so-called “psychic vision” who are only able to see what is happening in the astral realm. They see only that as a light phenomenon, which can also be perceived in animals. They see what lives in a person in terms of desires, cravings and passions in the form of light phenomena. A person can also rise above this realm. Then the body of representation becomes visible to him, the higher spiritual possibilities of development as a second, finer substance, as an aura that radiates through and permeates the first.

And finally, there is that which spreads out as an even more ethereal substance within this second aura. This is present in a very weakly developed state in people at the lowest levels, but it is developed more and more highly and appears in a wonderful way in the high spiritual beings of our culture. This is what carries over from incarnation to incarnation, the causal body. It is also present in undeveloped people, but only small, like a small halo above their heads. The more a person develops, the more it expands and becomes, as it were, a sun. And the more it illuminates and glows through the being, the better one can see these three bodies distinctly, when one's spiritual vision is opened.

One can direct one's eyes only to the astral world, one can subtract what belongs to the lower and higher spheres and direct one's gaze only to the astral aura. Then one sees only the instincts, desires and passions as color phenomena in front of oneself. If you then focus your attention on the body of representation, you see the mental body. And if you look at the eternal, at the body of causes, you see the most luminous aura of the human being. This bearer of causes is only visible to those whose spiritual eye is awakened in the highest regions of the spiritual world.

This cause carrier, seen externally in its light appearance, shows us the most diverse sights in the most diverse people. If you look at an undeveloped person, be it a negro in Africa, or even an undeveloped person in our areas, a person who has not yet formed many thoughts, is not able to live much in the imagination, knows nothing of higher ideas or spiritual interests, who only lives in his animal instincts, in satisfying his hunger and his physical well-being, then, if we disregard all other auras and only look at the causal aura, it appears to us as a more or less dark oval. This indicates that the causal body is still underdeveloped, that the real self still has a long way to go before it develops. These are the people who show nothing but a few greenish or dirty indigo stripes in their brown ovals. These few stripes are the only indication of the causal or cause body. This is the sight that fills those who can observe the aura with sorrow, because it shows those who can observe how much we still have to do with undeveloped people. We can see how rays of light emerge in them when we transmit spiritual culture to them.

But even the lower mental body, the body of imagination of the undeveloped person, still shows the brownish form and a few developed greenish areas, which alternate with reddish areas or with areas that play into the bluish. These greenish and bluish parts become more and more frequent the more ideas are formed in the person concerned. And then, when we examine such a person for his astral body, we are suddenly confronted with appearances of almost terrible effect in the glaringly bright colors; we are confronted with blood-red clouds that fill almost the entire astral body, billowing about in confusion. Only at the upper or lower layer of the oval we see a greenish or indigo base, and that alternates with the brownish colorings, but also alternates with all kinds of formations, which differ according to the different temperaments. In the angry people we see red flashes flash through the astral body, in others we see bluish-gray clouds.

This is the aura of an undeveloped person. Then we have to look at the aura of a person at a higher level, that is, a person who has received a good education here in our area. In such a person, the causal body appears as a form that is already more endowed with colors, as a form that is permeated by beautiful colors. In this case, it is the green colors, green-yellow and yellow color nuances. These are the nuances that the European has. Only when these colors expand a little further does the lower spiritual body appear. And when we look at the astral body of a person, it generally appears to be somewhat similar in design to the astral body of an undeveloped person. Only the colors have different nuances. The undeveloped person has blackish colors; the more developed the person is, the brighter the colors. They are illuminated from within, they attract the gaze and have a sympathetic effect on the gaze.

And if we go to the highly developed spiritual person, to the one who has developed higher spiritual abilities within himself, who has already devoted himself to a spiritual life through many incarnations, then the astral body also appears in completely different transformations. It no longer appears interspersed with cloud-like formations, but radiates from within on a blue background. The cause body has a more or less light or dark blue coloration, and the eternal man radiates into this. The purer and nobler he develops in the spiritual, the more he shows the coloration of the spiritual. We see a beautiful golden-yellow radiance from the inside out, merging into radiance verging on rose-red, and these merge into beautiful bluish-violet radiance. The causal body is permeated by radiance, expanding more and more, taking on larger and larger dimensions. The adept rests in the midst of this causal body, which fades from golden yellow rays within to violet rays without, so that he is surrounded by this flood of light, enclosed by it, so that he can become so great that he can often exceed his human form ten, twenty, thirty times in length from top to bottom.

These are the causes of great leaders and guides of people. And if you then look for the body of the imagination of lower people, you will still find forms there, but you will find that they have become luminous, sparkling, radiant from within. We may well conclude that this is because what such people want and feel is shaped by the spirit, by spiritual abilities. These are the faculties that reveal themselves to the spiritual eye when it observes its surroundings. It sees what is transient and what is permanent.

All the bodies that I have mentioned, especially the astral body, which appears flooded in reddish shades, are completely lost in Kamaloka and Devachan. In the lower parts of Devachan and the astral plane, the finer parts dissolve. Man loses what he contains of lower sensual values. The astral body can completely dissolve in Kamaloka and only passes with the causal body, the spiritual body, to Devachan.

In the fourth region of Kamaloka, what we call human selfishness and human egoism is completely absorbed by matter. Whatever still chains itself to the world is lost in the fourth region. Man feels the worthlessness of base selfishness and begins to realize that he must stretch his wings, that he must comprehend what does not concern him. And when he arrives in the spiritual realm, his feelings, emotions and perceptions, which can be summarized by the word selfishness, have disappeared. He has reached the stage where he can experience, “That is you!” and “I am Brahma”. He can hand over the lower spiritual bodies to dissolution and take his self over into the higher realms of the spiritual realm, where it can fully unfold. Here everything appears to a person in its true form. Here he appears as what he is, as what has embodied itself.

The bluish oval appears as the actual body of the person, and within the bluish oval shines that which we must call the actual essence of the person. A person cannot yet have this body. It is woven from the three finest substances of the spirit world, and these show up in their pure bluish color. I emphasize that this pure bluish color can only be observed if one completely disregards what else the person has and only looks at the spiritual. So he appears only in his bluish oval, permeated by his essence.

This is what the Platonic philosophy called the so-called luminous man, the sparkling, the shining one. This is the same thing that the initiate Paul called the so-called spiritual body. This means nothing other than what we find here in the highest regions of Devachan. This fine blue body is woven from the finest fabrics of the spirit land, of Devachan. That which radiates and sparkles in it does not come from any of the worlds we have mentioned so far. What sparkles in this body comes from even higher worlds.

If you take the earthly world, the astral world and the spiritual world, the Devachan, you have the three worlds within which a person incarnates in the world. He always returns to develop new abilities there, which he then applies in the earthly world. These are the three worlds that Paul speaks of: the spiritual world, the soul world and the body world. Everything is woven into the physical body from these three. When we come into the physical world, we spread the physical covering around us. We take substances from physical matter, from the physical world. We live in some world with those substances taken from that world, so that when we descend from the spiritual realm, we first surround our real self with the body that is woven from the lower parts of the spiritual realm; this then descends into the astral world and forms the astral body. This finally attracts the physical materiality, and then the person is embodied again.

But what expands within the actual blue spiritual body, within this sparkling structure, is not from these three worlds. The real self does not come from these three worlds. What is wrapped around it as a blue oval is the uppermost, the finest, which is taken only from the spiritual realm. But that which is embodied, the self, comes from even higher realms. It comes from the actual divine home of man, from the regions which the theosophist calls the Budhi region and the Nirvana region. Man comes from these two regions.

The human being's essence rests in this spiritual body, which was present before man began to incarnate and which will again be present in other worlds when man ceases to incarnate. This is the actual, eternal, heavenly, divine essence of man. It is what Giordano Bruno called the eternal monad, which passes eternally through all embodiments, the heavenly self of man. This now participates in the manner indicated in what is gradually emerging. At first it radiates in a beautiful golden-yellow color, then it expands more and more, and in the outermost parts it takes on a violet-reddish color, depending on the various character traits that the person has acquired, because all of these exert their effects on the self. In a person who has developed the qualities of pride or ambition in his previous incarnations, we see how this golden, radiant part of the person takes on an orange-reddish coloration. This shows the effect that pride has had on the self. And in another way, other qualities show the influences that must be balanced. This is what has descended from even higher worlds to incarnate in our earthly world. This is what comes from Budhi and Nirvana; this is what we call Atma-Budhi, which is composed of the highest essence, which comes from the divine Being itself.

Last time I spoke about the fact that gradually, as a person passes through many incarnations, he ascends to the three higher regions of the spirit land, that is, each person will have to spend a more or less long time between two incarnations in the first higher region. Even the undeveloped savage experiences a glimpse of his Self in the spiritual realm, and his stay in this realm is getting longer and longer. And when the qualities of compassion, the higher spiritual qualities, are developed, then he ascends to the second region between two embodiments. And when he then returns to our earth, he has become what we call an emissary. Then he has become someone who can speak about the intentions of the world, then he is someone who, between two incarnations, has participated in the unveiling of the impulses of life, then he knows why the animal, the plant, and the human being develop. Then he can talk about the Earth, where it came from and what will happen to it in the future, then he can speak from experience about what theosophical wisdom reveals to us. When he has become a so-called initiate – that is, in the embodiment – then he knows from his own experience the nature of higher life and is able to recognize good. Then, in the next incarnation, he ascends to the highest region of the spiritual realm, where those who have the causes of world events clearly in view, even when embodied in the earthly world, reside.

And then the region is reached into which the structure of the higher worlds, the world of Budhi and the world of Nirvana, shines. Just as Budhi shines into our spiritual world, so the highest of things shines into it, the germs of the human self shine into it. These germs are there and enter the third world to envelop themselves in the substance of the third region. You may ask whether a seer, when he enters the third region of the spiritual world, can also see human beings in the state of germination. Yes, he can, because in this region that which belongs to prehistoric times has long since ceased to exist. The state of affairs is laid bare as if it were happening now, the state in which human souls have now begun to fulfill their development.

What Jacob Böhme expressed has come to pass with this man: if someone were to say to me, “Were you there when what you have told us about the beginning of earthly existence came about?” I could say, “Yes, I was there.” For in him the sense had long been opened that he could say that he had been there at the beginning, that he had really participated in the creation of the world.

What I have now related shows you that we are dealing with three worlds: the spiritual world, the astral world and the earthly or physical world. But this also shows that there are still higher worlds, which are the actual home of the human self. These three worlds are themselves created, formed, they have emerged from a spiritual essence. The sense world has a different origin in the spirit, and the astral world around us has its origin in the spirit. But as we develop more and more in the spiritual, we can investigate the causes of things. We can investigate what underlies the astral as spirit, and we can observe in the highest region of Devachan. But as long as what shines in the budhi does not shine in, we cannot speak of anything that belongs to what we call the deepest truths of world existence. We cannot speak, and we have no power to speak about the cause of evil, about the cause of imperfection, as long as we dwell in these three worlds. Within this world, we have evil alongside good, imperfection alongside perfection. It belongs to this world. It is grounded in this world that evil is added to good and imperfection to perfection. Answering this question requires that one recognize the meaning of existence. There is a meaning of existence, of life and of all becoming. One cannot recognize this if one remains only within the three worlds. And there is the question: Why is good mixed with evil and the perfect with the imperfect within the three worlds?

These three worlds are created from nirvana and budhi, and when we can see beyond that, in nirvana and budhi, then we see how evil, as it were, lies in the divine world order, from which good springs. Ultimately, all evil dissolves into good. According to the sayings of all great minds, good is the actual origin of the world. The world originates in the good. But how it does so, we cannot recognize in the three worlds. If we look beyond our three-worlds circle – I developed this in the first lessons – at the boundary of these three worlds, as it were from Budhi, some mysterious writing becomes perceptible. The Akasha writing appears. This is what is also communicated to us from the external world that does not belong to our three worlds. It contains the destiny of every single person and of all humanity. In this writing, the deeds of people are recorded, and the things that people themselves have entered in the book of guilt through their lives are recorded. Why man can become guilty in the succession of incarnations, that only becomes known at the sight of what has shone forth from the other spheres, when it is possible to read what is recorded in the akasha cloth. In it is written the law of karma.

This law can only be fully understood if one knows how all evil and imperfection dissolves into good, how even evil only contributes to the increase of good. When the highest self shines forth in man, then the great law of world justice is revealed, then the meaning of existence, the meaning of the world, is revealed to him. The world has its meaning from outside the three worlds, and man fathoms this meaning of the world when he rises above the three worlds of Devachan. It requires modesty. When man has found his innermost nature, when he has found in himself the living spirit that comes from the other worlds, when the shining spark has lit up in him, then the source of the shining spark is also revealed to him, and with it the reason for his existence. Then Budhi flows together with that which is above him, with that which is the meaning of the corporeal world. Then man begins to know what is one of the highest secrets of existence, why man is incarnated in this or that body.

With higher vision, we can easily see why a person forms a spiritual body around themselves and why they wrap themselves in an astral body. But now the mystery of earthly incarnation begins: why a person is born into this family, this country, this people. We know very specific human germs. That which is guided by entities of the highest order begins, by entities whose entity rests entirely in Budhi and Nirvana, by the entities we call Lipika, which govern the physical existence of the world, which determine the self to be born in this or that family. This is something that is connected to the deepest meaning of existence. Only when man has risen to the point of fathoming this meaning, do the scales that conceal the answer to the question “How is it that man is born in this body and carries this or that suffering, this or that imperfection through this or that body?” also disappear.

Man is equipped for a certain fate through his physical existence. This is one of the great questions of existence, which is connected to the whole meaning of existence, which is revealed when one knows the decrees of Lipika, the lords of fate. Christian esotericism has understood how to express this in a very beautiful way. Incidentally, you can find this secret in every religion. You just have to know how to read it. The Christian religion has also expressed the veiledness of this secret. You know the beings that live in the spiritual realm: angels or messengers. They have their task within Devachan, within their spiritual realm. The fact that they have their task here, not beyond Budhi or Nirvana, means that their views are bound to what is going on within the actual spiritual realm. But within the spiritual realm, the mystery of why this self dwells in this physical body and that in that is not revealed. That is why the Christian religion expresses it with the words: “The angels veil their faces from the mystery of the Incarnation and only say, ‘Holy, holy, holy’.”

This is just one example of how much can be found in the esotericism of the great religious beliefs if one only knows how to read them. Thus we have followed man through the three worlds and have reached the boundary where the destiny of these three worlds is written in monumental letters: that is the Akasha Chronicle. What shines from this Akasha Chronicle into these three worlds from the outside, as it were, appears to us when we are within these three worlds, in much the same way as when we look out into the starry sky and see, as it were, a heavenly writing in the constellations. Man comes to decipher this writing when he is able to work his way up to the highest regions of Devachan.

The initiates are able to read this Akashic writing and then, when man is able to read more or less of this Akashic writing, then he becomes a participant in the destiny of humanity, then he becomes one of the spiritual leaders of humanity, directing the forces for centuries to come, sending spiritual currents that do not come from the three worlds, but are sent into these three worlds from even higher worlds.

What a person experiences in the third spiritual world, what is known as the “bliss of Devachan”, what lives and flashes in us when we spend the interim between two embodiments in Devachan, that is the subject of the next few hours. I would like to explain why Devachan is called the “land of delights”, why it is called the heavenly region. This will be the subject of our next meditation.

I would like to add that from the boundary of this highest realm of Devachan, exalted masters of Budhi and Nirvana send great impulses to humanity, sending that which has an effect for centuries and making them the greatest guides in human history. They give the impulses, they create out of the mysterious, or according to Christian esotericism, out of that which causes the angels to veil their faces. They are the Messiahs, the greatest of all human leaders. They are named after the kingdom from which they come, from Budhi Buddha. Therefore, those who can teach what flows in from Budhi are called Christ. Buddha, Christ, they are the ones who send the truths from the higher regions into our three worlds. Such a one knows the world. He knows what lies beyond the three worlds. There lies that which we call the secret of evil. This is revealed at the boundary of devachan. There one comes to know the meaning of the world, what I have called the “Worv”. That is what gives the secret its sound. That is why Christ is called: the incarnate Word. That is why it is said: All things are made by the Word. That is why it is said in the Gospel: All things are made by the Word.

This is the sixth step, where the intentions and tendencies of humanity are determined. This is because the one who sends the great and high impulses into human history from this realm, because he knows and must know the secret that lies above the secret of good and evil, can be said to know more than the angels. This is also expressed by Christian esotericism: “Christ makes the angels his messengers.” Those who understand the depths of the Christian religion become theosophists, and true theosophists will not want to contribute to anything other than to the deepening of the core of truth in the great religions of humanity.

When we try to ascertain man's position in the Universe as a whole, it is a question of turning our attention not only to Space but to Time. Anyone who follows the history of human evolution at all, will find that it is a peculiarity of the Oriental conception of the Universe to set Space in the foreground, not leaving Time wholly disregarded, but placing everything pertaining to Space in the foreground. The peculiarity of the Western conception of the Universe is to reckon to a very special degree with Time, and it is precisely this regard for the temporal in human evolution and the Universe which must have primary consideration in a right view of the Christ-Force. To recognise the full significance of the Christ-Force in human evolution on Earth, we must be able to place Man himself correctly in the whole Universe, in a temporal sense. The customary belief in the law of the conservation of force, and especially that of the conservation of substance, hinders this. The law of the conservation of force is one which would so place Man in the Universe that he stands there as a mere product of nature. Attempts have been made to discover the procedure of the transformation through combustion of what man takes in as nourishment, and to find out how the heat of combustion is set up and how other forces arise in man as transformed forces of the food. Such attempts have already been made in modern times by students. They are like thoughts which find expression somewhat in the following way. A man sees a building, he hears that it is a Bank, and endeavours by some method to calculate how much money is put into the Bank and how much taken out; and finding that the amounts are the same, draws the conclusion that the money has either transformed itself in there or has remained the same, but that there are no officials there in the Bank at all. This is approximately the logic of the thought that whatever a man has eaten may be found again in the transformed forces of his calefaction, his activity. Here too courage is lacking actually to put to the test the depth of thought underlying these modern principles. One might indeed arrive at many things by testing what we find in modern science; one has only to test its logic and more especially its reality.

Now the point is that on account of a mass of unreality and of illogical methods of thought, man is placed in the dilemma in which, as I have already pointed out, on the one hand stand ideals, as secondary effects, and on the other, natural occurrences; and we can find no means of building a bridge between them. At most an attempt is made today by chatterers in the sphere of philosophy to talk of natural occurrences in a way which flatters the primitive thought of man; this kind of talk has no desire to go into anything concrete, but prefers to acquiesce in such nonsense as that of Eucken or Bergson. What is of real consequence is, first of all, that one should ask oneself: What it is that man bears within him out of the whole compass of the Universe? What enables him as a member of the Universe so to work with his Ego, that one can see that what results from his activity is his own? Now of all things of the Universe, of all properties of being in the Universe, one such property is easier to study than others, if one only sets aside the prejudices of modern science, and that is the element of heat.

Certainly it must be said in the first place that even the animal world, and perhaps to some extent the plant world, have heat of their own; but the heat of the higher animal world and of man can be distinguished from other kinds of individual heat. And it is necessary to enquire now into what may be called the heat peculiar to man. For in this particular heat (leaving aside for the moment that of the animal, although what I am saying does not contradict the facts in the animal world; but it would lead us too far to include it in our present observations), in what man possesses as his own heat—in this he has his inmost corporeality, his inmost bodily field of activity. Our attention is not drawn to this, only because it escapes ordinary observation that the element of soul and spirit dwelling in man finds its immediate continuation in the effect it has on the heat within him. In speaking of man's bodily nature pure and simple, one should really speak of his heat-body. When we see a man before us, we are also confronted by an enclosed heat-space, which is at a higher temperature than its environment. In this increased temperature lives the soul and spirit element of man, and the soul and spirit in him is indirectly conveyed by means of the heat, to his other organs. In this way too, man's Will comes into existence.

The Will comes into being through the fact that in the first instance man's heat is acted upon, then his lung-organisation, thence his fluid-organisation, and thence only what is mineral or solid in his organism. Thus the human organisation must be represented as follows: The first part to be acted upon is the heat, then through heat the air is worked upon; thence an influence acts upon the water—the fluid-organism—and thence upon the solid organisation. (I have drawn attention to the fact that the solid part of man's organisation is the smallest, for he is more than 75% water-body.) This fact, that we really live and move in our heat element, is one of the physiological facts which we must keep carefully in mind, for we must not simply regard what forms an isolated heat-space as though it were just a space of pure uniform heat, having a higher temperature than the environment—no, we must regard it as having differentiated parts, warmer and colder. Just as our liver, lungs and so forth, differ from each other, so do the parts of our heat-organism; and this differentiation is continually changing inwardly. It is a constantly moving differentiation, and that which in the first instance unites with the activity of the soul and spirit has its being in this inner heat-organisation.

Philosophers today say that the effect of the soul and spirit upon the body cannot be perceived, because they imagine an arm as a sort of solid lever appliance; and of course they cannot see how the activity of the soul and spirit, which is conceived of as abstractly as possible, is to be transmitted to this solid lever-appliance. But one need only fix one's attention on the transition, and we find there that which has been organised for man out of the whole Universe. If we really study human thought, we find that the thought which asserts itself in our head has very much to do with this inner work that goes on within the heat-relationships. (This is not quite exactly spoken, but the inaccuracy can perhaps only be corrected in the course of time. We must try to get a complete picture, therefore I will begin with a more cursory description.) If we observe this inter-working of thoughts in the heat-space, in the isolated heat-space, it is evident that something like a co-operation of thought-activity and heat-activity takes place. In what does this consist? Here we come to something which demands very careful consideration.

Taking first the whole of the rest of man, and then his head, we can of course, trace a transmutation of matter (metabolism) from the former to the latter; and the fact that ultimately the head has to do with thought—that we perceive as a direct experience. Yet what really happens? We will lead up to this gradually by way of appropriate imagery. Let us suppose we have some fluid substance; we bring it to boiling point, then it evaporates, and changes into a more rarefied substance. This same process takes place far more intensely with human thought. All that plays its part as transmutation of substances in the human head, brings it about that all substance falls away like a sediment, it is precipitated, and nothing remains of it but the mere picture.

I will now use another example. Suppose you have a vessel containing a solution. This you cool down, which is again a heat-process. A sediment collects below, and above remains finer liquid. This is also the case with the human head; only here no substance whatever is collected above, nothing but pictures, all matter is expelled. This is the activity of the human head; it forms what are mere pictures, and expels the matter.

This process, as a matter of fact, takes place in everything that may be called the transition to pure thinking. All the material substance which has co-operated in the human inner life falls back into the organism, and pictures alone remain. It is a fact that when we rise to pure thought, we live in pictures. Our soul lives in pictures; and these pictures are the remains of all that has gone before. Not the substance, but the pictures remain.

What has just been presented can be followed into the thoughts themselves, for this process only takes place at the moment when thoughts change into mere pictures. At first thoughts live, as it were, embodied. They are permeated by substance; but as pictures they separate themselves out from this substance. If however, we go to work in a truly spiritually scientific way, we can quite easily distinguish pure thought, sense-free thought that has separated itself out from the material process, from all thoughts belonging to what I have called in these lectures the “instinctive wisdom of the ancients.”

This instinctive wisdom of the ancients, as we learn it today, bears in it, quite literally and exactly, the character of not being brought to such filtration of thought that all material substance fell away. Such falling away of all matter is a result of human development. Although not observed by external physiology, it is a fact that virtually—of course virtually and approximately—the thoughts of earthly humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha were always united with matter, and that at the time of the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha in Earth-life, humanity had arrived at the point in evolution of being able to dissociate itself from matter in the inner process of thought; matter-free thought became possible.

This is not to be regarded as unimportant! It is indeed of the utmost importance that we should observe this development in earthly life—that man in his evolution has become free from the embodiment of thoughts; that they have changed to pure pictures. Thus we may say that up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, embodied pictures lived in man; but after the Mystery of Golgotha, matter-free pictures lived in man. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Universe worked upon man in such a way that he could not attain to pictures free of the body, free of matter. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Universe has, as it were, withdrawn. Man has been transposed to an existence which only takes place in pictures.

What man felt before the Mystery of Golgotha as his connection with the Universe, that he related also to the Universe. He related human life on Earth to Heaven. This we can observe quite exactly. The Hebrew of old was clearly and distinctly conscious that the twelve tribes of old Israel were projections on Earth of the constellations of the Zodiac. The twelve-foldness of the Universe comes to expression in the life of man; and we may say that in those days the life of man was pictured as a result of the twelve-foldness of the Heavens, of the Zodiac. Every man felt the starry Heaven streaming into him; and above all a group of men felt themselves as a group into which the starry Heaven rayed. In the evolution of Hebrew antiquity we must go back to the time when we are told of the twelve sons of Jacob as the projection on Earth of the twelve regions of Heaven. Just as there was this in-streaming of the heavenly forces upon Earth-man in gray antiquity, so also, since in the different parts of the Earth's surface evolution came about at different times, in Europe we find a similar thing at a later time. We must go back to the Middle Ages and study the legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, those significant Celtic legends. For Mid-Europe developed later to the stage reached by the old Hebrews thousands of years before. Mid-Europe was only so far on at the time to which the Legends of Arthur and his Round Table are assigned. There was however, a difference. Hebrew antiquity evolved to the point where the in-streaming from the Universe still yielded embodied pictures. Then came the point of time when the body was withdrawn from the pictures, when the pictures had to be given a new substance. There was indeed a danger that, as regards his soul-life, man would pass completely into a picture-existence. This danger man did not at once recognise. Even Descartes was still floundering, and instead of saying: ‘I think, therefore I am not’, he said the opposite of the truth: ‘I think, therefore I am’. For when we live in pictures, we really are not! When we live in mere thoughts, it is the surest sign that we are not. Thoughts must be filled with substance. In order that man might not continue to live in mere pictures, in order that inner substance might once more be in the human being, that Being intervened who entered through the Mystery of Golgotha. Hebrew antiquity was the first to meet with this intervention of the central force, which was now to give back reality to the human soul that had become

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picture. This, however, was not at once understood. In the Middle Ages we have the last ramifications in the twelve around King Arthur's Table; but this was soon replaced by something else—the Parsifal Legend, which places One man over against the twelve, One man, who develops the twelve-foldness from out of his own inner centre. Thus, over against that picture which was essentially the Grail picture, must be the Parsifal picture, in which what man now possesses within him, rays out from the centre. The endeavour of those in the Middle Ages who wished to understand the Parsifal picture, who wished to make the Parsifal striving active in the human soul, was to bring into the picture-existence that could crystallise out in man after all the materiality had filtered away—to bring into it true substance, inwardness of being. Whereas the Grail legend shows still the in-streaming from without, the Parsifal figure is now set over against it, raying out from the pictures that which can restore reality to them.

Inasmuch as the Parsifal Legend appeared in this form, it represented the striving of humanity in the Middle Ages to find the way to the Christ within. It represents an instinctive striving to understand that which lives as the Christ in the evolution of humanity. If one studies inwardly what was experienced in the form of this figure of Parsifal, and compares it with what is to be found in the modern creeds, one receives a strong impulse towards that which must happen today. People are now satisfied with the mere husk of the word ‘Christ’ and believe that they thus possess Christ, whereas even the theologians themselves do not possess Him but hold to the outer interpretation of the word. In the Middle Ages there was still so much direct consciousness left, that by comprehending the representative of humanity, Parsifal, men were able to wrest their way upwards to the form of Christ. If we reflect on this we receive the impression of man's place in the whole Universe. Throughout the world of Nature, conversion of forces prevails. In man alone matter is thrown out by pure thought. That matter which is actually cast out of the human being by pure thought is also annihilated, it passes into nothingness.

If we reflect upon this, we must think of all Earth-existence as follows: Here is the Earth, and on the Earth, man; into man passes matter. Everywhere else it is transmuted. In man it is annihilated. The material Earth will pass away in proportion as matter is destroyed by man. When, some day, all the substance of the Earth will have passed through the human organism, being used there for thinking, the Earth will cease to be a cosmic body. And what man will have gained from this cosmic Earth will be pictures. These however, will have a new reality, they will have preserved an original reality. This reality is that which proceeds from the force which, as central force, makes itself felt through the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus, when we look to the end of the Earth, what do we see? The end of the Earth will come when all its substance is destroyed as described above. Man will then possess pictures of all that has taken place in earthly evolution. At the end of the earthly period the Earth will have sunk into the Universe, and there would remain merely pictures, without reality. What gives them reality however, is the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha having been there in humanity; that gives these pictures inner reality for the life to come. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new beginning is set for the future existence of the Earth.

From this we can see that what is contained in our stream of evolution is not to be regarded merely as a continuous stream, where one thing is always related to another as effect to cause, but we must so consider the Earth-evolution that we recognise in the first place a pre-Christian evolution, out of which came all that men were able to think at that time, for what they were able then to think was contained in the Father-God, was imparted to the Earth through Him. The nature and work of the Father-God however, was such that what He created as Earth-evolution was given over to that part of Earth-evolution that tends to pass away. A new beginning was made with the Mystery of Golgotha. Of all that went before only pictures were to remain, as it were descriptive paintings of the world. These pictures were, however, to receive new reality through that which entered as Being into the evolution of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. That is the cosmic significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; that is what I meant years ago, when I said: Christianity will not be understood until it has penetrated even into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in physical things, the Christian substance works in the world-existence. We have not grasped Christianity until we can say to ourselves: Precisely in the domain of heat such a change is taking place in man that through it matter is being destroyed and a purely picture-existence comes forth out of the matter; but through the union of the human soul with the Christ-substance this picture-existence is made into a new reality.

If we compare this thought, showing us the interweaving of what man has transformed into soul and spirit with physical existence, if we compare this whole thought with the cheerless scientific thoughts of modern times which can lead only to a blind alley, we shall see its great and deep significance, and we shall see how we are to regard thoughts like those of Julius Robert Mayer, which are in reality that which falls away from cosmic existence, even as ice and snow melt before the Sun. Man however, retains these pictures, and they derive a reality for the future because a new substance has laid hold of them, the substance which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

And through this, the thought of freedom is established for man and is united with scientific thinking. This comes about because man says: Not ‘conservation of matter and of energy’; but, ‘matter and energy have a temporal life allotted to them.’ We take part not in the developing material Universe, but in its decay, and we have now to raise ourselves out of it to mere picture-existence and permeate ourselves with That to which we can only devote ourselves with our free-will, to the Christ-Being. For He so stands in human evolution that man's connection with Him can only be a free one. Anyone who seeks to be constrained to recognise Christ cannot find His Kingdom, he can rise only to the Universal Father-God, who however, in our world, has now only a share in a decaying world, and precisely on account of the decay of His own world, has sent the Son. Spiritual cosmogony must unite with natural cosmogony, but they must unite in man—and that by a free act. Hence we can only say of one who wishes to prove freedom that he is still at an ancient heathen standpoint. All proofs of freedom fail; our task is not to prove freedom, but to take hold of it. It is grasped when one understands the nature of sense-free thinking. Sense-free thinking however needs again the connection with the world, and this connection it does not find unless it unites with what has been introduced into the evolution of the world as new substance through the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus the bridge between natural and moral cosmogony lies in a right understanding of Christianity. It might at first appear very strange that just those who uphold the modern creeds—as well as ancient creeds that extend their influence into modern life—do not desire a science leading towards Christianity, but desire a science as materialistic as possible, so that an unscientific faith may hold its own alongside of it.

In this connection we might say: Modern materialism and reactionary Christianity are very closely related, for the latter has driven mankind into the conception that things spiritual must not be penetrated by true knowledge. Knowledge must be kept free from the Spiritual, must be kept away from it, must extend only to the material. Thus on the one hand stands the advocate of one or other creed, who says: Science extends only to what is sense-perceptible; all else must be grasped by faith alone. On the other side stands the materialist, who says: science extends only to what is sense-perceptible; and faith I have given up.

Spiritual Science is not related to materialism. Modern creeds are indeed very closely related to it; that is to say, old creeds as introduced into modern life are indeed closely related to materialism.

I think I have now shown how the possibility of permeating the moral law with what we can know of nature, and conversely, of permeating nature-knowledge with moral law—is bound up with Spiritual Science. For the phantom which figures today in external science as Man, that delusive picture which shows Man as a configuration of mineral substance, simply does not exist. Man is just as much organised into the Fluid element as into the Solid; he is organised also into the element of Air, and above all, into that of Heat. When we come as far as Heat, we find the transition to the soul-and-spirit nature, for in Heat we have already the transition from Space to Time; and that which is of the soul flows in the temporal. Beyond Heat we pass more and more out of Space into Time, and it becomes possible, by the roundabout way here indicated, to seek the moral in the physical. Indeed it might be said that one who thinks short-sightedly will scarcely arrive at the connection of the moral with the physical in human nature—for one might certainly go to meet death as a miscreant without dislocating a limb, but remaining a well-formed man. The heat condition in the man is however not examined. The heat condition is changed far more subtly and delicately than is supposed, and works back upon what man carries through death. Today the method of study is such that we look up into abstraction, we have our thoughts up there; and we look down into the physical-material. We do not make the transition unless we pass over to the inwardly stirring heat lying between these, which has, at least for human instinct, still a physical as well as a soul aspect. We can develop warmth for our fellows morally—soul-warmth, which is the counterpart of physical warmth. This soul-warmth however, does not arise through a physical change in the sense of Julius Robert Mayer's theory; it arises—but how does it arise? I might say that here it gives palpable evidence of itself. Why do we speak of ‘warm’ feelings? Because we feel, we experience that the feeling we call ‘warm’ gives the picture of outer, physical warmth. The warmth percolates into the picture. What today is only soul-warmth will in a future cosmic existence play a physical part, for the Christ-Impulse will live therein. What today is simply picture-warmth in our world of Feeling—will live on, that it may become physical when the Earth-warmth has disappeared, for it is what the Christ-Substance, the Christ-Nature is. Let us try to find that delicate connection between external physical warmth and that which we instinctively call warmth of feeling; let us try to find it. Let us go to what Goethe said in his book called ‘The Material-Moral effects of Colours’, let us see how in his colour-perception he places the cooling colours on one side, and the warming colours on the other; how he unites the material-moral with the physical conditions which can to a certain extent be measured with a thermoscope, and shows how the element of soul interplays with the external and physical. Then we arrive at one aspect of how a moral cosmogony can be found in the study of Goethe.

The Jesuits of course hate this alliance. Therefore the best book on Goethe written out of the Jesuit thought is a poisonous book, a terrible book, though much more ingenious and effective than anything written about him elsewhere, because written with inner Jesuitical rhetoric. I refer to the three-volumed work on Goethe by Father Baumgartner. It is full of spite and malice, but it is both powerful and effective. We may be very sure that in that world, of which many people have no conception, a world which opposes us too, Goethe is better known than he is among more cultured circles. Those who appreciate Goethe and understand him from the positive standpoint, form but a small community. There is a large community of those who hate him; we do not conceive it half large enough. Some time ago I pointed out how little people are awake to what lives among us—I once said I would have liked counts to be taken at the door of all those who knew the German work, Weber's Thirteen Limetrees, a work that was truly Roman Catholic in the most positive sense. I should like to know how many it would be! The result would have been deplorable. Yet soon after publication this work ran through hundreds of editions. Have those who bring humanity forward any idea in their waking consciousness of how widespread these things are? That they have a widespread effect is certain; so too have those things from which the conflict with us proceeds. Whereas we have a small community which holds to Goethe, but is yet never able to point to anything of importance from Goethe's wisdom, the Jesuit book on Goethe is written with great cleverness and acumen—and that is precisely what we need, that we may be filled with spirit that is awake. Spiritual Science will surely succeed if a wakeful spiritual life really takes root in us.

Those who look at the historical development of humanity only in terms of the sequence of cause and effect, as is customary today, will not be able to gain from history itself that which it can be in terms of forces, of impulses for the individual human being, if one tries to penetrate into the true essence of this historical becoming. Historical development can only reveal itself to someone who is able to perceive a wise working through the succession of facts. Today it is almost the case that one is of the opinion that anyone who sees a wise event in the context of the world and especially in the historical development of humanity is indulging in superstition and attributing to things something that only he himself has thought up. However, one must not impose one's own ideas onto things. One must not force one's way of thinking onto things, but one must try to let things speak for themselves. If one is open enough, one will perceive something like an active wisdom everywhere in historical development, especially at significant turning points in human evolution.

Now, one of the things that has emerged from history is, above all, the establishment of the individual festive days of the year, especially the great festive days. It is striking when we realize that Christmas is a so-called fixed feast, falling every year near the winter solstice, on December 24 and 25. In contrast to this, Easter is a so-called movable feast, which appears to be arranged according to the constellation of the sun and moon, the observation of which is thus, to a certain extent, brought in from the extra-terrestrial cosmos. It is the case that if a person takes these festive days of the year seriously, they have a meaning for their life, they are significant in their life. That is what they should be. Meaningful, penetrating thoughts should arise on these festive days. Profound feelings and emotions should well up from the heart and soul. It is precisely through what we experience inwardly during such festive seasons that we should feel connected to the passage of time and to that which is effective in the course of time.

Now, these festive seasons have been fixed for certain historical reasons, and one has to reflect on such a fact that Christmas is an immovable festival and Easter is a movable one, that Christmas falls at a time when the earth is, so to speak, most closed off from the influences of the extraterrestrial cosmos. When the sun has the least effect on the earth, when the earth, out of its own forces, which it has retained from the summer and autumn season, produces its own covering for the shortest days, when the earth, out of itself, makes what it can with its own forces with the least influence from the cosmos, we celebrate Christmas. |

When the time begins again when the earth experiences the most significant influences from the extraterrestrial cosmos, when the warmth of the sun, the light of the sun, causes vegetation to grow out of the ground, when heaven, so to speak, works together with the earth to weave the earth's garment, then we celebrate Easter. And in that such conceptions have emerged from the thoughts of humanity, not in an abstract way conceived by the one or the other arbitrarily, but from thoughts that have, as it were, permeated humanity through long epochs, that have developed themselves, into the historical evolution something has flowed that, when recognized, at the same time evokes the possibility of deeply venerating it, the possibility of looking back to the times of our ancestors with reverence, devotion, and love. And by drawing attention to something like this, one can indeed say: Contemplation of the active wisdom in historical becoming allows those forces and impulses to emerge from this history that can then, in the right way, become rooted in the human soul and work in the human soul in the right way.

Christmas, as we celebrate it today at the shortest time of the year, on December 24th and 25th, has only been celebrated in the Christian Church since the year 354. It is not usually thought about in a forceful way that even in Christian-Catholic Rome in the year 353, Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ, was not celebrated on that day. It is one of the most interesting aspects of historical reflection to see how this Christmas celebration has become established, out of a historical instinct and from deeper sources of wisdom, which may have worked largely unconsciously.

Something similar, but fundamentally different, was celebrated before: January 6, which was the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ. And this Feast of the Epiphany of Christ meant the remembrance of the baptism of John in the Jordan. This Feast of the Baptism of John in the Jordan was celebrated in the first centuries of Christianity as the most important. And only from the time I have indicated does the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ, the Feast of the Baptism of John in the Jordan, so to speak, wander through the twelve holy nights back to December 25 and is replaced by the Feast of the Birthday of Christ Jesus. This is connected with deep, meaningful inner processes of the historical development of Christianity.

What does the fact that in the first centuries of the Christian worldview the memory of the baptism of John in the Jordan was celebrated indicate? What does this baptism of John in the Jordan mean? This baptism of John in the Jordan signifies that from the heights of heaven, for extraterrestrial, cosmic reasons, the entity of the Christ descends and unites with the entity of the man Jesus of Nazareth. This baptism of St. John in the Jordan therefore signifies a fertilization of the earth from cosmic expanses. This baptism of St. John in the Jordan signifies an interpenetration of heaven and earth. And in celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany, we celebrated a supersensible birth, the birth of the Christ in the thirty-year-old man Jesus.

In the first centuries of Christian development, attention was focused primarily on the appearance of Christ on earth, and of less importance, alongside this view of the appearance of an extraterrestrial Christ-being in the earthly realm, was the earthly birth of the man Jesus of Nazareth, who only received the Christ in his own body when he was thirty years old. This was the conception in the early centuries of Christianity. In these centuries, therefore, the descent of the supermundane Christ was celebrated. And an attempt was made to understand what had actually happened in the course of his incarnation.

If we allow the historical development up to the Mystery of Golgotha to take effect on us, it presents itself in such a way that in primeval times humanity was endowed with an original wisdom of a supersensible kind, an original wisdom that one must have the deepest reverence for if one is able to contemplate it in its entire inwardness, in its entire essence. In the first, only externally childlike appearing wisdom of mankind, an infinite amount is revealed not only about the earthly, but above all about the extra-earthly, and how the extra-earthly affects the earth. Then one sees how, in the course of the development of mankind, this light of primeval wisdom shines less and less in human minds, how people increasingly lose touch with this primeval wisdom. And this primeval wisdom has faded and disappeared from the human mind precisely in the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching. All phenomena of historical development in Greek and especially in Roman life show in the most diverse ways that precisely the best of humanity were aware that a new heavenly element must enter into earthly life so that the earth and humanity could continue to develop.

For the unprejudiced observer, the entire evolution of mankind on earth falls into two parts: the time that waited for the Mystery of Golgotha, waited not only in the simple, childlike minds of men, but waited with the highest wisdom — and in the part that then follows on from the Mystery of Golgotha, in which we are immersed and for which we hope for an ever broader and broader fulfillment, again in the supersensible world, again in the influence of the extraterrestrial cosmic reality on earthly events within the evolution of the earth. Thus the Mystery of Golgotha stands at the very center of earthly evolution, giving it its true meaning.

I have often tried to express this pictorially for my listeners by saying that one should look at something like the significant painting by Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper in Milan, which unfortunately no longer exists in its artistic perfection. How one sees the Redeemer within His Twelve, how one sees Him contrasted on one side with John and on the other with Judas, and how one then has the whole thing before one in its coloring. And here, precisely with regard to this most characteristic image, when contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha, one must say: If any being were to come down to Earth from a foreign heavenly body, it would in the outer reality, would be amazed, for we must assume that such a being from another planet would have a completely different environment around it, and it would be amazed at all the things that human beings have created on earth. But if he were to be led to this picture, in which this Mystery of Golgotha is shown in its most characteristic form, he would intuitively sense something of the meaning of earthly existence from this picture, simply through the way in which Christ Jesus is placed among his twelve disciples, who in turn represent the whole human race.

One can sense the way in which the Mystery of Golgotha actually gives meaning to the evolution of the earth from the most diverse backgrounds. But one only fully senses that this is the case when one can rise to the vision that with the baptism of John in the Jordan a supersensible being, the Christ, has entered into a human being. This is how the Gnostics saw it, not with the world view that we are again trying to gain today through anthroposophy, but with their world view, which was the last remnant of the ancient wisdom of mankind. One might say that so much of the instinctive wisdom of humanity remained that, in the first centuries after Christ's appearance, a number of people were still able to grasp what actually happened with the appearance of Christ on earth. The wisdom that the Gnostics had can no longer be ours. We must, because humanity must be in a state of continuous progress, advance to a much more conscious, less instinctive view of the supersensible as well. But we look with reverence at the wisdom of the Gnostics, who had retained so much of the first instinctive primal wisdom of man that one could grasp the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

From this comprehension of the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha and of the central phenomenon of John's baptism in the Jordan, the first great festival was established. But it was already so arranged in the developmental history of mankind that the ancient wisdom was dying out and becoming paralyzed. And it was precisely in the fourth century A.D. that one could do nothing with this ancient wisdom. Yesterday I presented another point of view, showing how this ancient wisdom gradually darkened. In a certain sense, the fourth century is the one in which man made the first beginning of being completely dependent on himself, having nothing around him for his contemplation other than what the senses can perceive and what the combining mind can make of the sensory perception. In order to gain its freedom, which could never have been gained through dependence on unearthly things, if ancient wisdom had not been paralyzed, humanity had to lose ancient wisdom, had to be thrown into materialistic observation. This materialistic outlook first appeared at dawn in the fourth century A.D. and grew stronger and stronger until it reached its culmination in the nineteenth century.

Materialism also has its good side in the history of the development of mankind. The fact that man no longer had the supersensible light shining into his mind, the fact that he was dependent on what he saw with his senses in the world around him, gave rise to the independent power within him that tends towards freedom. It also appeared wise in the developmental history of humanity that materialism has emerged. But precisely at the time when materialism took hold of the earthly nature of man, it was no longer possible to understand how the influence of the extraterrestrial, the heavenly, in the symbol of John's baptism in the Jordan presented itself to humanity. As a result, people lost their understanding of the meaning of the Feast of Epiphany, January 6, and resorted to other explanations. All the feelings and emotions that were related to the Mystery of Golgotha were no longer associated with the supermundane Christ, but began to be associated with the earthly Jesus of Nazareth. And so the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ became the Feast of the Epiphany of the Child Jesus. Admittedly, the development has taken a course that has now reached a peripeteia, which must create new necessities in the striving of humanity for our present-day world view.

We see how, as early as the 4th century, human beings' full and wise comprehension of the impossibility of comprehending the appearance of Christ was already confronted with it. But human feeling, human perception, human emotion and will develop in the course of history at a slower pace than thoughts. While thoughts had long since ceased to be directed towards the appearance of Christ, hearts still turned to this appearance of Christ. Deeply intimate feelings lived on in Christendom. And these profound feelings now formed the content of historical development for many centuries. And these profound feelings expressed it - but as if from instinctive impulses - what a significant event the appearance of Christ was for the development of the earth. The festival of the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth was connected to the Adam and Eve Day, the festival of the beginning of the earth of mankind. Adam and Eve Day falls on December 24, and Jesus' birthday celebration on December 25. In Adam and Eve, people saw the beings with whom the evolution of the earth began, the beings who descended from spiritual heights, who became sinful on earth, who became entangled on earth in material events, who lost their connection with the supersensible worlds. The first Adam was spoken of in the Pauline sense; and the second Adam was spoken of as the Christ: that man can only be fully man in the post-Christian era if he unites within himself the forces that fell away from God through Adam and the forces that through Christ bring him back to God. This was expressed by bringing together the Adam and Eve festival and the Jesus birthday festival. The sense of this connection, which gives earthly life its true meaning, has been preserved in a heartfelt way over the centuries.

One example of this is the occurrence of the very heartfelt 'Paradeisspiele' (Paradise Plays) and 'Christi-Geburtspiele' (Plays about the Nativity), of which we have brought samples to be performed here, which date from the last Middle Ages, from the beginning of the modern era, when German tribes living in the western regions took them with them to the east. In present-day Hungary, such tribes settled. We find such tribes north of the Danube in the Pressburg area, we find them south of the Carpathians in the so-called Spiš area, we see them in Transylvania. We find mainly Alemannic-Saxon tribes in these areas. We then find Swabian tribes in the Banat. All these German tribes took with them the one thing from their original homeland that had been imbued with the most heartfelt sentiments, which united humanity during these centuries with the most important experience on earth.

But human wisdom increasingly took a course that also intertwined the Christ event with the materialistic conception of the world. In the nineteenth century we see the rise of a materialistic theology. The criticism of the Gospels begins. The possibility of having an inkling — as must be the case with supersensible representations — that what appears as an imagination of the supersensible is different depending on whether it is viewed from one point of view or another, is lost. One has no conception of the fact that the sages of former centuries must also have recognized the so-called contradictions in the Gospels and that they did not criticize them in a critical way. One sinks philistinely into these contradictions in the Gospels. One resolves the contradictions, one removes everything supersensible from the Gospels. One loses the Christ out of the story of the Gospel. One tries to make something out of the story of the Gospels, something like an ordinary, profane story. Gradually, one can no longer distinguish what the theological historians say from what a secular historian like Ranke says about the Mystery of Golgotha.

When one looks for the figure of Jesus in the famous historian Ranke, as he presents him as the simple but most outstanding human being who ever walked the earth, when one reads all the lovingly described in Ranke's profane history, one can hardly tell the difference between this and what the materialistic theologians of the 19th century had to say about Jesus. Theology is becoming materialistic. Precisely for enlightened theology, the Christ disappears from the view of humanity. The “simple man from Nazareth” is gradually becoming that which only those who undertake to describe the essence of Christianity want to point to. And Adolf Harnack's description of the essence of Christianity has become famous.

In this book, “The Essence of Christianity” by Adolf Harnack, there are two passages that could be truly devastating for anyone who has a sense for the real essence of Christianity. The first is that this theologian, who wants to be a Christian, says that the Christ does not actually belong in the Gospels, that the Son does not belong in the Gospels; only the Father belongs in the Gospels. And so Christ Jesus, who walked the earth in Palestine at the beginning of our era, becomes simply the human proclaimer of the Father's teaching. The Father alone belongs in the Gospels, says Adolf Harnack, and yet he believes himself to be a Christian theologian! One must say: the essence of Christianity has completely disappeared from this “Essence of Christianity”, I mean that which Adolf Harnack describes, and actually such a view should no longer call itself Christian.

The other thing that can have a devastating effect in this writing “The Essence of Christianity” occurred to me once when I was present at a lecture given in a society called the Giordano Bruno Society. In connection with the remarks of a speaker there, I had to say how the most important part of the essence of Christianity has disappeared from modern theology. I had to point to Harnack's remark in this book “The Essence of Christianity,” where he says: Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, the idea of resurrection, the Easter faith, emerged from this event; and it is this faith that we want to hold on to. — So the resurrection itself has become unimportant to modern Christian theologians. They do not want to concern themselves with this resurrection as a fact. Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, people have begun to believe that the resurrection occurred there, and it is not the resurrection that we want to hold on to, but this belief.

I pointed out at the time that the essence of Christianity had been expressed by Paul, who said, based on his experiences outside Damascus: And if the Christ had not been resurrected, we would all be lost. Not the man Jesus is the essential thing in Christianity, but the supersensible entity, which through the baptism of John in the Jordan entered into the man Jesus, which arose from the tomb at Gethsemane, and which became visible to those who had the capacity for such visibility. Paul, as the latest of them, saw it, and Paul refers to the risen Christ. I therefore had to point out at the time how the remark of one of the most famous modern so-called Christian theologians fails to see the very essence of Christianity, its supersensible nature. The chairman of the society replied to me in a most peculiar way at the time. He said that such a thing could not be contained in Harnack's book, for Harnack was a Protestant theologian, and if Harnack asserted such a thing, it would be on a par with an assertion that could only come from the Catholic side, for example, about the Holy Robe of Trier. For the Catholic, it is not important whether it can be proven that this holy robe in Trier really comes from Jerusalem, but rather that faith is attached to this holy robe. The chairman of this society was so embarrassed that he did not even admit that this remark was in Harnack's book. I told him that since I did not have the book at hand, I would write him the page number on a postcard the next day. This is also characteristic of the modern thoroughness with which books are read that have an importance in the first place. You read a book and believe that it makes a significant impression on life, and you do not even notice one of the most important remarks, but you think it is impossible that it could be in it. It is in it! All this proves to us how the supersensible Christ has been thrown out of the evolution of humanity by a theology that is becoming ever more materialistic, how people have clung only to the outward physical appearance of the man Jesus.

Now, the festive customs and dedications of the simple minds that resorted to Christmas plays were beautiful; they arose from sacred feelings. Even if people could no longer provide each other with more information about the full meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha, they also had it in their hearts where they outwardly adhered to the material appearance of the child Jesus. And in this form, the celebration of the birth of Christ is beautiful and heartfelt.

The thought that destroys the Christ in the man Jesus is not beautiful and, from the highest point of view, it is not true, even from the Christian world view. It is as if the wisdom-filled guidance of humanity had first taken into account what had to happen in order for the materialistic view and thus the development of humanity to freedom to begin and continue. Just as materialism had to come in order to liberate humanity, so the Feast of the Epiphany, which can only be understood through supersensible vision and falls on January 6, had to be moved back to the Feast of the Nativity, December 25.

The twelve holy nights lie in between. In a sense, humanity made its way back through the entire zodiac by going through a twelvefold number, at least in the symbol, when this festival was moved.

Today, by summarizing everything that is connected with the Christ through the man Jesus, we can certainly unfold all the intimacy and depth of feeling for Christmas. And in my Christmas meditation yesterday, I wanted to express in words what is beneficial in this respect for the present time. But we must, after materialism has celebrated its highest triumphs in theology, after Christ Jesus has become, precisely for enlightened theology, only the simple man Jesus, again find our way back to the intuition of the supersensible, extraterrestrial Christ-being.

If you come with this point of view, then you will make enemies of precisely the materialistic theology of today. Just as the sun materially sends down its light from extraterrestrial cosmic expanses, so the spiritual sun of Christ descended to men and united with Jesus of Nazareth. Just as one can see the revelation of the soul and spirit in the outer physiognomy of man, in his facial features and in his gestures, so one can see the outer physiognomy in that which takes place in the cosmos, in the gestures that are into the cosmos through the course of the stars, in that which, as the inner warmth of the soul of the universe, manifests itself externally through the radiation of the sun, in that one can see the outer physiognomy of what permeates the whole world spiritually and soulfully. And in the concentrated spiritual descent of Christ upon the earth, one can see the inward aspect as the outward physiognomy of the concentrated rays of the sun streaming down upon the earth. And one will understand in the right way when it is said: The solar nature of Christ descended upon the earth.

We must come back to this supersensible understanding of Christ. We must learn to direct our thoughts back to the other birth, which took place as an extra-terrestrial birth through the baptism of St. John in the Jordan, despite the heartfelt devotion we wish to preserve for the birthday of Jesus, for which Christmas alone has become. We also want to learn to understand what takes place in the Jordan baptism of John in a meaningful historical symbol before our soul, as well as what happened in the stable of Bethlehem or in Nazareth. We want to learn to understand the words as they are communicated in the Gospel of Luke in the right way: This is my son, today he was born to me. — We want to learn to understand the Christmas mystery in such a way that it becomes for us again the source of understanding for the appearance of Christ on earth. We want to learn to understand the birth of the spirit in addition to the memory of our physical birth.

Such an understanding can only gradually arise from a general spiritual comprehension of the mysteries of the universe. We must gradually struggle towards a spiritual conception of the mystery of Golgotha. To do this, however, we need insight into the origin of such impulses within the earthly development of humanity, as there was in the 4th century AD, when the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ was moved from January 6 to the day of Jesus' birthday on December 25 out of the innermost need of developing humanity. One must learn to see how the wise guidance of human history works there. One must learn to devote oneself to this historical development with one's whole being. Then one will recognize the wise guidance in human history without superstition, and without bringing one's own fantasies into it. One must learn not only to immerse oneself in history with abstract ideas and to look at cause and effect, but one must learn to devote oneself to this historical development with one's whole being. Only then will we understand what makes our time a truly transitional time, a time in which a spiritual world view must again be wrested from the materialistic view, and a natural elevation to the supersensible must again be wrested. And an expression for this elevation to the supersensible will be a new understanding of the appearance of Christ on earth, the mystery of Golgotha.

Thus for the modern man who is really able to delve into the spirit of the time, Christmas has a twofold significance: it is that which has been approaching through recent history since the 4th century AD, that which has produced such wonderful has produced such wonderful beauties precisely in the simple, unadorned folk tradition, and that which still arouses our heartfelt delight today when we see it again in the renewal of folk plays such as we are attempting through our anthroposophical science. It is all that human warmth and affection has poured into life through the centuries during which the idea of Christianity has taken on more and more materialistic forms, until in the 19th century it has come so far that it must turn around through its own absurdity and return to the spiritual. This gives us, as people of today, the second thing about Christmas: in addition to the feeling that we have for the traditional Christmas that has been handed down since the 4th century AD, for this heartfelt feeling that we want to feel with, a new Christmas should be born from our contemporary understanding, a second Christmas to the old Christmas.

The Christ shall be reborn anew through humanity. Christmas is traditionally a celebration of the birth of Jesus; in spirit it shall become a celebration of the birth of a new conception of Christ, not new in relation to the first centuries, but new in relation to the centuries since the 4th century AD. And so Christmas itself should not be just a celebration of the memory of the birth, but, as it is experienced from year to year in the near future, it should become a direct, contemporary birthday celebration, the celebration of a present-day event. This birth of the new Christ-idea must come to pass. And Christmas must become so intense that every year at this very time man will be able to reflect anew and with special intensity on the fact that a new Christ-idea must be born.

Christmas must become a festival not of remembrance but of the present, a consecration of that which the human being experiences as a birth in his immediate present. Then it will truly enter into our more recent historical becoming, then it will strengthen itself more and more in this historical becoming of humanity, also into the future, which will have such need of it. Then it will become a consecration of the world.

For some time we have been occupied with gaining a more accurate knowledge of Man's relation to the universe, and today we would like to supplement our past studies. If we consider how Man lives in the present period of his evolution—taking this period so widely that it encompasses not only what is historical but also in part the pre-historical—we must conclude that speech is a preeminent characteristic at this moment of the cosmic evolution of mankind. It is speech that elevates Man above the other kingdoms of nature.

In the lectures last week, I mentioned that in the course of mankind's evolution, language, speech as a whole, has also undergone a development. I alluded to how, in very ancient times, speech was something that Man formed out of himself as his most primal ability; how, with the help of his organs of speech he was able to manifest the divine spiritual forces living within him. I also referred to how, in the transition from the Greek culture to the Roman-Latin culture, that is to say in the fourth Post-Atlantean period, the single sounds in language lose their names and, as in contemporary usage, merely have value as sounds. In Greek culture we still have a name for the first letter of the alphabet but in Latin it is just ‘A’. In passing from the Greek to the Latin culture something living in speech, something eminently concrete changes into abstraction. It might be said: as long as Man called the first letter of the alphabet ‘Alpha’, he experienced a certain amount of inspiration in it, but the moment he called it just ‘A’, the letters conformed to outer convention, to the prosaic aspects of life, replacing inspiration and inner experience. This constituted the actual transition from everything belonging to Greece to what is Roman-Latin—men of culture became estranged from the spiritual world of poetry and entered into the prose of life.

The people of Rome were a sober, prosaic race, a race of jurists, who brought prose and jurisprudence into the culture of later years. What lived in the people of Greece developed within mankind more or less like a cultural dream which men approach through their own revelations when they have inner experiences and wish to give expression to them. It might be said that all poetry has in it something which makes it appear to Europeans as a daughter of Greece, whereas all jurisprudence, all outer compartmentalization, all the prose of life, suggest descent from the Roman-Latin people.

I have previously called your attention to how a real understanding of the Alpha—Aleph in Hebrew—leads us to recognize in it the desire to express Man in a symbol. If one seeks the nearest modern words to convey the meaning of Alpha, these would be: ‘The one who experiences his own breathing’. In this name we have a direct reference to the Old Testament words: ‘And God formed Man ... and breathed into nostrils the breath of life’. What at that time was done with the breath, to make Man a Man of Earth, the being who had his Manhood imprinted on him by becoming the experiencer, the feeler of his own breathing, by receiving into himself consciousness of his breathing, is meant to be expressed in the first letter of the alphabet.

And the name ‘Beta’ considered with an open mind, turning here to the Hebrew equivalent, represents something of the nature of a wrapping, a covering, a house. Thus, if we were to put our experience on uttering ‘Alpha, Beta,’ into modern language we could say: ‘Man in his house’. And we could go through the whole alphabet in this way, giving expression to a concept, a meaning, a truth about Man simply by saying the names of the letters of the alphabet one after another. A comprehensive sentence would be uttered giving expression to the Mystery of Man. This sentence would begin by our being shown Man in his building, in his temple. The following parts of the sentence would go on to express how Man conducts himself in his temple and how he relates to the cosmos. In short, what would be expressed by speaking the names of the alphabet consecutively, would not be the abstraction we have today when we say A, B, C, without any accompanying thoughts, but it would be the expression of the Mystery of Man and of how his roots are in the universe.

When today, in various societies ‘the lost archetypal word’ is talked about, there is no recognition that it is actually contained in the sentence that comprises the names of the alphabet. Thus we can look back on a time in the evolution of humanity when Man, in repeating his alphabet, did not express what was related to external events, external needs, but what the divine spiritual mystery of his being brought to expression through his larynx and his speech organs.

It might be said that what belongs to the alphabet was applied later to external objects, and forgotten was all that can be revealed to Man through his speech about the mystery of his soul and spirit. Man's original word of truth, his word of wisdom, was lost. Speech was poured out over the matter-of-factness of life. In speaking today, Man is no longer conscious that the original primordial sentence has been forgotten; the sentence through which the divine revealed its own being to him. He is no longer aware that the single words, the single sentences uttered today, represent the mere shreds of that primordial sentence.

The poet, by avoiding the prose element in speech, and going back to the inner experience, the inner feeling, the inner formation of speech, attempts to return to its inspired archetypal element. One could perhaps say that every true poem, the humblest as well as the greatest, is an attempt to return to the word that has been lost, to retrace the steps from a life arranged in accordance with utility to times when cosmic being still revealed itself in the inner organism of speech.

Today we distinguish the consonant from the vowel element in speech. I have spoken of how it would appear to Man if he were to dive beneath the threshold of his consciousness. In ordinary consciousness memories are reflected upwards or, in other words, thoughts are reflections of what is experienced between birth and death. Normally we do not penetrate Man's actual being beyond this recollection, this thought left behind in memory. From another point of view I have indicated how, beneath the threshold of consciousness, there lives what may be called a universal tragedy of mankind. This can also be described in the following way: When Man wakes up in the morning and his ego and astral body dive down into his etheric body and his physical body, he does not perceive these bodies from within outwards, what he perceives is something quite different. We can get an idea of this by means of a diagram.

Let us say that here we have the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious, red representing the conscious, blue the unconscious. If a person sees something belonging to the outer world or to himself, for instance, if with his own eye he sees another Man's eye, then the visible rays which go out of his eye into the other Man are thrown back, and he experiences it in his consciousness. What he also bears of his own being beneath the threshold of consciousness he experiences in his astral body and his ego, but not in the ordinary waking state. It remains unconscious and essentially forms the actual content of the etheric and the physical bodies. The etheric body is never recognized at all by ordinary consciousness; it recognizes only the external aspect of the physical body. As I have mentioned in the past, we must plunge beneath memory to perceive the primal source of evil in human beings, but then something else can also be perceived, namely, an aspect of Man's connection with the cosmos.

We may, through appropriate meditation, succeed in penetrating the memory representations, as it were, to put aside what separates us inwardly from our etheric and physical bodies; if we then look down into the etheric body and the physical body so that we perceive what normally lies beneath the threshold of consciousness, we will hear something sounding within these bodies. And what sounds is the echo of the music of the spheres, which Man absorbed between death and new birth, during his descent out of the divine spiritual world into what is given to him through physical inheritance by parents and ancestors. In the etheric body and in the physical body there echoes the music of the spheres. In so far as it is of a vowel nature it echoes in the etheric body, and in the physical body in so far as it is of a consonant nature.

It is indeed true that Man, as he goes forward in the life between death and a new birth, raises himself to the world of the higher hierarchies. We have learned how Man in the world of the Angels, the Archangels, the Archai, joins in with their life and lives within the realm of the hierarchies, as here we live among the beings of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. After this life between death and a new birth he descends once more to earthly life. And we have also learned how on his way down he first gathers to him the influences of the firmament of the fixed stars, represented in the signs of the Zodiac; then, as he descends further, he takes with him the influence of the moving planets.

Now just picture to yourselves the Zodiac, the representation of the fixed stars. Man is exposed to their influence on descending from the life of soul and spirit into earthly life. If their effects are to be designated in accordance with their actual being we must say that they are cosmic music, they are consonants. And the forming of consonants in the physical body is the echo of what resounds from the single formations of the Zodiac, whereas the formation of vowels within the music of the spheres occurs through the movements of the planets in the cosmos. This is imprinted into the etheric body. Thus, in our physical body we unconsciously bear a reflection of the cosmic consonants, whereas in our etheric body we bear a reflection of the cosmic vowels. This remains, one might say, in the silence of the subconscious. But as the child develops, forces press upwards within the body and strengthen the speech organs; these are forces that, as reflections of the formative forces of the cosmos, build up the speech organs. The more interior speech organs are so formed out of Man's essential being that they can produce vowels, and the organs nearer to the periphery, the palate, the tongue, the lips and everything that contributes to the form of the physical body, are built up in such a way that consonants can be produced. While the child is learning to speak, something takes place in the upper part of his being, as a result of the activity of his lower part, which is a consequence of the formative forces taken up into the physical body, and also into the etheric body. (This is naturally not a material process but has to do with formative activity.) Thus when we speak, we bring to Manifestation what we might call an echo of the experience Man goes through with the cosmos in the life between death and a new birth during his descent out of the divine spiritual world. All the single letters of the alphabet are actually formed as images of what lives in the cosmos.

We can get an approximate idea of the signs of the Zodiac if we relate them to modern speech by setting up B, C, D, F, and so forth, as constellations of the Zodiac. You can follow them by feeling the revolution of the planets in H (ed.: ‘H’ like in him, her)—H is not actually a letter like the others, H imitates the rotational movement, the circling around. And the single planets in their revolutions are always the individual vowels which are placed in various ways in front of the consonants. If you imagine the vowel A to be placed in here (see diagram) you have the A in harmony with B and C, but in each vowel there is the H. You can trace it in speaking—AH, IH, EH. H is in each vowel. What does it signify that H is in each vowel? It signifies that the vowel is revolving in the cosmos. The vowel is not at rest, it circles around in the cosmos. And the circling, the moving, is expressed in the H hidden in each of the vowels. Consider, therefore, a vowel harmony expressed somewhere in speech: let us say I, O, U, A. (ed.: IH, OH, UH, AH in German) What is expressed by this? Something is expressed that is the cosmic working of four planets. Let us add one of the consonants to something like this—IOSUA—let us add this S in the middle of it, and this would mean that not only the forming of vowels within the planetary spheres is expressed, but also the effect that the planets connected with I, O, U, A, experience in their movement through the connection with the star sign S. Thus if a Man in the days of ancient civilization uttered the name of a God in vowels, a planetary mystery was expressed. The deed of a divine being within the planetary world was expressed in the name. Were a divine name expressed with a consonant in it, the deed of the divine being concerned reached in thought to the representative of the fixed star firmament—the Zodiac.

When there was still an instinctive understanding of these things, in the time of atavistic clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on, a connection with the cosmos was experienced in human speech. When speaking, Man felt himself within the cosmos. When the child learned to speak it was felt how what was experienced in the divine spiritual world before birth, or before conception, gradually evolved out of the being of the child.

It may be said that if a Man could look through himself inwardly he would have to admit: I am an etheric body, in other words, I am the echo of cosmic vowels; I am a physical body, in other words, the echo of cosmic consonants. Because I stand here on the earth, there sounds through my being an echo of all that is said by the signs of the Zodiac; and the life of this echo is my physical body. An echo is formed of all that is said by the planetary spheres and this echo is my etheric body.

1. Physical body = Echo of the Zodiac
2. Etheric body = Echo of the planetary movements
3. Astral body = Experience of the planetary movements
4. Ego = perception of the echo of the Zodiac

Nothing is said, my dear friends, by repeating that Man consists of physical body and etheric body. Those are no more than vague, indefinite words. If we want to speak in a real language, which can be learned from the mysteries of the cosmos, we would have to say: Man is constituted out of the echo of the heavens, of the fixed stars, of the echo of the planetary movements, of what is experienced of the echo of the planetary movements, and of what knowingly experiences the echo of the fixed star heavens. Then we would have expressed in real cosmic speech what is abstractly expressed by the words: Man is made up of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We remain entirely in the abstract by saying: Man is composed first of physical body, secondly of etheric body, thirdly of astral body, fourthly of ego. But we pass into concrete cosmic speech if we say: Man consists of the echo of the Zodiac, of the echo of the planetary movements, of the experience of the impression of the planetary movements in thinking, feeling and willing, and in the perception of the echo of the Zodiac. The first is abstraction, the second reality.

When you say ‘I’, what is that exactly? Now just imagine someone had planted trees in a beautifully artistic order. Each individual tree can be seen. However at a distance all the trees resolve into a single point. Take all the individual things—all that resounds from the Zodiac in the way of world consonants, then go far enough away: Everything that is formed as inward sound, in the most manifold way, is compressed within you to the single point ‘I’.

It is an actual fact that this name which Man gives himself is really only an expression for what we perceive in the measureless spaces of the universe. Everywhere it is necessary to go back to what, as reflection, as echo, appears here upon earth. Thus, when the matter is seen in its reality, before Man's higher and inward experience, everything out of which Man builds himself up as a phenomenon, as pure experience, melts away. If we look upon Man and gradually learn to know his true nature, then his physical body actually ceases to be in the way it normally confronts us and otherwise stands before us, our vision widens and Man grows into the heavens of the fixed stars. The etheric body, too, ceases to be before us. Vision is extended, experience is extended, and we arrive at a perception of planetary life, for this human etheric body is a mere reflection of planetary life.

Man standing before you is nothing but the phenomenon, the appearance, the image, of what goes on in the life of the planets. We think we have an individual human being in front of us, but this individual is a picture, on a certain spot, of the whole world. What then is the reason for the difference between an Asiatic and an American? The reason is that the starry heavens are portrayed at two different earthly points, just as we have various pictures of one and the same external fact. It is indeed true that when we observe Man the world begins to dawn upon us, and by such observation we are faced by the great mystery of the extent to which Man is an actual pictured microcosm of the reality of the macrocosm.

Now of what does modern life consist? When we look back from these modern times upon mankind's life in primeval times, we still find an experience of Man's connection with the spiritual world in the instinctive consciousness of those ancient days. In the alphabet we can have a concrete experience of this. When, in primeval words, Man had to express the rich store of the divine in all its fullness, he uttered the letters of the alphabet. When he expressed the mystery of his own nature, in the way he learned about it in the Mysteries, then he voiced how he had descended through Saturn or Jupiter in their stellar relation to the Lion or the Virgin, in other words, how he had descended through the A or the I in their relation to the M or the L. He gave utterance to what he had then experienced of the music of the spheres, and that was his cosmic name. And in those ancient days men were instinctively aware that they brought a name down with them from the cosmos to the Earth.

Since then Christian consciousness still preserves this primeval consciousness in an abstract way by consecrating individual days to the memory of saints, who, rightly understood, should give new life to the spiritual cosmos. By being born on a particular day of the year we should receive the name of the saint whose day it is on the calendar. What is meant to be expressed here in a more abstract way, was more concretely expressed in primeval times, when in the Mysteries the cosmic name of a person was found in accordance with what he experienced as he descended to earth, when with his being he created vowels with the planets and added them to the consonants of the Zodiac. The various groups of the human race had many names then, but these names were conceived in such a way that they harmonized with the universal all-embracing name.

Considered from this point of view, what was the alphabet? It was what the heavens revealed through their fixed stars and through the planets moving across them. When the alphabet was spoken out of the original, instinctive, human wisdom it was astronomy that was expressed. What was spoken through the alphabet and what was taught in astronomy in those olden days was one and the same thing. The wisdom in the astronomy of those times was not presented in the same way as the learning contained in any branch of knowledge today, which is built up from single perceptions and concepts. It was conceived as a revelation that made itself felt on the surface of human experience, either in the form of an axiomatic truth or as part of an axiomatic truth. Thus a concrete experience was represented with a part of the primal wisdom. And there was something of quite a dim consciousness connected with the fact that, in the Middle Ages, those who were highly educated still had to learn grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. In this ascent through the various spheres of learning lies a half conscious recognition of something, which in earlier days, existed in instinctive clarity. Today grammar has become very abstract. Going back into times of which history tells us nothing, but which, nevertheless, are still historical times, we find that grammar was not the abstract subject it is today but that men were led through grammar into the mystery of the individual letters. They learned that the secrets of the cosmos found expression in the letters. The single vowel was brought into connection with its planet, the single consonant with the single sign of the Zodiac; thus, through the letters of the alphabet, Man gained knowledge of the stars.

Passing from grammar to rhetoric entailed the application of what lived in Man as active astronomy. And by rising to dialectics one came in thought to comprehending and working on what lived in Man out of astronomy. Arithmetic was not taught as the abstraction of today, but as the entity expressed in the mystery of numbers. Number itself was looked upon differently from how it is done today. I will give you a trifling instance of this.

How does one picture 1, 2, 3 to oneself today? It is done by thinking of a pea, then of another pea, and this makes two; then another is added and there are three. It is a matter of adding one to another—piling them up. In olden days one did not count in this way. A start was made with a unit. And by splitting the unit into two parts one had 2. Thus 2 was not arrived at by adding one unit to another. It was not a putting together of units, but the two were contained in the one. Three was contained in the one in a different way—four again in a different way. The unit embraced all numbers and was the greatest. Today the unit is the smallest. Everything today is atomistically conceived. The unit is one member and the two is added to it, this is all imagined atomistically. The original idea was organic. There the unit is the greatest and the following numbers always appear as being smaller and are all contained in the unit. Here we come to quite different mysteries in the world of numbers.

These mysteries in the world of numbers give the merest intimation that here we are not concerned with what merely lives in the hollow of Man's head. (I say the hollow of his head because I have often shown it really to be hollow from the spiritual point of view.) In the relations of number we can come to perceive the relations of the objectivity of the world. If we always just add one to one naturally this is something that has nothing to do with the facts. I have a piece of chalk. If beside it I place a second piece of chalk this has nothing to do with the first. The one is not concerned with the other. If, however, I presuppose that everything is a unit and now pass to the numbers contained in this unit, I get a two in a way that is a matter of some consequence. I have to break up the piece. I then get right into reality.

Thus after being borne up in dialectics to grasping the thought of the astronomical, one reached still further into the cosmos with arithmetic and in a similar way with geometry. From geometry one got the feeling that the geometrical, thought concretely, was the music of the spheres. This is the difference between what holds good today and what once existed in the instinctive wisdom of primeval times. Take music today—the mathematical physicist reckons the pitch of a note, for example, reckons which pitch is at work in a melody. Then anyone who is musical is obliged to forget his music and enter the sphere of the abstract if, being a keen musician, he has not already run away from the mathematician. Man is led away from immediate experience into abstraction and this has very little to do with experience.

In itself it is really interesting—if one has a mathematical bent—to press on from the musical into the sphere of acoustics, but one does not gain much in the way of musical experience. That someone today learns geometry and as he proceeds begins to experience forms as musical notes, that is to say, if he rises from the 5th to the 6th grade, and makes geometry sound musically, all this, as far as I know, does not enter the curriculum. But that was once the meaning of rising to the sixth part of what was to be learned—from geometry to music. And only then did the archetypal, underlying reality become an experience. The astronomy in the subconscious then became something that one consciously mastered as astronomy, as the highest and 7th member of the so-called Trivium and Quadrivium.

The history of Man should be studied in accordance with the development of his consciousness for then we can gain a feeling that consciousness must return to these matters. That is just what is attempted in anthroposophical Spiritual Science. There is no need to marvel that those who are accustomed to accept the recognized science of the day find nothing right in what I have written, for example, in Occult Science. It is necessary, however, that Man should go back, in a fully conscious way, to the true reality which for a time had to recede into the background to enable Man to develop his freedom. Man would have been able ever more strongly to develop the consciousness of how necessary it is for him to stand within a divine cosmic world, had he not been cast out of this cosmos into the merely phenomenal, into pure appearance, so strongly indeed that the whole manifold splendor and majesty of the starry sky was condensed into the abstract ego.

This was a necessary step in the struggle for freedom. For Man could develop his freedom only by pressing together quite indistinguishably into the single point of the ego something that, filled out by the whole of cosmic space, streamed through all time. But he would lose his being, he would no longer know or possess himself, no longer be active and act on his own initiative, were he not to reconquer the whole world from this single point of his ego, were he not to rise again from the abstract to the concrete. It is indeed important to understand how, in passing from the Greek to the Latin culture, abstraction took hold of European culture and thus resulted in the loss of the primeval word. It must be remembered that the Latin language was for a long time the language of the cultural elite. What persisted however, was a kind of desperate holding on to what this Latin language had actually already discarded. And what had been spoken in the Greek world then remained behind only in thought. Of the logos there remained logic—abstract thought.

In the longing that a Man such as Goethe had for knowledge of the Greek culture, there lies something that may be expressed as follows: he longed for liberation from the abstraction of modern times, from the dry prose of Romanism. He wanted to reach the other daughter of the primeval wisdom of the world, what remained of all that stood for Greece.—We too must experience something of this kind if we wish to understand Goethe's intense yearning for the South. In modern school biographies we find nothing of all this. Only when in every individual thing there echoes a consciousness of Man being an expression of the whole cosmos, will the way be cleared for the forces needed for Man's progress, if civilization is not to decline into utter barbarism.

I have said on many occasions that at the time when medieval culture had reached its prime, two streams of spiritual life were flowing through the ripest souls in European civilisation—streams which I have described as knowledge through revelation and knowledge acquired by reason, as we find it in Scholasticism. Knowledge through revelation, in its more scholastic form, was by no means a body of mystical, abstract or indefinite thought. It expressed itself in sharply defined, clear-cut concepts. But these concepts were considered to be beyond the scope of man's ordinary powers of cognition and must in every case be accepted as traditions of the Church. The Church, by virtue of its continuity, claimed the right to be the guardian of this kind of knowledge.

The second kind of knowledge was held to be within the scope of research and investigation, albeit those who stood wholly within the stream of Scholasticism acknowledged that this knowledge acquired by reason could not in any sense be regarded as knowledge emanating from the super-sensible world.

Thus when medieval culture was at its prime, it was realised that knowledge no longer accessible to mankind in that age must be preserved as it were by tradition. But it was not always so, for if we go back through the Middle Ages to the first Christian centuries we shall find that the characteristics of this knowledge through revelation was less sharply emphasised than they were in medieval culture. If one had suggested to a Greek philosopher of the Athenian School, for instance, that a distinction could be made between knowledge acquired by reason and knowledge through revelation (in the sense in which the latter was understood in the Middle Ages), he would have been at a loss to know what was meant. It would have been unthinkable to him that if knowledge concerning super-sensible worlds had once been communicated to a man by cosmic powers, it could not be communicated afresh. True, the Greeks realised that higher spiritual knowledge was beyond the reach of man's ordinary cognition, but they knew too that by dint of spiritual training and through Initiation, a man could unfold higher faculties of knowledge and that by these means he would enter a world where super-sensible truth would be revealed to him.

Now a change took place in Western culture between all that lived in the centuries when Greek philosophy came to flower in Plato and Aristotle, and the kind of knowledge that made its appearance about the end of the fourth century A.D. I have often referred to one aspect of this change by saying that the Mystery of Golgotha occurred in an age when very much of the old Initiation-wisdom was still living in men. And indeed there were many who applied their Initiation-wisdom and were thus able, with super-sensible knowledge, to realise the significance of the Event on Golgotha. Those who had been initiated strained every nerve to understand how a Being like the Christ, Who before the Mystery of Golgotha had not been united with earthly evolution, had passed into an earthly body and linked Himself with the evolution of man. The nature of this Being, how He had worked before His descent to the earth—such were the questions which even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha men were trying to answer by means of the highest faculties of Initiation-wisdom.

But then we find that from the fifth century A.D. onwards, this old Initiation-wisdom which had lived in Asia Minor, Northern Africa, in Greek culture, had spread over into Italy and still further into Europe, was less and less understood. People spoke contemptuously of certain individuals, saying that their teachings were to be avoided at all costs by true Christians. Moreover, efforts were made to obliterate all that had previously been known of these individuals.

It is strange that a man like Franz Brentano should have inherited from medieval tradition a hatred of all that lived in personalities like Plotinus, for example, of whom very little was known but who was regarded as one with whom true Christians could have no dealings. Brentano had allowed himself to be influenced by this hatred and vented it on Plotinus. He actually wrote a polemical thesis entitled Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht, and the philosopher is Plotinus, who lived in the third century A.D. Plotinus lived within the streams of spiritual life which were wholly exhausted by the time of the fourth century A.D. and which in the later evolution of Christendom people tried to cast into oblivion.

The information contained in text-books on the history of philosophy in regard to the outstanding figures of the early Christian centuries is usually not only scanty in the extreme but quite incapable of giving any idea of their significance. Naturally it is difficult for us in modern times to have any true conception of the first three or four centuries of Christendom—for example, of the way in which the impulses living in Plato and Aristotle were working on and of thought which had in a certain respect become estranged from the deeper Mystery-wisdom, although this wisdom was still possessed by certain personalities in the first three or four centuries after the coming of Christ.

Very little real understanding of Plato is shown in modern text-books on the history of philosophy. Those of you who are interested should read the chapter on Plato in Paul Deussen's History of Greek Philosophy, and the passage where he speaks of the place assigned by Plato to the Idea of the Good in relation to the other Ideas. Deussen says something like this: Plato did not admit the existence of a personal God because, if he had done so, he could not have taught that the Ideas subsist in and through themselves. Plato could not acknowledge God as a Being because the Ideas are primary and subsistent. True—says Deussen—Plato places the Idea of the Good above the other Ideas, but he did not thereby imply that the Idea of the Good stands above the others.—For what is expressed in the Idea of the Good is, after all, only a kind of family-likeness which is present in all the Ideas.—Such is Deussen's argument.

But now let us scrutinise this logic more closely. The Ideas are there. They are subsistent and independent. The Idea of the Good cannot be said to rule or direct the other Ideas. All Ideas bear a family-likeness but this family-likeness is actually expressed through the Idea of the Good. Yes—but whence are family-likenesses derived? A family-likeness is derived from stock. The Idea of the Good points to family-likeness. What can we do except go back to the father of the stock!

This is what we find to-day in famous histories of philosophy and those who write them are regarded as authorities. People read such things and never notice that they are out-and-out nonsense. It is difficult to imagine that anyone capable of writing such absurdities in connection with Greek philosophy could have anything very valuable to say about Indian wisdom. Nevertheless, if we ask for something authoritative on the subject of Indian wisdom to-day we shall certainly be advised to read Paul Deussen. Things have come to a pretty pass!

My only object in saying this is to show that in the present age there is little real understanding of Platonic philosophy. Modern intellectualism is incapable of it. Nor is it possible to understand the tradition which exists in regard to Plotinus—the so-called Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas who lived at the beginning of the third century A.D. It is said that Ammonius Saccas gave instruction to individual pupils but left nothing in writing. Now the reason why the eminent teachers of that age wrote nothing down was because they held that wisdom must be something living, that it could not be passed on by writing but only from man to man, in direct personal intercourse. Something else—again not understood—is said of Ammonius Saccas, namely that he tried to bring about agreement in the terrible quarrels between the adherents of Aristotle and of Plato, by showing that there was really no discrepancy between the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.

Let me try to tell you in brief words how Ammonius Saccas spoke of Plato and Aristotle. He said: Plato belonged to an epoch when many human souls were treading the path to the spiritual world in other words when there was still knowledge of the principles of true Initiation. But in more ancient times there was no such thing as abstract, logical thought. Even now (at the beginning of the third century A.D.) only the first, elementary traces of this kind of thinking are making their appearance. In Plato's time, thoughts evolved independently were unknown. Whereas the Initiates of earlier times gave their message in pictures and imaginations, Plato was one of the first to change these imaginations into abstract concepts and ideas. The great spiritual picture to which Plato tried to lift the eyes of men was brought down in more ancient times merely in the form of imaginations. In Plato, the imaginations were already concepts—but these concepts poured down as it were from the world of Divine Spirit. Plato said in effect: the Ideas are the lowest revelation of the Divine-Spiritual. Aristotle could no longer penetrate with the same intensity into this spiritual substance. Therefore the knowledge he possessed only amounted to the substance of the ideas, and this is at a lower level than the picture itself. Nevertheless, Aristotle could still receive the substance of the ideas in the form of revelation. There is no fundamental difference between Plato and Aristotle—so said Ammonius Saccas—except that Plato was able to gaze into higher levels of the spiritual world than Aristotle.—And thereby Ammonius Saccas thought to reconcile the disputes among the followers of Aristotle and Plato.

We learn, then, that by the time of Plato and Aristotle, wisdom was already beginning to assume a more intellectual form. Now in those ancient times it was still possible for individuals here and there to rise to very high levels of spiritual perception. The lives of men like Ammonius Saccas and his pupil Plotinus were rich in spiritual experiences and their conceptions of the spiritual world were filled with real substance.

Naturally one could not have spoken to such men of outer Nature in the sense in which we speak of Nature to-day. In their schools they spoke of a spiritual world, and Nature—generally regarded nowadays as complete and all-embracing—was merely the lowest expression of that spiritual world of which they were conscious.

We can form some idea of how such men were wont to speak, if we study Iamblichus, a man possessed of deep insight and one of the successors of Ammonius Saccas. How did the world appear to the soul of Iamblichus? He spoke to his pupils somewhat as follows:—If we would understand the universe let us not pay heed to space, for space contains merely the outward expression of the spiritual world. Nor let us pay heed to time, for only the illusory images of cosmic reality arise in time. Rather must we look up to those Powers in the spiritual world who are the Creators of time and of the connections between time and space. Gazing out into the expanses of the cosmos, we see how the cycle, repeated visibly in the Sun, repeats itself every year. But the Sun circles through the Zodiac, through the twelve constellations. It is not enough merely to observe this phenomenon, for three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers are working and weaving therein, sending forth the Sun-forces which flood the whole universe accessible to man. Every year the cycle is repeated. If these Powers alone held sway, there would be three hundred and sixty days in a year. But there are, in fact, five additional days, ruled by seventy-two sub-heavenly Powers, the planetary Spirits. I will draw (on the blackboard) this pentagonal figure, because one to five is the relation of seventy-two to three hundred and sixty. The five remaining days in the cosmic year which are abandoned, as it were, by the three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers, are ruled by the seventy-two sub-heavenly Powers. But over and above the three hundred and sixty-five days, there are still a few more hours in the year. And these hours are directed by forty-two earthly Powers.—Iamblichus also said to his pupils: The three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers are connected with the head-organisation of man, the seventy-two sub-heavenly Powers with the breast-system (breathing-process and heart) and the forty-two earthly Powers with the purely earthly system in man (e.g. digestion, metabolism).

In those times the human being was given his place in a spiritual universe, whereas nowadays we begin our physiological studies by learning of the quantities of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, lime-stone, etc., within the human organism. We relate the human being to a lifeless nature. But Iamblichus would have taught how the organism of man is related to the forty-two earthly Powers, the seventy-two sub-heavenly or planetary Powers, and the three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers. Just as to-day man is said to be composed of earthly substances, in the time of Iamblichus he was known to represent a confluence of forces streaming from the spiritual universe. Great and sublime was the wisdom presented in the schools of learning in those days, and one can readily understand that Plotinus—who had reached the age of twenty-eight before he listened to the teachings of Ammonius Saccas—felt himself living in an altogether different world. He was able to assimilate some of this wisdom because it was still cultivated in many places during the first four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. With this wisdom men also tried to understand the descent of the Christ into Jesus of Nazareth and the place of Christ in the realms of the spiritual Hierarchies, in the great structure of the spiritual universe.

And now let me deal with another chapter of the wisdom taught by Iamblichus. He said: There are three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers, seventy-two planetary Powers, forty-two earthly Powers—in all, four hundred and seventy-four Divine Beings of different orders. Look to the far East—so said Iamblichus—and you will there find peoples who give names to their Gods. Turn to the Egyptians and to other peoples—they too name their Gods. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans—all will name their Gods. The four hundred and seventy-four Gods include all the Gods of all the different peoples: Zeus, Apollo, Baal—all the Gods. The reason why the peoples have different Gods is that one race has chosen twelve or maybe seventeen Gods from the four hundred and seventy-four, another race has taken twenty-five, another three, another four. The number of racial Gods is four hundred and seventy-four. And the highest of these Gods, the God who came down to earth at a definite point of time, is Christ.

This wisdom was well suited to bring about reconciliation between the different religions, not as the outcome of vague sentiment but of the knowledge that the different Gods of the peoples constitute, in their totality, one great system—the four hundred and seventy-four Gods. It was taught that all the choirs of Gods of the peoples of ancient times had reached their climax in Christianity and that the crown of wisdom was to understand how the Christ Being had entered through Jesus of Nazareth into His earthly activity.

And so, as we look back to an earlier Spiritual Science (which although it no longer exists in that form to-day, indeed cannot do so for it must be pursued now-a-days in a different way), the deepest respect grows up within us. Profound wisdom was taught in the early Christian centuries in regard to the super-sensible worlds. But knowledge of this spiritual universe was imparted only to those who were immediate pupils of the older Initiates. The wisdom might only be passed on to those whose faculties of knowledge had reached the stage where they were able to understand the essence and being of the different Gods.

This requisite of spiritual culture was recognised everywhere in Greece, in Egypt and in Asia Minor. It is, of course, true, that remnants of the ancient wisdom still existed in Roman civilisation. Plotinus himself taught for a long time in Italy. But a spirit of abstraction had crept into Roman culture, a spirit no longer capable of understanding the value and worth of personality, of being. The spirit of abstraction had crept in, not yet in the form it afterwards assumed, but adhered to all the more firmly because it was there in its earliest beginnings.

And then, on the soil of Italy at the beginning of the fourth century A.D. we find a School which began to oppose the ancient principle of Initiation, the preparation of the individual for Initiation. We see a School arising which gathers together and makes a careful record of everything originating from ancient Initiation-wisdom. The aim of this School—which lasted beyond the third on into the fourth century—was to perpetuate the essence of Roman culture, to establish historical tradition as against the strivings of individual human Beings. As Christianity began to find its way into Roman culture, the efforts of this school were directed to the elimination of all that could still have been discovered by means of the old Initiation-knowledge in regard to the presence of Christ in the personality of Jesus.

It was a fundamental tenet of this Roman School that the teaching given by Ammonius Saccas and Iamblichus must not be allowed to pass on to posterity. Just as in those times there was a widespread impulse to destroy the ancient temples and altars—in short to obliterate every remnant of ancient Heathendom—so, in the domain of spiritual life, efforts were made to wipe out the principles whereby knowledge of the higher world might be attained. To take one example: the dogma of the One Divine Nature or of the Two Divine Natures in the Person of Christ was substituted for the teaching of Ammonius Saccas and Iamblichus, namely, that the individual human being can develop to a point where he will understand how the Christ took up His abode in the body of Jesus. This dogma was to reign supreme and the possibility of individual insight smothered. The ancient path of wisdom was superseded by dogma in the culture of the Roman world. And because strenuous efforts were made to destroy any teaching that savoured of the ancient wisdom, little more than the names of men like Ammonius Saccas and Iamblichus have come down to us. Of many other teachers in the Southern regions of Europe not even the names have been preserved. Altars were destroyed, temples burnt to the ground and the ancient teachings exterminated, to such an extent indeed that we have no longer any inkling to-day of the wisdom that lived in the South of Europe during the first four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Again and again it happened, however, that knowledge of this wisdom found its way to men who were interested in these matters and who realised that Roman culture was rapidly falling to pieces under the spread of Christianity. But after the extermination of what would have been so splendid a preparation for an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, it was only possible to learn of the union of Christ with Jesus in the form of an abstract dogma laid down by the Councils and coloured by the Roman spirit. The living wisdom was wiped out, and abstraction, albeit working on in the guise of revelation, took its place.

History is well-nigh blank in regard to these things, but during the first centuries of Christendom there were a number of men who were able to say: “There are indeed Initiates—of whom Iamblichus was one. It is the Initiates who teach true Christianity. To them, Christ is Christ indeed, whereas the Romans speak merely of the ‘Galileans.’ ” This expression was used in the third and fourth centuries A.D. to gloss over a deep misunderstanding. The less men understood Christianity, the more they spoke of the Galileans; the less they knew of the Christ, the more emphasis they laid on the human personality of the ‘Galilean.’

Out of this milieu came Julian, the so-called Apostate, who had absorbed a very great deal from pupils of men like Iamblichus and who still knew something of the spiritual universe reaching down into every phenomenon of Nature. Julian the Apostate had heard from pupils of Iamblichus of the spiritual forces working down into every animal and plant from the three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers, the seventy-two planetary Powers and the forty-two earthly Powers. In those days there were still some who understood what was, for example, expressed in a most wonderful way in a deeply significant legend related of Plotinus. The legend ran: There were many who would no longer believe that a man could be inspired by the Divine Spirit and who said that anyone who claimed to have knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual world was possessed by a demon. Plotinus was therefore carried off to the temple of Isis in Egypt in order that the priests might determine the nature of the demon possessing him. And when the Egyptian priests—who still had knowledge of these things—came to the temple and tested Plotinus before the altar of Isis, performing all the ritual acts still possible at that time, Lo! instead of a demon there appeared the Godhead Himself!

This legend indicates that in those times men still acknowledged that at least it was possible to prove whether a good God or a demon was possessing a human being.

Julian the Apostate heard of these things. But on the other side there came insistently to his ears the words of a writing which passed into many hands in the Roman world during the first Christian centuries and was said to be a sermon of the Apostle Peter, whereas it was actually a forgery. In this document it was said: Behold the godless Hellenes! In very creatures of nature they see the Divine-Spiritual. This is sinful, impious. It is sacrilege to see the Divine-Spiritual in Nature, in animal and in plant. Let no man be so sinful as to believe that the Divine is present in the course of the Sun and Moon.—These were the things that dinned in the ears of Julian, now from one side, now from another. A deep love for Hellenism grew up within him and he became the tragic figure who would fain have spoken of Christianity in the light of the teachings of Iamblichus.

There is no telling what would have come to pass in Europe if the Christianity of Julian the Apostate had conquered instead of the doctrines of Rome, if his desire to restore the Initiation-training had been fulfilled the training whereby men could themselves have attained to knowledge of how the Christ had lived in Jesus and of His place among the other racial Gods. Julian the Apostate was not out to destroy the heathen temples. Indeed he would have been willing to restore the temple of the Jews at Jerusalem. His desire was to restore the heathen temples and he also had the interests of the Christians at heart. Truth and truth alone was his quest. And the great obstacle in his way was the School in ancient Rome of which I have spoken—the School which not only set out to exterminate the old principle of Initiation but did in fact succeed in exterminating it, wishing to put in its place recorded traditions of Initiation-wisdom.

When the moment had arrived, it was easy to arrange for the thrust of the Persian spear which caused Julian's death. It was then that the words were uttered which have never since been understood, not even by Ibsen, but which can be explained by a knowledge of the traditions of Julian's time: ‘The Galilean has conquered, not the Christ!’ For at this moment of death it was revealed to the prophetic vision of Julian the Apostate that henceforward the conception of Christ as a Divine Being would fade away and that the ‘Galilean,’ the man of Galilean stock would be worshipped as a God. In the thirtieth year of his life Julian the Apostate had a pre-vision of the whole of subsequent evolution, on into the nineteenth century, by which time theology had lost all knowledge of the Christ in Jesus.

Julian was ‘Apostate’ only in regard to what was to come after. The Apostate was indeed the Apostle in respect of spiritual realisation of the Mystery of Golgotha.—And it is this spiritual realisation that must be quickened again in the souls of men.

Newer geological strata always overlay those that are older and the newer must be pierced before we can reach those that lie below. It is sometimes difficult to believe beneath what thick layers the history of human evolution lies concealed. Thick indeed are the layers spread by Romanism over the first conceptions of the Mystery of Golgotha! Through spiritual knowledge it must again be possible to penetrate through these layers and so rediscover that old wisdom which was swept away from the domain of spiritual life just as the heathen altars were swept away from the physical world.

Egyptian priests declared that Plotinus bore a God within him, not a demon. But in the West the dictum went forth that Plotinus was assuredly possessed by a demon. Read what has been said on the subject, including the thesis by Brentano which I have mentioned, and you will find the same. According to the Egyptian priests, a God and not a demon was living in Plotinus, the philosopher of the third century A.D. But Brentano states the contrary. He declares: Plotinus was possessed by a demon, not by a God!

And then, in the nineteenth century, the Gods became demons, the demons Gods. Men were no longer capable of distinguishing between Gods and demons in the universe. And this has lived on in the chaos of our civilisation.

Truly these things are grave when we see them as they really are. I wished to-day to speak of one chapter of history and from an absolutely objective standpoint, for what comes to pass in history is after all inevitable. Necessary as it was that for a season men should remain without enlightenment about certain mysteries, enlightenment must ultimately be given, and—what is more—received.

Dear friends,

Today I would like to insert into our studies a chapter of anthroposophy that we need for our examination of healthy responsibility and pathological irresponsibility as the physician and the priest must know them.

First of all it is important that we look into the question: What is really inherited by a human being? What is not inherited and must come to the human being in some other way? In evaluating healthy and sick individuals, a great deal depends upon whether one can differentiate between these two ingredients. Human beings come out of the spiritual, super-sensible worlds into the sense world: that means, they combine what is given them by heredity with what they bring from earlier earth lives and from life between death and the new birth. Then we see how they develop as a children, from day to day, from week to week. But if one does not perceive that they are four-membered beings, with physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego organization, one is not in a position to understand their development, for one does not see what part each member is playing in this development. They have different origins; they come from different worlds.

First, human beings have their physical organism. The most striking phenomenon in the physical organism is that in the first period of life they have what we call “first teeth,” which last until the time we call “change of teeth.” The teeth are only the most obvious thing that is changed at this time. For the fact is that human beings only keep the physical substance they received at birth until the change of teeth. They are constantly stripping that physical material from their form.

The process is, of course, more complicated than is implied in the brief statement that in the course of every seven or eight years a person pushes off all physical substance and replaces it. The truth is near to that, but one need only look at the change of teeth itself to realize that this picture must be modified somewhat. For if this abstract assertion were correct, we would have new teeth every seven years. We get new teeth only once. The teeth are changed once and do not undergo any other renewal. They belong in this category in the most extreme sense. As a matter of fact, the course of human life is such that the older one becomes, the more one retains of old physical substance. A replacement of by far the greatest part of the substance does indeed take place in seven- to eight-year periods; but we must distinguish what remains behind. At the seventh year it is only the adult teeth that remain. After each subsequent period there remain also certain parts of the substance that are not replaced, although the greater part is indeed replaced in the course of seven or eight years. Thus a basic statement can be made for the first seven years. Human beings strip away all the physical substance they had when they were born, keeping none of it, keeping only the forces that have lived and worked in it during those years. These forces have so appropriated the fresh new substance that was constantly being aquired that at seven the physical body has been completely renewed, even to the teeth. And from that statement the understanding must follow that the principle of heredity as our current natural science conceives of it really holds good only for the first seven years of life. Only for those first seven years is it true that a person's characteristics come from parents and grandparents. The physical body of those first seven years provides, in a certain sense, a kind of model from which the artist working in the human being (who consists now in these years of etheric body, astral body, and ego) fashions a new physical body. We see how what we bring down from spiritual worlds—our individuality, our own being—and what we receive from heredity work together in artistic reciprocal activity. If a human being is an inwardly strong individual and brings an intensely strong inner astrality and ego nature, which in turn makes the etheric body strong, then we will see a young person shooting up who from inner strength keeps very little to the model, only copies it for the general form. Naturally, the universal human model must be preserved, and therefore an affinity is already there for the inherited human form; features of it definitely remain beyond the change of teeth. Still, to thoughtful observation it will be apparent that in the case of inwardly strong individuals important changes come after the change of teeth because such individuals follow only slightly the model they inherited.

If we investigate such an individual as St. Teresa, we find that these particularly strong individualities resemble their parents very closely in the first seven years, but then in the ninth and tenth years they develop in surprising ways. Then the real individual is emerging. In the strongest sense of the word, heredity only holds good for the first life period. What seems to appear later as heredity is not really heredity but must be recognized as a copy of the inherited model. The copy may be more or less exact; even so, it is not heredity; it is a copy of the inherited characteristics. The ordinary natural scientist considers this to be simply the principle of heredity carried further. But someone who really studies the nature of humanity will perceive that there is a complete qualitative difference between the resemblance to parents before the change of teeth and the resemblance after the change of teeth. Before, the forces of heredity are active. After, the forces that copy the model are active. To be exact, one can no more say that a human being has inherited what is carried between change of teeth and puberty than one can say of an artist copying the Sistine Madonna in the Dresden Gallery that the painting has caught the qualities of the Madonna through heredity!

You can see the particular kind of work the etheric body has to do. For in the years up to the change of teeth, the astral body and ego organization participate very little. The etheric body forms a new physical human body in accordance with the model. Why? Because, like the child during the first seven years, it is not yet able to receive other than a very special kind of impression from the outer world. Here we come upon an important secret of human evolution, a secret that answers the question: What does a child really perceive? The answer lies far away from present-day ideas.

We live, shall we say, between death and a new birth (or conception) in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world we are surrounded by realities very different from those found here in the physical world. We come out of that world into the physical world and continue our life in a physical body that we receive. Now in this physical world the same forces work further, although they are hidden from human sense perception. If you look at a tree, the same spiritual forces are working in it as those you encounter between death and new birth, only they are covered over, veiled, by the physical material of the tree. Everywhere in the physical world in which we live between birth and death, spiritual forces are active behind the sense-perceptible physical entities. We can think of the activities of the spiritual world continuing into this world in which we live between birth and death.

Now in the first seven years of life the child's whole being cannot unite with anything except this spiritual reality in all the colors, all the forms, all warmth, all cold. The child is fully aware when entering this physical world of the continuing spiritual activity. This awareness gradually diminishes up to the change of teeth. A sense impression is quite different to a child than to an adult. This fact is never recognized. To a child the sense impression is something entirely spiritual. For this reason if a child's father has a fit of anger, the child is not conscious of the angry gestures but of the moral state behind the gestures. It is this that passes into the child's body. During this time, therefore, the child is working with the forces that build a physical body in accordance with the child's own model—the body that will now be the child's own—and during this time is turned entirely toward spiritual foundations and works out of spiritual forces.

What does that mean? What is really working when spiritual forces are working? Obviously colors, forms, warmth, cold, roughness, smoothness work upon the sense perceptions. But behind all that, what is the fundamental force that is working? In reality, whatever has to do with an ego nature. Only invisible spiritual beings make an impression on the child, beings who have something to do with an ego nature, above all, beings of the spiritual hierarchies higher than human beings, but also the animal group-souls, and the group-souls of the elemental beings. In reality, all this is working upon the child. And out of these spiritual forces, out of these mighty spiritual dynamics the child forms a second body from the original model. It grows and is finally present as a complete second body when the change of teeth takes place. This is the body that the human being has built for itself since birth, the first body that is it's very own, a physical body built out of the spiritual world.

Thus we have in this first life period very special laws working within all that activates the child, in all the awkwardness and uncertainty that are in the soul and with which it moves. They come from the fact that constant adjustment is having to be made to the physical world, since the child is still dreamily and half-consciously immersed in the other surrounding world: the spiritual world. Someday when medicine reaches a proper spiritual outlook, this interplay between the spiritual and physical worlds during the first seven years of life will be seen as the true cause of the so-called “children's diseases.” Then we will have the explanation for a problem that today is solved in the medical books by empty words and formal elucidations that do not lead to any reality.

The etheric body has a great deal to do in these first seven years of life. It works quietly and steadily to develop the faculties that it will possess in the second seven-year period: independent faculties of memory leading toward the intellect. Whoever has an eye for it can see the greatest transformation in the child's soul-life when the first life period goes over into the second. The etheric body is now relieved of the work it had to accomplish—in the full sense of the word—to build the second body. It is relieved, freed. How it is freed, one can only realize if one perceives that at fourteen years not only the teeth remain but still more that had to be renewed, like the teeth, in the first life period. This now remains in the physical-material substance. What remains frees the etheric body—itself becomes free in the etheric body. Quantitatively it is a small thing, but qualitatively it is something of tremendous importance. It is what now becomes tremendously active as soul attributes, soul characteristics. What the human being saves by not having to create a third set of teeth (and much else that is taken care of by evolution in the same way as the teeth) enables something of the etheric body to be “left over.” What flowed during the first seven years into the physical development and is now “left over” from the physical development works now purely in the realm of soul, its nature depending upon the individual. With the faculties upon which you call as a teacher in school, the faculties you train, the child accomplished the great change from milk teeth to second teeth, and much else. With the forces that are saved by not having to form a third set of teeth, the child begins to develop soul faculties. This takes place in the depths of human nature. During the first seven years these soul forces had been entirely embedded in the physical development. We have to comprehend physical development as a soul-spiritual activity just as much as a physical activity. We see a spiritual entity active in the body in the first seven years of the human being, in the fullest sense of the word.

How does this relate to general human evolution? Those forces with which the human soul works in the first seven years of life are in the cosmos; they are sun forces. It is not only physical-etheric rays that stream down from the sun: in those physical-etheric sun rays, forces are streaming down from the sun that are identical with the forces by which our etheric body renews our physical body in the first seven years of life. It is the Sun Being (Sonnenentität) that works there. Look at the child—how the child works at a second physical body, copying from the model! The child is absorbing pure forces from the sunshine. One must understand that—how humanity stands within the cosmos! And when the child has certain etheric forces released at the change of teeth, they then work back upon the astral organization and ego organization. Then in the second life period human beings have access to what could not reach them at all in the first period. They now have access to the moon forces.

The etheric forces in the first seven years of life are sun forces. At the change of teeth we have access to the moon forces; these are identical with the forces of our astral body. Thus at the change of teeth human beings move from the sun sphere—in which, however, we also still remain, for it remains active in us—into the moon sphere. And now between change of teeth and puberty we work on ourselves with the moon forces. With the moon forces we now build our second own body (the third earthly body), in which not so much is replaced as in the first life period, but even so a great deal. Again forces remain behind, but they are now of an astral nature, and they are now transforming the soul. They were freed from their work on the body when we reached puberty. We have now reached a period in which we manifest certain forces that are now free in the soul, forces that had to work in the physical body between the ages of seven and fourteen.

So we work entirely in the first life period with what comes to us from the sun. And with the school child between change of teeth and puberty, it is sun forces that have now become free for soul activity. That is the great powerful fact we find in human evolution, that if one is educating a child's soul between change of teeth and puberty, one has to do purely with sun forces. The child-soul is so intimately related to what lives in the sunshine! One's heart can rejoice in such knowledge. The knowledge really sheds light on the relation between humanity and cosmos.

Moon forces are active in this second life period in the bodily development; they are not yet freed for the soul-life. They become free at puberty, and then they join the work on the soul. The change that takes place in the soul-life at puberty is caused by the fact that moon forces are now impressing themselves into the soul-life. So what a young person does in all kinds of behavior after the onset of puberty is a working together of sun and moon forces.

Thus we see into the depths of human evolution. We will stay clear of speaking of heredity in the crude sense in which natural science speaks of it. We will look in the opposite direction, to see what lives in the human activity of the child. It is the sun that lives in all the human activity of the child, and in the child's human thinking.

It is the sun that streams to us from the stone—for a stone has no light of its own, it can only reflect the sun's light to us. The natural researcher grants you that fact—but that is the very smallest, the most abstract detail! The child also reflects the sun forces back to us, between the seventh and fourteenth years. Just as we can designate the light reflected from the stone as sunlight streamed back to us, so we can designate what the child does in the second life period as “sun.” Sun is not merely there where it seems to be concentrated. This physical notion, that the sun is only there is like the notion of someone who looks at the soup in a soup bowl and sees a blob of fat floating on the top of it and thinks that the blob of fat is the soup.

Yes, our physical ideas are often very childish, and if one uncovers them and shows them for what they are, then people laugh. One could wish there were the same reaction to much that is happening today in the name of science, because it is pretty laughable. When someone takes the blob of fat to be the soup itself, that's the same as when that gold ball up there above us is regarded as the entire sun. In reality the sun fills the whole world.

Now let us look into the connection between the moon forces and the forces of reproduction. The forces of reproduction now gradually form the child's own second body that is built up between the seventh and fourteenth years and is finished when puberty begins. The human being takes in the reproductive forces during this time; this is plainly moon activity. These forces relate entirely to moon activity. They are the result of moon activity.

And now we reach the life period in which we must form our own third body (the fourth when counted from an external view), the time from puberty to the beginning of the twenties. The division of time in the later years is no longer so exact as the time between change of teeth and puberty. Now there is always more physical substance remaining behind; it stays fixed in the human being, it becomes permanent structure. Gradually a great deal of permanent structure accumulates. The older a person becomes, the less material is stripped away from the bones and replaced. Also in the rest of the organism certain parts need a longer time to separate off. And one can see a simple fact in connection with the teeth: that once one has got one's second set of teeth, whether one still has them later depends upon how long they last—just as with a knife, one only has it as long as it lasts. The knife can't renew itself. Teeth can't renew themselves either, really.

Obviously everything is in flow: there is renewal in the first place, but then it goes over into the state of nonrenewal. The teeth maintain their life process at a much slower tempo than the rest of the organism, so far as intensity is concerned. But therefore in reverse, the tempo is faster so far as quality is concerned, for they actually become bad before the other parts of the organism—for the reason that the other parts can always renew themselves. If the teeth were subject to the same laws as many other parts of the human organism, there wouldn't have to be any dentists. On the other hand, if the other parts of the organism were subject to the same laws as the teeth, we would all die young in this modern civilization of ours.

But now to go on. We are active in our organism in the first seven years of life with the forces of the sun, in the second seven years with the forces of the moon. In this second period the sun forces remain and the moon forces combine with them. In the third seven-year period, from puberty into the twenties, much more delicate forces are taken in, coming from the other planets. These other planetary forces appear in the human growth process, and because they work much less strongly than the sun or moon, their influence is outwardly much less visible. They had been working in the body between the fourteenth and the twenty-first years. Now at twenty-one, although it is hardly noticeable, they begin to work in the area of soul and spirit. Whoever has insight can see this remarkable change. Up to that moment only sun and moon have spoken out of human deeds. Now planetary forces modify that sun and moon activity. Actually people's coarse methods of observation afford very little capacity for grasping this change. But it is there.

Knowledge of these connections is necessary for someone concerned with the human being in health and in illness. For what do we really know of a human being, shall we say in the eleventh or twelfth year, if we don't know that the moon forces are working there? After that period, even though there are continually fewer parts to be renewed, the person must still renew them. Up to the twenty-first or twenty-second year, the sun, moon, and planets are working in succession into human growth. Then from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year the constellations of the fixed stars work. To be sure, this escapes ordinary observation. Only mystery wisdom tells of the entire zodiac playing into the human being between the beginning and the end of the twenties. Then the world becomes severe. It no longer wants to work into a person; it becomes harsh. Of this strange new relation of the human being to the world in the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth year—that the world hardens toward us—of this, today's science hardly knows anything. Aristotle taught it to Alexander when he told him that we push against the crystal heaven and find it hard. Thus “the crystal heaven,” beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, acquires meaning for human comprehension. And one begins to realize that when we come to the end of our twenties, we find no more forces in the cosmos for our own renewal. Why do we not die, then, at twenty-eight years? Well, the surrounding world does in fact let us die at twenty-eight. It is true. Whoever sees humanity's relation to the world, whoever looks consciously out into the world, must say, “O world, in reality you sustain me only until my twenty-eighth year!” Only when one realizes this does one finally begin to understand the real nature of the human being.

For now what happens when the world withdraws its formative forces—forces that previously we had always been free to use to build ourself up? At this remarkable moment, when in the twenty-eighth year we begin to show clearly that the earlier forces of growth are now completely gone, some people begin to die off. Some hold on a little longer to the forces of growth that are flowing away. But even Goethe had grown smaller when he measured himself carefully. This was when he began to work again on the second part of Faust. Earlier he had already begun to fade. From the moment when the world deserts us, we have to manage our renewal ourselves, out of forces we have received up to that moment. Certainly when the parts of our organism that can be renewed are becoming fewer and fewer, we cannot work to give ourselves a new body in the same glorious measure that children use up to the change of teeth, when they are forming their first very own body from the model. But we have collected many, many forces from sun and moon and stars which we are carrying within us and which we need when at twenty-eight we have to begin to renew our physical-material body ourselves. This is the moment in earth-life when we find that we are now given complete responsibility for our human form. This moment of our life when we are put entirely on our own is the point of time toward which we have been striving, and from which we must go on. (Plate III, middle) We strive from childhood when we are receiving many cosmic forces, strive more and more toward a point lying at the end of our twenties, when we no longer build our growth out of cosmic forces. Whatever we do after that moment, we do from forces out of our own body. In the middle is the point at which we stop working with cosmic forces and begin to develop forces out of our own body.

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We often find a premature activity happening in some child from forces out of the child's own body. We become aware of it from certain pathological symptoms the child shows from the bones, for instance, becoming brittle, and particularly from becoming fat. But the connection between these things is not easily seen. In every moment of life a person is either striving toward this twenty-eighth-year point or away from it. You must realize that it is a kind of zero point, a kind of hypomochlion, a zero moment in time when we stand between ourselves and the world. Always in our inner dynamics we are striving toward it or from it. Whatever is happening in us is a striving toward a zero or away from a zero, something we do toward or away from nothingness. We are striving toward the point where the world is no longer active and we are not yet active. Between the two conditions is a kind of zero. There is something in us that is oriented toward nothingness. It is this that makes us free beings; that is why we can hold responsibility. It is rooted in the human constitution that we are responsible free beings, because at the moment of transfer from the world to ourselves we go through a point of zero. Just as the beam of a pair of scales goes through a point of zero from right to left, from left to right, and that point does not follow the laws to which the rest of the scales is subject. You can think when you have a pair of scales, (Plate III, right) here the mechanical laws you have learned are in force; this gives the scales an exact form—either this above and that below or the opposite. That is the law of scales, the law of leverage. You can carry the scales around; their relation remains the same everywhere, subject always to those mechanical laws wherever you take them—except at this point. This point is free. You can carry the point around as if it were not connected to a pair of scales: the scales remain unchanged. And so it is, when you take hold of yourself in your soul experiences at that point toward which first you strive, from which afterward you strive away: first the world is active, afterward you yourself, and here nothing is active. With the tendency toward and the tendency from, here where a hypomochlion sits, here can live freely that human capacity which is determined neither by nature nor by the world. Here is the point of origin of human freedom. Here is where responsibility is born.

If, therefore, one wants to be able to judge the degree of responsibility in, for instance, a person thirty-five years old—and I mean professionally, not merely a layman's opinion, or that of a dilettante—then one must ask oneself, has too much, perhaps, worked over from this person's abnormal development up to the point at the end of the twenties? Is the point moved more toward youth or more toward age? A person is properly responsible if the point is normal, if judging the whole individual from external life one can decide that the point is normal. If it lies too far back toward youth—that is, if the world ceased too soon to give its forces to some person—one may perhaps find that the person suffers easily, even though to a small degree, from compulsive ideas. The soul is becoming rigid and cannot be held fully accountable for its deeds.

If the point comes late, the question will be whether that person is hindered by his or her inner nature from developing complete freedom of soul and is too rigid physically, and for that reason cannot be held fully responsible. The physician and the priest are the ones who are competent to form this judgment, in the finest sense of the word. They will know that they can judge pretty accurately from people's appearance what their development has been, whether they are in balance, whether their life-hypomochlion is at the right spot, that is, at the right point of time, or is too early or too late. We will discuss physical appearance later, for even an intensive study of physiognomy belongs to pastoral medicine.

These are things that in the old mystery wisdom were regarded as very important for judgments of human life. They are things that have been forgotten and that must be brought again into our knowledge of the human being if that knowledge is to have any beneficial influence, if it is to be active in the right sense in medical and pastoral activity.

More about this tomorrow.

I will begin today by pointing out that our studies hitherto have led us to a specific result. We have drawn attention on the one hand to the movements of the heavenly bodies, and, though it still remains for us to do it in more detail, we have at least gained some conception: Here are a number of cosmic bodies in movement, in a certain order and configuration. Meanwhile we have also been drawing attention to the form of man, and incidentally, from time to time, to the forms of animal and plant-nature; this we shall have to do still more, to gain the necessary supports from diverse realms. In the main however, it is the human form and figure we have contemplated, and in so doing we have divined that the formation of man is in some way related to what finds expression in the movement of celestial bodies. We want to formulate it with great care.

Yesterday I showed that wheresoever we may look in the human body, we shall find the formative principle of the looped curve or Lemniscate, save for the two outermost polarities—the Radius and the Sphere. Thus in the human body we perceive three formative principles (Fig. 1): The Sphere, with its activity primarily going inward, the Radius, and between these the looped curve or Lemniscate. Truly to recognise these formative principles in the human organism, you must imagine the Lemniscate as such with variable constants, if I may use the paradox. Where a curve normally has constants in its equation, we must think variables. The variability is most in evidence in the middle portion of the human body. Take as a whole the structure of the pairs of ribs and the adjoining vertebrae. True as it is then that in the vertebra the one half of the Lemniscate is very much condensed and pressed together, whilst in the pair of ribs the other half is much extended and drawn apart (Fig. 2), we must not be put off my this. The underlying formative principle is the Lemniscate, none the less. We simply have to imagine that where the ribs are (the drawing indicated those that are joined in front via the sternum) the space is widened, matter being as it were extenuated, while, to make up for this, the matter is compressed and the space lessoned in the vertebra.

Let us now follow the human form and figure upward and downward from this middle portion. Upward we find the vertebra as it were bulged out into a wide cavity (Fig. 3), while the remaining branches of the Lemniscate seem to vanish, nestling away, so to speak, in the internal formative process, becoming hidden and undefined. Going downward from the middle portion, we contemplate for instance the attachment of the lower limbs to the pelvis. In all that opens downward from this point, we find the other half of the loop fading away. We have therefore to contemplate a fundamental loop-curve, mobile and variable in itself. This dominates the middle part of man. Only, the formative forces of it must be so imagined that in the one half (Fig. 2) the material forces become, as it were, more attenuated and the loop widens, while in the other it contracts.

Further we must imagine that from this middle region upward the portion of the Lemniscate which in the vertebra was drawn together, bulges and widens out, while the other, downward-opening portion vanishes and eludes us. On the other hand, as you go downward from the middle part of man, the closed loop grows minute and fades away, while those portions of the curve which disappear as you go towards the head, run out into the radial principle and are here prolonged. (Fig. 4)

We should thus find our way into it, till we are able to see the only moving Lemniscate with perceptive insight. Also we think how the formative principle of the moving Lemniscate is combined with forces which are spheroidal on the one hand and on the other radial—radial with respect to the Earth's centre. We then have a system of forces which we may conceive as being fundamental to the form and figure, to the whole forming and configuration of the human body. (By the word “forces” I mean nothing hypothetical;—purely and simply what is made manifest in the forming of it.) Answering to this , in cosmic space, in the movement of celestial bodies, we also find a peculiar configuration,—configuration of movements. In yesterday's lecture, we recognised in the planetary loops the very same principle outside us which is the principle of form within us. Let us now follow this loop-forming principle in greater detail. Is it not interesting that Mercury and Venus make their loops when the planets are in inferior conjunction, i.e., when they are roughly between the Earth and the Sun? In other words, their loop occurs when what the Sun is for man—so to express it—is enhanced by Venus and Mercury. As against this, look for the loops of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These loops we find occurring when the planets are in opposition to the Sun. This contrast too, of oppositions and conjunctions, will in some way correspond to a contrast in the building forces of man. For Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, because their loops appear in opposition, the loops as loops will be most active and influential. Thinking along these lines, we shall indeed relate the loop-formation of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars to that in man which is little influenced by the Sun; for it takes place, once more, when the planet is in opposition. Whilst, inasmuch as Venus and Mercury form their loops when in conjunction, their loop-formation must in some way be related to what is brought about, amid the formative principles of man, by the Sun—or by what underlies the Sun. We shall therefore conceive the Sun's influence to be in some sense reinforced by Venus and Mercury, while it withdraws, as it were, in face of the superior planets, so-called. The latter, precisely during loop-formation, bring to expression something that bears directly, not indirectly, upon man.

If we pursue this line of thought and bear in mind that there is the contrast between Radius and Sphere, then we need but recall the form that comes to manifestation in these movements, and we shall say: In Mays, Jupiter and Saturn the essential phase must be when they are forming their loops, that is to say, when, in a manner speaking, the sphere-forming process comes into evidence. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (not to speak of further planets) will show their influence upon that element in man which is assigned to the sphere-forming process, namely the human head. In contrast to this—they are indeed the polar opposite—the movements of Venus and Mercury will somehow find expression in what in man too is the opposite pole, opposite to the forming of the head,—i.e., what abandons parallelism with the spherical formation and becomes parallel to the radial. Where the one part of the Lemniscate becomes minute and the other grows into the limbs, into a purely radial development, we have to look for the relation to Venus and Mercury. This in turn will lead us on to say: In the superior planets, which make their loop when in opposition, it is the loop that matters; they develop their intensity while they form the loop. Whilst in the inferior planets Venus and Mercury—it is essential that they wield their influence by virtue of what is not the loop,—i.e., in contrast to the loop, by the remainder of the planet's path. Think of a Lemniscate like this (Fig. 5), say in the case of Venus (I draw it diagrammatically).

You will understand it if you imagine this part (dotted line) ever less in evidence, the farther you go downward. That is to say, whilst in the path of Venus it closes, in its effects it no longer does so, but, as it were, runs out into parabolic branches, answering precisely to what happens in the human limb, where the vertebra form fades away and loses character (to put it very briefly, omitting details). This loop of the Lemniscate is represented by the path's fading away, not being fully maintained; it only indicates the direction but cannot hold it. So, where it closes in the path of Venus in the Heavens, in man's formation it falls asunder. Thus, to sum up, the building principle of the human form, howsoever modified, is based on this; the metamorphosis emerges between head and limbs—the limbs with the metabolism which belongs to them—and in the great Universe this answers to the contrast between those planets that form them in opposition to the Sun. Between the two is then the Sun itself.

Now, my dear friends, something quite definite results from this Namely, we see that also with respect to the qualitative effects we have just referred to, we have to recognise in the Sun's path, even as to its form, something midway between what we find in the forms movement of the superior and of the inferior planets respectively. We must therefore assign, what finds expression in the path and movement of the Sun, to all that in man which is midway between the forming of the head and the metabolism, In other words, we must attribute to the rhythmic system some relation to the path of the Sun. We therefore have to imagine a certain contrast between the paths of the superior and of the inferior planets; and in the Sun's path a quality midway between the two.

There is now a very evident and significant fact, regarding both the Sun's path and the Moon's. Follow the movements of the two heavenly bodies; neither of them makes any loop. They have no loop. Somehow therefore we must contrast the relation to man, and to Earth nature generally, of Sun and Moon on the one hand and of the loop-forming planetary paths on the other. The planetary paths with their characteristic loops quite evidently correspond to what makes vortices and vertebrae,—to what is lemniscatory in man.

Look simply at the human form and figure and think of its relation to the Earth; we can do no other than connect what is radial in human form and stature with the path of the Sun, even as we connect what is lemniscatory in form with the typical planetary path.

You see then what emerges when we are able to relate to the starry Heavens the entire human being, not only the human organ of cognition. This in effect emerges: In the vertical axis of man we must in some way seek what answers to the Sun's path, whilst in all that is lemniscatory in arrangement we have to seek what answers to the planetary paths,—lemniscatory as they are too, though in a variable form. Important truths will follow from this, We must conceive, once more, that through his vertical axis man is related to the Sun's path. HOW then shall we think of the other path which also shows no loops, namely the Moon's? Quite naturally—you need only look with open mind at the corresponding forms on Earth—we shall be led to the line of which we spoke some days ago, the line that runs along the spine of the animal. There we must seek what answers to the Moon's path. And in this very fact—the correspondence of the human spinal axis to the Sun's path and of the animal spinal axis to the moon's _ we shall have to look for the essential morphological difference between man and animal.

Precisely therefore when we are wanting to discover what is essential in the difference of man and animal, we cannot stay on Earth. A mere comparative morphology will not avail us, for we must first assign what we there find to the entire Universe. Hence too we shall derive some indication of what must be the relative position of the Sun's path and the Moon's—shall we say, what is their mutual situation, to begin with, in perspective (for here again we must express it with great caution). They must be so situated that the one path is approximately perpendicular to the other.

The human vertical therefore—or, had we better say, what answers to the main line and direction of the spine in man—is related to the Sun's path. The rational morphology we are pursuing makes this coordination evident. Mindful of this, we must surely relate the Sun's path itself to what in some way coincides with the Earth's radius. Admittedly, the Earth may move in such a way that many of her radii in turn coincide with the Sun's path. The relation indicated will need defining more precisely in coming lectures. Yet this at least gives us a notion of it: the direction of the Sun's path must be radial in relation to the surface or the Earth. We have no other alternative. In no event can the Earth be revolving round the Sun. What has been calculated—quite properly and conscientiously, of course—to be the revolution of the Earth around the Sun must therefore be a resultant of some other kind of movements. To this conclusion we are driven.

The many relevant details as regards human form and growth are so very complicated that in this brief lecture-course not everything can be gone into. But if you really concentrate upon the morphological descriptions given (though they are only bare indications of a qualitative morphology), you will be able to read it in the human form itself: The Earth is following the Sun! The Sun speeds on ahead, the Earth comes after. This then must be the essence of the matter: the earthly and the solar orbit in some way coincide, and the Earth somehow follows the Sun, making it possible as the Earth rotates for the Earth's radii to fall into the solar path, or at the very least to be in a certain relation to it.

Now you may very naturally retort that all this is inconsistent with the accepted Astronomy. But it is not so,—it really isn't! As you are well aware, to explain all the phenomena, Astronomy today must have recourse not only to the primary notion of a stationary Sun supposed to be at the focus of an ellipse along which the Earth is moving—but to a further movement, a movement of the Sun itself towards a certain constellation. If you imagine the direction of this movement and other relevant factors, then from the several movements of Sun and Earth, you may well be able to deduce a resultant path for the Earth, no longer coincident with the ellipse in which the Earth is said to be going round the Sun, but of a different form which need not be at all like the supposed ellipse. All these things I am gradually leading up to; for the moment I only wish to point out that you need not think what I am telling you so very revolutionary as against orthodox Astronomy. Far more important is the method of our study,—to bring the human form and figure into the system of the starry movements. My purpose here is not to propound some astronomical revolution, nor is it called for. Look, for example: say this or something like it (Fig. 6) is the Earth's movement, and the Sun too is moving, You can well imagine, if the Earth is following the Sun in movement, it is not absolutely necessary for the Earth always to be running past the Sun tangentially. It may well be that the Sun has already gone along the same path and that the Earth always to be running past the Sun tangentially. It may well be that the Sun has already gone along the same path and that the Earth is following, Nay, it is possible, envisaging the hypothetical velocity that has been calculated for the Sun's proper movement, you may work out a very neat arithmetical result. Work out the resultant of the assumed Earth-movement and the assumed Sun-movement; you may well get a resultant movement compatible with present-day Astronomy,—velocity and all. Let me then emphasise once more: What I am here propounding is not unrelated to present-day Astronomy, nor do I mean it not be. Quite on the contrary, it is related to it more thoroughly and deeply than theories which are so frequently presented, nicely worked out in theoretic garb, selecting certain movements and omitting others. I am not therefore instigating an astronomical revolution in these lectures; let me say this again to prevent fairy-tales arising. What I intend is to co-ordinate the human form—inward and outward form, figure and formation—with the movements of the heavenly bodies, nay, with the very system of the Cosmos.

For the rest, may I call your attention to this: It is not so simple to bring together in thought our astronomical observations of the heavenly bodies and the accepted constructions of the orbits. For as you know from Kepler's Second Law, an essential feature, on which the forms of the orbits depend, are the radius-vectors,—their velocity above all. The whole form of the path depends on the functionality of the radius vectors. If this be so, does it not also reflect upon the forms of the paths which actually confront us? May it not be that we are cherishing illusions after all, at the mere outward aspect of them? It is quite possible: What we here calculate from the velocity and length of the radius vectors might not be primary magnitudes at all. They might themselves be only the resultants of the true primary magnitudes. If so, then the seeming picture which emerges must refer back to another and more deeply hidden.

This too is not so far afield as you might think. Suppose that in the sense of present-day Astronomy you wished to calculate the Sun's exact position at a given time of day and on a given date. Then it will not suffice you to take your start from the simple proposition, 'the Earth moves round the Sun'. People have thought it strange that in the ancient Astronomy (that of the Mysteries, not the exoteric version) they spoke of three Suns instead of one. So they distinguished three Suns. I must confess, I do not find it so very striking. Modern Astronomy too has its three Suns. There is the Sun whose path is calculated as the apparent counterpart of the Earth's movement round the Sun. This Sun occurs, does it not , in modern Astronomy? The path of it is calculated. Astronomy then has another Sun—an imagined one of course—with the help of which certain discrepancies are corrected. And then it has a third Sun, with the help of which it re-corrects discrepancies that persist after the first correction. Modern Astronomy too therefore distinguishes three: the real Sun and two imagined ones. It needs the three, for what is calculated to begin with does not accord with the Sun's actual position. It is always necessary to apply corrections. This alone should be enough to show you that we should not build too confidently on mere calculation. Other means are needed to arrive at adequate conceptions of the starry movements; others than the science of our time derives from sundry premises of calculation.

The broad ideas of planetary paths we have been laying out, it I may put it so, call now for great definition. Yet we shall only come to this if we contrive first to go further in out study of Earth-nature, to see their mutual relation in a certain aspect.

The Kingdoms of Nature are commonly thought of in a straight line: mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, and I will add, human kingdom. (Some authorities would not admit the fourth, but that need not detain us.) The question now is: Is this arrangement sensible at all? Undoubtedly it is implicit in many of our modern lines of thought; at least it was so in the golden age of the mechanical outlook upon Nature. Today I know, in these wider realms of Science, there is a certain atmosphere of resignation, not to say despair. The habits of mind however remain the same as at their heyday, 20 or 30 years since. The scientists of that time would have been content, had they been able to follow up this series—mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, man,—with the mineral kingdom as the amplest, deriving therefrom, by some combination of mineral structure, the structure of the plant, then by a further combination of plant structure the structure of the animal, and so on to man. The many thoughts that were pursued about the primal generation of living things, generatic aequivocs,—were they not eloquent of the tendency to derive animate living Nature from inanimate and at long last from inorganic or mineral? To this day, I believe, many scientiste would doubt if there is any other rational way of conceiving the inner connection in the succession of Nature's Kingdoms than by deriving them all ultimately from the Inorganic, even where they culminate in Man. You will find countless papers, books, lectures and so on, including highly specialised ones claiming to be strictly scientific, the authors of which—as though hypnotised—are always looking at it from this angle. How, they inquire, can it have happened, somewhere at some time in the course of Nature, that the first living creature came into being from some molecular distribution, i.e. from something purely mineral in the last resort?

The question now is, is it true at all to put the kingdoms of Nature in series in this way? Can it be done? Or, if we do, are we doing justice to their most evident and essential features? Compare a creature of the plant kingdom with an animal to begin with. Taking together all that you observe, you will not find in the forming of the animal anything that looks like a mere continuation or further elaboration of what is vegetable. If you begin with the simplest plant, the annual, you may well conceive its formative process to be carried further in the perennial. But you will certainly not be able to detect, in the organic principles of plant form and growth, anything that suggests further development towards the animal. On the contrary, you will more likely ascertain a polarity, a contrast between the two. You apprehend this polarity in the most evident phenomenon, namely the contrasting processes of assimilation: the altogether different relation of the plant and of the animal to carbon, and the characteristic use that is made of oxygen. I may remark, you must be careful here, to see and to describe it truly. You cannot simply say, the animal breathes-in oxygen while the plant breathes oxygen out and carbon in. It is not so simple as that. Nevertheless, the plant-forming process taken as a whole, in the organic life, reveals an evident polarity and contrast (as against the animal) in its relation to oxygen and carbon. The easiest way to put it is perhaps to say: What happens in the animal, in that the oxygen becomes bound to carbon and the carbonic acid is expelled, is for the animal itself and for man too.—an un-formative process, the very opposite of formative, a process which must be eliminated if the animal is to survive. And now the very thing which is undone in the animal, has to be done, has to be formed and builded in the plant. Think of what in the animal appears in some sense as a process of excretion, what the animal must get rid of makes for the forming and building process in the plant. It is a tangible polarity. You cannot possibly imagine the plant-forming process prolonged in a straight line, so as to derive therefrom the animal-formation. But you can well derive from the plant-forming process what has to be prevented in the animal. From the animal the carbon has to be taken away by the oxygen in the carbonic acid. Turn it precisely the other way round, and you will readily conceive the plant-forming process.

You therefore cannot get from plant to animal by going on in a straight line. On the other hand you can without false symbolism imagine here an ideal mean or middlepoint, on the one side of which you see the plant—and on the other the animal—forming process. It forks out from here (Fig. 7). What is midway between,—let us imagine it as some kind of ideal mean. If we now carry the plant forming process further in a straight line we arrive not at the animal but at the perennial plant. Imagine now the typical perennial. Carry the stream of development which leads to it still further; in some respects at least you will not fail to recognise in it the way that leads toward mineralisation. Here then you have the way to mineralisation, and we may justly say; In direct continuation of the plant forming process there lies the way that leads to mineralisation. Now look what answers to it at the contrasting pole, along the other branch (Fig. 7). To proceed by a mere outward scheme, one would be tempted to say: this branch too must be prolonged. There would be no true polarity in that. Rather should you think as follows: In the plant-forming process I prolong the line. In the animal-forming process I shall have to proceed negatively, I must go back, I must turn round; I must imagine the animal-forming process not to shoot out beyond itself but to remain behind—behind what it would otherwise become.

Observe now what is already available in scientific Zoology, in Selenka's researches for instance on the difference between man and animal in the forming of the embryo and in further development after birth,—comparing man and the higher animals. You will then have a more concrete idea of this "remaining behind". Indeed we owe our human form to the fact that in embryo-life we do not go as far as the animal but remain behind. Thus if we study the three kingdoms quite outwardly as they reveal themselves, without bringing in hypotheses, we find ourselves obliged to draw a strange mathematical line, that tends to vanish as we prolong it. This is what happens at the transition from animal to men, whilst on the other side we have a line that really lengthens (Fig. 8).

Here is a fresh extension of mathematics. You are led to recognise a distinction—a purely mathematical one—when you draw this diagram. Namely there are lines which when continued grow longer, and there are lines which when continued grow shorter. It is a fully valid mathematical idea. If then we want to set out the Kingdoms of Nature in a diagram at all, we must do it thus. First we must have some ideal point to start from. Thence it forks out: plant kingdom, animal kingdom on either hand. Thereafter we must prolong the two lines. Only, the plant-kingdom-line must be so prolonged that it grows longer; the animal-kingdom-line so that it grows shorter as we prolong it. I say again, this is a genuine, mathematical idea.

We thus arrive at real relationships between the Kingdom of Nature, though we begin by simply placing them side by side. The question now is—and we will only put it as a question,—What in reality corresponds to the ideal point in our diagram? We may divine that as the forming of the Kingdoms of Nature is related to this ideal point, so too must there be movements in the great Universe which relate to something somehow corresponding to it,—to this ideal mean. Let us reflect on it until tomorrow.