The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have sought out of the esoteric aspect of the Easter thought to speak to you about how, when the course of Nature is permeated by spirit, it must come about that an autumn festival is added to the festivals of the year. This should be a kind of Michael festival, placed in relation to the fall equinox approximately in the same way as Christmas is to the winter solstice, Easter to the spring equinox, and St. John's to the summer solstice.

I should like to try to bring closer to you the Easter thought appropriate to the present age, particularly in its feeling content, so that tomorrow I can lay before you the whole significance of such a contemplation.

When we celebrate the Easter festival today, if we look about us into the consciousness of contemporary humanity and are honest with ourselves, we shall have to admit that the Easter thought is actually very little true for the greater part of humanity! On what does the truth of the Easter thought depend? The truth depends on a man's being able to link with this thought a mental image showing the Christ Being as having gone through death, having conquered Death, and then when He had undergone death and the succeeding Resurrection, having thereafter so united Himself with mankind that He could still give revelations to those who had formerly been His disciples, to the Apostles. But the Resurrection thought has more and more faded away, whereas when Christianity was in its inception it had been so living that Paul's words could sound across the ages from this epoch: “And if the Christ be not risen, then is... your faith vain!”

Paul has here linked Christianity directly with the Easter thought, that is with the thought of the Resurrection. People who have received the education of the present day call the Resurrection a miracle, and as miracle it is excluded from the realm of what is or can be reality. So that for all those who can no longer penetrate to the Resurrection thought, the Easter festival merely reflects an ancient custom, as do the rest of the Christian festivals. In the course of the years we have mentioned this from the most varied points of view.

It will first be necessary for mankind to reacquire a knowledge of the spiritual world as such in order to understand events which do not belong to the realm of sense reality; and what is connected with the Resurrection thought must be regarded as such an event. Then it will be possible for the Easter thought to become truly living again, which it cannot be for a humanity that relegates the Resurrection to the realm of unreal miracles.

The Easter thought arose in those epochs of mankind in which there were still remnants of the ancient primitive human knowledge of the spiritual world. We know that at the beginning of human earth-evolution, man had a certain instinctive clairvoyance by means of which he could gain glimpses of the spiritual world which led him to view this world as of equal validity with the physical sense world. This original instinctive clairvoyance is lost for earthly humanity. But in the first three centuries of the Christian era, the last remnants of it at least still existed. Hence in these centuries a certain understanding of the Easter thought based upon ancient human insight could still take root.

Such an understanding became blunted in the fourth century, when preparation began for what has come to full expression since the first third of the fifteenth century; namely, man's life in abstract, dead thoughts, which we have often mentioned. In these abstract, dead thoughts, in which natural science attains greatness, the Easter thought soon died. Today the time has come when it must again awaken as a living thought. But in order to awaken, it must pass over out of the state of death into a state of livingness.

That which is living is characterized by the fact that it puts forth something other than itself out of itself. In the early Christian centuries, when the Easter thought was spreading throughout Christendom, the “Gemuets”¹ of men were still sensitive enough to experience inwardly something very powerful when they pictured the grave of Christ and, rising out of the grave, that Being Who was now united with mankind. The Gemuets could experience with great inner force what appeared before their souls in this powerful image. And this inner experience was a reality in the human soul life.

Only that is a reality in the human soul life which this soul really lays hold of, just as the senses ordinarily lay hold of the outer sense world. The people of the early centuries felt that they were changed by beholding the event of the Death and the Resurrection of Christ. They felt that by this sight their souls were transformed, just as a man feels that he is changed by physical events in the course of his life on earth.

The human being is transformed at about the seventh year by the change of teeth, and again at about the fourteenth or fifteenth year by the onset of puberty. These are bodily transformations. In the contemplation of the Easter thought the early Christians felt themselves transformed in their inner soul life. They felt themselves thereby lifted out of one stage of human existence and transported into another.

In the course of time the Easter thought has lost this force, this power, and it can regain it only when the Resurrection, which cannot be understood according to natural laws, regains reality through spiritual science, a science which comprehends the spiritual. But what is spiritually conceived attains reality, not when this spiritual is conceived merely in abstract thoughts but only when it is also grasped in lively connection with the world appearing before the senses.

Anyone who wants to cling to the spiritual only in its abstraction, who says, for example, that we should not pull down the spiritual into the physical sense world, should at the same time maintain that the Divine Being is degraded when He is represented as having created the world. The Divine is comprehended in its greatness and power, not when we place it outside and beyond the sensible, but when we ascribe to it the power to work in this sensible world, to permeate this sensible world creatively. It is a debasing of the Divine to want to set it up yonder in abstract heights, in a “cloud-cuckoo-land.” And we will never live in spiritual realities if we conceive the spiritual only in its abstractness, if we cannot bring it into connection with the whole course of the world as this comes to meet us.

And this cosmic course, as far as our earthly life is concerned, meets us first of all in the fact that this earthly life comprises a certain number of years, and that these years present the return of certain events in a regular rhythm, as I indicated yesterday. After a year we return to approximately the same conditions of weather, of sun-position, and so forth. The course of the year thus enters into our earthly life in a rhythmical way.

We saw yesterday that this course of the year represents an in-and-out-breathing by the Earth itself of soul-spiritual elements. If we picture to ourselves once more the four high points of this Earth breathing-process, as we allowed them to come before our souls, we must say to ourselves: The time of the Christmas festival represents the time when the Earth holds its breath within it. The soul-spiritual part of the Earth is completely absorbed. Deep in the bosom of the Earth there rests all that the Earth unfolded during summer in order to let it be stimulated by the cosmos. All that opened up to the cosmos and was yielded up to its forces during the summertime has now been completely drawn in by the Earth, to rest in her deeps at Christmas time. Man of course does not dwell in the earthly depths; physically he lives on the surface of the Earth. Soul-spiritually also, he does not dwell in the depths of the Earth, for he lives actually in the Earth's periphery; he lives in the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth.

Therefore esoteric wisdom has always recognized the essential being of the Earth at the time of the winter solstice, at Christmas time, as something concealed at first, as something which cannot be penetrated by the ordinary forces of human knowledge, something which belongs in the sphere of the esoteric mysteries. And in all ancient times when something comparable to our present Christmas festival existed, it was recognized that what goes on in connection with the Earth at Christmas time could be grasped only by initiation into mystery-knowledge, by the initiation still known in Greece as the Chthonian Mysteries. By means of this initiation, man forsook in a certain way the periphery of the Earth in which he lived with his ordinary consciousness, to immerse himself in something into which he could not submerge physically. He immersed himself in the soul-spiritual element, and thus he learned to know what the Earth becomes during midwinter, when she draws her soul-spiritual element into herself.

And then a man came to know through this Mystery initiation, that at the time of the winter solstice the Earth is especially receptive to permeation by the Moon forces. This was regarded as the secret—if I may express myself in the modern sense—as the Christmas secret of the ancient mysteries: that just at Christmas time one comes to know how the Earth, by being permeated and saturated by her spirit-soul-being, becomes especially receptive in her inner being to the activity of the Moon forces.

In certain ancient times, for example, no one was entrusted with a knowledge of healing science unless he was initiated in the Winter Mysteries, and understood how the Earth, through the holding of her breath, becomes especially susceptible inwardly to the activity of the Moon forces, how at this time she permeates especially the plants with healing forces, how at this time she makes the plant world, and to a certain extent also the world of the lower animals into something entirely different.

The Christmas initiation was felt as a descent into the depths of the earthly world. But something else was connected with this Christmas initiation; namely, something that was felt in a certain sense to be a danger for the human being. A man said to himself: “When anyone really observes his consciousness in connection with what lives in the Earth as Moon forces at Christmastime, he comes into a state of consciousness in which he must be inwardly very strong, must have inwardly fortified himself, in order to withstand the attack from all sides of the Ahrimanic powers, who live in the Earth precisely because of its having taken in the Moon activity.” And only in the strength which a man had himself developed in his soul-spiritual being, in the strength to break the opposition of these forces, did he see what makes it possible to endure his earth existence over the long run.

But then some time after the celebration of these Christmas Mysteries, the teachers of the Mysteries gathered their pupils together, and as a sort of revelation, said to them the following: “Certainly, through initiation one can, in full consciousness, behold what is at work within the Earth at the time of the winter solstice. But with the oncoming of spring, when the plant world starts to grow, something rises up out of the depths of the Earth which permeates all that is growing and sprouting, permeates also man himself; namely, what the Ahrimanic powers bring about. At a time when man was still endowed with divine forces, as he was at the Earth's beginning, then through this primordial divine heritage men could still resist the attack of the Ahrimanic powers which broke over mankind in this way during the time of the winter moon. But (so the initiates told their pupils) a time will come when mankind will be rendered insensible to the spiritual through the agency of the Moon forces which the Earth takes up in the wintertime. With the growing and sprouting in the spring, a kind of intoxication with regard to the spiritual will come over mankind, depriving men of any consciousness that anything spiritual exists. Then, should mankind not find it possible to resist these intoxicating forces, the humanity of the Earth will go into decline and not be able to develop further with the Earth to future higher stages of earth evolution.”

The initiates painted in gloomy colors the age which had to break in for humanity in the fifteenth century, when mankind will excel to be sure in abstract, dead thoughts, but when man can again acquire spiritual capacities only by gaining new strength to overcome the intoxicating forces that rise out of the Earth. This he can do by developing the particular spiritual force now accessible to mankind.

When we form such visualizations, we transpose ourselves, so to speak, into the connection that exists between the course of the year in nature and what lives in the spirit. We bring together what is otherwise abstract, merely thought-out, with what is the natural sensible course as it confronts us, for example, in the seasons.

The polar opposite of this Christmas Mystery is the St. John's Mystery, at the time of the summer solstice. Then the Earth has completely exhaled. The spirit-soul element of the Earth is then utterly surrendered to the super-earthly powers, to the cosmic powers. Then the spirit-soul element of the Earth takes in all that is extraterrestrial. Just as the ancient initiates had said of the Christmas Mystery, so they said also of the St. John's Mystery (we use modern forms of expression, but there were appropriate forms in the ancient Mysteries also)—the initiates said that it was necessary to attain initiation in order to penetrate the secrets of the St. John's Mystery, that is, the secrets of the heavens. For man belongs to the periphery of the Earth; he belongs neither within the Earth, nor as earthly man does he belong to the heavens. Hence he must be initiated into the secrets of the sub-earthly in order to come to know the secrets of the super-earthly.

In a certain way, the Easter Mystery and the Michael or Autumn Mystery were seen as holding the balance between the super-earthly and the sub-earthly. And the Michael Mystery, as we have said, will first attain its proper significance in the time that is still future to our own.

The Easter Mystery in its full magnitude entered into the evolution of mankind through the Mystery of Golgotha. And this Easter Mystery was understood, as I have already said, because remnants of the ancient clairvoyance still existed. At that time people could still raise themselves up in their Gemuets or feeling souls to the resurrected Christ. The Easter Mystery was therefore woven into that ritual which was not an initiation ritual, but a ritual for mankind in general; it was woven into the ritual of the celebration of the Mass.

But with the retreat of primitive clairvoyance, the understanding of the Easter Mystery was lost. People begin to discuss a matter only when they no longer understand it. All the discussion that began after the first Christian centuries about how the Easter thought is to be understood derive from the fact that people could no longer comprehend it in a direct elementary way.

Now we have often been able to apply to the Easter thought what anthroposophical spiritual science gives to us. What is essential here is that this anthroposophical spiritual research points again to forms of life which are not exhausted between birth and death in the sense world; that it places what can be spiritually investigated over against what can be sensibly investigated; that it makes comprehensible how the Christ could converse with His disciples, even after the physical body was turned to dust. In the light of spiritual research, the Resurrection thought becomes alive again. But this Resurrection thought will be fully understood only if it is linked to what I might call its counter-pole. What then does the Resurrection thought really portray? The Christ Being descended from spiritual heights, entered into the body of Jesus and lived on Earth in this body, thereby bringing into the earthly sphere forces in themselves super-terrestrial. And these super-earthly forces which the Christ Being brought into the earthly sphere were from the time of the Mystery of Golgotha on, united with the forces of mankind's evolution. Since then that which the men of ancient times could behold only outside in cosmic space is to be feelingly perceived within the evolution of earthly humanity. Following the Resurrection, the Christ united Himself with mankind, and since then He lives, not only in the super-earthly heights, but also within the earth-existence; He lives in evolution, in the stream of mankind's evolution.

Above all, this event must be regarded not from the earthly point of view alone, but also from the super-earthly viewpoint. We can say that we should not view the Christ only in the way He comes to Earth out of heavenly worlds and becomes man, in the way He is given to men, but we should view this Christ Event also from the standpoint that the Christ actually departs from the spiritual world when He descends to the Earth.

Human beings saw the Christ arise in their realm. The Gods saw the Christ forsake the heavenly world and plunge down among mankind. For men the Christ appeared; for certain spiritual beings He vanished. Only when He passed through the Resurrection did He appear again to certain extraterrestrial spiritual beings, now shining out to them from the Earth like a star, a star which radiates out from the Earth into the spiritual world. Spiritual beings mark the Mystery of Golgotha by saying: “A star began to shine out from the Earth into the spiritual realm.” And it was felt to be of immense importance for the spiritual world that the Christ had submerged into a human body, and had gone through death in this body. For by partaking in death in a human body He was enabled immediately after this death to undertake something which His former divine companions could by no means have accomplished.

These former divine companions confronted, as an inimical world, what even in earlier times was called “hell.” But the efficacy of these spiritual beings stopped short at the gates of hell. These spiritual beings worked upon man. The forces of man extend even into hell. This signifies nothing other than man's subconscious projection into the Ahrimanic forces in the wintertime and also into the ascent of these Ahrimanic forces in the spring. The divine spiritual beings felt this as a world opposed to them. They saw it rise up out of the Earth and felt it to be an exceedingly problematic world. But they themselves had only a roundabout connection with it through man. They could only observe it in a certain way. But because the Christ had descended to the Earth, had Himself become man, He could descend into the realm of these Ahrimanic powers and overcome them. This is expressed in the Creed as “the Descent into Hell.”

This Descent into Hell provides the opposite pole to the Resurrection. This is what Christ has done for mankind: By descending from the divine heights and taking on the form of man, He became able actually to descend into the realm to whose dangers man is exposed, into which the other Gods, who had not been exposed to human death could not descend. In His way the Christ gained the victory over death. And therewith entered, I might say, as the opposite pole of the Descent into Hell, the ascent into the spiritual world, in spite of the fact that the Christ remained on Earth. For Christ had so united Himself with mankind that he had descended to that to which mankind is exposed. During the winter and spring seasons, He could win for man that which works out of extraterrestrial regions into the Earth again from St. John's to autumn. Thus in the Easter thought we see united in a certain way the Descent into the region of Hell, and through this descent the winning of the heavenly region for the further evolution of mankind.

All this belongs to a right conception of the Easter thought. But what would this Easter thought be if it could not become living! It was possible in ancient times to connect the right feeling awareness with the thought of the winter solstice only because they had on the other hand the St. John's thought. Schematically drawn: If one had the earthly with its deeply concealed winter nature (orange), then its counterpart was what in summer lay in the super-earthly periphery (orange). Both were to be reached only through initiation, yet they were connected by what was in the atmosphere surrounding the Earth, in the Earth's periphery (green), Christmas calls for St. John's. St. John's calls for Christmas. Man would rigidify under the influence of the Ahrimanic powers if he could not be exposed to the loosening Luciferic powers, who again give wings to thought, so that it need not remain rigid but can thaw again under the influence of the light.

At first humanity in its evolution had only the one pole, the Easter pole, and this Easter pole became paralyzed. The Easter festival lost its inner vitality. It will regain its inner life only when man can think about this festival in such a way that he can say to himself: “Through what is symbolically expressed in the Descent into Hell—which in reality can be understood as the Resurrection—a counterweight was given against something which had to come; namely, the paralyzing of all spiritual vision, its dying away in the earthly life. Prophetically, Christ Jesus wanted to prepare for what had to come; namely, the circumstance that man during his life on Earth between birth and death would have to forget the super-earthly, the spiritual, that he would in a certain way die to the spiritual. Opposed to this dying away of man in earthly life stands the Easter thought of the victory of super-earthly life over the earthly.”

On the one side is this: Man descends from his pre-earthly life; but in the period that dawned in the first half of the fifteenth century, he will in his earthly life more and more forget his super-earthly origin; as to his soul-being he will die away, as it were, in the earthly life. That stands on the one side.

On the other stands this: There was a spiritual, heavenly Being, Who by His deed, working out of the heavens into the Earth, set forth the counter-image. That spiritual Being descended into a human body, and in the Resurrection has, through His own being, placed the super-earthly spiritual among the men of Earth. In remembrance of this we have the Easter festival, which puts before mankind the picture of the burial of Christ Jesus and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.

He was laid in the grave and thereafter He arose—this is the Easter thought, as it stands in cosmic records... “Look upon thyself, O Man; thou descendest out of the super-earthly worlds; thou art threatened by the danger that thy soul will die away in the earthly life. Therefore the Christ appears, Who sets before thine eyes how that from which thou also didst arise, how that super-earthly spiritual conquers death. There stands before thee in mighty images such as could be placed before mankind: the entombment of Christ Jesus, the Resurrection of Christ Jesus. He was laid in the grave. He rose from the grave and appeared to those who could behold Him.”

But with the paralyzed soul forces of man today, this image can no longer become living. Where could it become alive? In a traditional faith man can still look upon what the Easter festival gives him: Upon the sublime picture of the burial and the Resurrection. But out of the inner force of his soul, he can no longer, of himself, find anything to connect with this Easter thought, with the thought of the entombment and the Resurrection. It is out of spiritual knowledge that he must again unite something with it.

And this something is another thought, to which there can be no alternative. It is, however, possible for a human being to let spiritual knowledge approach him so that he may understand this “other.” Let us place this “other” before ourselves, so as to inscribe it deeply within our souls. Easter thought: He has been laid in the grave; He is risen. Now let us place before ourselves the other thought which must come over mankind: He is risen and can confidently be laid in the grave. Easter thought: He has been laid in the grave; He is risen. Michaelmas thought: He is risen and can confidently be laid in the grave.

The first thought, the Easter thought, pertains to the Christ; the second thought pertains to the human being. It pertains to the man who directly comprehends the power of the Easter thought, comprehends how when spiritual knowledge enters into the earthly life of the present, in which his soul-spiritual is dying away, his soul can resurrect, so that he becomes living between birth and death, so that in the earthly life he becomes inwardly alive.

The human being must through spiritual knowledge comprehend this inner resurrection, this inner awakening; then will he confidently be laid in the grave. Then he may be laid in the grave, through which he otherwise would fall prey to those Ahrimanic powers who work within the earth realm at the time of the winter solstice.

And the festival which contains this thought: “He is risen and can confidently be laid in the grave”—this festival must fall in the time when the leaves are beginning to turn yellow and fall from the trees, when the fruits have ripened, when the Sun has received that power which brings to maturity what in the spring was budding and sprouting, full of the forces of growth, but which also brings withering and the inclination to seek again the inner part of the Earth; when what is developing on the Earth begins to be a symbol of the grave.

If we place the Easter festival at the time when life begins to bud and to sprout, when the forces of growth attain their highest point, then the other festival, which contains: “He is risen and can confidently be laid in the grave,” we must place at the time when Earth nature begins to wither, when the mood of the grave is spreading abroad in Earth nature, when the symbol of the grave can appear before the soul of man. Then the Michael thought begins to stir in man, that thought which is not, like the Easter thought in the earliest centuries of Christianity, directed toward a kind of inner perceiving (Anschauung).²

In the first centuries of Christianity, this feeling perception was directed to the Christ laid in the grave and risen. In this perception the soul was made strong, was filled with its strongest forces. In the festival-thought at the time of the fall equinox, the soul must feel its strength when appeal is made not to its perceiving, but to its will. “Take into thyself the Michael thought which confers the Ahrimanic powers, that thought which makes thee strong to gain here on Earth knowledge of the spirit, so that thou canst overcome the powers of Death.”—As the Easter thought is directed to the perception, this thought is directed to the will-powers: to take up the Michael force, which means to take the force of spiritual knowledge into the will-forces. And so the Easter thought can become living, can be brought directly to the human soul and spirit, when now the Michael thought, the thought of the Michael festival in the autumn, is felt to be the counter-pole of the Easter thought—just as the St. John's thought was perceived to be the counter-pole of the Christmas thought. As the Christmas thought by its inner livingness, has brought forth the St. John's thought after a half-year, so must the Easter thought bring forth the Michael thought. Mankind must attain an esoteric maturity, so as to think, not merely abstractly, but to be able again to think so concretely that men can again become festival-creating. Then it will be possible again to unite something spiritual with the cycle of sense phenomena.

All our thoughts are so abstract! But no matter how remarkable they are, how intelligent, if they remain abstract, life will not be able to penetrate them. When today men reflect that Easter might be set abstractly on any day, no longer according to the constellations of the stars, when today all higher knowledge is darkened, when man no longer sees any relation between insight into the soul-spiritual and the natural-physical forces, the force must once more awaken in man which will be able to unite something spiritual directly with the sense phenomena of the world.

Wherein then did the spiritual strength of man consist, making him able to create festivals in the course of the year, in accordance with the yearly phenomena? It consisted in the primal spiritual force. Today men can continue to celebrate festivals according to the ancient traditional custom, but they must gain once more the esoteric force out of themselves to “speak” something into Nature that accords with natural events. It must become possible to grasp the Michael thought as the blossom of the Easter thought. While the Easter thought stems from physical blossoming, it will become possible to place the blossom of the Easter thought—the Michael thought—into the course of the year as the outcome of physical withering.

People must learn once more to “think” the spiritual “together with” the course of nature. It is not admissible today for a person merely to indulge in esoteric speculations; it is necessary today to be able once again to do the esoteric. But people will be able to do this only when they can conceive their thoughts so concretely, so livingly that they don't withdraw from everything that is going on around them when they think, but rather that they think with the course of events: “think together with” the fading of the leaves, with the ripening of the fruits, in a Michaelic way, just as at Easter one knows how to think with the sprouting, springing, blossoming plants and flowers.

When it is understood how to think with the course of the year, then forces will intermingle with the thoughts that will let men again hold a dialogue with the divine spiritual powers revealing themselves from the stars. Men have drawn down from the stars the power to establish festivals which have an inner human validity. Festivals must be founded out of inner esoteric force. Then from the dialogue with the fading, ripening plants, with the dying Earth, by finding the right inward festival mood, men will also again be able to hold converse with the Gods and link human existence with divine existence.

• 1. The Gemüt, or feeling soul, together with the intellectual soul forms the centermost of the three soul elements in Rudolf Steiner's picture of man. This soul element was predominant in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in which the event of Golgotha took place.
• 2. It is assumed that Anschauung here is intended to describe the way man's Gemuet could inwardly experience the Entombment and Resurrection, as was indicated earlier. This would be perceptively, feelingly, rather than through logic.

In the lecture yesterday we heard that man spends the first period of his life between death and a new birth in the Moon sphere, preparing the forces that will eventually take effect in his karma. In the Moon sphere he encounters Beings who were once together with him on the Earth as the great primeval Teachers of humanity. These are the Beings with whom he comes into contact almost immediately after death; he also comes into contact with the Hierarchy of Beings to whom the book Occult Science: An Outline refers as the Angeloi. The Angeloi have never been inhabitants of the Earth in the literal sense; they have never borne earthly bodies, nor even etheric bodies resembling those of men. The etheric bodies of the other Moon Beings of whom I spoke were not altogether dissimilar from those of men, but those Beings did not incarnate in physical bodies.

The Angeloi are the Beings who in the present period of our cosmic evolution guide us from one earthly life to another, and it is from the Moon sphere that they guide us. We have heard how in this same sphere the human being lays the foundations of his karma, gathers into himself the impulses which will bring about its ultimate fulfilment. But whatever has passed with a man through the gate of death as the result of unrighteous deeds, deeds which cannot be tolerated by the spiritual worlds—all this ‘bad’ karma, if I may so express it, must be left behind in the Moon sphere. For as he moves onwards through his life between death and a new birth, a man could not be encumbered with the consequences and effects of his unrighteous deeds. When he passes beyond the Moon sphere his inner life has expanded into a still wider region of the Cosmos, and he enters the Mercury sphere. Here he lives, primarily, in communion with the Beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. In all these realms, of course, he is in contact with human souls who have also passed through the gate of death. In the Moon sphere, these are the third class of beings among whom he lives—they are disembodied human souls who, like himself, have passed through the gate of death. We shall presently see why the spiritual effects of the bad karma must remain behind in the Moon sphere. For the moment, the fact itself will suffice.

When man enters the Mercury sphere, he undergoes further purification. Even when he has laid aside in the Moon sphere those moral attributes which are unfit for the Cosmos, the spiritual counterparts of his physical weaknesses, of his physical infirmities, still remain with him, as do the tendencies to illness and the effects of the illnesses from which he suffered here on Earth. Surprising as it may seem, it is the case that in the life between death and a new birth, man lays aside his moral failings first and his physical infirmities only later, when he enters the Mercury sphere. In the Mercury sphere his soul is purged of the inner effects of those morbid processes which came to expression in illness during his life on Earth and in his soul he becomes completely healthy. You must remember that man is a single whole. From the occult standpoint it is erroneous to speak of him as a compound of spirit, soul and body. He is not a compound of these three constituents, but when we observe him he is revealed on the one side as body, on the other as spirit, and between body and spirit, as soul. In reality, man is one whole, a self-contained unity. The soul and the spirit too are involved in the conditions which prevail in illness. And when man has laid aside the physical body at death, the effects of the experiences resulting from the disease-processes are, to begin with, still present in his soul. But in the Mercury sphere these effects are obliterated under the influences of the Beings we know as the Archangeloi.

You see, therefore, that having passed stage by stage through the Moon sphere and the Mercury sphere, man becomes a being from whom moral and physical weaknesses have been removed. Then—after the lapse of many decades—he enters the Venus sphere and there, as one who has lived through the spheres of Moon and Mercury, he is ready to pass from the Venus sphere into the Sun sphere where the longest period of life between death and a new birth is spent. The indications I am giving will show you how well-founded were the practices of those ancient Mysteries where men acted out of wisdom which, although it was an instinctive wisdom, was the outcome of wonderful powers of clairvoyance. In those olden times it would have been unthinkable to study medicine, for example, in the way that is customary nowadays. What happens now is that the purely physical symptoms of disease are observed and efforts are made to discover ameliorative measures by dissecting the corpse and observing the changes in evidence there, as compared with those which take place in the normal, living organism—and so forth. Such procedure would have been regarded as futile in the days of the ancient Mystery-wisdom when it was known that illumination leading to the healing of illness must come from the Beings of the Mercury sphere. For it was known that only if illumination proceeds from the whole nexus of cosmic processes can a man be healed fundamentally. The description of the Oracle of the Mercury Mysteries given from a different point of view in the book Occult Science indicates the nature of the practices in these Mysteries which were dedicated primarily to the ancient Art of Healing.

In the lecture yesterday we heard of the great primeval Teachers who were once together with men on Earth; wherever human beings dwelt, these Teachers were among them, peopling the etheric sphere of the Earth as a kind of second race. But in their dim, dreamlike consciousness men were aware that other Beings too came down among them, Beings whose abode has never been on the Earth. What has to be said about these things will of course seem not only paradoxical but sheer nonsense to the modern mind with its devotion to materialistic science. Nevertheless this ‘nonsense’ is the truth. The sages in the ancient Mysteries knew well that illumination on the processes of healing can be given only by the super-sensible Mercury Beings. And so through the sacred rites enacted in these Mysteries, spiritual Beings were able to come down from the Mercury sphere to the altars in the sanctuaries where the priests of the Mysteries conversed with them. The Beings who thus descended to the altars were known in the Mysteries simply as the God Mercury. The influence was the same, although it was not necessarily the same Being who descended on every occasion. Men's attitude to this sacred medicine in olden times was such that they said: the Art of Healing has been imparted by the God Mercury to his priest-healers.

Even to-day it cannot be said that Spiritual Science does not depend upon the help of Beings of the Cosmos who, when the necessary preparation has been made by Initiates, are able to come down to the Earth. Initiates of the Mystery-wisdom belonging to the modern age know well how much depends upon the possibility of conversing with Beings of the Cosmos. But the mentality prevailing to-day is utterly different from that of olden times. A doctor nowadays is one upon whom some University has conferred a medical degree, whereas in days of antiquity a doctor was one who had conversed with the God Mercury. But as time went on this converse took place no longer and only traditions remained of what was once achieved in the Mysteries when the priest-healers had conversed with the God.

In the Venus sphere it is a matter of leading over into the Sun sphere whatever still remains of the human being when his tendencies to unrighteousness and to illness have been eliminated. To understand this we must think of something that is characteristic of man. Here on Earth a man is always one whole, one undivided whole. Only if he is executed for some terrible crime is he no longer a single whole in respect of the physical body. However severe the punishment he may receive for lesser transgressions, he is still one whole. But this is not the case with the soul-and-spiritual counterpart which has passed through the Moon sphere and the Mercury sphere. When as a being still possessed of soul and spirit in the super-sensible world after death, man has cast off the weaknesses due to the wrongdoings and to illnesses, he is in a certain sense no longer whole. For a man is one with his wrongdoings; his sinfulness is part of him. If someone were so utterly villainous as to possess no good qualities at all, his whole being would have to remain in the Moon sphere and he could make no further progress; for to the extent to which we are evil, to that extent we leave our own being behind in the Moon sphere. We are one with, identical with, what is evil in us according to the standards of the spiritual world. Therefore when we arrive in the Venus sphere, we have been mutilated in a certain respect. In the Venus sphere the element of purest Love prevails—purest Love in the spiritual sense; and it is this Cosmic Love that bears what now remains of the human being from the Venus sphere into the Sun existence.

There, in the Sun existence, man has to work in a very real way at the moulding and shaping of his karma. Now if our physicists were ever to reach the Sun they would be astonished, to say the least of it! For everything that men claim to have discovered about the Sun is at variance with the facts. The Sun is supposed to be a kind of globe filled with incandescent gas—but that is far from the truth. Let us take a rather commonplace illustration. If you have some Seltzer water in a glass you will have to look carefully if you want to see the actual water, for what you see are the bubbles in the water. These bubbles are less dense than the water itself and you see what is the less dense. And now, what about the Sun? When you look at the Sun you do not see it because it is a globe of densified, incandescent gas in empty space, as science alleges, but you see it because just at that place there is a condition of utmost rarefication.—And now you must get accustomed to an idea that is far from familiar.-

You look out into space—I am not going to speak now about the nature of space. Here, when you look into the water, there are bubbles everywhere—bubbles which are thinner, less dense than the water. Where the Sun stands in the sky, conditions are less dense even than space. You will say: ‘but space itself is void, it is nullity.’ Nevertheless at the place where the Sun is situated there is actually less than nullity. It should not be difficult, especially in these days, for people to think of something else that is less than nothing. If there were originally five shillings in my pocket and I spend them one by one, in the end I have nothing. But when I get into debt I have less than nothing—which is the plight of a good many people to-day! Very well, then: where there is space, space alone, there is nothing; but where the Sun is there is less than nothing, there is a lacuna in space—and there dwell the spiritual Beings referred to in the book Occult Science as the Exousiai, the Dynamis, the Kyriotetes. There they have their abode, sending their own essence and power through all creation. Among them man spends the greater part of his life between death and a new birth. In association with the Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, with human souls karmically connected with him who have also passed through the gate of death, and with yet other Beings whose existence is hardly even conjectured, the karma for the next earthly life is worked out and formulated. Conditions in this Sun region are not as they are on Earth. Why do our clever scientists—and clever they certainly are—picture the Sun as a globe of incandescent gas? It is because a certain illusory, materialistic instinct makes them want to detect physical processes in the Sun. But there is nothing physical in the Sun. One may at most speak of physical processes in the Sun's corona, but certainly not in the Sun itself. In the Sun there is nothing like natural law, for it is a world of purest spirit. Materialists would like to insist that the Sun too is under the sway of natural law, but it is not so. The only laws prevailing in the Sun are those which give effect to the karmic consequences of the Good and which operate in restoring the mutilation man has undergone as the result of his ‘bad’ karma when he has been transported by the Love of the Venus Beings into the Sun sphere. When the life of man between death and a new birth is described many will wonder how this very lengthy period is spent. Many things that happen on the Earth command admiration and awe, but the most sublime achievements of earthly civilisation are puny and insignificant in comparison with what is accomplished in a purely spiritual way during this Sun existence, when mighty Powers are all around and within us, working to the end that our karma shall take effect in the next earthly life.

The elaboration of part of man's karma is completed in the Venus sphere, and some part even in the Mercury sphere. Later on we shall hear of a certain well-known historical personality whose destiny in his incarnation in the nineteenth century was due to the fact that his karma was very largely wrought out in the spheres of Venus and Mercury. Souls who begin to give shape to their karma in these spheres often become personalities of outstanding significance in the subsequent incarnation. But in the great majority of cases the main part of the karma for the following earthly life is worked out in the Sun sphere, where the longest period is spent. We will speak in greater detail later on but to-day I will give an outline of how the foundations of karma are laid, stage by stage, in the various spheres. In order not to be confused by other descriptions I have given of the life between death and a new birth, you must be clear that in moving through these spheres man enters into entirely different conditions of cosmic existence. When the time comes for him to enter the Mars sphere, he is still not altogether outside the Sun sphere, for the influences of the Sun are still active in this part of the Cosmos which was once cast off by the Earth. In the Sun sphere, man is concerned only with his moral qualities and with those attributes of his being which have remained healthy; the rest has been laid aside. It persists in him as a kind of incompleteness but this is made good in the Sun sphere. During the first half of existence in the Sun sphere we are engaged in making preparation for the appropriate physical organisation of the next earthly body. During the second half of the Sun existence, in union with the Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and with human souls karmically connected with us, we are concerned with the preparation of the moral side of karma, the moral qualities which will then be present in the next life. But this moral part and the spiritual part of karma—for example, specific talents in one direction or another—are then further elaborated in the Mars sphere, in the Jupiter sphere and in the Saturn sphere. And in passing through these spheres we come to know what the ‘physical’ stars are in reality.

To speak of a ‘physical’ star is not really correct. For what is a star? Physicists imagine that combustion of gas or some process of the kind is taking place in the sky. But as I said, if they could actually get there they would be amazed to find no burning gas in the Sun but actually a lacuna, a gap in space, in a condition infinitely more rarefied than any particles of earthly matter could ever be. Everything is Spirit, pure Spirit. Nor are the other stars so many bodies of incandescent, burning gas, but something entirely different. Bordering on this Earth with its physical substances and physical forces, is the universal Cosmic Ether. We are able to perceive the Cosmic Ether because, as we gaze into it, our field of vision is circumscribed and the surrounding ether appears blue. But to believe as materialistic thinkers do, that physical substances are roaming around up there in the Cosmos is just childish fancy. No physical substances are moving around, for at the place where a star is seen, there is something altogether different. The farthest reaches of the etheric would lead out of and beyond space, into the spheres where the Gods have their abode. And now picture to yourselves a certain inner relationship which may exist between one person and another and comes to physical expression. Picture it quite graphically. You are caressed by someone who loves you. You feel the caress but it would be childish to associate it in any way with physical matter. The caress is not matter at all, it is a process, and you experience it inwardly, in your soul. So it is when we look outwards into the spheres of the Ether. The Gods in their love caress the world. But the caress lasts long, because the life of the Gods spans immense reaches of time. In very truth the stars are the expression of love in the Cosmic Ether; there is nothing physical about them. And from the cosmic aspect, to see a star means to feel a caress that has been prompted by love. To gaze at the stars is to become aware of the love proceeding from the divine-spiritual Beings. What we must learn to realise is that the stars are only the signs and tokens of the presence of the Gods in the Universe. Physical science has much to learn on its path from illusion to truth! But men will not achieve self-knowledge nor will they understand their own true being until this physical science has been transformed into a spiritual science of the worlds beyond the Earth. Science in its present form has meaning only for the Earth, for physical matter in the real sense [The difference between physical and mineral matter must be remembered here.] exists only on the Earth. And so when we depart from the Earth at death, we enter more and more into a life of purely spiritual experiences. The reason why our physical life presents an entirely different aspect in these backward-streaming experiences which continue for a third of the length of earthly existence, is that we have been permeated with the essence and substance of the Moon sphere. The preparation of karma is one of the many things that have to be accomplished in the worlds of the stars.

In order that one set of facts may be supported by others, let me explain how such observations are made by one who is versed in modern Initiation Science. For some time now, even in public lectures, I have been describing how when a man develops the faculty of genuine super-sensible perception through the methods indicated in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, he looks back over his earthly life, seeing it as a kind of tableau. Everything is present simultaneously, in a mighty panorama of the whole of life since the birth of the ‘I’; but the several epochs are in a certain respect distinct from each other. We survey our experiences from birth until the change of teeth, then again, as one complete series, the experiences occurring between the time of the change of teeth and puberty, then the experiences of the period from puberty until the beginning of the twenties, and so forth. Further concentration and application of the methods for the attainment of spiritual knowledge enable us, as we survey this tableau, to observe, firstly, our life from birth to the seventh year. But later on these pictures are allowed to fade away and we see right through our life; when the consciousness has been emptied of all pictorial impressions and we have achieved Inspiration, we behold the living, weaving activity of the Moon sphere in place of the tableau of early childhood from birth until the seventh year. We behold this living, weaving activity. And so Initiation in the form that is normal and right for this present age brings us knowledge of the secrets of the Moon sphere, when the pictures of our own life up to the seventh year are obliterated in the consciousness of Inspiration and we perceive what now flashes up in their place.

Then, if we observe the tableau of life between the seventh and fourteenth years and again obliterate the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we gaze into the Mercury sphere. Everything has to do with the being of man, for man is an integral part of the whole Universe. If he learns to know himself as he really is, in the innermost core of his being, he learns to know the whole Universe. And now I would ask you to pay attention to the following.—Deepest respect arises in us for the old, instinctive Initiation Science which gave things that have remained in existence to this day, their true and proper names. Designations that are coined nowadays result in nothing but confusion, for modern scholarship is incapable of naming things in accordance with reality. An unprejudiced observation of life will fill us with reverence for the achievements of ancient Initiation Science. Ancient Initiation Science knew by instinct something that is confirmed to-day by statistics, namely, that the illnesses of childhood occur most frequently in the first period of life; it is then that the human being is most prone to illness, and even to death; after puberty this tendency abates, but the healthiest period of all, the period when mortality is at its lowest, is between the ages of seven and fourteen. The wise men of old knew that this is due to the influences of the Mercury sphere and again to-day we may make the same discovery when through modern Initiation Science we penetrate the secrets of existence. Such things fill us with reverence for these sacred traditions of humanity.

By looking back into our experiences from the fourteenth to the twenty-first years and obliterating the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the secrets of the Venus sphere. Here again the wonderful wisdom of ancient Initiation Science comes into evidence. The human being reaches puberty; love is born. When the pictures of this period of life are illumined by Initiation Science, the secrets of the Venus sphere are disclosed. Everything I am now describing is part of the true self-knowledge which unfolds in this way.

When the pictures of experiences occurring between the twenty-first and forty-second years of life are eliminated in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the Sun sphere. Through deepened self-knowledge the secrets of the Sun sphere can be experienced in this retrospective contemplation of the events of our life between the twenty-first and forty-second years. To acquire knowledge of the Sun existence our vision must cover a period three times longer than that of the periods connected with the other planetary bodies.

I told you that the karma of a certain well-known personality in history had taken shape paramountly in the spheres of Mercury and Venus, and you will now understand how such things are investigated. We look back, firstly, into the period of our own life between the seventh and fourteenth years, and then into the period between the fourteenth and twenty-first years; when the pictures have been eliminated in the consciousness of Inspiration, light is shed upon the secrets of the Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere. Through this illumination we perceive how such an individuality worked together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies and with other human souls, and how his subsequent earthly incarnation in the nineteenth century took shape.

Now if the elaboration of karma has taken place mainly in the Mars sphere, investigation is more difficult. For if a man attains Initiation before the age of 49, it is not possible for him to look back into the period of life which here comes into question, namely, the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. He must have passed his forty-ninth year if he is to be able to eliminate the pictures of this particular set of experiences and penetrate the secrets of the Mars sphere. If Initiation is attained after the age of fifty-six it is possible to look back into the period between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth years of life, when karma that is connected with the Jupiter sphere takes shape. And now we are at the point where the various sets of events come together in one connected whole.

It is not until the period between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years can be included in this retrospective vision that we are able to survey the whole range of experiences and to speak out of our own inner knowledge. For then we can gaze into the profoundly significant secrets of the Saturn sphere. Karmas that were wrought out mainly in the Saturn sphere operate in mysterious ways to bring men together again in the world. In order to perceive all these connections in the light of Initiation Science itself—they can of course be explained and so become intelligible—but in order to perceive with independent vision and be able to judge them, we must ourselves have reached the age of sixty-three. A human being appears in some earthly life—thus for example there is a certain great poet of whom I shall speak later—and we find that through his faculties, through his literary creations, he was giving expression to that in his karma which could have been wrought out only in the Saturn sphere.

When we look up to the Sun, to the planetary system—and the same applies to the rest of the starry heavens for they are connected in a very real way with the being of man—we can witness how human karma takes shape in the Cosmos. The Moon, the planets Venus, Jupiter—verily these heavenly bodies are not as physical astronomy describes them. In their constellations, in their mutual relationships, in their radiance, in their whole existence, they are the builders and ¹ shapers of human destinies, they are the cosmic timepiece according to which we live out our karma. As they shine downwards from the heavens their influences have real power. This was known in the days of the ancient Mystery-wisdom but the old Astrology—which was a purely spiritual science, concerned with the spiritual foundations of existence—has come down to posterity in a degraded, amateurish form. Anthroposophy alone can contribute something that will enable us to perceive the spiritual connections as they truly are and to understand how through the great timepiece of destiny, human life on Earth is shaped according to law.

From this point of view let us think of the human being and his karma. Those who with the help of Anthroposophy evolve a healthy conception of the world as against the unsound views prevailing to-day, will unfold not only quite different concepts and ideas but also quite different feelings and perceptions. For you see, if we really understand the destiny of a man, we also learn to understand the secrets of the world of stars, the secrets of the Cosmos. But nowadays people write biographies without the faintest inkling that something is really being profaned by the way in which they write. In times when knowledge was held to be sacred because it issued from the Mysteries, nobody would have written biographies in the way that is customary to-day. Every ancient ‘biography’ contained indications of the influences and secrets of the world of stars. In human destiny we can perceive, firstly, the working of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai; then of still loftier Sun Beings, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; then of the Thrones who are concerned mainly with the elaboration of karma in the Mars sphere; then of the Cherubim who elaborate the karma belonging to the Jupiter sphere; and then of the Seraphim who work together with man at the elaboration of karma in the Saturn sphere—Saturn karma. In a man's destiny, in his karma, we behold the working of the higher Hierarchies. This karma, at first, is like a veil, a curtain. If we look behind this veil we gaze at the weaving deeds and influences of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. Every human destiny is like script on a sheet of paper. Just imagine that someone looking at the writing on the paper were to say that he can see signs - K - E - I, and so forth, but he is quite unable to combine these letters into words! As there are some twenty-two to twenty-eight letters (to be exact, about thirty to thirty-four in all) such a man could only conceive that the whole of Goethe's Faust is made up entirely of those thirty-four letters. He cannot read, therefore he sees only the different letters. When someone else finds a great deal more in Faust because he can combine the letters into the words of which this wonderful work is composed, an out-and-out illiterate with no notion of how to read may say with horror: Here is someone who actually thinks that all kinds of things are contained in Faust—but he is an utter fool! Yet the whole of Faust does actually consists of these letters. Similarly, when we observe the karma of a human being in the ordinary way, we see letters only; but the moment we begin to read this karma we behold the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and their mutual, interrelated deeds. The destiny of an individual human life becomes the richer, the more we get beyond the thirty-four letters and find in them—Faust! And the picture of a human destiny is enriched beyond measure when earthly ignorance is transformed into knowledge of the Cosmic Alphabet, when we realise that the letters of that script are the signs and tokens of the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

To a man who beholds it, the vista of karma as the shape taken by destiny in life is so overwhelming, so sublime and majestic that simply by understanding how karma is related to the spiritual Cosmos he will unfold quite different qualities of feeling and discernment. It will not remain so much theoretical knowledge. What we acquire through Anthroposophy should not be a mere accumulation of theoretical information but should work more and more upon our life of thought and feeling, in that it rids us of the notion that we live an earthworm's existence and makes us aware that we belong to the land of Spirits. Verily, we are citizens not of the Earth alone but of the land of Spirits. The whole existence we have spent between death and a new birth converges in that which, on Earth, is enclosed within our skin. The secrets of worlds are contained in a particular form within this encircling skin.

Self-knowledge is by no means the trivial sentimentality of which there is so much talk nowadays. Human self-knowledge is world-knowledge. And so when friends have given me an opportunity, I have often written down for them the following lines:

If thou would'st know thy Self,
Look out into the Cosmic Spaces.
thou would'st fathom the Cosmic Spaces,
Look inwards, into thine own Self.

Willst Du Dein Selbst erkennen,
Schaue hinaus in die Weltenweiten.
Willst Du die Weltenweiten durchschauen,
Blicke hinein in das eigene Selbst.

During the hour that has become available today I want to speak about certain things which will be easier to understand now that preparation has been made both in the general lecture-course and in the last two lectures to Members. I shall speak this evening about the karma of the Anthroposophical Society and continue this same theme in London during the next few days.

The lectures here have made it clear that in our own epoch the Impulse of the Being known in Christian terminology as the Archangel Michael is responsible for the spiritual guidance of civilised mankind. This particular Rulership—if so it may be called—of the spiritual life began in the seventies of last century and was preceded, as I said, by that of Gabriel. I shall now have something to say about certain aspects of the present Rulership of Michael.

Whenever Michael sends his impulses through the evolution of humanity in the sphere of earthly life, he is the bringer of the Sun-forces, the spiritual forces of the Sun. With this is connected the fact that during their waking consciousness men receive these Sun-forces into their physical and etheric bodies.

The present Rulership of Michael—which began not very long ago and will last from three to four centuries—signifies that the cosmic forces of the Sun penetrate right into the physical and etheric bodies of men. And here we must ask: What kind of forces, what kind of impulses are these cosmic Sun-forces?

Michael is essentially a Sun-Spirit. He is therefore the Spirit whose task in our epoch is to bring about a deeper, more esoteric understanding of the truths of Christianity. Christ came from the Sun. Christ, the Sun-Being, dwelt on the earth in the body of Jesus and has lived since then in super-sensible communion with the world of men. But before the whole Mystery connected with Christ can reveal itself to the soul, mankind must become sufficiently mature and the necessary deepening will to a great extent have to be achieved during the present Age of Michael.

Now whenever the Sun-forces work in upon the earth they are always connected with an impulse which streams into earthly civilisation as an inpouring wave of intellectuality, for in our sphere of existence everything possessed by man and by the world in general in the way of intellectuality, intelligence, derives from the Sun. The Sun is the source of all intellectual life operating in the service of the Spirit.

Utterance of this truth may evoke a certain inner resistance today, for men do right not to place too high a value upon intellect in its present form. Those who have any real understanding of the spiritual life will not set much store by the intellectuality prevailing in the modern age. It is abstract and formal, it crowds the human mind with ideas and concepts which are utterly remote from living reality, it is cold, dry and barren as compared with the warm, radiant life pulsing alike through the world and through man.

In respect of intelligence, however, this holds good only for the present time, since we are living in a very early period of the Michael Age and what we now possess as intelligence is still only just beginning to unfold in the general consciousness of mankind. In time to come this intelligence will have an altogether different character. In order to realise how the nature of intelligence changes during the course of human evolution, let us recall that in medieval Christian philosophy Thomas Aquinas still speaks of Beings, of “Intelligences” inhabiting the stars. As opposed to the materialistic views prevailing today, we ourselves regard the stars as colonies of spiritual Beings

This seems strange and far-fetched to the ears of a modern man who has not the remotest inkling that when he gazes at the stars he is gazing at Beings related in certain respects with his own life and inhabiting the stars just as we ourselves inhabit the earth.

In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas speaks of Beings in the stars although he assigns to each star a single Being in the sense that earthly humanity would be regarded as a single unit if the earth were being observed from some distant heavenly body. We ourselves know that the stars are to be conceived as colonies of Beings in the cosmos. Thomas Aquinas does not speak of specific Beings or numbers of Beings inhabiting the stars, but when he refers to the “Intelligences” of the stars this authority of medieval Christian doctrine is continuing a tradition which at that time was already dying away. This is an indication that what is comprised to-day in the term “Intelligence” was once something altogether different.

In very ancient times a man did not produce his thoughts from out of himself; when he thought about the things of the world his thoughts were not the product of his own inner activity. The faculty of thinking, man's own activity in the forming of thoughts, has only fully unfolded since the 15th century, since the entry of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul into the evolution of humanity. In olden, pre-Christian times it would never have occurred to men to believe that they were producing their own thoughts out of themselves; they did not feel that they themselves were forming their thoughts but rather that the thoughts were revealed to them from the things of the world. They felt: Intelligence is universal, cosmic; Intelligence is contained within the things of the world; the Intelligence-content, the Thought-content of things is perceived just as colours are perceived; the world is full of Intelligence, pervaded everywhere by Intelligence. In the course of his evolution man has acquired a drop of the Intelligence that is spread over the wide universe. Such was the conception in days of old.

And so man was conscious all the time that his thoughts were revealed to him, inspired into him. He ascribed Intelligence only to the universe, not to himself.

Now throughout the ages, the Regent of this Cosmic Intelligence which, like the light, streams over the whole world, has been the Spirit known by the name of Michael. Michael is the Ruler of the Cosmic Intelligence. But after the Mystery of Golgotha something of deep significance took place in that Michael's dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence gradually fell away from him, fell from his grasp. Since the earth began, Michael has administered the Cosmic Intelligence. And in the age of Alexander, of Aristotle, when a man was aware of thoughts, that is to say of the content of Intelligence within him, he did not regard these thoughts as his own, self-made thoughts; he felt that the thoughts were revealed to him through the Michael-Power, although in that pagan epoch this Being was known by a different name. This Thought-content gradually fell away from Michael. And if we look into the spiritual world we see that the descent of the Intelligence from the Sun to the earth is accomplished by about the 8th century A.D. In the 9th century men are already beginning, as the forerunners of those who came later, to unfold their own, personal intelligence; intelligence begins to take footing within the souls of individual men. And looking down from the Sun to the earth, Michael and his hosts could say: What we have administered through aeons of time has fallen away from us, has streamed downwards and is now to be found within the souls of men on earth.

Such was the mood and feeling prevailing in the Michael-community on the Sun. It was in the age of Alexander and for a few centuries previously that Michael had exercised his former earthly dominion. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, Michael and his own were in the sphere of the Sun and from there they witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun; they did not, as those who were below, witness His arrival among them on earth. Michael and his hosts witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun and at the same time they saw that their dominion over the Intelligence was gradually falling from their grasp.

Thus in the periods of evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha, the course of development is as follows. Here we have the stream of spiritual, heavenly life (red) and here the stream of earthly life (yellow). Christ comes to the earth and lives henceforward in union with the earth. Until the 8th or 9th century the Intelligence is gradually sinking down to the earth (green). Men begin to ascribe what they call knowledge, what they unfold in thoughts, to their

own, personal intelligence. Michael sees that what he has administered through aeons is now to be found within the souls of men on earth. And in the Michael-community it was realised: During our next rulership (—it was to begin in the last third of the 19th century—) when our impulses are again to pour through earthly civilisation, it is on the earth that we shall have to seek for the Intelligence which has descended from the heavens in order that in the hearts and in the souls of men it may be possible for us again to administer what through aeons we have administered from the Sun, from the cosmos.

And so at this time the Michael-community prepared itself to find again in the hearts of men that which had fallen from its grasp that which under the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha had also been taking the path, albeit a more gradual path, from the heavens to the earth. I will now indicate briefly how Michael and his hosts have striven in order that from this present Michael Age onwards they may once again take hold of the Intelligence that fell away from them in the heavens. Michael who has been striving from the Sun for those on earth who perceive the Spiritual in the cosmos, desires henceforward to establish his citadel in the hearts and in the souls of men on earth. This is to begin in our present age. Christianity is to be guided into a realm of deeper truths inasmuch as understanding of Christ as a Sun Being is to arise within humanity through Michael, the Sun Spirit who has always ruled over the Intelligence, who can now no longer administer it in the cosmos but desires in future time to administer it in and through the hearts of men.

In seeking to discover the origin and source of Intelligence in whatever form it may be revealed, men turn today to the human head, because having descended from the heavens to the earth, the Intelligence weaves within the soul and is made manifest inwardly through the head. It was not always so in times when men strove for Intelligence for the essence of the Intelligence revealing itself from the Cosmos. In those earlier epochs men strove for Intelligence not by developing the faculties of the head but by seeking for the Inspirations conveyed to them by the cosmic forces.

An example of how in olden time men sought the Cosmic Intelligence in a way in which it is no longer sought today is to be found when one stands, as we were able to do last Sunday, at that place in Tintagel which was once the site of King Arthur's Castle and where he with his twelve companions exercised a power of far-reaching significance for Europe.

From the accounts contained in historical documents it will not be easy to form a true conception of the tasks and the mission of King Arthur and his Round Table as it is called. But this becomes possible when one stands on the actual site of the castle and gazes with the eye of spirit over the stretch of sea which an intervening cliff seems to divide into two. There, in a comparatively short time, one can perceive a wonderful interplay between the light and the air, but also between the elemental spirits living in light and air. One can see spirit-beings streaming to the earth in the rays of the Sun, one can see them mirrored in the glittering raindrops, one can see that which comes under the sway of earthly gravity appearing in the air as the denser spirit-beings of the air. Again, when the rain ceases and the rays of the Sun stream through the clear air, one perceives the elemental spirits intermingling in quite a different way. There one witnesses how the Sun works in earthly substance—and seeing it all from a place such as this, one is filled with a kind of pagan “piety”—not Christian but pagan piety, which is something altogether different. Pagan piety is a surrender of heart and feeling to the manifold spiritual beings working in the processes of nature.

Amid the conditions of modern social life it is not, generally speaking, possible for men to give effect to the processes coming to expression in the play of nature-forces. These things can be penetrated only by Initiation-knowledge. But you must understand that every spiritual attainment is dependent upon some essential and fundamental condition.

In the example I gave this morning¹ to illustrate how the knowledge of material phenomena must be furthered and extended, I spoke of the interweaving, self-harmonising karma of two human beings as a necessary factor. And in the days of King Arthur and those around him, special conditions were required in order that the spirituality so wondrously revealed and borne in by the sea might flow into their mission and their tasks.

This interplay between the sunlit air and the rippling, foam-crested waves continues to this day; over the sea and the rocky cliffs at this place, nature is still quick with spirit. But to take hold of the spirit-forces working there in nature would have been beyond the power of one individual alone. A group of men was necessary, one of whom felt himself as the representative of the Sun at the centre, and whose twelve companions were trained in such a way that in temperament, disposition and manner of acting, all of them together formed a twelve-fold whole—twelve individual men grouped as the Zodiacal constellations are grouped around the Sun. Such was the Round Table: King Arthur at the centre, surrounded by the Twelve, above each of whom a Zodiacal symbol was displayed, indicating the particular cosmic influence with which he was associated. Civilising forces went out from this place to Europe. It was here that King Arthur and his Twelve Knights drew into themselves from the Sun the strength wherewith to set forth on their mighty expeditions through Europe in order to battle with the wild, demonic powers of old still dominating large masses of the population, and drive them out of men. Under the guidance and direction of King Arthur, these Twelve were battling for outer civilisation.

To understand what the Twelve felt about themselves and their mission, it must be remembered that in olden time men did not claim a personal intelligence of their own. They did not say: I form my thoughts, my Intelligence-filled thoughts, myself. They experienced Intelligence as revealed Intelligence, and they sought for the revelations by forming themselves into a group like the one I have described, a group of twelve or thirteen. There they imbibed the Intelligence which enabled them to give direction and definition to the impulses needed for civilisation. And they too felt that their deeds were performed in the service of the Power known in Christian-Hebraic terminology as Michael. The whole configuration of this castle at Tintagel indicates that the Twelve under the direction of King Arthur were essentially a Michael-community, belonging to the age when Michael still administered the Cosmic Intelligence.

This was actually the community which worked longer than any other to ensure that Michael should retain his dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence. At the ruins of King Arthur's Castle today, the Akasha Chronicle still preserves the picture of the stones falling from those once mighty gates, and these falling stones become an image of the Cosmic Intelligence falling, sinking away from the hands of Michael into the minds and hearts of men.

At another place this Arthur-Michael stream has its polaric contrast: the Grail stream of which the Parsifal Legend tells.² This other stream comes into being at a place where a more inward form of Christianity had taken refuge. In the Grail stream too we have the Twelve around the One but account is everywhere taken of the fact that the Intelligence, the Intelligence-filled thoughts, no longer flow as Revelations from the heavens to the earth; what has now streamed downward seems, in face of earthly thoughts, to be like the “pure fool”—Parsifal. It is realised here that the Intelligence must now be sought within the earthly sphere alone.

There in the North stands King Arthur's castle where men still turn to the Cosmic Intelligence and where they strive to instil the Intelligence belonging to the universe into civilisation on earth. And further to the South stands that other castle, the Grail castle, where the Intelligence is no longer drawn from the heavens but where it is realised that what is wisdom before men is foolishness before God and what is wisdom before God is foolishness before men. The impulse proceeding from this other castle in the South strives to penetrate the Intelligence that is now no longer the Cosmic Intelligence.

And so in olden times, lasting on into the age when the Mystery of Golgotha takes place over in Asia, we find in the Arthur stream the intense striving to ensure Michael's dominion over the Intelligence, and in the Grail stream going out from Spain, the striving in which account is taken of the fact that the Intelligence must in future be found on earth, since it no longer flows down from the heavens. The import of what I have just described to you breathes through the whole legend of the Grail.

Study of these two streams brings to light the great problem arising from the historical situation at that time. Men are confronted with the after-workings of the Arthur-principle and the after-workings of the Grail principle. The problem is: How does Michael himself, not a human being like Parsifal, but Michael himself, find the path leading from his Arthurian knights who strive to ensure his cosmic sovereignty, to his Grail knights who strive to prepare the way for him into the hearts and minds of men in order that therein he may again take hold of the Intelligence? And now the great problem of our own age takes definition: How shall the Michael Rulership bring about a deeper understanding of Christianity? Overwhelmingly this problem confronts us, marked by the contrast of the two castles: the one of which the ruins are to be seen to this day at Tintagel, and that other castle which will not easily be seen by human eyes, since in the spiritual realm it is surrounded, as it were, by a trackless forest, sixty leagues deep on every hand. Between these two castles looms the great question: How can Michael become the giver of the impulse which will lead to a deeper understanding of the truths of Christianity?

Now it would not be correct to say that the Knights of King Arthur were not battling for Christ and the real Christ Impulse. It was simply that they bore within them the urge to seek for Christ in the Sun and they would not abandon their conviction that the Sun is the fount of Christianity.

Hence their feeling that they were bringing the heavens down to the earth, that their Michael-battles were being waged for Christ Who works from the rays of the Sun. Within the Grail stream the Christ Impulse takes expression in a different way. Men are conscious that the Christ Impulse, having come down to the earth, must hence-forward be carried into effect through the hearts of men. The spiritual Essence of the Sun is now united with earthly evolution—such was their conviction.

I have told you in these lectures³ of individuals who in the 12th century taught and worked in the School of Chartres, where teachings still inspired by a lofty and sublime spirituality were given forth. I spoke of particular Teachers in the School of Chartres, among them Bernardus Sylvestris, Bernard of Chartres, Alanus ab Insulis—and there were others too, surrounded by a great company of pupils. Remembering what was especially characteristic of these Teachers of Chartres, we may say: In some measure they still preserved within them the old traditions of nature teeming with life and being as opposed to an abstract, material nature. And this was why there still hovered over the School of Chartres elements of that Sun-Christianity which the heroes of Arthur's Round Table, as Knights of Michael, had striven to implant as an impulse in the world.

In a remarkable way this School of Chartres stands midway between the Arthur-principle in the North and the Grail-principle in the South. And like shadows cast by the castle of King Arthur and the castle of the Grail, the super-sensible, invisible impulses made their way, not so much into the actual content of the teachings, as into the whole attitude and mood-of-soul of the pupils who gathered with glowing enthusiasm in the “lecture halls”—as we should say nowadays—of Chartres. These were times when in the Christianity presented by these Teachers of Chartres, Christ was conceived as the sublime Sun-Spirit Who had appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. So that when these men spoke of the Christ they saw His Impulse working on in earthly evolution in the sense of the Grail-conception, and at the same time they saw in Him the down-pouring Impulse of the Sun.

What is revealed to spiritual observation as the essence, the keynote of the teachings given forth at Chartres cannot be discovered today from surviving literary texts emanating from individual Teachers in the School of Chartres. To the modern student these writings seem scarcely more than glossaries of names. But in the brief sentences interspersed between the countless designations, names, definitions, those who read with spiritual penetration will discern the deep spirituality, the profound insight still possessed by these Teachers of Chartres.

Towards the end of the 12th century they passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world. And there they came together with that other stream which was also linked with the Michael Age of ancient time but in which full account was taken of the central truth of Christianity, namely that the Christ Impulse had come down from the heavens to the earth. In the spiritual world the Teachers of Chartres came into contact with all that the Aristotelians of old had been able, as a result of the expeditions of Alexander to Asia, to achieve in preparation for Christianity. But they also came together with Aristotle and Alexander themselves who were then in the spiritual world. The impulse of which these two individualities were the bearers could not take effect on the earth at that time because it counted upon an abandonment of the old, nature-inspired Christianity that had still been reflected in the teachings of Chartres where, as in Arthur's Round Table, a pagan Christianity, a pre-Christian Christianity prevailed. In the days of the Teachers of Chartres it was not possible for the Aristotelians, for those who had established and promoted Alexandrianism, to be on the earth. Their time came a little later, from the 13th century onwards.

But in the intervening period something of great significance took place. When the Teachers of Chartres and those who were associated with them had passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world, they came together with souls who were preparing to descend to the physical world and who were eventually led by their karma to the Order paramountly connected with the cultivation of knowledge in the Aristotelian form: the Order of the Dominicans. The men of Chartres came together with these other souls who were preparing to descend.

Using trivial words of modern speech, I will now describe what then transpired. At the turning-point of the 12th and 13th centuries, at the beginning of the 13th century, a kind of conference took place between the souls who had just arrived in the spiritual world and the souls who were about to descend. And the momentous agreement was reached, that Sun-Christianity as expressed, for example, in the Grail-principle and also in the teachings of Chartres, should now be united with Aristotelianism. Those who descended to earth became the founders of Scholasticism, the spiritual significance of which has never been truly assessed and in which, to begin with, men could only hope to win the day for their view of personal immortality in the Christian sense by advocating it in the most radical, extreme way. The Teachers of Chartres had laid less emphasis upon this principle of the personal immortality of man. They still inclined to the view that having passed through the gate of death the soul returns to the bosom of the Divinity. They spoke far less of personal, individual immortality than did the Dominican Schoolmen.

Many significant happenings were connected with what was here taking place. For example: When one of the Schoolmen had come down from the spiritual world to work for the spread of Christianity in an Aristotelian form, he had not, to begin with, been able fully to grasp the essential import of the Grail-principle. Karma had willed it so. And here lies the reason for the comparatively late appearance of Wolfram von Eschenbach's version of the Grail story. Another soul, who came down to the earth somewhat later than the first, brought with him the impulse that was necessary, and within the Dominican Order deliberations took place between an older and a younger Dominican as to how Aristotelianism might be united with the Christianity which, inspired more by nature and the workings of nature, had prevailed in King Arthur's Round Table.

Then the time came for those individualities who had been teachers in the Dominican Order also to return to the spiritual world. And now the great agreement was reached under the leadership of Michael himself who looking down to the Intelligence that was now on the earth gathered his own around him: spiritual beings belonging to the super-sensible worlds, a great host of elemental spirits, and many, many discarnate human souls who were longing for a renewal of Christianity. It was too early, yet, for this to take effect in the physical world. But a great and mighty super-sensible School was instituted under the leadership of Michael, embracing all those souls in whom the impulses of paganism still echoed on but who were nevertheless longing for Christianity, and those souls who had already lived on the earth during the early centuries of Christendom and who bore Christianity within them in the form it had then assumed. A Michael host gathered together in super-sensible realms, receiving in the spiritual world the teachings which had been imparted by the Michael Teachers in the old Alexander time, in the time of the Grail tradition and which had also taken effect in impulses like that going out from Arthur's Round Table.

Christian souls of every type and quality felt drawn to this Michael-community where, on the one side, deeply significant teaching was imparted concerning the ancient Mysteries and the spiritual impulses at work in olden days, while, on the other, a vista was opened into the future when in the last third of the 19th century, Michael would again be working on earth and when all the teachings given forth in this heavenly School under Michael's own leadership in the 15th and 16th centuries, were to be carried down to the earth.

If you seek for the souls who gathered around this School of Michael at that time, preparing for the later period on earth, you will find among them very many who now feel the urge to come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Karma has so guided these souls that in the life between death and a new birth at that time they thronged around Michael, preparing to carry down a Cosmic Christianity again to the earth.

The fact that the karma of very many of the souls who have come into the Anthroposophical Movement with real sincerity is connected with these preliminary conditions and antecedents, makes the Anthroposophical Movement into the true Michael Movement, the Movement that is predestined to bring about the renewal of Christianity. This lies in the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement. It lies, too, in the karma of many individuals who have come with sincerity into that Movement. To carry into the world the Michael Impulse which in this way can be pictured in all its concrete reality, which is betokened by many a sign on the earth today and also comes strikingly to expression in the wonderful play of nature-forces around the ruins of Arthur's castle—this is the task of the Anthroposophical Movement in a very special sense. For in the course of the centuries the Michael Impulse must find its way into the world of men if civilisation is not to perish from the earth.

This was what I wanted to inscribe in your hearts in the lecture for which time was fortunately available today.

• 1. Lecture X. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.
• 2. See Rudolf Steiner, Christ and the Spiritual World, Leipzig, 28th December, 1913–2nd January, 1914. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963.
• 3. See Lecture 4. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.

During the hour that has become available today I want to speak about certain things which will be easier to understand now that preparation has been made both in the general lecture-course and in the last two lectures to Members. I shall speak this evening about the karma of the Anthroposophical Society and continue this same theme in London during the next few days.

The lectures here have made it clear that in our own epoch the Impulse of the Being known in Christian terminology as the Archangel Michael is responsible for the spiritual guidance of civilised mankind. This particular Rulership—if so it may be called—of the spiritual life began in the seventies of last century and was preceded, as I said, by that of Gabriel. I shall now have something to say about certain aspects of the present Rulership of Michael.

Whenever Michael sends his impulses through the evolution of humanity in the sphere of earthly life, he is the bringer of the Sun-forces, the spiritual forces of the Sun. With this is connected the fact that during their waking consciousness men receive these Sun-forces into their physical and etheric bodies.

The present Rulership of Michael—which began not very long ago and will last from three to four centuries—signifies that the cosmic forces of the Sun penetrate right into the physical and etheric bodies of men. And here we must ask: What kind of forces, what kind of impulses are these cosmic Sun-forces?

Michael is essentially a Sun-Spirit. He is therefore the Spirit whose task in our epoch is to bring about a deeper, more esoteric understanding of the truths of Christianity. Christ came from the Sun. Christ, the Sun-Being, dwelt on the earth in the body of Jesus and has lived since then in super-sensible communion with the world of men. But before the whole Mystery connected with Christ can reveal itself to the soul, mankind must become sufficiently mature and the necessary deepening will to a great extent have to be achieved during the present Age of Michael.

Now whenever the Sun-forces work in upon the earth they are always connected with an impulse which streams into earthly civilisation as an inpouring wave of intellectuality, for in our sphere of existence everything possessed by man and by the world in general in the way of intellectuality, intelligence, derives from the Sun. The Sun is the source of all intellectual life operating in the service of the Spirit.

Utterance of this truth may evoke a certain inner resistance today, for men do right not to place too high a value upon intellect in its present form. Those who have any real understanding of the spiritual life will not set much store by the intellectuality prevailing in the modern age. It is abstract and formal, it crowds the human mind with ideas and concepts which are utterly remote from living reality, it is cold, dry and barren as compared with the warm, radiant life pulsing alike through the world and through man.

In respect of intelligence, however, this holds good only for the present time, since we are living in a very early period of the Michael Age and what we now possess as intelligence is still only just beginning to unfold in the general consciousness of mankind. In time to come this intelligence will have an altogether different character. In order to realise how the nature of intelligence changes during the course of human evolution, let us recall that in medieval Christian philosophy Thomas Aquinas still speaks of Beings, of “Intelligences” inhabiting the stars. As opposed to the materialistic views prevailing today, we ourselves regard the stars as colonies of spiritual Beings

This seems strange and far-fetched to the ears of a modern man who has not the remotest inkling that when he gazes at the stars he is gazing at Beings related in certain respects with his own life and inhabiting the stars just as we ourselves inhabit the earth.

In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas speaks of Beings in the stars although he assigns to each star a single Being in the sense that earthly humanity would be regarded as a single unit if the earth were being observed from some distant heavenly body. We ourselves know that the stars are to be conceived as colonies of Beings in the cosmos. Thomas Aquinas does not speak of specific Beings or numbers of Beings inhabiting the stars, but when he refers to the “Intelligences” of the stars this authority of medieval Christian doctrine is continuing a tradition which at that time was already dying away. This is an indication that what is comprised to-day in the term “Intelligence” was once something altogether different.

In very ancient times a man did not produce his thoughts from out of himself; when he thought about the things of the world his thoughts were not the product of his own inner activity. The faculty of thinking, man's own activity in the forming of thoughts, has only fully unfolded since the 15th century, since the entry of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul into the evolution of humanity. In olden, pre-Christian times it would never have occurred to men to believe that they were producing their own thoughts out of themselves; they did not feel that they themselves were forming their thoughts but rather that the thoughts were revealed to them from the things of the world. They felt: Intelligence is universal, cosmic; Intelligence is contained within the things of the world; the Intelligence-content, the Thought-content of things is perceived just as colours are perceived; the world is full of Intelligence, pervaded everywhere by Intelligence. In the course of his evolution man has acquired a drop of the Intelligence that is spread over the wide universe. Such was the conception in days of old.

And so man was conscious all the time that his thoughts were revealed to him, inspired into him. He ascribed Intelligence only to the universe, not to himself.

Now throughout the ages, the Regent of this Cosmic Intelligence which, like the light, streams over the whole world, has been the Spirit known by the name of Michael. Michael is the Ruler of the Cosmic Intelligence. But after the Mystery of Golgotha something of deep significance took place in that Michael's dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence gradually fell away from him, fell from his grasp. Since the earth began, Michael has administered the Cosmic Intelligence. And in the age of Alexander, of Aristotle, when a man was aware of thoughts, that is to say of the content of Intelligence within him, he did not regard these thoughts as his own, self-made thoughts; he felt that the thoughts were revealed to him through the Michael-Power, although in that pagan epoch this Being was known by a different name. This Thought-content gradually fell away from Michael. And if we look into the spiritual world we see that the descent of the Intelligence from the Sun to the earth is accomplished by about the 8th century A.D. In the 9th century men are already beginning, as the forerunners of those who came later, to unfold their own, personal intelligence; intelligence begins to take footing within the souls of individual men. And looking down from the Sun to the earth, Michael and his hosts could say: What we have administered through aeons of time has fallen away from us, has streamed downwards and is now to be found within the souls of men on earth.

Such was the mood and feeling prevailing in the Michael-community on the Sun. It was in the age of Alexander and for a few centuries previously that Michael had exercised his former earthly dominion. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, Michael and his own were in the sphere of the Sun and from there they witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun; they did not, as those who were below, witness His arrival among them on earth. Michael and his hosts witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun and at the same time they saw that their dominion over the Intelligence was gradually falling from their grasp.

Thus in the periods of evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha, the course of development is as follows. Here we have the stream of spiritual, heavenly life (red) and here the stream of earthly life (yellow). Christ comes to the earth and lives henceforward in union with the earth. Until the 8th or 9th century the Intelligence is gradually sinking down to the earth (green). Men begin to ascribe what they call knowledge, what they unfold in thoughts, to their

own, personal intelligence. Michael sees that what he has administered through aeons is now to be found within the souls of men on earth. And in the Michael-community it was realised: During our next rulership (—it was to begin in the last third of the 19th century—) when our impulses are again to pour through earthly civilisation, it is on the earth that we shall have to seek for the Intelligence which has descended from the heavens in order that in the hearts and in the souls of men it may be possible for us again to administer what through aeons we have administered from the Sun, from the cosmos.

And so at this time the Michael-community prepared itself to find again in the hearts of men that which had fallen from its grasp that which under the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha had also been taking the path, albeit a more gradual path, from the heavens to the earth. I will now indicate briefly how Michael and his hosts have striven in order that from this present Michael Age onwards they may once again take hold of the Intelligence that fell away from them in the heavens. Michael who has been striving from the Sun for those on earth who perceive the Spiritual in the cosmos, desires henceforward to establish his citadel in the hearts and in the souls of men on earth. This is to begin in our present age. Christianity is to be guided into a realm of deeper truths inasmuch as understanding of Christ as a Sun Being is to arise within humanity through Michael, the Sun Spirit who has always ruled over the Intelligence, who can now no longer administer it in the cosmos but desires in future time to administer it in and through the hearts of men.

In seeking to discover the origin and source of Intelligence in whatever form it may be revealed, men turn today to the human head, because having descended from the heavens to the earth, the Intelligence weaves within the soul and is made manifest inwardly through the head. It was not always so in times when men strove for Intelligence for the essence of the Intelligence revealing itself from the Cosmos In those earlier epochs men strove for Intelligence not by developing the faculties of the head but by seeking for the Inspirations conveyed to them by the cosmic forces

An example of how in olden time men sought the Cosmic Intelligence in a way in which it is no longer sought today is to be found when one stands, as we were able to do last Sunday, at that place in Tintagel which was once the site of King Arthur's Castle and where he with his twelve companions exercised a power of far-reaching significance for Europe.

From the accounts contained in historical documents it will not be easy to form a true conception of the tasks and the mission of King Arthur and his Round Table as it is called. But this becomes possible when one stands on the actual site of the castle and gazes with the eye of spirit over the stretch of sea which an intervening cliff seems to divide into two. There, in a comparatively short time, one can perceive a wonderful interplay between the light and the air, but also between the elemental spirits living in light and air. One can see spirit-beings streaming to the earth in the rays of the Sun, one can see them mirrored in the glittering raindrops, one can see that which comes under the sway of earthly gravity appearing in the air as the denser spirit-beings of the air. Again, when the rain ceases and the rays of the Sun stream through the clear air, one perceives the elemental spirits intermingling in quite a different way. There one witnesses how the Sun works in earthly substance—and seeing it all from a place such as this, one is filled with a kind of pagan “piety”—not Christian but pagan piety, which is something altogether different. Pagan piety is a surrender of heart and feeling to the manifold spiritual beings working in the processes of nature.

Amid the conditions of modern social life it is not, generally speaking, possible for men to give effect to the processes coming to expression in the play of nature-forces. These things can be penetrated only by Initiation-knowledge. But you must understand that every spiritual attainment is dependent upon some essential and fundamental condition.

In the example I gave this morning¹ to illustrate how the knowledge of material phenomena must be furthered and extended, I spoke of the interweaving, self-harmonising karma of two human beings as a necessary factor. And in the days of King Arthur and those around him, special conditions were required in order that the spirituality so wondrously revealed and borne in by the sea might flow into their mission and their tasks.

This interplay between the sunlit air and the rippling, foam-crested waves continues to this day; over the sea and the rocky cliffs at this place, nature is still quick with spirit. But to take hold of the spirit-forces working there in nature would have been beyond the power of one individual alone. A group of men was necessary, one of whom felt himself as the representative of the Sun at the centre, and whose twelve companions were trained in such a way that in temperament, disposition and manner of acting, all of them together formed a twelve-fold whole—twelve individual men grouped as the Zodiacal constellations are grouped around the Sun. Such was the Round Table: King Arthur at the centre, surrounded by the Twelve, above each of whom a Zodiacal symbol was displayed, indicating the particular cosmic influence with which he was associated. Civilising forces went out from this place to Europe. It was here that King Arthur and his Twelve Knights drew into themselves from the Sun the strength wherewith to set forth on their mighty expeditions through Europe in order to battle with the wild, demonic powers of old still dominating large masses of the population, and drive them out of men. Under the guidance and direction of King Arthur, these Twelve were battling for outer civilisation.

To understand what the Twelve felt about themselves and their mission, it must be remembered that in olden time men did not claim a personal intelligence of their own. They did not say: I form my thoughts, my Intelligence-filled thoughts, myself. They experienced Intelligence as revealed Intelligence, and they sought for the revelations by forming themselves into a group like the one I have described, a group of twelve or thirteen. There they imbibed the Intelligence which enabled them to give direction and definition to the impulses needed for civilisation. And they too felt that their deeds were performed in the service of the Power known in Christian-Hebraic terminology as Michael. The whole configuration of this castle at Tintagel indicates that the Twelve under the direction of King Arthur were essentially a Michael-community, belonging to the age when Michael still administered the Cosmic Intelligence.

This was actually the community which worked longer than any other to ensure that Michael should retain his dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence. At the ruins of King Arthur's Castle today, the Akasha Chronicle still preserves the picture of the stones falling from those once mighty gates, and these falling stones become an image of the Cosmic Intelligence falling, sinking away from the hands of Michael into the minds and hearts of men.

At another place this Arthur-Michael stream has its polaric contrast: the Grail stream of which the Parsifal Legend tells.² This other stream comes into being at a place where a more inward form of Christianity had taken refuge. In the Grail stream too we have the Twelve around the One but account is everywhere taken of the fact that the Intelligence, the Intelligence-filled thoughts, no longer flow as Revelations from the heavens to the earth; what has now streamed downward seems, in face of earthly thoughts, to be like the “pure fool”—Parsifal. It is realised here that the Intelligence must now be sought within the earthly sphere alone.

There in the North stands King Arthur's castle where men still turn to the Cosmic Intelligence and where they strive to instil the Intelligence belonging to the universe into civilisation on earth. And further to the South stands that other castle, the Grail castle, where the Intelligence is no longer drawn from the heavens but where it is realised that what is wisdom before men is foolishness before God and what is wisdom before God is foolishness before men. The impulse proceeding from this other castle in the South strives to penetrate the Intelligence that is now no longer the Cosmic Intelligence.

And so in olden times, lasting on into the age when the Mystery of Golgotha takes place over in Asia, we find in the Arthur stream the intense striving to ensure Michael's dominion over the Intelligence, and in the Grail stream going out from Spain, the striving in which account is taken of the fact that the Intelligence must in future be found on earth, since it no longer flows down from the heavens. The import of what I have just described to you breathes through the whole legend of the Grail.

Study of these two streams brings to light the great problem arising from the historical situation at that time. Men are confronted with the after-workings of the Arthur-principle and the after-workings of the Grail principle. The problem is: How does Michael himself, not a human being like Parsifal, but Michael himself, find the path leading from his Arthurian knights who strive to ensure his cosmic sovereignty, to his Grail knights who strive to prepare the way for him into the hearts and minds of men in order that therein he may again take hold of the Intelligence? And now the great problem of our own age takes definition: How shall the Michael Rulership bring about a deeper understanding of Christianity? Overwhelmingly this problem confronts us, marked by the contrast of the two castles: the one of which the ruins are to be seen to this day at Tintagel, and that other castle which will not easily be seen by human eyes, since in the spiritual realm it is surrounded, as it were, by a trackless forest, sixty leagues deep on every hand. Between these two castles looms the great question: How can Michael become the giver of the impulse which will lead to a deeper understanding of the truths of Christianity?

Now it would not be correct to say that the Knights of King Arthur were not battling for Christ and the real Christ Impulse. It was simply that they bore within them the urge to seek for Christ in the Sun and they would not abandon their conviction that the Sun is the fount of Christianity.

Hence their feeling that they were bringing the heavens down to the earth, that their Michael-battles were being waged for Christ Who works from the rays of the Sun. Within the Grail stream the Christ Impulse takes expression in a different way. Men are conscious that the Christ Impulse, having come down to the earth, must hence-forward be carried into effect through the hearts of men. The spiritual Essence of the Sun is now united with earthly evolution—such was their conviction.

I have told you in these lectures³ of individuals who in the 12th century taught and worked in the School of Chartres, where teachings still inspired by a lofty and sublime spirituality were given forth. I spoke of particular Teachers in the School of Chartres, among them Bernardus Sylvestris, Bernard of Chartres, Alanus ab Insulis—and there were others too, surrounded by a great company of pupils. Remembering what was especially characteristic of these Teachers of Chartres, we may say: In some measure they still preserved within them the old traditions of nature teeming with life and being as opposed to an abstract, material nature. And this was why there still hovered over the School of Chartres elements of that Sun-Christianity which the heroes of Arthur's Round Table, as Knights of Michael, had striven to implant as an impulse in the world.

In a remarkable way this School of Chartres stands midway between the Arthur-principle in the North and the Grail-principle in the South. And like shadows cast by the castle of King Arthur and the castle of the Grail, the super-sensible, invisible impulses made their way, not so much into the actual content of the teachings, as into the whole attitude and mood-of-soul of the pupils who gathered with glowing enthusiasm in the “lecture halls”—as we should say nowadays—of Chartres. These were times when in the Christianity presented by these Teachers of Chartres, Christ was conceived as the sublime Sun-Spirit Who had appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. So that when these men spoke of the Christ they saw His Impulse working on in earthly evolution in the sense of the Grail-conception, and at the same time they saw in Him the down-pouring Impulse of the Sun.

What is revealed to spiritual observation as the essence, the keynote of the teachings given forth at Chartres cannot be discovered today from surviving literary texts emanating from individual Teachers in the School of Chartres. To the modern student these writings seem scarcely more than glossaries of names. But in the brief sentences interspersed between the countless designations, names, definitions, those who read with spiritual penetration will discern the deep spirituality, the profound insight still possessed by these Teachers of Chartres.

Towards the end of the 12th century they passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world. And there they came together with that other stream which was also linked with the Michael Age of ancient time but in which full account was taken of the central truth of Christianity, namely that the Christ Impulse had come down from the heavens to the earth. In the spiritual world the Teachers of Chartres came into contact with all that the Aristotelians of old had been able, as a result of the expeditions of Alexander to Asia, to achieve in preparation for Christianity. But they also came together with Aristotle and Alexander themselves who were then in the spiritual world. The impulse of which these two individualities were the bearers could not take effect on the earth at that time because it counted upon an abandonment of the old, nature-inspired Christianity that had still been reflected in the teachings of Chartres where, as in Arthur's Round Table, a pagan Christianity, a pre-Christian Christianity prevailed. In the days of the Teachers of Chartres it was not possible for the Aristotelians, for those who had established and promoted Alexandrianism, to be on the earth. Their time came a little later, from the 13th century onwards.

But in the intervening period something of great significance took place. When the Teachers of Chartres and those who were associated with them had passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world, they came together with souls who were preparing to descend to the physical world and who were eventually led by their karma to the Order paramountly connected with the cultivation of knowledge in the Aristotelian form: the Order of the Dominicans. The men of Chartres came together with these other souls who were preparing to descend.

Using trivial words of modern speech, I will now describe what then transpired. At the turning-point of the 12th and 13th centuries, at the beginning of the 13th century, a kind of conference took place between the souls who had just arrived in the spiritual world and the souls who were about to descend. And the momentous agreement was reached, that Sun-Christianity as expressed, for example, in the Grail-principle and also in the teachings of Chartres, should now be united with Aristotelianism. Those who descended to earth became the founders of Scholasticism, the spiritual significance of which has never been truly assessed and in which, to begin with, men could only hope to win the day for their view of personal immortality in the Christian sense by advocating it in the most radical, extreme way. The Teachers of Chartres had laid less emphasis upon this principle of the personal immortality of man. They still inclined to the view that having passed through the gate of death the soul returns to the bosom of the Divinity. They spoke far less of personal, individual immortality than did the Dominican Schoolmen.

Many significant happenings were connected with what was here taking place. For example: When one of the Schoolmen had come down from the spiritual world to work for the spread of Christianity in an Aristotelian form, he had not, to begin with, been able fully to grasp the essential import of the Grail-principle. Karma had willed it so. And here lies the reason for the comparatively late appearance of Wolfram von Eschenbach's version of the Grail story. Another soul, who came down to the earth somewhat later than the first, brought with him the impulse that was necessary, and within the Dominican Order deliberations took place between an older and a younger Dominican as to how Aristotelianism might be united with the Christianity which, inspired more by nature and the workings of nature, had prevailed in King Arthur's Round Table.

Then the time came for those individualities who had been teachers in the Dominican Order also to return to the spiritual world. And now the great agreement was reached under the leadership of Michael himself who looking down to the Intelligence that was now on the earth gathered his own around him: spiritual beings belonging to the super-sensible worlds, a great host of elemental spirits, and many, many discarnate human souls who were longing for a renewal of Christianity. It was too early, yet, for this to take effect in the physical world. But a great and mighty super-sensible School was instituted under the leadership of Michael, embracing all those souls in whom the impulses of paganism still echoed on but who were nevertheless longing for Christianity, and those souls who had already lived on the earth during the early centuries of Christendom and who bore Christianity within them in the form it had then assumed. A Michael host gathered together in super-sensible realms, receiving in the spiritual world the teachings which had been imparted by the Michael Teachers in the old Alexander time, in the time of the Grail tradition and which had also taken effect in impulses like that going out from Arthur's Round Table.

Christian souls of every type and quality felt drawn to this Michael-community where, on the one side, deeply significant teaching was imparted concerning the ancient Mysteries and the spiritual impulses at work in olden days, while, on the other, a vista was opened into the future when' in the last third of the 19th century, Michael would again be working on earth and when all the teachings given forth in this heavenly School under Michael's own leadership in the 15th and 16th centuries, were to be carried down to the earth.

If you seek for the souls who gathered around this School of Michael at that time, preparing for the later period on earth, you will find among them very many who now feel the urge to come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Karma has so guided these souls that in the life between death and a new birth at that time they thronged around Michael, preparing to carry down a Cosmic Christianity again to the earth.

The fact that the karma of very many of the souls who have come into the Anthroposophical Movement with real sincerity is connected with these preliminary conditions and antecedents, makes the Anthroposophical Movement into the true Michael Movement, the Movement that is predestined to bring about the renewal of Christianity. This lies in the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement. It lies, too, in the karma of many individuals who have come with sincerity into that Movement. To carry into the world the Michael Impulse which in this way can be pictured in all its concrete reality, which is betokened by many a sign on the earth today and also comes strikingly to expression in the wonderful play of nature-forces around the ruins of Arthur's castle—this is the task of the Anthroposophical Movement in a very special sense. For in the course of the centuries the Michael Impulse must find its way into the world of men if civilisation is not to perish from the earth.

This was what I wanted to inscribe in your hearts in the lecture for which time was fortunately available today.

• 1. Lecture X. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.
• 2. See Rudolf Steiner, Christ and the Spiritual World, Leipzig, 28th December, 1913–2nd January, 1914. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963.
• 3. See Lecture 4. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.

It is natural and obvious that in these lectures we should seek the method by which the study of medicine can be fertilised and quickened, and that we do not lose ourselves here in atomised details which can have a merely relative importance. The methodical study of relationships between external nature and man may well tend to equip every human individual with the means to observe nature independently. So we will cite some concrete examples which may indicate a pathway in a certain sense, to a particular realm.

Of course the spiritual-scientific investigation proper in yielding regulative principles, can find out many things which can be verified in the sense pointed out yesterday in Dr. S.'s address. On the other hand, if one applies these principles methodically they prove to be elucidating for many experiences. I should like to put a few illustrative instances before you which can be of great significance. Let us keep to the vegetable world for the moment; and consider the general effect of aniseed (Anisum Vulgare) on the human organism. We shall find its characteristic effects to be the increase and excitation of the secretory functions, primarily in the secretion and excretion of urine, of milk and also of sweat. How is this effect produced? We shall find with this particular plant, that this effect is linked with the minutely distributed portions of iron or iron salts, which aniseed contains. So we can observe, for ourselves, that the curative efficacy of aniseed depends on the fact that it takes away from the blood the forces working normally by means of the iron, and pushes them for a while to the region below the sphere of the blood.

The study of certain plants which act preferably upon the middle (rhythmic) system (i.e., between outside and inside, or between the surface of the body and the heart) shows us especially clearly how their effects extend to different regions; and this provides us with guiding threads to find out in a rational way the curative remedies. Study, for instance, a plant which is in this respect an instructor in the realm of nature; Cichorium intybus, the chicory. From this plant we may learn a variety of facts about our human bodies, if we only take the trouble to do so. We find that Cichorium intybus is not only an antidote to digestive weakness but also to weakness in the organs immediately exposed to the external world. Its second beneficial peculiarity is a direct influence on the blood itself, it prevents the blood from being slack in essential processes and prevents it from admitting disturbances in the composition of the blood fluid itself. Finally, and very valuably, the curative effects of Cichorium intybus reach to our periphery and under certain conditions may affect the organs of the head but especially of the throat and chest, and the lungs. This wide range of strong action on every part of the human being makes Cichorium intybus such an interesting subject for inquiry. One finds its effects extending fan-like in so many directions. We may ask, for instance: what is the origin of the counteraction to weak digestion? We shall find that this effect is due to the bitter substance extracted from the plant, which so strongly affects our sense of taste. This bitter extract, which still preserves its nature as a plant substance, has affinity to those substances in man which are not yet properly worked up and are still resembling their original external appearance.

We must remember that the substances we take in, are at first comparatively slightly modified in their passage as far down as the stomach. They are then further altered by the intestines, pass into the blood and have their farthest stage of transformation in the human periphery, the skin, as well as in the bone, nerve and muscular systems. All extractive substances are strongly akin to the external raw materials, before they have been transformed.

Cichorium intybus contains also alkaline salts, e.g., Potassium. It is here that we must see the source of its effects on the blood. Thus we can watch in this plant how the working forces diverge. The forces situated in the extractive substances are drawn into the organs of digestion by natural affinity. The forces inherent in the alkaline salts, are drawn by natural affinity into the organs related to the blood or the blood itself. Cichorium intybus also contains silicic acid (silicon) to a considerable degree. This substance operates through the bloodstream and beyond it, into the peripheral organs until it reaches the bony structure via the nervous system and the muscle system. So Cichorium intybus really says to us “here am I and I let myself be divided into three, so that I have effect on all three divisions of the human organism.” Such are the experiments of Nature itself, and they are always much more valuable and significant than those made by man; for Nature is far richer in its purposes than we can be, as we put our questions to it in experimental form.

Another plant full of interest in this direction is Equisetum arvense (the Horsetail). Here, too, we find strong effects as antidote against weak digestion and also strong effects on the periphery of the human frame. If we ask to what are these peripheral effects due, we again find they are due to the silicon content of the plant. And these two examples can be multiplied many times over, by any thorough study of medicine and of botany. Such comparative study will prove always and everywhere, that all substances which keep close to the plant nature, as extracts, are related to the digestive tract; and that the substances which tend to the mineral kingdom, i.e., silicic acid, work automatically and irresistibly outwards, from the centre of the human being to its periphery, and have their curative effect on that periphery.

Another superbly efficacious plant, simple and humble but infinitely instructive, is Fragaria vesca, the little wild strawberry of the woods. Its medicinal properties have only been obscured because it is eaten; and in this case the organisation of the eater masks as it were the plant's effects. But it would be well to test the plant on persons who are still sensitive, susceptible, and do not often eat strawberries. In such persons, the amazing value of the wild strawberry would reveal itself at once. It is on the one hand especially potent in normalising the formation of the blood. It may even be prescribed with benefit in cases of diarrhœa for this reason; the forces in the lower organic sphere which are deflected from their normal course can be, as it were, restored to their proper path, viz., into the blood system itself. Here, then, is, on the one hand, a force which is essentially active in blood formation. On the other hand, the wild strawberry also contains silicic acid, which promotes stimulation of all the periphery. The wood-strawberry is indeed a splendid multum in parvo. It tends, through its siliceous content, to stimulate the action of the periphery in our organism. Then, as this peripheral stimulation means a certain risk, if too much silicic acid is conducted to the periphery that there is not a simultaneous current of nutritive substances in the same direction, and that the bloodstream is not simultaneously sufficiently enriched to nourish these areas stimulated by the silicates—the wild strawberry itself prepares the blood which has to be transmitted. It expresses and manifests in a remarkable form, just what should be done, in order to balance and help the processes activated by siliceous compounds in the periphery of our human organism. Thus nature gives us, in single examples such as this—which could be considerably multiplied—remarkable glimpses of possibilities which may become practice, if we have the intuition to seek Nature aright.

From the same point of view, I will call your attention to another example. Study the rather extensive field of action of such plants as—for instance, Lavandula (Lavender). On the one hand, the constituents of lavender are powerful remedies for what I may term “negative conditions of the soul,” appearing as fainting fits, neurasthenia, paralysation etc. Thus, lavender operates towards the human surface and extremities, expelling the astral body which has overpowered the physical.

In considering the application of herbal remedies—and in fact all substances—which have proved of benefit in cases of what we may term negative soul states, we should do well to inquire whether opposite negative conditions exist, such, for example, as amenorrhoea in women. It will invariably be found that the same substance is effective in both directions. A plant of this description is Melissa the balm-mint, which is a remedy against vertigo and fainting fits, and at the same time a powerful ecbolic.

These examples have been cited in order to show the possibility of following the process occurring in the plant through its resemblance to the internal process in man. We must, however, keep in mind this reservation: the plant is really akin to a part only of the nature of man. I should like to ask all those who restrict themselves (with a certain degree of fanaticism) to plant remedies alone, to bear this in mind. Man is so constituted as to comprise and contain all the kingdoms of nature in himself; in addition to the human kingdom, there has been a kinship during the periods of man's formation, in his evolutionary stages, with all the other kingdoms of nature. Indeed in the course of evolution, we have, so to speak, put these nature kingdoms outside, and are able to reabsorb what is needful for us once more. Yes—it is really a process of reabsorption—of return. And this fact of reabsorption and return is very significant.

The elements most recently detached in the course of evolution, must be the soonest reabsorbed in any curative process. We will, for the moment, leave the animal world for later consideration. It is clear that in the course of evolution we have detached the mineral kingdom proper at a later date than the vegetable and therefore it is obvious that seeking the relationships to the plants alone is simply one-sided. Nevertheless the vegetable kingdom retains for us its instructive significance, and not least because if plants heal us, they do so, not only through their essential nature as plants, but also through those ingredients in their composition which appertain to the mineral kingdom. At the same time, we must bear in mind that the plant modifies and transforms a portion of its mineral elements and that the portion thus modified is not curative in such a high degree as the unmodified mineral residue. Thus the Silicic acid (silicon) which has been “overcome” and absorbed into the plant's processes, is not so powerful a remedy as silicon in its mineral form, for in this case the human organism is much more stimulated and requires greater effort in assimilating and taking it into the human unity, than in the assimilation of silicon in its modified vegetable form.

It must always be emphasised that man must evolve greater forces to cope with the greater forces he encounters. And the forces inherent in mineral substances, which are to be assimilated and overcome, are incontestably greater than those in vegetable matter. (May I interpolate here the emphatic statement that I am not making propaganda for anything whatsoever, I am only stating facts.) The difference between animal and vegetable diets is based on the principle just stated. If we live on exclusively vegetable food, our own human being has to take over all that portion of the process which the animal performs for us, after it has eaten and assimilated plants, and brought the substance a stage further. We may put it thus: the process brought to a certain stage by the plant itself, is then carried further by the animal. The formative process of the animal organism stops at this point, (see Diagram 18, red) whereas in the plant it stops here (Diagram 18, white).

The meat-eater dispenses with the particular digestive process performed within the animal; he leaves it to the animal to do it for him. Therefore the meat-eater does not develop those particular energies that must be and are developed by vegetable substance, which he must lead himself to the necessary point. So the organism has to mobilise quite other forces in order to deal with plant food than is the case with meat food. These forces, these potential forces for overcoming, whether used or not, are there: they exist within us and if not used they recoil, as it were, into the organism, and are active—with the general effect of causing great exhaustion and irritation to the individual. Thus it becomes necessary to emphasise strongly that there is considerable relief from fatigue, if a vegetarian diet is adopted. Man becomes more able to work because he gets used to drawing on inherent sources of energy which he fails to do but makes sources of disturbance by a meat diet. As already made plain, I am not “agitating” for anything. I know that even homeopathic physicians have repeatedly assured me that persons induced to abandon meat food are thereby exposed to consumption. Yes, that may be possible. Nevertheless the stark facts just stated, remain unaffected it is so, beyond all dispute. I will, however, quite freely admit that there are human organisms among us today that cannot tolerate purely vegetable food, that require meat in their diet. This depends on the individual case.

When we admit the need for creating a relation to the mineral realm and the mineral forces in the curative process, we are led to consider a further therapeutic requirement. We are led to consider a subject which has been much discussed, but which in my opinion can only be solved—or even really understood—if approached from the viewpoint of spiritual science.

In order to grasp the nature of the curative process it is most important, as it seems to me, to deal with the question of the comparative value of prepared, i.e., cooked food and food in its raw state. Again I must ask you—and on this theme most especially—not to take me for an agitator, either for or against either method! But we must examine, in a perfectly unbiased manner, the actual facts of the case. If people eat cooked and prepared food, and assimilate the forces left within it, they are externally performing an office which must be performed by the organism itself in the case of raw food. Man throws upon the process of cooking, in all its forms, something which his organism should do. Moreover man is so constructed, that in our periphery we are interrelated with the whole of outer nature, but in our “centre”—to which our digestion essentially belongs—we separate ourselves from nature and cut ourselves off as individuals. Let us try to represent this difference, in the form of a rough sketch. (See Diagram 19). Through our periphery (green in Diagram), we are closely interwoven with the cosmos, and we individualise ourselves in the digestive process up to the formation of the blood (red in Diagram); so that this digestive tract is the scene of several processes independent of the external processes of nature, in which man maintains his individual entity as distinct from the external processes—at least more so than in the polaric region where man is wholly inserted into the external processes. Perhaps I may make this more comprehensible if I add the following: I have already described how man is included in the whole cosmos through the operation of the formative forces of lead, tin and iron within the regions here colored green. In the regions marked red, the formative forces of copper, quicksilver and silver are active. The equipoise is held by gold, those forces mainly localised in the heart. To refer to man in this way means to look on him somewhat as a finger which is an organ of the whole cosmos. It implies an interaction and integration with the whole cosmos. But in the tract marked here (see Diagram 19) lies the contradiction contained in the fact that man, in digestion and in the allied functions, separates himself from the general world process—and the same is true for the complementary process of thinking and vision, where he once more individualises himself. This is why man tends to display, as it were, obstinate individual requirements in all things appertaining to digestion; and this instinctive self-assertion shows itself in the habit of cooking [i.e., changing] the raw materials of our food. This instinct demands that what is estranged from nature shall be used for human consumption. For were it consumed in the raw state, the average human being would be too feeble to work it up. To use an apparent paradox to eat would be a perpetual process of remedial treatment, if we did not cook our foodstuffs. And so to eat raw foodstuffs is far more of a remedial process than to eat cooked foodstuffs—the latter being much more merely nutritive. In my opinion there is extraordinary significance in the fact that the consumption of raw food is much more a remedial process than the consumption of food that has been cooked. Raw food diet is much more in the nature of specific curative treatment, than cooked food. I may add moreover that all cooked food is somewhat held up in its efficacy and remains within the region marked red in the diagram (see Diagram 19); whereas the substance introduced into the body, in its natural uncooked state, such as fruit, acts beyond the alimentary tract, and comes to manifest itself on the periphery, e.g., causing the blood to bear its nutritive power into the peripheral region.

You may confirm these statements in the following manner, and indeed such tests ought to be made. Suppose you are attempting curative treatment with siliceous substances; then put your patient for a while on a diet of raw food and you will see how materially the effect of the silicon is increased, because you are contributing further forces to its peripheral operation; you support its formative activity, its tendency to harmonise deformations. Of course I do not allude to gross malformations showing in anatomical deformities, but I mean deformations which remain in the physiological realm. To clear up these is the trend of the silicon, and here you support the trend by the administration of suitable nourishment, while the cure is proceeding. These combinations are what I wish to emphasise in our study of methods, for their operation is so extremely significant and because—as I believe—till now, so little studied and understood. They are studied to some extent it is true, but empirically, without any search for a “ratio”; and therefore we can find so little occasion for satisfaction in considering the work already available in this field.

In all these respects, individuality has to be taken into account. That is why I have already taken the opportunity to point out that it is hardly possible to make any assertion, in this field, which is not on the other hand incorrect in some way. But we must take the things referred to as our guiding lines, although in a particular instance we must be able to say; in this case I cannot prescribe raw diet, for it would produce this or that, in that particular individual constitution. Here it is advisable—there again it would do harm. The main lines of cause and effect, however, are as we have here described them. Only through such interactions, is it possible to see deeply into the human constitution as a whole. We must particularly distinguish between the periphery, where man is more embedded into the whole cosmos and can only be affected by the introduction of minerals—which are so remote from man—and, on the other hand, the regions I have designated red. These red regions may be influenced and cured by vegetable remedies, as well as by administering substances which are efficacious because of their inherent saline quality: that is, all the carbonates; whilst all alkaline compounds are as it were the median point and balance between the two. (See Diagram 19, yellow). Thus we have in a sequence: carbonates, alkalis, and silicates, or siliceous acid itself.

These, then, are the factors indicating mankind's relationship to nature around us. We visualise man, split into two parts, as it were, and we find a middle region in him, which causes the swing of the pendulum between these extremes. And we must acknowledge that this discrimination between the peripheral man and the more central individualised man, leads us into the depths of nature. Man is akin to all extra-terrestrial things through his periphery, as is shown by the efficacy of the mineral substances, which are in turn under the dominion of the planets and stellar constellations. Centrally, as an individual he is related to all earthly things. Through this earthly affinity, most fully expressed in the digestive system, man is also this concrete human individual that has the power to think and is able to evolve as a man.

We may consider the dualism in man as a dualism of the extra-terrestrial, the cosmic elements in him, and those which pertain to earth. There is a distinct cleavage in the human organism between the cosmic and telluric and I have already drawn your attention to how the peripheral, the extra-terrestrial region is mirrored, as it were, in man, in his possessing a spiritual organisation, and at the same time, the polar opposite, a digestive organisation. All that has to do with the elimination of the digestive products and all that has to do with elimination in the brain, and provides the foundation for mental activity—all these things alike refer to the peripheral, the celestial man. However strange and contradictory it may seem—this is the case. On the other hand, all the processes in man, whether fluid or more gaseous in their nature, which are connected with the formation of either urine or sweat—are indications of the terrestrial man as a being which individualises itself. These two polarities of human nature, which strive asunder, must strike us as very significant.

So far as I know this particular human duality has not been alluded to or treated, in modern times, in any therapeutically valuable manner. For, as you perceive, all the subjects of our inquiry are intended to bring therapeutics and pathology together; therapeutics and pathology ought not to be two separated domains. For that reason the themes of these discussions have a therapeutic orientation; what is pathologically apprehended makes us think in therapeutical terms. That is the reason for the method of my putting forward things here, and of course objections may easily be made, by those who disregard this therapeutic orientation.

For example, anyone who studies the external origin of syphilis must certainly get clear how far there must be infection (approximately at least) in order to develop syphilis proper. Merely to state this abstractly leads us to an emancipation of pathology. Please forgive a somewhat crude comparison—the actual infection or contagion in syphilis is of no more significance than the fact that in order to raise a bump on the head, it is necessary to receive a blow from a stone or some other hard object. Of course, there will be no bump, if there is no blow, nor injury from a falling tile etc.; but this particular statement remains unfruitful regarding treatment. For—to continue our comparison—the circumstances of an injury from stone throwing or so forth, may be of great social importance, but these circumstances mean nothing at all in the examination of the organism with a view to its cure. We must examine the human organism in such a way as to find within it the factors that play a part in therapeutics. In the treatment of syphilis, the factors above mentioned play prominent roles, and throw light on the curative process. What is put before you here and now, is so put before you, not so much for the sake of pathology as for the foundation of the bridge between disease and cure.

I assert this, in order to characterise and define our work here, its spirit and attitude; this latter will become more evident with every day that passes. In our age there is a tendency to treat pathology more and more as an isolated subject, and without reference to therapeutics. Therefore thought is deflected from things fruitful and—if followed up in the right way—of great significance in the search for all curative procedures. Think, e.g., of our question: what is the true meaning of this duality in the human organism, between the cosmic-peripheral—so to speak—and the terrestrial or telluric-central man? Both these aspects of man are complexes of forces, manifesting in different ways. All peripheral working manifests as formative powers. And I would even say that the last formative “deed” of this peripheral principle manifests as the ultimate periphery of the human frame and completes our human semblance. Examine, for instance, the relation of human hair to silicic acid; notice how in the peripheral region of man the human formative forces co-operate with the formative forces of silicon. You may actually measure the impact of alien influences which man permits or resists, from the dominance or the reverse—which is allotted to silicic acid in the head formation! Of course we must take the rest of the individual's stature into consideration as well; but if we merely go along the street nowadays, and can “see together” the bald heads, one finds out how far a man is tending to admit or to reject the impact of the siliceous formative process upon himself. This is a result of immediate observation which can be attained, without actual clairvoyance, but by careful investigation of nature's own ways. The forces in question—they are not at work inside the cells but control the total shaping of man—find their last expression in man's structure which of course includes the configuration of the skin together with its greater or small amount of hair growth and so forth. On the other hand, the more centralised region, which is more associated with carbon and carbon dioxide—bears in itself the dispersive forces, those which dissolve and even destroy the shape. We exist as men by virtue of our tendency perpetually to de-form the shape, which in turn is deprived perpetually of its deformations through forces proceeding from the cosmos. This is a duality inherent in man: moulding and deforming. This duality is a continuous organic process. Now, visualise on the one hand, the cosmic peripheral formative forces (See Diagram 20, arrow pointing downwards) which operate on man from outside. In the human heart these forces encounter the telluric forces; and we have already dealt with the equilibrium brought about through the heart. And assume that the peripheral forces acting upon man which reach their tidal mark, so to speak, in the heart, are held back before being dammed up in the heart. (See Diagram 20, arrow pointing to the left).

They diverge and form a diverticulum before reaching the great dam of the heart itself. And in so doing they form something within our organism, that testifies, though imperfectly, to the operation of the cosmic formative through the digestive organs and their allies towards the heart, also form a diverticulum before they reach the heart (See Diagram 20, right hand side). Then taking these two diverticulums, we should have here a concentration of all that is both spiritually and physically formative in man, and at the same time associated with all the secretory activities in the head and the intestines; a reservoir of forces that do not come to meet the action of the heart, but creates beforehand a kind of accessory heart that functions alongside the heart. Here, on the other hand, we have a kind of accessory digestive action, formed by a divergence of the forces originating in the earth and its substances and acting in man, deforming and dissolving his shape. Then duality in man would be organically established and expressed; this is how here the female sexual organs, the female sexual principle arises, and there the male principle. (See Diagram 20). Indeed, this gives a possibility to study the female sexual organisation in the light of its dependence on the cosmic peripheral formative forces. And there is the possibility to study the male sexual organisation, even its specific forms, if we regard it as dependent on the telluric forces of shape-dissolution.

This is the approach for really scientific comprehension of our human constitution down to these regions. Here is also the way of discovery of vegetable remedies, e.g., rich in formative power, which may be found efficacious in restoring paralysed and defective formative forces in the uterus. If you study the formative forces in this way you will find also the formative forces in plants and minerals This will be considered more particularly, but for the present I must outline the relationship on a large scale. If in the future these things will be clearly seen, then we shall really begin to have a science of Embryology. Today we have no such science, for there is no realisation of the strong impact of the cosmic realm at the beginning of embryological development. The cosmic forces are as fertilising in their operations as the male seed itself. The first stages of human embryological evolution must be studied wholly as part of the relation of man to the cosmos. What was, so to speak, injected with the male seed emerges as time goes on, for the formative forces which the cosmos tends to project into the female organism are so deformed by the operation of the male element, that the cosmic tendency towards a total shape is differentiated in the direction towards separate organs. The role of the female organisation goes to the totality of man's structure; the role of the male organisation, through the operation of the male seed, is specialisation, differentiation, i.e., the moulding of the several organs, and thus the deformation of the original uniform whole. We might say: through the feminine forces, the human organisation tends to the spherical or globular form; through the masculine, the human organism tends to specialise this globe, and divide it into heart, kidneys, stomach and so forth. In the male and female element we have before us the polarities of the earth and of the cosmos. And this is again a subject which leads its students to deep reverence for the primary wisdom, and to listen with very different feelings to the legends of Gaea fertilised by Uranus, of Rhea fertilised by Kronos, and so forth. There is something here quite different from vaguely mystical feelings, in the veneration with which we receive these ancient intuitions, in all their significance. At first one is amazed at such a comment as the following, which comes from scientists upon whom these truths dawn: “The old mythologies have more physiology in them than modern science has.” I can understand the shock and surprise; but the remark has its deep core of truth.

The further we advance, the more insistently we realise the inadequacy of contemporary methods—that ignore all the interrelations we mentioned—as guides to the understanding of the human organisation.

I will take this opportunity of repeating what has already been stated: namely that the contents of these lectures have not been derived from any study of ancient lore. What is here stated, is gained from the facts themselves: occasionally I have alluded to the coincidence with the primary wisdom; but my statements are never gained from it. If you study the processes in question with care, you will be led to those conceptions which remind us of some elements of ancient wisdom. I should never myself consider it admissible to investigate any subject by studying the works of Paracelsus. But I am often strongly inclined to “look up” in his books how a discovery which I have made may sound in his language. This is the sense in which I should like you to receive what I attempt to give. But it is a fact that as soon as we look deeper into human nature from the standpoint of spiritual science, we come to a great reverence for primary wisdom. But that is a question which naturally must be considered in other fields of knowledge than the medical.

on the occasion of the introduction of Emil Leinhas as general director

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! The development of conditions in the “Coming Day” makes changes necessary at this present moment in time, which, in my opinion, are of far-reaching significance. First of all, I will take the liberty of presenting these changes to you, so to speak, from their historical necessity, and then I will take the liberty of linking some remarks to them. The conditions in an association such as the “Coming Day” is supposed to be are, by their very nature, initially such that they can only gradually take on a permanent form, that is, a permanent form such that one can count on very firm conditions. And so it has become more and more apparent in recent days that changes are necessary at the present time.

You are aware that some time ago the del Monte company joined the “Coming Day”. At the time, del Monte's affiliation with “Der Coming Day” was associated with extraordinary sacrifices on the part of that company. The previous general director of “Der Coming Day,” Mr. Benkendörfer, was one of the driving forces behind del Monte's undertaking at the time, and it was a huge sacrifice, both personally and professionally, for the remaining associates of the del Monte company and for Mr. Benkendörfer himself, to bring about the constellation that was necessary for the takeover of the general management of the “Coming Day” by Mr. Benkendörfer.

Now, over time, it has become clear that the del Monte company, which of course is absolutely calculating – and of course this can only be in the interest of the “Coming Day” – is calculating with an extraordinary expansion. It has become necessary for the del Monte company to approach the supervisory board of the “day to come” and make it that Mr. Benkendörfer is absolutely necessary for the future expansion of the del Monte enterprise, which is of course now an integral part of the “Coming Day”; not only for today's circumstances, but because it is in the most vital interest of the “Coming Day” that the necessary and promising expansion of the former del Monte company can take place. The supervisory board of “The Coming Day” could not ignore the fact that this urgent request on the part of the del Monte company must be accommodated; and we found ourselves in the painful position of having to grant Mr. Benkendörfer, who We were painfully obliged to grant Mr. Benkendörfer his resignation as managing director of “Coming Day” and to continue to provide his valuable services to the del Monte company. Mr. Benkendörfer will therefore turn his labor toward del Monte within the framework of the “Coming Day,” in which the del Monte company will certainly remain.

Thus, my dear friends, after a relatively short time, we were obliged to fill the post of managing director again, and it must be emphasized that this appointment was only possible under conditions that would have been unthinkable some time ago, for the post of general manager of “Kommender Tag” is one of the most difficult positions imaginable, given the position that “Coming Day” occupies in the world among supporters and opponents. It was only because Mr. Molt could see the possibility of now having to lead Waldorf-Astoria alone under the current circumstances and to do without something that he could not have done without a short time ago - namely, the valuable cooperation of Mr. Leinhas - that it was possible to fill the position of our managing director with an appropriate personality again. And I therefore expressly take this opportunity to emphasize that Mr. Molt, in a far-sighted recognition of the overall interests of “Coming Day”, decided to take on the responsibility of managing the Waldorf-Astoria, thereby giving the supervisory board of “Coming Day” the opportunity to make any progress at all under the current circumstances. So we had the necessity and therefore also the opportunity to fill the position of managing director, and at this moment I am able to introduce Mr. Emil Leinhas, who is well known to all of you, as the future managing director. Well, that is the first far-reaching change that is taking place here in the constitution of the “Day to Come”.

And now allow me to tie a few remarks to this presentation of the historical circumstances.

The first thing I have to say – and you will believe that it comes from the bottom of my heart – is that I also have to express to you how much all of us, the supervisory board, the board of directors and the entire staff of “The Coming Day” have reason to feel from the bottom of our hearts our sense of gratitude for what Mr. Benkendörfer has done for “The Coming Day” during the time of his general management, and at great personal sacrifice. Mr. Benkendörfer not only took over the “Coming Day” as general director at great sacrifice, but also took it over at an extraordinarily difficult time for the “Coming Day”, and his tasks were such that one can say of them, especially in these months in which Mr. Benkendörfer presided over the “Coming Day”, the tasks were such that they had to weigh heavily on the shoulders of a personality.

My dear friends, the person who works in a company, especially one like “Kommender Tag”, often has no idea what worries live in the soul of the person who now has to pull the numerous strings from the inside out, who has to ensure the prosperity, the prosperity and the development of such an undertaking . Mr. Benkendörfer has taken on all these difficult tasks, and I can tell you with the utmost conviction that Mr. Benkendörfer has done something for the whole “Coming Day” that cannot be overestimated, and you will understand that this deeply felt gratitude, of which I have spoken, is also expressed here. I expressed it yesterday at the supervisory board of “The Coming Day”, and it was approved by the entire supervisory and management board of “The Coming Day” in the broadest, most undivided way. It is incumbent upon me to say, following on from this, that it was a matter of course that the connection that Mr. Benkendörfer had with the “Coming Day” through the general management developed a connection that must remain; therefore, the supervisory board of “The Coming Day” felt compelled to ask Mr. Benkendörfer to join the supervisory board – a matter that the next general assembly will have to consolidate. Mr. Benkendörfer will thus continue to work in the bosom of the supervisory board itself, also belong to the board of directors and, as a delegate of the board of directors, take care of the work at del Monte. Thus, to the greatest extent, Mr. Benkendörfer's valuable labor will continue to benefit the “Coming Day.” I have asked that, by decision of the Supervisory Board, all thanks and expressions of hope be incorporated into the minutes of the Supervisory Board of the “Coming Day” as a historical fact.

And now, my dear friends, I come to the second part. This is the part that relates to the future. Allow me to make a few remarks about it. The point is that the last few weeks in particular have shown the importance that has been given in the world to that which has grown out of the anthroposophical movement in the most diverse ways. We held an anthroposophical congress in Stuttgart from the end of August to the beginning of September; this anthroposophical congress was attended by 1600 people and went in such a way that any unbiased person must say: Something has happened here that is not happening anywhere else in the world in the same way, and it is precisely one of the signs of the decline of our time that such a fact is not being pointed out to the greatest possible extent in a fitting and appropriate way, that people are not paying attention, that it is being taken for granted in our time, which so urgently needs the opposite. It may be said that, within the framework of this Anthroposophical Congress, what the Anthroposophical movement has been representing in a thoroughgoing way for decades has gone through a kind of fiery trial. At this congress, spiritual achievements were accomplished which, I am firmly convinced, are among those that cannot be found elsewhere at the present time. From the sum of these spiritual achievements, I would like to highlight two that are characteristic of what is happening within the framework of our Anthroposophical Movement – this movement that is so vilified in the world. I do not want to shy away from saying what I believe, because not speaking one's mind is something that many people today already consider their mission. But we will not make any progress if we do not speak the truth, express honest conviction, even where it takes a little courage to do so, and say it where it is needed.

There is much that could be said about this conference, my dear friends. What I have emphasized as an example should not be taken as implying that nothing similar could be said about anything else. Perhaps others will do so. It seems to me appropriate to emphasize some examples from the whole range of spiritual achievements of our Anthroposophical Congress. We may say that what actually emerged from the underground of the Anthroposophical Movement is, first and foremost, the Waldorf School, founded years ago by Mr. Emil Molt. The outside world may think what it will of this school, but the fact remains that a large part of the world looks to this school and another part gasps at the impossibility of founding similar schools all over the world. The spirit of the Waldorf school is longed for in the widest circles. I would like to say that in the field of inner work, this spirit of the Waldorf School was also expressed at the congress. We experienced that a teacher at the Waldorf School, Miss Caroline von Heydebrand, gave a lecture on something that is extremely popular in our time and that plays an extraordinary role in today's school system with the well-known name “experimental psychology and pedagogy”. But for anyone who really understands schooling and teaching, the development of this method in the context of human development means nothing other than that it shows how alien the inner human being has actually become to the human being, the educator to the child. At the conference, Fräulein von Heydebrand provided a detailed critique of this modern education system – or, one might say, this modern aberration. She showed that from a higher perspective, it is possible to carry the essence and spirit of education and teaching out into the world from the very field of the Waldorf School. It was a pedagogical and didactic act of the very first order that happened as a result, and as I said, today we must find the courage to say what needs to be said, where judgments are not made about the value of human achievements, to say what must be said without reserve: that here something has been achieved that has a significance for our time and that can only arise from this spirit.

It must be mentioned in this circle, because much depends on the progress of the “Coming Day”, that one realizes how human achievements that want to prepare themselves to produce rising forces in the face of the forces of decline must be valued. We must not pass by asleep, otherwise we will be trampled underfoot in world history, no matter how much we want to found. What matters is human judgment. We must be able to understand how to put people in the right place, then the right thing will also happen in social relationships.

Now I would like to speak of the second thing. Today we are all obliged to develop a thorough sense of what is to become social. Everything connected with the name of the threefold social organism is based on such a feeling. Most of you will know, my dear friends, that from April 1919 onwards an attempt has been made to make it clear to the world that it is this threefold social organism that can really lead the great social questions of the present to a solution appropriate to our time. It has been tried. What we have experienced is among the most tragic imaginable; we have experienced that what was attempted at that time has reached into the very soul of the proletarian and the depths of the heart. It may have been as imperfect as possible in the beginning - the effect has penetrated into the hearts of the proletarians. We have been able to see that, even if it was imperfect in the beginning, effective forces could gradually develop if all people who are involved - and all people are involved - if all people would work together. In the past, the matter failed in the way it was propagated by us in the most diverse ways, and this word “it has failed” is what should be written in our hearts. In particular, the cause has failed in the proletarian world, and I cannot but mention it truthfully. Now some people come straight from proletarian circles and say: Yes, it was bound to fail because our school education was not such that we could fully grasp the matter. This is a great mistake; the school education would have been quite sufficient; it has also been shown that it was sufficient. What happened at the time was that the terribly domineering proletarian leaders, those who could not or would not understand what it was all about, broke the tip off the whole movement of threefolding. And it will not do to try to overlook, with our inadequate schooling, what is not there, to overlook what could not be broken, the sense of authority towards the established leaders. It is my profound conviction that much of what belongs to the forces of misfortune in the present has arisen from this. And it is likely that precisely those people who have already understood something about the matter will have to feel it deeply and painfully that certain insightful people did not approach the matter more energetically at the time.

What is needed in social life today is not to be alone in the individual company, not only to be able to manage the individual company; what is needed is an overview of the economic situation of the whole world. In the last third of the nineteenth century, the idea of world trade was transformed into world economy, and today the world economy is what we need in economic terms, despite the fact that war has created such terrible, insurmountable boundaries that should not actually exist. Nevertheless, the world economy stands as a challenge that cannot be ignored. And basically, no one can work on a large scale – and it must be – on the smallest scale, who does not have an overview of what the world economy requires.

Now, university science, often based on minds that are so far removed from life and can only theorize, and political economy, are trying to establish all kinds of things from social events, from which one can know what one should actually do in economic practice. And the work of university professors and their followers over long periods in this field has also given rise to the popular theories — you can check this in my “Key Points” — with which people want to reform the world today and which are nothing more than unworldly theories that have grown out of the ivory towers of professors.

Now, at our anthroposophical congress, the following also happened: Mr. Leinhas gave a lecture that ties in with the recently published book of an extremely amiable and, among his colleagues, extremely outstanding university professor of economics. It can be said that the book, in addition to having the various computational and other speculative properties of economics, is one of the most appealing phenomena in the social sphere today because it also has a certain human character. It was therefore extraordinarily fortunate that Mr. Leinhas took this book as his starting point and showed in a very thorough way during his lecture how this book, which has grown out of academic scientific thinking, makes it clear that the whole of university science is of no use in economic life. It can also be of no use if the various party secretaries distill their knowledge from the books of university professors. This does not make the theories applicable to life, so that individual party secretaries can write them down and color them somewhat party-wise, which thrives in the unworldly university rooms of the economists, because that is how things are in this field. Mr. Leinhas' lecture, based on a thorough knowledge of the economic conditions of the present, has torn the mask off the face of all this hustle and bustle, and the achievement of the lecture is that university science with all its offshoots will have to lie on the ground precisely because of the further expansion of what is given in the lecture, and we have shown that in this field one will have to work from a completely different angle.

My dear friends, if today, out of unprejudiced human judgment, one were to carry out that which is carried out from the oldest prejudices that still remain today, then the judgments that go out into the world today would be different. Dr. von Heydebrand's lecture on experimental pedagogy and psychology would have to be discussed for a long time in all teachers' circles and at all teachers' conferences as the one that addresses the burning question of the present. What Mr. Leinhas presented would be discussed for weeks in all the most important newspapers, filling entire columns with what was shown. It would be discussed back and forth, pro and contra, in order to evaluate the spiritual results of our time. A different tone must be adopted if one is to characterize the untruthfulness of the world today on the basis of truth. And one would like to hope that among you, my dear friends, there are receptive hearts and minds that are not in a position to have to take out the oldest grist and grain from those people who are supposed to drive the various carts forward. We have indeed had to learn from yesterday to today how, in order to fill one of the most important posts, one of the oldest personalities, who had long since been “dealt with”, had to be resorted to. These are only symptomatic phenomena, because people do not want to form their own judgment about things that are originally created out of life, and then they seek the corresponding positions because they cannot come to any other judgment, out of the oldest prejudices.

We must get away from these things if we want to understand how to evaluate things today; and we evaluate them correctly if we say at this moment: It is one of the greatest blessings that the “Coming Day” can have, that in the personality of Mr. Emil Leinhas, who has shown so extraordinarily what he is capable of, that he gets a corresponding leadership in this personality. And I believe it is the duty of everyone who lives and works in the “Coming Day” to be aware of this fact.

That is what matters, that we are able to measure true human value. If we are not able to do so, then we will not escape the forces of decline. Mr. Leinhas is not a scholar; he knows the practice of life in all its ramifications, he knows it from reality. And such a personality was needed to criticize what grows out of the party leaders' theories, which are divorced from reality. What is close to my heart today is to tell you that all those who understand something of the tasks of “The Coming Day” must consider it a very special piece of luck that a personality who must now be considered an authority in the field of economics thanks to her achievements during the congress is being placed at the head of the board of directors of “The Coming Day”.

In saying this, I am hinting at something, and what I am hinting at is based on my heartfelt feeling that I have to say that the “Day to Come” still has a long way to go before it can achieve the level it needs to reach if it is to emulate the success of the congress held from the end of August to the beginning of September. It is absolutely a matter of discovering a kind of “Columbus' Egg” for the “Coming Day”. Today we are in a position where it is our task to ensure that the whole spirit of our movement can really be brought directly into practical life; and of course we do not achieve that - you must not hold it against me - not by the fact that after all, serious concerns could arise from the inner life of 17 Champignystraße. What is really at issue here is that each and every one of us here be imbued with the new spirit to the very depths of our hearts; and for that we need one thing above all, and I have to say it three times, because these days we have to say things three times: we all need trust, trust, trust among ourselves!

And now I ask you, my dear friends, all of you who are present, whether this trust has been present in the necessary way from each person to each person. I ask you most sincerely to develop this out of a full sense of responsibility: Ask a little less whether this trust is present in the right way in the other person or whether you can place it in the other. Try to approach it from the opposite pole; try to ask yourself more often whether trust can be placed in you, whether it can be justified for each individual, but then as he really is, and whether each person is endeavoring to translate this trust into life in the appropriate way. There is no other way of doing it, my dear friends.

You can't always see life's circumstances so clearly when you're caught up in today's judgments, which are so superficial. Circumstances are very interrelated and very complicated, and if you really want to develop the trust that is so necessary in business and economic life, then the other thing that I have been talking to you about for a few minutes is also important: the envious recognition of human value, not in order to show it to others, but because you are interested in things moving forward.

That this spirit may truly take hold at 17 Champignystraße, that a pure, honest, humane spirit of trust may truly prevail here, which seeks to learn to perceive the value of the human being, depends on whether we can continue to work fruitfully with the “Kommenden Tag” at all, my dear friends. We cannot work today as we are accustomed to working in external matters; we must make progress, even if it is slow. To do that, we need to develop two things: trust and envious recognition of the human value of the person who works alongside us. This can be said to you by someone who was willing to study the circumstances and who knows that we have entered into great social need because, on a large scale throughout the world, trust has gradually been lost. Today we have to say to ourselves: I want, I want, I want to join in trust with the person whom I know can do this or that.

I would not speak to you sincerely and honestly if I had not also given you this speech, which some may feel is an epistle; it is meant to be nothing more than truly heartfelt, friendly advice that, if you consider what I have outlined, can be of great significance for the progress of the “Coming Day”. I am convinced that it contains something of the spirit we need and that it was not superfluous to talk about the most fundamental things during this important, most important change in the “Coming Day”. If we try to develop this trust, if we try to recognize the value of the people living beside us, then the “Coming Day” will gradually become something that can be placed in a healthy way next to what has not yet been achieved to perfection, but at least in its beginnings; we have achieved something after all : we have achieved in the general anthroposophical movement that we were able to organize this substantial congress with 1600 visitors, and we have achieved something in the Waldorf school, where after only two years of activity, something of what I just wanted to express with the two main spiritual forces in human nature has been established. There is something in the Waldorf School among the teaching staff that works out of the trust that one has in the other, and there is also something of the recognition of the value of the personality working alongside one. And for this reason it can be said that especially in the Waldorf school, this extraordinarily commendable creation that Mr. Emil Molt has brought into the world, we can see something of what we need in all areas of our lives, my dear friends.

At this solemn moment, one would like to express the heartfelt wish that the “day to come” could gradually become what was achieved at the congress from the end of August to the beginning of September, what was achieved in the Waldorf school and what is noticeable there to a certain extent. It is difficult to achieve something like this in economic life, but I can say one thing: we must achieve it through human cooperation. Those who work here, and especially Mr. Leinhas, who has a thorough knowledge of the conditions of economic and business and the people associated with it, you will always find a friend who has an open ear for everything that legitimately comes from the bosom of any part of “The Coming Day” in general or from any individual part of “The Coming Day”. We just need the right feeling in working together, then it will work. For myself, the personality of Mr. Leinhas guarantees that.

But I also have something else to say: even the most valuable personality cannot achieve anything if it does not find the appropriate collaborators in the world. One must be able to judge human value, but one must also know that the most valuable personality cannot achieve anything if it does not find the appropriate collaborators. Let me also express the heartfelt wish that all of you may find Mr. Leinha's right co-workers at 17 Champignystraße! The latter is a basic condition; then, at Champignystraße, one will at least be able to try everything that is necessary for prosperity and further development – otherwise not, my dear friends. Otherwise, if this condition is not met by the energetic and willing staff, Champignystraße will gradually degenerate into some backwater that only “quacks” about associative life without being able to carry out the story.

I have only given you a rough outline of the conditions necessary for the prosperity of the “Day to Come”. I would like to entrust this to you, now in this solemn moment, when I stand before you as Chairman of the Supervisory Board not only out of duty but also out of the innermost desire of my heart to express my heartfelt thanks to the outgoing General Director, which those who know Mr. Benkendörfer will certainly want to join in.

Thank you very much for everything you have done for the “Coming Day”, and rest assured that we hope to see your efforts bear fruit for us in a different field in the future. And you, my dear friend Emil Leinhas, I hereby transfer the office of General Director of “The Coming Day” to you in front of the assembled staff of “The Coming Day”. I have said how I rely on you, and I believe that I can rely on you with the utmost conviction. I am convinced that if you find the appropriate support here from the staff, we will have in you the personalities that we so urgently need for the management of the “day to come”. So, good luck to you and all your staff! May the most blessed things within the “day to come” arise from your work!

And so, my dear friends, I have come to the end of my remarks, which were intended to inform you of the changes that have become necessary for the “coming day”.

[Emil Molt also gives a speech, after which Rudolf Steiner takes the floor again.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks for the expression of trust that the second chairman of the supervisory board has just expressed, and I may well take this opportunity to say that I am deeply convinced that I can only achieve everything I do with my limited strength if I truly have the trust of each and every colleague. In view of this, please allow me to say a few more words.

I would now like to address the members of the Supervisory Board, the co-chairman Mr. Emil Molt, and thank you in particular for the trust you have shown me in so many ways, but most of all I would like to address my dear friend Mr. Uehli, who is so closely connected with all that happens here at Champignystraße 17 in his work. Mr. Uehli, my dear friends, also took over his position here in a leading role at a time when the most difficult tasks imaginable had to be placed on his shoulders. It is only thanks to his subtle and at the same time energetic zeal for everything that the anthroposophical movement stands for – a zeal that, precisely because of its nature, it is so easy for colleagues to join and all that is striven for by this zeal —, my dear friends, it is precisely this zeal that must be attributed in the first place to a large extent to the fact that the Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart took the course that I have indicated. Therefore, at this moment, I may still say that it is my most heartfelt wish, but also my hope, that the most beautiful collegial relationship will develop between friend Leinhas and friend Uehli here in these rooms. But that will develop, because it has the very best foundations; it will develop, it has been developing for a long time and we can build on it. This cooperative relationship is there, but such things also bear fruit when they are understood. May it be well understood what can develop from the interaction of two such personalities here at 17 Champignystraße, and therefore let me also say my greeting at last to what fills me with very special joy and satisfaction: the prospect of the cooperative interaction of the two friends!

[Short speeches by Ernst Uehli, Eugen Benkendörfer and Emil Leinhas follow, and finally a word of thanks from the employees at the headquarters at 17 Champignystraße.]

Dr. Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen. Have you thought of something else you would like to ask me?

A question is asked concerning the relationship between human breathing and the pulse. Wouldn't this have been completely different in earlier times?

Dr. Steiner: You mean in the human being himself? Well, let's quickly review how things stand today. We have on the one hand the breathing. Man is connected to the outer world through breathing, because he is constantly inhaling and exhaling air. It can thus be said that man today is constituted in such a way that he absorbs the healthy air and expels the air that would make him ill. The expelled air contains carbon dioxide. The circulation of the blood, on the other hand, is an internal process in which the blood flows through the body itself. I shall not discuss whether it is accurate to say that the blood circulates in the body, but the force of the blood circulates through the body. Now, although it varies slightly in each individual, a person takes approximately eighteen breaths per minute. As for the blood, the pulse rate is seventy-two beats per minute. So, one can say that breathing is related to blood circulation in an adult today in such a way that his pulse is four times faster than his breathing.

Now, we must be clear what is really involved in the human being when breathing is considered in relation to his blood circulation. First, we must be clear that man breathes chiefly through the lungs—the nose, mouth, and lungs—but this is only his primary way of breathing. Indeed, with the human being, functions primarily carried out by one part of his body are also actually carried out to a lesser degree by his whole body. Hence, air, or particularly the oxygen in the air, is constantly absorbed through the surface of his skin. Man therefore also breathes through his skin, and along with the ordinary breathing process of his lungs one can also speak of his skin's breathing. If, for example, the holes of his skin, called pores, are clogged, the skin absorbs too little air. Something is not right with the skin's breathing. Man's skin must always be in such shape that he can breathe through it.

Now, in the case of human beings, all outer processes can, as it were, also be found to exist inwardly. Making a sketch of a human being, we can say that breathing occurs through the entire surface of the skin but most particularly through the lungs in eighteen breaths per minute. All this, however, requires a counterbalance in the human being, and something quite interesting makes its appearance. Man cannot breathe properly through his lungs nor through his skin, but especially not through his skin, if this counterbalance is not present.

You know that a magnet has not only a north pole, a positive pole, but also a south pole, a negative pole. If man has his lungs and skin for breathing, then he also needs an opposite, and that opposite is located in the liver. We have already familiarized ourselves with the liver from various standpoints; now we must learn to view it as the opposite of the skin-lung activity; the liver and the skin-lung activity balance each other. One could say that the liver's constant purpose is to bring into order internally what man acquires through breathing in his relation with the outer world. That is what the liver is for.

Consider a disorder of the liver that may occur at any time, even in older people. It is quite difficult to diagnose when the liver is not in order, and frequently one is unaware of it because the liver is the organ, the single organ, that doesn't hurt when something is wrong with it. Man can suffer for a long time from a liver ailment without knowing of it. No one can diagnose it, because there is no pain. This is because the liver is related to the most outer aspects of the human being, the skin and lungs. Internally, the liver is really something like an outer world. Man does not sense it within when a chair is broken, nor does he sense it when the liver is being destroyed. It is as if the liver were a segment of the outer world. In spite of this, it is of terrible importance to the human being.

Now imagine that the liver malfunctions. When this happens, all the activity of the lungs and skin is also thrown out of balance, and then a specific problem arises. You see, from the heart, the veins reach everywhere into the lungs and the skin. Through quite delicate blood vessels, the blood circulation reaches everywhere into the skin, into the lungs, and also into the liver. The following now takes place. If the liver's function is impaired, the blood cannot flow properly in and out of the liver. If, because of a liver problem, the blood flows into it too strongly and the liver becomes overactive, too much bile is produced and the person becomes jaundiced. Jaundice occurs in man when too much bile is produced, when, therefore, the activity of the liver is too strong. Jaundice therefore results when overactivity of the liver pervades the body.

What happens, however, when the liver's activity is too weak? The blood's activity on the surface of the skin is not compensated for. The blood, which flows everywhere, wishes to be compensated, and the blood in the liver investigates, as it were, whether or not the liver is behaving properly. If the liver isn't behaving properly, the blood rushes to the surface of the body to replenish itself there. What happens? Smallpox is the result. This is the connection between smallpox and the blood circulation, which, due to a defective liver, has something wrong with it.

The blood reaches everywhere where I have drawn a line in blue (see sketch); there is also a red line signifying that oxygen from the air reaches everywhere. The circulation of the blood rightly makes a point of contact there with the breathing, and whether this occurs in the lungs or the skin really does not matter, because it balances itself out. If the air that enters through the breathing process does not make contact with the blood in the correct way, however, smallpox results. What is smallpox? Smallpox is really the result of the development of too much respiratory activity on the body's surface or in the lungs. A person becomes too active on his surface area, and this activity causes inflammation everywhere.

What can be done under these circumstances? Well, people already do the only thing that can be done in such cases. They vaccinate with cowpox vaccine. What is really accomplished through cowpox vaccine? The vaccine inwardly permeates the body, because the blood circulates everywhere. Whereas the blood is otherwise compensated for on the body's surface, it now has to cope with the vaccine. The overactivity on the surface thus is prevented. Smallpox inoculation does indeed have a certain significance. The blood, which is not properly engaged by the liver, is now busy with the vaccine. Generally, there is good reason for all methods of inoculation. You have perhaps heard that a large part of our healing is based on inoculation, because an activity occurring in the wrong place can thereby be directed to another part of the human body.

Inoculation against rabies is especially interesting. Though rabies comes from something altogether different, it is basically the same response as that I explained concerning smallpox. Imagine that a person is bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. Such an animal has actual poison in its saliva. This poison now enters the victim through the bite, and the person becomes involved in detoxifying the poison. He may be too weak to do it, and he might succumb to the poison, but something else is really the basis for death. You know that a man first develops rabies before he succumbs to the poison. What is the reason for this?

Let us assume that I am bitten by a rabid dog. Now I must direct all my inner activities to this spot, and I must let them flow here to use up the poison. This surge of activity is sensed by my spinal cord as though I had received a shock. This is how it affects my spinal cord. Since my body must suddenly develop such extreme activity because of the dog's bite, my spinal cord suffers a shock through which I become ill.

What must now be done to offset this shock? You know that when a person freezes in horror, he can be brought to his senses by being slapped a few times. The spinal cord also needs to be slapped, but one must first get to the spine. This can be accomplished by giving a rabbit rabies. It is then killed and its spinal cord removed and dried for approximately twenty minutes at about 20° C. This substance is then injected into the rabid person.

Now, oddly enough, all substances have a way of going to specific parts of the body. The dried spinal cord of the rabbit, which retains the rabies poison for a short time—about fifteen minutes—before becoming ineffective, is quickly injected into the human being. It goes into his own spinal cord, which thereby suffers a countershock. It is just as if you shake a person who is paralyzed with fear and he snaps out of it. In the case of rabies, man's spinal cord recovers from the shock by means of an inoculation with the rabid rabbit's dehydrated spinal cord.

You see, therefore, that when an activity develops in the human being in the wrong place and he becomes ill, he can be cured if almost the same process is developed in a different place. These are some of the complicated relationships of the human organism.

Now, if you consider respiration and the activity of the blood, these two processes are related in today's adult in a ratio of one breath to four pulse beats. The blood stream flows faster; after three pulsations man inhales, and after three more, he inhales again. This is how air goes through his body. The blood moves through the body: one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale; one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale again. This goes on throughout our body.

All this produces carbon dioxide. Now, most of this carbon dioxide is exhaled, but if all of it were exhaled, we would be the worst dopes. A part of the carbon dioxide must continuously enter our nervous system, which needs carbon dioxide, because it must be continuously deadened. The nervous system requires this deadening carbon dioxide. Through inhaling air it therefore rises up continuously in me and supplies my nervous system.

What does this mean? Nothing other than this, that since carbon dioxide is a poison, I continually require a poison in my system for my thinking. This is a most interesting point. Unless a continuous poisoning process took place in me, with which I must continuously struggle, I could not use my nervous system. I would be unable to think. Man is really in the position of having constantly to poison himself by inhaling air, and by means of the poison in the breath, he thinks. Carbon dioxide constantly streams into my head, and with this poisonous air I think.

Today, man simply breathes air. The air contains oxygen and nitrogen. Man absorbs the oxygen, omitting the nitrogen.

When we study man today, the following is discovered. The human head today requires carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a combination of carbon that is produced in the human body and oxygen. Man omits the nitrogen contained in the air. If one studies the human head today, one discovers that this human head is so organized that it can think quite well because of the absorption of carbon dioxide and therefore of carbon and oxygen. This human head, through the carbon dioxide, which is a poison and rises fleetingly to the human head from the organs, is constantly exposed to damage. It is as if we were always to inhale a bit of carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. You really always inhale a bit of carbon dioxide into your head. This is of great significance, because we constantly take in something that actually destroys life. This is also the reason that we must sleep, that we require a time during which the head does not absorb this minute amount of carbon dioxide as vigorously and thereby is able to restore its organs.

Studies of the head show that in its present condition it can make use of this poison, carbon dioxide, by repeatedly sustaining a little damage and then restoring itself through sleep, then again being damaged, again restoring itself, and so on. In very ancient times, however, man did not as yet have a head. It came about through evolution. Man would never have acquired a head if he had inhaled only carbon dioxide. The fully evolved head can tolerate carbon dioxide, but if man had always inhaled carbon dioxide, he would never have acquired a head. Therefore, he must have breathed something else long ago. Now we must ask ourselves what man used to breathe. If all human evolution is studied in detail, one discovers that during embryonic development in the womb, the human being uses something other than mere carbon dioxide. It is an interesting fact that in the mother's womb man is almost all head. The rest of the embryo, if you study it in the early stages, is minute (see sketch) and still is almost all part of the head; the rest is terribly small. The whole embryo is then surrounded by the walls of the womb.

You see, man is almost all head, but he must still develop, and for that he requires nitrogen. He requires nitrogen, and this is supplied by the mother's body. If man did not have access to nitrogen in the womb, a substance he later rejects in the air, not allowing it to enter him, it would be impossible for him to develop. We would not acquire a proper head if it were not for nitrogen. In an early stage of evolution, when his head was only beginning to develop, man must not have absorbed oxygen but nitrogen. The essential elements for man must, therefore, have been carbon and nitrogen instead of today's carbon and oxygen.

Just as man inhales oxygen today, he once must have inhaled carbon combined with nitrogen—in other words, he must have absorbed nitrogen. But what is carbon plus nitrogen? It is cyanogen, and when it is present as an acid, it is hydrocyanic acid. This means that conditions must have been such at one time that man did not absorb oxygen from the air but nitrogen, with which he internally produced cyanogen, an even stronger poison. This even stronger poison is what has enabled man to think today with carbon dioxide. At that time he fashioned the organs with an even stronger poison.

Going back in time, we come to a point in ancient evolution when, unlike today, man produced cyanogen, and instead of exhaling carbon dioxide as he does today, he exhaled hydrocyanic acid, a much stronger poison. Thus, from man and his present-day respiration, we go back to an ancient condition in which the air was filled with hydrocyanic acid just as it is today permeated with carbon dioxide.

In 1906, I gave lectures in Paris, and because of various suggestions from the listeners I was prompted to tell them that even today there are cosmic bodies that possess the ancient cyanogen atmosphere rather than that of the earth. If the earth were viewed from the moon or particularly from Mars, one would be able to perceive traces of carbon dioxide everywhere in the earth's atmosphere by means of the spectroscope. Had the ancient earth been viewed from space when man was only beginning to acquire his head, however, one would have perceived traces of hydrocyanic acid instead of carbon dioxide. To this day there are cosmic bodies that have retained the earth's condition of former ages; these are the comets. The comets are what the earth was like when man acquired his head. Hence, they must contain cyanogen. I said in 1906 that the main characteristic of comets is that they contain cyanogen; if one studies a comet with a spectroscope, one must see lines of cyanogen. Soon after this a comet appeared; they only appear rarely. I was in Norway at the time, and there was much talk about it—curiously enough, people actually observed the cyanogen line.

People always say that when anthroposophy becomes aware of something that is based on spiritual insight, one should be able to prove it afterward. There are indeed numerous things that have later been proved. When proof arises, however, people overlook or suppress it. The truth is that, on the basis of this change in the breathing process, I stated prior to its having been observed with the spectroscope that comets contain cyanogen. This is the same substance that man needed in order to acquire his head at a time when the earth was still in a comet-like condition.

Now, imagine for a moment that I were to breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen; something other than human blood would naturally arise. As you know, the blood that has become blue combines in the lungs with oxygen and becomes red. Now, when man inhales oxygen he absorbs oxygen into his blood; when he inhales nitrogen, he absorbs the nitrogen into his blood. The way our blood functions today in a healthy person, it never contains uric acid, but if even a little nitrogen is absorbed into the blood, if something is only slightly amiss with the human being, uric acid appears in the blood.

In the age when man acquired his head, his blood consisted completely of uric acid, since nitrogen continuously combined with the blood instead of oxygen. His blood was only uric acid. As an embryo today, the human being swims in the amniotic fluid and thus has uric acid readily accessible. Uric acid is everywhere in his environment. In this early state the embryo needs uric acid for its development. In the past, when man was acquiring his head and exhaled hydrocyanic acid, he swam around in uric acid. In other words, he made use of cyanic acid, combining nitrogen and carbon and inwardly producing uric acid. Hydrocyanic acid surrounded him everywhere. The world was once in a condition in which uric and hydrocyanic acids actually played as big a role as water and air do today.

Even today, living creatures exist that can survive on something other than oxygen. There are, for example, creatures that are minute, since everything that was formerly large has become small today. The tiniest, smallest living creatures were once giants. But there are living creatures that cannot tolerate oxygen at all. They avoid oxygen and absorb sulphur instead. They are the sulphur bacteria that live by means of sulphur. This shows that oxygen is not the only necessity for life. Likewise, man didn't need oxygen to stay alive in earlier ages but instead required nitrogen, and through that he was formed. Man was fashioned during a comet-like formation of the earth, and the relationship between breathing and the blood was completely different in those earlier ages.

Let's now consider what we have learned in connection with the world itself. If we focus on the fact that we take one breath to four pulse beats—one, two, three, breath of air; one, two, three, breath of air—the same rhythm can also be found in nature: spring, summer, fall, winter. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter. Here we have the correlation between what's outside in the universe and what you have within man. So we can say, if we behold the entire earth, that our inner rhythm can be found outside on earth as well. People pay no heed at all to these circumstances regarding the earth.

You see, there is snow outside now. In summer there is no snow. What does that really mean? What is outside as snow now you find at other times as water. Water is completely dependent on the earth, and man must certainly sense that. The water around here in the Jura mountains contains calcium. Everything within the earth is also in the water. People who are especially sensitive to this develop goiters from what is contained in the water in the Jura region. The water is dependent on the earth. In spring, it begins to become dependent, it is most dependent in summer, and it ceases somewhat to be dependent in fall. In winter—well, gentlemen, the earth does not form the snow! The snow, consisting of myriads of delicate crystals, is formed by the universe, from out of the cosmos. Unlike in summer, the earth in winter doesn't abandon itself to the warmth of the world but rather to the formative forces. The water turns away from the earth in winter and receives the coldness of universal space. So we have discovered an interesting rhythm in the universe. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter, and the water no longer directs itself to the earth but to the universe. Again, one, two three—spring, summer, fall; then four: the water follows the universe, no longer the earth.

Now compare this rhythm with the blood and the breathing process. One, two, three pulse beats, the blood is directed to the body's interior; four: breath of air, the blood is directed to what is outside. Here you have the same activity with the earth as in the human being. If you compare the blood with the earth's water, the blood directs itself accordingly. The first three pulse beats are inwardly a little like spring, summer, and fall; four, now comes earthly winter, and aha, we breathe, now comes the breath, just as with the earth itself. Inwardly, man is attuned completely to the earth's breathing process. It can therefore be said that what runs its course in one year in the earth takes place quickly, eighteen times in one minute, in man. What takes a year for the earth takes place eighteen times in one minute in man. Man actually is always filled with this rhythm, but it is much faster than with the earth. When we consider the earth in the light of our discussion today, we realize that the condition of the earth was formerly quite different, and it comes to acquire for us a certain similarity to the comets. Now, when a comet disintegrates, the pieces, which contain iron, fall to earth as meteors. An entire comet, which falls to earth when it splinters, therefore contains iron.

This is also something that we still contain within ourselves. When our corpses disintegrate, the iron from our blood is left behind. Here we have retained something of our ancient comet nature, and we actually act as comets do. We have iron in our blood through developing the ancient cyanogen activity in ourselves—that is, our external bodies, the blood of which it may no longer enter though it was once allowed to. This means nothing more than that today we withdraw our inner spring, summer, fall, and winter from the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter. Our dependency on the outer seasons has become minimal.

You need not go terribly far back into the past, however, to find that things had a totally different character then. Although things are changing now, if one grew up in a country village as I did, one knows that there used to be people who were very dependent on spring, summer, fall, and winter; there are fewer now because everything is becoming more uniform in the world. One could even notice it in their whole life of soul. They were in a totally different mood in summer than in winter. When they encountered you in winter they were always a little outside their beings; they were much more like apparitions than people. They came into their own only in summer and then were really themselves. This means that they were dependent upon the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter.

This demonstrates to us what man was like in earlier ages. When he breathed nitrogen instead of oxygen, he was completely dependent on the outer surroundings; he participated in the pulse beat and breathing of his comet body, which in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, I called the ancient Moon. The ancient Moon was a sort of comet-like body, and, as a participant in it, man was a part of a large organism that also breathed. It was as if man today were suddenly to have one pulse beat in spring, one in summer, one in fall, and would then take a breath in winter, and so on. This is the way man was when he breathed nitrogen; he was a member of the entire earthly organism.

So, you see, we come from a completely different direction and again reach the point we arrived at earlier when we considered the megatheria, sauria, and so forth. We arrive at the same point by a different path.

This is the remarkable thing about spiritual science. Ordinary present-day scientific activity begins at some point and proceeds step by step, trotting along in a straight line without knowing where it is going. That is not the case with anthroposophical science. It can proceed in one or another direction from various points of departure, but just as a hiker always reaches the same summit regardless of where he starts at the foot of a mountain, so anthroposophy always arrives at the same goal. This is what is so remarkable. The more one honestly examines the world, the more the individual considerations fit together into a unity.

We have an example of this in exploring your question today. We proceeded from matters quite different from the earlier subjects, yet once again we arrived at the conclusion that man had his rhythm within the entire earthly organism when it was still comet-like; only now has he made it his own. Man existed as part of the earth just as he does today when he is still a germ within his mother. There he also takes part in her pulse and breathing activity.

Can it be proven that man today takes part in his mother's pulse and breathing activity? This is proven by what I said before, that smallpox develops from the blood's activity coming into connection with the breathing activity. This is interesting. If man does share the maternal blood and breathing activities while in the womb, a child in the womb should contract smallpox if the mother has it, and it does. When a pregnant woman contracts smallpox, her unborn child already has smallpox in the womb, because the child takes part in everything.

In the same way, when the earth was still the mother of the human being—although the earth was then a kind of comet—he participated in all that the earth underwent. His pulse beat and breathing were that of the earth's pulse beat and breathing. It therefore can be said that it is most remarkable when, if we go back into ancient times when human beings knew instinctively and were not clever as they are today, they always called the earth “mother”—Mother Earth and so forth. They spoke of Uranus, meaning the universe, and Gaea, the earth, and they viewed Uranus as the father in the universe outside an11 the earth as the mother.

So one can say that the part of the human organism in which the child develops, the womb, is really like a miniature earth that has remained behind and is still in the ancient comet-like state.

In that ancient comet-like state, man's breathing and that of the earth were together a breathing in the great universe. Not only did man absorb nitrogen, but the whole comet-earth received the nitrogen from the universe. Breathing in that age was also a form of fertilization. Only the process of fertilization in humans and animals remains of that today. In fertilization, therefore, something of the nitrogen breathing process still takes place, because the most important element in the human sperm is nitrogen. This is transmitted to the female organism and, as a nitrogen stimulus, brings about what oxygen could never accomplish, that is, the formation of the organs that must be present later when man is exposed to oxygen. So you see that we actually receive our breathing from the universe.

Now, let's try exploring something else. You see, the year's course is followed somewhat in the course of the day: 18 breaths per minute; 60 times that much per hour = 1,080; in 24 hours, one day, we have 24 times that much = 25,920. Hence, we take 25,920 breaths per day.

Now let me figure something else for you—the number of days in an average human life. As you know, the year has about 360 days. The average number of years a man lives is between 71 and 72. 72 times 360 makes 25,920. We take as many breaths per day as we have days in our human life. But a day, too, is in a certain sense a breathing. One day is also a breathing. When I go to sleep, I exhale my soul, and I draw it back in again when I awake: exhalation, inhalation. I exhale the spiritual and inhale it again. This rhythm in my breathing I therefore have throughout my life on earth in sleeping and waking. This is most interesting: 25,920 breaths per day, 25,920 days in the average human life.

Now we turn and look at the sun. When you observe the sun in spring today, it rises in the sign of Pisces, but it does not rise every year in spring in exactly the same spot. On March 21 in the spring of next year the sun will have moved a fraction. Year by year it moves a little. The point where it rises moves constantly and eventually comes full circle. Therefore, if the sun rises in the constellation of Pisces today—the astronomers think it is still in Aries where it was formerly, because they have not yet caught up with their notations—then it must have risen in primordial times in Pisces, too! When the number of years that it takes the sun to come full circle is calculated, the result is 25,920 years. It is the same ratio. Even the cosmic rhythm harmonizes with the faster rhythms of breathing and blood circulation. Just imagine how man stands with the cosmos! He is born completely from out the universe. His father and mother are originally in the universe.

One arrives at a completely different way of viewing man in relation to the universe than when one simply says that God created the world and man—a concept that doesn't require much thinking. But anthroposophy wishes to begin to think something in every instance. This is held against it. Why? Well, it takes no effort to say words that don't require thinking. In anthroposophy, however, one must exert oneself, and this makes people angry. One needn't strain oneself in today's science. All of a sudden here comes this upstart, anthroposophy, and one cannot sit as if in the cinema thoughtlessly watching a movie. People would even like to introduce movies into schools so that children wouldn't have to make an effort to learn. I am surprised that arithmetic has not been made into movies yet! Then along comes anthroposophy demanding that you don't sit around so idly but put your confounded skulls to use! And, that, no one wants to do.

Dear Attendees!

When any worldview asserts itself – be it a more materialistic-intellectual or an idealistic-spiritual worldview – it can be said that such a worldview has an opponent on the corresponding opposite side, or even just on a side that is more or less turned away from it, and that it is fought from that side. But of the spiritual scientific world view, as I have been developing it from this place for years now, it can be said that it is fought more or less by all of these world views, whether they lean more towards the idealistic-spiritual direction or the materialistic-realistic direction. The fact that it still has opponents from all sides today is largely due to the fact that the most essential basic characteristics of this spiritual scientific worldview are misunderstood and then judged or condemned before one has actually got to know them.

This spiritual-scientific worldview is misunderstood not only because of what it asserts, but above all from many sides because of certain fabrications that are made about it, because of certain false ideas that are formed about it. I have often emphasized this here, and I will have to ask you again today to allow me to say things that have already been said in some small details, but which are necessary to tie in so that new points of view can be developed.

For example, it is widely believed that spiritual science does not want to stand on the standpoint of firmly established scientific knowledge, which has rushed from triumph to triumph in recent centuries. But this is quite a mistake! For spiritual science, when it is represented from its true foundations, is entirely based on the point of view that says: everything that scientific knowledge has brought us must today be regarded as a first starting point for any, including the spiritual scientific, world view.

I have often said here that I would not say a word from the spiritual-scientific point of view if I were not aware that none of the scientifically justified truths would be contradicted by spiritual science.

First of all, there are two things to be emphasized if one wants to speak of the opposition of those who say: We stand on the firm ground of natural science, and we must fight against this amateurish intervention from an authoritative, spiritual-scientific point of view. In this connection two things must be considered. Firstly, that such people can either stand on the ground from which they say: everything that can be the subject of scientific observation and that may be taken into account when a scientific world picture is being built up, is the experience of natural science, that is, what natural science has brought.

Another direction, which arises from its point of view and is opposed to this humanistic direction, is that which says: Of course, one can admit that behind the facts that natural science establishes for the sensory world, there are still other spiritual facts or spiritual beings to be sought; but the human capacity for knowledge is not at all predisposed to recognize anything of this world of existence hidden behind the sensory world.

And from these two points of view, spiritual science is then fought against, as if from its side it itself somehow appeared antagonistic, appeared opposed to these two views, insofar as these two views are positive. But it does not do that at all! That it does not do that at all will be clear from some of the reflections of this evening.

On the other hand, however, spiritual science, as it is meant here, also has an opponent, an opponent who often does not present himself as its opponent, but who in many respects is perhaps even an honest opponent, as honest as the one just mentioned. And this other opponent of spiritual science, as it is meant here, is that which is brought into the world in terms of ideas and fantasies in a large number of unclear minds under all kinds of mystical names, and sometimes also under all kinds of mystical fraud. On this side, dear attendees, there are, above all, people who can count on such listeners and confidants who, in blind faith, accept everything that is somehow chattered about the spiritual world, and who accept it all the more willingly when such chatter occurs, usually in an amateurish way, of course, with a judgmental attitude towards strict science, which often appears all the more snobbish the less the person in question has taken in the denier of this strict science into his soul.

Then there are those who make all kinds of assertions that are supposed to come from the spiritual world, and who pursue quite different purposes with them, in that they first want to befuddle people with all kinds of assertions from the spiritual world so that they can then use them as tools for whatever purposes they have in mind.

Perhaps it will be possible, if time permits, to talk about this kind of opposition to spiritual science at the end of the lecture. This opposition is not harmless because people who are often quite honestly striving for science either lack the opportunity or the ability to engage with spiritual science and therefore lump together true spiritual science with nebulous mystical ravings, superstitious ideas, and the delusions of such ambiguous minds.

The question may still be raised as to why spiritual science is being fought by the more or less materialistically colored world view, which also believes that it stands on the firm ground of natural science.

This, esteemed attendees, is something that must indeed be seriously considered, considered for a very specific reason. From this side, from the more or less materialistically colored world view, which believes that it is standing on the firm ground of natural science, it will be emphasized again and again that spiritual science claims all sorts of things that cannot be understood, while the materialistically colored world view only says what can be observed everywhere, so to speak, what everyone can understand.

Spiritual science, however, does not want to deny the latter; and that is why it is so difficult for it to penetrate precisely against this objection. A materialistically colored worldview, such as the one I mentioned yesterday as that of de La Mettrie in his “Man a Machine”, such materialistic worldviews can be understood extremely easily. Everything about them is extremely plausible, obvious, clear. That is why they find such willing adherents in our time. And then such worldviews often spread the opinion that their clear views are denied by spiritual science.

Just as de La Mettrie can be described as the father of the newer, more materialistically-oriented positivism, how can spiritual science appreciate something like what de La Mettrie says in his book 'The Human Machine' to prove how everything of a spiritual nature is dependent on material things, how everything of a spiritual nature is conditioned by material things? De La Mettrie says:

“What power does a meal have over us? Joy awakens in a sad heart; it passes to the souls of the fellow diners and is expressed in those charming songs in which the French excel.”

No one with a humanistic worldview would dream of doubting such a palpable truth as is expressed here. And whether such a palpable truth is expressed in a coarse, boorish manner, as here, or whether it is expressed in a somewhat more refined way, is ultimately irrelevant!

This same de La Mettrie says, for example: Man's mental qualities, everything he reveals of his soul to the outside world, are so dependent on the mechanism of his body that one can say: If only some little thing in the brain of Erasmus or of Fontenelle – a little thing that cannot even be proved anatomically – had been different, then Erasmus and Fontenelle might have become blockheads instead of geniuses!

These things are always mentioned, with the intention of making it appear as if spiritual science could somehow be refuted by them! Spiritual science will readily admit this; it will only have to consider such a crude truth and the somewhat finer truth lying on the same board, as when one says, for example: It could have been much worse; let us assume that Erasmus, the one who should have become Erasmus, had been killed as a five-year-old boy by a bandit, then of course his soul would have been able to develop even less than if only a cog in his brain had been wrong! Or even before he was born, his mother would have been killed by a bandit!

All the things that are put forward from that side cannot be refuted at all; they even stand out because they are taken for granted, but it can still remain a small thing to keep mentioning them and to awaken the belief as if the spiritual scientist were so foolish that he could not admit such “tangible” things.

But the humanities scholar, he knows, dear attendees, that – [just as] such assertions are true, [just as] well-founded they are – that they are, on the other hand, just as well contestable, of course! – Because that which one can say with regard to the external world, can combine with the mind, can be totally wrong on the other hand! I have often repeated here what the unforgettable Vincenz Knauer said against materialism. He said: Just do the test and lock up a wolf, lock him up. After you can be sure that everything [he had in terms of matter was pure wolf matter], feed him only lamb meat. One will convince oneself that, even though he will have rebuilt his body out of lamb, one will convince oneself that, even though he will have rebuilt his body out of lamb, the wolf will not have become a lamb!

It is a matter of the fact that what de La Mettrie says about the influence of a meal on the soul is certainly very true; it is absolutely true. But assertions that are supposed to have the strength to support a worldview are likely to gradually merge into others, or even into their opposite; and that, when viewed from the other side, their opposite can be asserted just as well.

I had to presuppose this, especially today, when it will be a matter of entering, from a certain point of view, the path that spiritual scientific research takes. This path is initially characterized by the fact that, in its further pursuit, it leads the spiritual scientist to confirm certain scientific findings even more than the natural scientist himself can confirm them today.

Now I have often explained here that the path that spiritual research has to take is an entirely inward one; that although this spiritual science wants to be as scientific, as strictly scientific as any natural science, the path it has to take because it does not deal with the sensory world but with the spiritual, that this path must be a purely inward one. I shall not go into the exact nature of this inner path today; I have done so here often enough, and the same thing cannot be repeated over and over again. I must refer you to what is written in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, where it is described in detail what the soul has to do with itself if it wants to go the way that awakens certain dormant powers in it, which can be called spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to use these Goethean expressions. It describes the development the soul must undergo to acquire such spiritual eyes and ears, in order to be able to see into a spiritual world just as the senses can see into the world of the senses.

But when everything that is needed for the soul to find the way that has just been indicated will come, then it will be found that the essential part of it is that thinking, and then imagining, is treated in a different way than this thinking, this imagining, is treated in ordinary life. In ordinary life, man forms ideas about the external world, and he is intent on this – and must be intent on this, for only in this way can he stand firmly in the external world and in practical life – he is intent on this and must be intent on this, in his ideas to have images of what is outside as reality, inwardly awakened images.

But something else is also necessary. Not only do the images have to be formed within us, but these images, which the human being forms as representations of reality in his environment, must - if I may use an expression that, although it does not accurately indicate the fact, allows us to communicate - these images must remain in the inner life of the human being: memory and recollection must be present. If the images did not stick, if what we imagine passes by without leaving a trace [in the form of memories], we would not have our continuous ego image, which must accompany us from the time we can remember back to our death and which must remain undisturbed. We only have this idea of self, we can only carry it with us, if the ideas we form are not just momentary, present experiences, but if they remain in our inner life, if they can be brought out of this inner life.

Now the essential thing about the first inner undertaking, the first inner activity that the spiritual researcher has to undertake with his own soul, is that this imagining, which is quite right for ordinary outer life, is changed, so that it occurs in the soul in a completely different way than it occurs in ordinary life. So in order to really recognize the spiritual, something must happen to the soul that arranges the life of ideas quite differently than it is in ordinary life.

Now, I have often emphasized that the point is for the spiritual researcher, in order to find his way into the spiritual world, to make a plan for himself, that it is a matter of making certain thoughts - the external reality of which is not important at first, they can be pictorial thoughts, symbolic thoughts - present in his soul. This is called 'meditation'; the soul's entire activity is concentrated on a thought-content that is placed arbitrarily in the soul, which one can survey, in which therefore no subconscious feeling, unconscious feeling driving forces can play a part, but a content that one can survey, that one places transparently clearly before the soul, is placed at the center of consciousness, moved to the center of thinking.

And then thinking must – this is a long path of practice that must be traversed, which can often take years – thinking must repeatedly return to placing this content at the center of consciousness. In this way, the entire life of the soul is concentrated – certainly, it may only last a short time, minutes during the day, for example – in this content. And in this way, little by little, I am describing what spiritual research really involves, the soul life gradually comes to separate two things that are always linked in ordinary thinking: namely, to separate the inner activity of thinking, of imagining, from the content. One must separate that, dear attendees, which one does when thinking, when visualizing – this inner activity of thinking must be completely separated from the content. So that when you place such a content at the center of your mental life, you gradually become aware: It does not depend on this content; I have only introduced this content so that I can exercise the inner activity of thinking with it.

And then I experience inwardly, now not a particular thought, now not a particular content, but the inner activity of thinking. This is less that which one otherwise calls thinking, but rather that which otherwise always remains unconscious in thinking; it is a certain activity of the will that is practiced in other thinking and imagining, a fine activity of the will. In ordinary life, in ordinary thinking, when one is thinking, one does not pay any attention to this at all. One does not pay any attention to the fact that one actually always uses one's will when one thinks, when one imagines; one does not pay attention to this. But now one experiences the fact that one exercises a fine inner will activity there. The soul becomes aware of certain powers within itself, which it otherwise exercises all the time in ordinary life, but to which it does not direct its consciousness and which remain unconscious. So that all the content of meditation can emerge from the imagination, and only this inner movement in thinking, in imagining, is inwardly grasped, so to speak. And that is what matters. Because when you continue to practise in this direction, you will have very definite experiences as you continue your search for the spiritual world. Certain experiences attach themselves to it when you have come to really separate the content and to be able to experience the mere inner activity, the activity in thinking, in imagining. Then you initially have an inner feeling as if you were now in some very vague experience. It is important - I would even say essential - to focus on these fine details if you want to know something about true spiritual scientific research.

What otherwise is the resting of thinking in the imagination can initially cease under the influence of such exercises if the goal is to be achieved, and must actually cease for certain experiences if the goal is to be achieved. One enters into an inner experience, into an inner movement. One does not feel external now - only the comparison is linked to the external - one feels as if one is groping spiritually in the darkness all around; one feels completely absorbed in the inner activity of thinking and imagining, which one has grasped. Through inner experience, one now has a certain experience; and that consists in saying to oneself: So, you have now reached the point where you live only in the activity of thinking, in the activity of imagining. First of all, one experiences that with regard to these inner experiences in the activity of thinking, in the activity of imagining, that which is otherwise the power of recollection, that which is otherwise memory, is no longer there. That is no longer there. One notices that one has entered into a completely different inner stream, that one does not experience what one now experiences as thinking activity in the same way as when one remembers something or when one otherwise thinks with reference to external objects or facts; but one notices that one is now developing thinking activity, just as one develops will activity out of habit – not a thinking, but an inner activity out of a certain fine habit, that is what one experiences inwardly now. And this inner experience has only one value, one meaning at that moment – this experience of inner activity has one meaning at the moment when one experiences it. It is also a rough comparison, but I can still use the comparison: what one experiences by separating one's inner thinking activity from one's thoughts now belongs to the momentary experience, just like eating and drinking. It is a rough comparison, but it is a comparison that illustrates everything I want to say. We cannot, when we have eaten yesterday, use yesterday's food or yesterday's drink to nourish the body today, but we have to eat and drink again today. Eating and drinking only have this momentary, present meaning. We cannot say: We eat today; and tomorrow, when we perform this activity, which [...] reminds us of our eating and drinking today, thereby also nourishing us. It is an activity – eating and drinking – that must always be repeated.

And so this inner activity of imagination is something, this inner activity of imagination is now something that has no value for a later time, but must always be evoked anew from the experience. You have to acquire the inner ability, not to remember what you have once experienced in this way, so that you can recall it, but so that you can experience it again and again from a now inner, finer habit. So that you realize that what you have now developed as an idea actually flows like dreams. Just as dreams flit by, so does this real sensing, spiritual-soul sensing, which is in an unchangeable mobility, as I have indicated.

So what do you actually notice at this moment, dear ones who are present? You notice that which can now have a shattering effect on the soul, as do many things that I have already mentioned on the occasion of the spiritual path of knowledge: you notice what it actually has to do with what we call memory, with what we call the power of remembrance. At first, we cannot use this power of recollection for spiritual knowledge. We have to let go of this power of recollection if we want to gain spiritual knowledge. And now we clearly recognize that the thinking that can be recollected – and that is all everyday thinking and must be all everyday thinking; if it is no longer everyday thinking, then one is no longer spiritually healthy – we recognize that the thinking that can be passed on to memory is directly connected to the physical body. One recognizes that the physical body really does function like a machine, albeit a more delicate one, in contributing to the thoughts we have in our daily lives in such a way that they can evoke memory.

You see, esteemed attendees, the spiritual researcher comes through an experience precisely to an affirmation of the trivial truth, which materialism claims as its own, that the thinking that is developed in everyday life is definitely conditioned by the body. Only what we have now peeled away, the inner activity, is not conditioned by the body. [It is not thinking, the activity of thinking, that is conditioned by the body, but the content of the thought is entirely dependent on the body.] The content of the thought is entirely dependent on the body.

And when some amateur spiritual scientists, or philosophically nuanced experts, come along and say: Yes, but a thought has an inner quality from which one recognizes that it cannot be absorbed into the body, that it is something other than the body, then one will say, with science that may not yet exist today – but with the ideal of science, which will one day be fulfilled, spiritual science –: there are certain materials that, when exposed to light, absorb it to a certain extent and then continue to radiate it for a while. Will these radiations now be regarded as something that is not based in matter? In the same way, when the external world, the physical, sensory external world, makes an impression on a person, and these thoughts are only retained during our lifetime, when they fluoresce, as it were, out of the physical body, these too should not be regarded as something that is spiritually alone, as something that could have significance for the eternal forces of the human soul. They are phenomena that occur in the physical matter of the human being. Just as electricity occurs in matter. Not in the denial of this justified scientific view, but in the right understanding lies what spiritual science has to do with it.

So that all philosophical talk, which is based on the observation of thoughts as they are, will never be able to say anything about the eternal powers of the human soul. Just as the fluorescence of matter, when it is removed as matter, naturally causes the fluorescence to cease, so anyone who is grounded in natural science cannot help but state the truth: when the body decays, its basis for the appearance of thoughts from the body also decays.

Only the direct evidence that arises from the fact that the otherwise unconscious thought activity, imagination, has separated itself from the thoughts themselves, has grasped itself inwardly, that initially gives the higher consciousness that one now lives in something that is really outside of the body. With the thoughts of everyday life, one does not live outside of the body. By seizing hold of the activity that one has isolated in the manner described from the content of one's thoughts, one knows that one is living with something in a sphere that is now outside of the body.

Thus, dear ones, one can never explore the eternal powers of the human soul from what a person consciously practices in relation to the physical environment and in relation to his outer life; but it is necessary that, from what a person experiences within himself in ordinary physical life, first that which can be inwardly grasped in the manner described is separated. But it is not enough for a person to go through the path just described; for by doing so, he would never come to anything other than to feel, in a sense of eternal departure, as if in a darkness of soul. So that is not enough.

What has a person actually achieved in this way? Basically, they have shed the content of thought, the thoughts themselves, and have recognized that these ideas, these thoughts, are bound to the physical, and that only the activity of imagining, the activity of thinking, is not bound to this physical.

Therefore, they must now go hand in hand – the exercises, the inner exercises that I have mentioned, in order to train the soul in the right way, must not be followed merely on their own – but they must be accompanied by other exercises. The exercises I have just characterized are actually intended to develop the life of thought, the life of imagination. One separates the activity of the will in imagining from the content of the life of imagination. These exercises must be accompanied by others that relate less to the life of thought and more to the life of the will. And just by practising the meditations – and that is usually enough; you can read more about it in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – just by practising the meditations, by carrying out this daily concentration of thought, which is an inner activity of the will – a fine will activity – one practises the will in a way that is not otherwise used in ordinary life. In ordinary life, one does not do this, that one makes an original decision of the will out of oneself. So there you are already practicing a volitional activity that, so to speak, does not develop as darkly as the impulses that otherwise arise from our desires, from our wishes, or for that matter from all kinds of ideals; but you are practicing a volitional activity for which you must first equip yourself directly, which must arise from the most direct, inner resolve.

But that is not the important thing; rather, the important thing is that this activity of the will is now actually practiced with a completely different goal than the activities of the will in ordinary life. The activities of the will in ordinary life are practiced in such a way that one brings about this or that external action, that this or that happens. Isn't it true that when you will something, you want this or that to happen. But outwardly nothing should happen at all if you just want to direct your thinking in a certain direction, in a certain concentration. But inwardly something does happen; inwardly something very essential happens. What happens inwardly is that through such a volitional decision, the human being's I itself, its innermost soul essence, advances, that what is otherwise always, so to speak, the center of all volition, from which all volition emanates, the I, is now itself made the object of volition. Otherwise the I wills this or that; now one wants to transform the I with the will, to make the I into something else: The ego becomes the object, the goal of the will. And that is what matters.

These exercises can be intensified and made more effective if one starts out from the point just characterized, saying to oneself: the volition of ordinary life proceeds in such a way that one satisfies one's desires, and perhaps also pursues certain very justified ideals in the outer life. But now I will also take on something besides all that. Of course, the spiritual researcher must not step out of all the justified claims and demands of life step out of the justifiable claims and demands of life, otherwise he would become a crank and no spiritual researcher; but I will also, so to speak, take on things that do not have an external effect, that do not aim at the realization of these or those desires or ideals, but which are aimed at taking my own inner being in hand, at developing my own inner being in a way that would not otherwise develop if I did not take it in hand. For example, after I have poured, I realize that under certain circumstances I would wish for this or that: I want to consider not pursuing these desires, but rather to tame my ego and to steer it in a different direction of desire, and so on, and so on. In short, [the aim is] to develop an inner will that does not start from the ego, but that is directed precisely towards the ego, towards the development, the unfolding of the ego, towards the progress of the ego.

A will is developed that runs in the opposite direction to the ordinary will, a will that runs towards the I; while the ordinary will runs from the I. If you continue the practice in this way, after a reasonable period of time – which may be longer for some, shorter for others, and may take weeks for some and years for others, depending on their disposition – you will then you will notice that just as you have discovered the activity of the will in thinking through the treatment of the life of thinking, you will now, strangely enough, discover in the will a hidden consciousness, a real, true hidden consciousness. This is not just a figure of speech, but a statement that corresponds to reality: you discover a hidden consciousness, a constant observer of what actually develops as will activity. One really discovers now that in the self lives a higher self, a real higher self; not just as one often speaks in a figurative way of a higher self, but a real being lives there in the will. You discover this by colliding with the ego through the opposite direction of will, and now the ego becomes so objective to you, so external, so external to you, as it is otherwise always within you.

So the second, which must go hand in hand with the development of the life of thinking, and which must likewise discover consciousness, the more comprehensive thinking in the will - as one has discovered the will in thinking through the foregoing -, that is precisely an inner exercise of the will.

Both exercises must go hand in hand. And when one speaks of this, what arises in the soul, it appears to the uninitiated, who absolutely wants to remain with the obviously plausible world view with its more materialistic coloration, as a great folly. But it is there, and it can be described as an inner spectator. And what one calls an inner spectator, which speaks from the will when it is treated in the appropriate way – which you can read about in more detail in the book mentioned – is now able to brighten, really brighten, the darkness of which I spoke earlier, this darkness of the soul. And so two inner experiences are drawn together, as it were. The first is this groping experience in the realm of the movable; and the other is the survey, with the higher consciousness that one has now developed within oneself, of that which was at first dark. One illuminates for oneself that which was at first in the dark.

And now one recognizes that the refutation of materialism lies in a completely different area than where one usually looks for it! What de La Mettrie says, that some small cog, which anatomy cannot even explore, could perhaps have been just a little bit different in Erasmus, and Erasmus would have become a fool instead of a genius - that is quite right, so right that it is quite self-evident. But that is not the point; rather, the point is that the inner, finer structure of his organism, which made Erasmus Erasmus and a genius out of him, had already been created, had been made under the influence of the soul-spiritual!

So that, in our body, we initially carry something like a machine, but this machine has been made by the soul-spiritual, has been made under the influence of this soul-spiritual, which also emerges from the spiritual world and connects with what is inherited from the father and mother, as well as with what is present that has been inherited from the father and mother. Those 'cogs' in Erasmus that truly enabled him to make of his corporeality precisely that which his ingenious thoughts and ingenious creations were, the structure that was in him , these little cogs, were first made by his soul-spiritual individuality, which had descended from the spiritual world to his physical birth, and were first structured there!

If you look for the soul, the deeper soul of the human being, alongside the physical, during our physical life, you are quite wrong! You go so far astray that the spiritual researcher himself objects: Yes, what develops during your physical life, for example, as your world of thought, that is entirely dependent on your corporeality. And then, as a spiritual researcher, you are very aware of materialism insofar as it is justified. But that which is our material body is created out of spiritual power!

And it is with that, dear ones present, that which has gone before our physical existence and that which will be there after our physical existence has disintegrated, it is with that that one connects through the spiritual research path. And just as it is true that at the moment when the heat that I put into the steam engine is converted into propulsive power, the heat that is converted into propulsive power is no longer present as heat, but rather as propulsive , it is equally true that the power we have as soul and spirit before we have accepted physical existence, that this is precisely what is transformed by organizing the body, by becoming physical. And as long as we are physical, it is absorbed in the physical and can only be regained by spiritual research showing that the soul-spiritual is separated from the physical in the way described and knows itself as such soul-spiritual, living alongside the physical. One can be convinced that there was a spiritual-soul in us before it transformed into the physical – that it will be there spiritually-mentally when we have passed through the gate of death.

But it is crude spiritualism, one-sided spiritualism, to believe that on the one hand you have the matter of the body and on the other hand the spiritual, and that the two go side by side like two good comrades between birth and death.

The real process is very different. The real process is that this miracle of the human organism is actually created out of the spirit, is structured out of the spirit. And when it is structured, then it can unfold as a body. For just as it develops during ordinary external physical life through a higher fluorescence, so the eternal powers of the human soul are really only discovered through spiritual research. One cannot approach the human being philosophically and say: We point to the thoughts that have grown in the human being, and so on, and show that these thoughts are imperishable. Every sleep shows that they can be extinguished. And why should they not be extinguished as in sleep for all when the human being passes through the gate of death? In this way, one can never develop a proof of the eternal powers of the human soul. But if you want to develop a proof, win, then you have to win it on the way of spiritual research, by separating the will from the thoughts, and connecting this will, separated from the thoughts, with the thoughts that jump out like a higher consciousness from the development of the will. There you have that which goes through births and deaths.

Now I know, dearest attendees, that there are countless objections to what I have just said, as there are countless objections to spiritual research in general. And these objections are so self-evident internally, and so seemingly logical, that they must be convincing. And so, for example, someone could also raise the objection and have the opinion: The spiritual researcher is talking nonsense again; he says that the soul must be involved when a person comes into existence physically. As if it were not known through external science how a person comes into existence physically! That happens all by itself; no spiritual activity from spiritual worlds is necessary for that, that happens all by itself; natural science proves that very precisely in the doctrine of generations, in embryology and so on!

I will now use a comparison, one that can, of course, be refuted by obvious objections. But anyone who wants to think about this comparison will find it so powerful that it will overcome the purely materialistic objection alluded to here.

Let us assume that there are beings who cannot understand anything, perhaps cannot even see anything – of course it is a hypothesis, but it is a hypothesis that can be put forward after all – who cannot see how clocks are made. Let us assume that there are such beings walking around here in Stuttgart who cannot perceive how clocks are made. All the activity of making clocks and watches passes them by; they do not see it. But they see the clocks and watches; they are seen by them. They go into a watchmaker's shop, do not see how the clocks and watches are made, but they see the finished clocks and watches, the clocks and watches that have been created. Since they cannot see the clocks and watches coming into being, they will come to the conclusion that the clocks and watches come into being by themselves! That they will come together from the outside through an inner attraction of their individual parts and so on. These beings would speak in a way that is similar to the way people speak when they say: That which arises in the human being in the continuous succession of generations arises all by itself! Because what is not seen is that the spiritual forces that come from the spiritual world are involved in the deception that takes place here in the physical world. And in these spiritual forces lies that which we discover in ourselves through the paths of spiritual research just discussed.

In this way we arrive at a spiritual view of the eternal core of the human being, consisting of soul and spirit, which stands before our soul and of which we know that It inclines down from a spiritual existence and unites as a third with that which the person materially inherits from father and mother. And then one also knows what it is that passes through the gate of death in order to live again in a spiritual world.

And now possibilities arise for the spiritual researcher to speak of a structure of the human being, just as he does. You see, dear audience, when the spiritual researcher comes first and says: This person is not just made up of the physical body that the eyes can see and that ordinary science describes and explains – all that ordinary science has to say is readily admitted by spiritual research – when the spiritual researcher says: This person also has an etheric body - the spiritual researcher says: This person also has an ethereal body on them. The term is not important, it could also be called something else, there is no need to be put off by the term “ethereal body”; “ethereal” is meant quite differently from the usual ether in physics. When this is simply stated as an example - when it is said: There is a finer body living inside the coarser body and this gives rise to the idea: Now, the coarser body is just coarse, and a somewhat finer body lives in it, so a finer etheric body is woven into it, and this finer, woven-in body is just the etheric body – so one could indeed say that this is nonsense. But the spiritual researcher does not take this point of view; the spiritual researcher takes the point of view that just imagining, thinking, can be transformed in different ways, that thinking becomes such that the thinking person says: That is nonsense. But the spiritual researcher does not take this point of view; the spiritual researcher takes the point of view that precisely the imagination, the thinking, can be transformed in various ways, that thinking becomes such that the power of memory is woven out of thinking; that thinking is developed such that the imagination becomes such that it is not only experienced instantaneously, as is otherwise the case with coarse eating and drinking. And by living and moving in this thinking, which does not now lead directly to memory, but which must always be newly created, one lives in something other than the physical body; one lives in the etheric body. There the etheric body is pointed to as an experience. There it is pointed out what it is. And spiritual scientific truths are not found by simply showing physical facts in a more refined form, as spiritualism wants to do – this corruption of a true spiritual science – but by showing what the spiritual world is in inner experiences, which, however, also want to be inwardly experienced.

And then, when the spiritual researcher also talks about the existence of a so-called “astral body” in addition to this etheric body, well, then the objections come flying in from all sides, spurred on by all the scorn. One can say, as all the fine phrases are already called, one can say: spiritual research aims at man to “astralize” himself – and so on and so on.

The people who talk like this do not even notice how the spiritual researcher quite agrees with the most foolish way in which the astral body is often spoken of: But I have to explicitly point out that by developing one's will in the way I have explained, that one then discovers in oneself a more comprehensive , a consciousness that can illuminate what is first experienced in the etheric body, and which soul darkness provides us with; and this consciousness, which is shown to be a reality, is now what is figuratively called the “astral body”, these are the inner realities, but realities that are gained in inner experience!

The world is indeed comfortable and would like to have the spiritual world in front of it as one has the material world in front of one; this is called “spirit-matter” so that one can see it with physical eyes. One can then indeed spare oneself the trouble of using one's spiritual eyes! But these ghosts are usually something quite different from real ghosts, even when, as in the majority of cases, there is more than mere fraud. It is precisely this that spiritual science needs to shake off, because it is based on strict inner experience. And in this strict inner experience, the first thing that is achieved is that the human being has the experience of being able to distinguish between another consciousness and another experience in a world of facts, to distinguish this soul from its ordinary corporeality and to live in what its eternal powers are.

When he then lives in what his eternal powers are, then he will become aware of what actually builds up his body – or let us say 'helps to build it up' so that it cannot be misunderstood. that this whole life breaks down into lives that are spent in the body between birth – or let us say conception – and death here on earth, and such lives that are spent between death and a new birth [in a spiritual world].

In what the person experiences when he feels the indicated consciousness emerging from his will, he experiences something very special. If I am to characterize what he experiences, then I must show it as a consciousness. And that is what essentially matters – not that one points out that there is something nebulous, monadic – or whatever one wants to call it – contained in man, but that it is a certain consciousness. I have also described it as consciousness; consequently, I can characterize it.

When we survey external material processes, there is the possibility, as you all know, that from certain constellations of the sun and moon today, we can predict that after a certain time a lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse will occur. This means that the realization of a future event is already present in the present event. Here we are dealing with an external realization that lives in concepts, in concepts that correspond to the laws of nature. Here we see a future event in the present event.

As the soul develops that consciousness out of the will, of which I have spoken, she actually experiences in the present physical body that which must necessarily lead to a next life on earth. What must lead to the next life on earth is experienced as truly as the future can be foreseen in the present constellation of the sun and moon. [How the future can be foreseen], so is experienced in advance that which must lead to the next earthly life. And so it is experienced that what goes through the gate of death, then lives in the spiritual world for a time, and then must come again to a new earthly life. This is experienced.

And this must be said as a general characteristic: the insights of spiritual science are not merely hinted at, but are inwardly experienced insights. Mere conceptual inner activity is transformed into direct experience. And things are experienced.

There is something important about this, very revered attendees, when we emphasize that what is, so to speak, detached from memory, that this only has a meaning for the moment, that it must be experienced again and again if it is to be there properly.

This is how it is in general with regard to the spiritual world. The spiritual world must always be experienced anew. And if someone wants to speak from the spiritual world, to characterize the facts of the spiritual world, then basically he cannot always remember and then recite them, but basically, if what he has to say is to come directly from the spiritual world, he must give it in the moment as his own experience again and again, he must bring it out of his innermost being in that moment.

Therefore, what is to be spoken of the spiritual world will have to have a somewhat different character than what is spoken in external science from mere memory. What is spoken from the spiritual world will be directly related to the present insight into the spiritual world, so that it can be described from the spiritual world. But as a result of this, dear attendees, one is also protected from falling into a kind of aberration of spiritual scientific research, namely, that one merely adheres to what has been said.

Those who stand on materialistic ground, on self-evident materialistic ground – I must emphasize this again and again – will say: Well, what the spiritual researcher claims to have developed within himself through his special development of thinking, what is it other than what we all know in psychology as hallucinations, visions and so on and so forth? What is it other than that? It is a riding-oneself-into-an-unhealthy-mental-life that is indicated as a spiritual research path!

There is another objection, which is just as foolish as it is self-evident and plausible; plausible for anyone who stands on the ground of a materialistic interpretation of psychiatric phenomena, self-evident. It is only through constantly experiencing anew that one actually knows that one is in touch with the spiritual world; because there is nothing to prove. It is not possible to prove that anything is a reality. Those people who believe that one can prove that something is a reality – I have often pointed this out here – do not understand anything about the concept of reality. You cannot prove that a whale is a reality if you cannot show its existence in the external world. Reality can only be experienced, not proven. But in the direct experience of reality, what we need to show something as reality arises vividly. And so, in the direct experience of the spiritual world, what the spiritual world is must always be experienced anew; otherwise, of course, one can indulge in all sorts of fantasies.

This relationship between logic and reality even played a trick on Kant, causing a dispute. Kant sought to eliminate the so-called proof of the existence of God by agreeing that conceptually one hundred ordinary dollars, one hundred merely imagined dollars contain exactly the same amount as one hundred real dollars – not a penny less. Of course, in concept, a hundred imagined dollars contain just as much as a hundred real dollars. But in reality, which one reaches not in concepts but in experience, a hundred real dollars mean precisely a hundred dollars more than a hundred merely imagined ones! Everyone can convince themselves of this through life!

Now, it is very easy to fall into error by saying: Yes, but does this ordinary consciousness, which is bound to our physical body, as today's explanations have sufficiently shown, does this consciousness, which leads into the spiritual world, have no connection at all? One can have such a connection – and must even have it, and it is important that one has it. It is a very important thing that, while unfolding this higher consciousness, man should always have his quite ordinary rational human being at his side, so that he knows: as he otherwise looks at external objects that are before him and which he can neither imagine nor fantasize, he should look at his quite ordinary human being as he stands in the physical-sensual world; and while one dwells in the spiritual world, one must never for a moment lose sight of the quite ordinary physical man with his memory-producing thinking, with his will, which arises from desires, ideals, and so on. That is the characteristic. And anyone who understands this will immediately understand the truly foolish nature of the materialistic psychiatric objections that speak of an 'unhealthy mental life' in relation to spiritual research endeavors.

What happens when you enter into an unhealthy mental life, an abnormal mental life, a morbid consciousness? Then the consciousness, which may have been healthy before – I say “may” have been healthy, if it is not completely healthy but perhaps has certain aptitudes, these will develop the morbid, abnormal consciousness – then they become morbid and can no longer develop the healthy soul life, cannot develop one out of the other. For, to put it trivially, one cannot be a fool and healthy at the same time, otherwise one would no longer be a fool! But what is really necessary for proper spiritual research is that the person, so to speak, really knows himself as a duality, and that he, in his completely rational, healthy human being, equipped with the physical conditions of reality, has worked into all of way of life as it otherwise was, so that when he puts himself in the place of the other consciousness, which can see into the spiritual world, these two consciousnesses do not develop apart, but one must place itself next to the other. And that is the essential thing that must be thrown in more and more if one wants to put together in a dilettantish way that into which the spiritual researcher lives with some form of unhealthy consciousness: it is precisely the most healthy consciousness, because the spiritual researcher not only lives in his otherwise healthy human being, but because he also looks down on him, looks up to him or looks into him, if we want.

Now it is self-evident, dear attendees, that in order to start spiritual research, one cannot be a crank or something similar. Otherwise, one can only look at the crosshead, and one must not demand that any other starting point for spiritual research is the right one than that of a person who is in real life, who has a sound judgment for all things of immediate, practical life, who also has the corresponding sense of truth for all things of practical life. Nothing is more unhealthy than being in any way affected by untruthfulness or dishonesty and the like when it comes to the development of spiritual vision.

One must even say: that which is achieved on the two paths that have been indicated is achieved precisely by seeking out what is independent of physicality, what is not achieved with the help of physicality. One frees oneself precisely from physicality. Therefore, all things that are bound to physicality – and these are visions, hallucinations, which do not come from the spirit, as they are understood in the ordinary, trivial, superstitious, mystical sense – these have nothing to do with true spiritual research, because they depend on physicality. And they are not in a more spiritual realm than the one we are in when we are in the physical world; rather, they are in a more material realm than the one we are in when we are in the physical world. One can be a visionary because one works with fewer tools on one's physical body than one works in ordinary, external physical life. There one works with the entire healthy body and looks into ordinary reality.

The ordinary visions are only a kind of afterimage, are afterimages of what one can also see with the eyes; only that they are pressed out of the physical body. They are based on the fact that certain parts of our organism do not come into effect, and others can only then come into effect; so that we are driven to the undersensory, not to the supersensory in this case, that we see less reality than we see with the ordinary, healthy senses.

Spiritual science, when understood in its true basis, is not suitable for reinforcing any kind of superstition. On the contrary, it is precisely that which will eliminate any kind of superstition, of strange mysticism, because it wants to develop a different soul life, not out of a sick person, but out of a healthy one, and because it wants to reject everything that has to do with the ill visions and hallucinations, which must be eradicated root and branch, so that true clairvoyance can arise, leading to the spiritual worlds, on which alone spiritual science can be based!

In the way described, dear attendees, the human being discovers the eternal powers of the human soul, he discovers that which goes through births and deaths, he arrives at a certainty of the eternal significance of man.

And this is the task of spiritual science: to show, in a scientific way, that what science has produced so gloriously about the external world has a counterpart in the spiritual world of spiritual human development. That is the task of spiritual science.

For some centuries now, I would say, natural science has had to educate humanity to a sense of reality that did not exist in the past. The time could come – and it has now come – when, with the same rigor in the development of inner soul forces, man can also speak about the spiritual world. And even if today all the reasons that have already been mentioned are still being objected to this spiritual science – this spiritual science will become as much a part of the spiritual development of humanity as natural science has become a part of it. What is today taken for granted in natural science was, relatively recently, still fought against, fought against in the worst way. That which is fought against today in spiritual science will become a matter of course, like certain achievements in natural science. But then the time will come when people will realize that just as everyone does not have to be an astronomer to understand what astronomy contributes to general knowledge and to convey to the world, so too does not everyone need to be a spiritual researcher. Today, anyone can become one to a certain extent, as can be seen from my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. But it is not even necessary. It is just as little necessary as it is necessary, in order to understand a book, to have the gift of writing that book oneself. When the truths about the spiritual world have been brought forth by this spiritual world through this or that spiritual researcher, then ordinary human comprehension is enough to understand what the spiritual researcher says - not just to believe it, but to really absorb it and have it as soul food. So that even in such difficult times as these, when we are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of deaths every day, we can develop an even greater awareness of the eternal significance of the human soul and the everlasting eternal powers that underlie the human soul.

I do not want to say, esteemed attendees, that our time – this time, which is so fateful – is more suitable than any other time to grasp these truths about the immortal powers of the human soul ; but what is happening around us and what we spoke about yesterday can be a pointer to point out to people that we need to reflect on what is happening around us a hundredfold every day, especially in our time. Our fateful time can serve as a pointer, if not as an extension of understanding, for these spiritual truths.

The spiritual researcher must speak when he, as I have indicated, looks into the spiritual world, a real, concrete spiritual world; not into the nebulous spiritual world already mentioned yesterday, which is spoken of by pantheism: “Spirit, spirit is behind everything! Spirit, spirit and always spirit again.” Abstract philosophy speaks of this. It is just the same as if one were always to say, “Nature, nature, nature!” and not “lilies”, “tulips” and so on. The spiritual researcher speaks of concrete spiritual facts and entities, with which spiritual life is related in the same way as our body is related to the outer sensory world through its senses.

However, when one enters this field, all those who, out of sheer cleverness in our time, have become foolish out of the obvious truths, which the spiritual researcher by no means denies, will rise up. But the time will also come when people will realize that just as there may still be people today who have not learned that there is air in the gap in the transcript, so too is there space. If space is empty, then air is not there. Just as it is a matter of course for someone who has learned something about these things to take the presence of air for granted, and even to consider it indispensable for life, so too will it be recognized as indispensable for the life of soul and spirit, that which constantly flows to us, as air flows to our lungs — flows to us from the spiritual and soul world that surrounds us and in which we live, just as the body lives in the physical and sensory world. A time will come when people will speak of this world, in which we are rooted spiritually and soulfully, just as the senses speak of the sensory world. However, there is still much to be improved, including the way in which spiritual science itself is practised. Today, strict scientists will say, and those who are immersed in and respect science will agree with them: 'Well, let's look at the people who talk about a spiritual world! We need only watch a little to see that some kind of enthusiasm, a morbid consciousness, is what brings it all about. And when you see how superficially this spiritual science sometimes behaves - well, then we have had enough!

One can certainly agree with those who, on the basis of their esteem for and application of the strictly scientific method, which is truly to be highly esteemed, come to such a judgment; because, as I have already indicated, that it can all too easily be lumped together with all kinds of amateurish and fantastic reveries and ravings, with starry-eyed nonsense. As true as it is on the one hand that there is a way into the spiritual world, to understand, to convince oneself of the eternal nature of the human soul, of its eternal life, as true as it is on the other hand that precisely this spiritual science, which by no means produces pathological clairvoyance, that this spiritual science must reject the community with all that wants to assert itself as a revelation of the spiritual world in a charlatan-like, twisted mystical way!

In our serious time, it is perhaps necessary that at the end such things are pointed out in more detail, dear attendees, so that people in wider circles do not believe that they can simply mix spiritual science, because it does not defend itself, with all kinds of confused stuff, and even worse than confused stuff. And so, because this has already been discussed in the circles of materialistic thinkers, let me, in conclusion, cite a fact, just as a fact, for a reason that will soon be apparent.

In 1912, in a yearbook published for 1913 by a person widely revered as a special prophetess who has much to say from the spiritual world, as many you could read in a yearbook that was published in 1912 for 1913, you could read – take note of the timing – you could read with reference to Austria: 'The one who still believes he can govern today will not govern. Instead, a young man will govern who should not yet govern. And the same assertion in a similar way then appeared again in 1913 in the same yearbook for 1914. And then, as we know, in June 1914 there was that assassination attempt on the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I just want to put the facts together. Of course, anyone in their right mind would think of something other than the fact that the person in question, who is a highly dubious character in many other ways, prophetically foresaw it!

But this becomes even clearer when one makes the following discovery – as I said, these things have also been discussed in a healthy way in the materialistic field, and spiritual science has every reason to show where it stands in relation to such things – the matter becomes even clearer when one considers that as early as 1913 in a Paris newspaper – “Paris-Midi” – the wish was expressed to commit the assassination of Sarajevo; that in this same newspaper it was also expressed, on the occasion of the introduction of the three-year term of service in France, that if there were to be a mobilization in France, Jaures would be killed in the first days of mobilization!

Combine these facts with the fact that they are prophetically - seemingly - bandied about among people - prophetically, seemingly from spiritual realms, bandied about among people - then you have the choice of either thinking of something that I don't want to insinuate – some kind of underground connection between this apparent prophecy and what actually happened – or the fact that what actually happened was really foreseen!

But spiritual science emphasizes that clear, realistic, healthy thinking is particularly important for it and that it does not want to be mixed with what, especially in our time, people are willing to accept who, through some external evidence, want to have the spiritual realm “proven” to them.

Just as little as any materialist will the true spiritual researcher think of the “prophecy” of that dubious personality, but of something else! And there is every reason, esteemed attendees, that now that things are being discussed publicly, it should be pointed out that spiritual science must shake off everything that likes to attach itself to its coattails: all that is charlatan-like, all frauds, and all that speculates on the credulity of humanity to achieve certain ends, which may sometimes be ends reprehensible. And in no other field does charlatanry, nonsense and speculation on the folly and superstition of people flourish more than in the field of striving for the truth about the spiritual worlds with the spiritual-scientific direction and world view.

This serious word is especially necessary if one wants to put the sense of truth, which is inseparable from spiritual scientific research, in the right light, and if one wants to draw attention to how everything spiritual must be inward, must be based on the internalization of human must be based on the internalization of human nature, and how it strictly separates itself – when spiritual science also speaks of things that can only be recognized from the spiritual world, even with regard to such things it will not be dismissive – but it will strictly separate itself from all that has just been characterized. This is especially necessary in our serious time, because it is necessary on the other hand that spiritual science incorporates the course of development, the spiritual course of development, as natural science once incorporated the spiritual course of development of humanity.

This will only be possible if it is understood how spiritual scientific endeavor is really sought in the sense indicated today, as paradoxical as it may seem, outside of the body and not through physical strength. If it is pointed out that these complicated spiritual scientists are vegetarians, for example, then that is a matter of taste, which has nothing to do with spiritual science as such, and should not be lumped together, just as one should not lump together the fact that some who consider themselves part of the spiritual scientific school of thought , wear short hair, if they are men, long hair, and that they wear these or those clothes and the like; just as little can the spiritual world be “eaten” through a false asceticism, through any mortification of the body - even if it is necessary, of course, to develop a healthy life - just as little can the spiritual world be “eaten” through an unhealthy mortification of the body! You cannot enter the spiritual world by eating or by doing this or that, but only through spiritual and soul forces!

I wanted to add this in particular, dear readers, to what true spiritual research is and what true spiritual research often has to face difficulties in asserting its position in the world today, compared to what presents itself as such.

One can only ever act from this or that point of view. Of course, much could be said in support of what has been presented today; I just wanted to hint at individual points of view - individual points of view that should once again show how well grounded in human experience, and especially in healthy human experience, the spiritual research direction is.

And if this spiritual research direction, esteemed attendees, is still fought today from many a self-evident side – the time will come when people will have worked themselves up in sufficient numbers to that inner activity that makes the spiritual world an immediate knowledge, and when that which is spiritual knowledge will be incorporated into human knowledge, just as the Copernican world view incorporated itself into human knowledge.

Yesterday we saw how anchored in Central European intellectual life in particular is the path of spiritual research and how virtually, if also forgotten, a tone of German intellectual life strives towards a real grasp of the spiritual world. Therefore, we may confidently point to what was mentioned yesterday as a faded note of German spiritual life, confidently to that which is effective after all, even if it is not seen today, which will be the germ and root of blossoms and fruits that must develop. What has been prepared in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and the others mentioned yesterday must come to the fore, what is a preparation for actually stepping into the spiritual world.

But this progression will come about just as surely as the plant, if it cannot be prevented, will develop from germ and root to leaf, flower and fruit. And the spiritual cannot find obstacles in the physical if it is well grounded. Therefore, we can look with confidence at the further development of what is in the German spiritual life and may do so - as a special act of self-reflection on the German nation - in this present, serious hour of world history. And we may also say to ourselves: however high and ever higher all the prejudices accumulate, all the prejudices against true spiritual-scientific knowledge, however great the power of those who exclude this spiritual-scientific world view or do not want to allow it to arise for whatever reasons: Looking into the nature of spiritual science, one can say: If spiritual science is truth, it will find the ways that truth has always found. It will develop through clefts and crevices as it has always developed, and so will spiritual truth. Even if many prejudices and opposing forces should pile up, he who is able to examine the relationship between truth and the human soul from a genuinely human, truly human feeling must say to himself again and again: Let it seem to him as if the human soul and truth are connected like sisters.

Truth, dear attendees, can be fought as an enemy, but it will always find ways and means. Even if it is suppressed by opposing prejudice in any given time, it will always find ways and means to prevail in the times to come.

Those who mock and ridicule spiritual science may be told by those who, as indicated, think about truth and life as indicated: Whatever powers still want to suppress spiritual science today, spiritual science can rely on its own strength. It will find itself in its own strength against all suppression; for one can suppress the truth, but one cannot erase it from the world.

Truth and the human soul are related and belong together like siblings, siblings in spirit. And even if human souls that tend towards error, not towards truth, may also diverge to a greater or lesser extent at one time or another, They will always find each other again in brotherly and sisterly love, and let me say this as the final word of today's lecture: these siblings, truth and the human soul, must find each other more and more in the spiritual love that rejects them both to their common origin, in which their brotherhood is rooted. And this origin is the light of the world, from which they both come, the spiritual world, the world of origin, the spiritual world, which is the paternal-maternal principle for truth and soul and to which truth and soul will always strive, embrace each other as siblings, mindful of their common origin in the all-encompassing, world-imbuing and world-interweaving spiritual of the world, in which this world has its true, its only true origin.

Translator Unknown, revised

Today a picture of the path of knowledge will be given, and the fruits of this path will also be shown. You already know some of the major points of view which thereby come into consideration. However, for those of you who have already heard lectures pertaining to the path of knowledge or who have read the periodical, Lucifer, particularly the thirty-second issue, something new will be offered if we discuss the path of knowledge as can occur only in intimate circles of students of spiritual science. The main matter at hand is to discuss this path of knowledge in so far as it is traced through the Rosicrucian, Western spiritual stream, which has guided European culture spiritually by invisible threads since the fourteenth century.

The Rosicrucian movement worked in complete concealment up until the last third of the nineteenth century. What was true Rosicrucianism could not be found in books and was also forbidden to be spoken of publicly. Only in the last thirty years have a few of the Rosicrucian teachings been made known to the outer world through the theosophical movement, after having been taught earlier only in the most strictly closed circles. The most elementary teachings of the Rosicrucian's are included in what is called theosophy today—but only the most elementary. It is only possible bit by bit to allow mankind to look more deeply into this wisdom which has been fostered in these Rosicrucian schools in Europe since the end of the fourteenth century.

To begin with, we would like to make clear that there is not just one kind of path of knowledge, but three paths to consider. Yet this should not be understood as if there were three truths. There is only one truth, just as the view revealed from the peak of a mountain is the same for all who stand there. There are, however, various ways by which the peak of the mountain can be reached. During the ascent, one has at every point a different view. Only if one is at the top—and one can ascend to the peak from various sides—can one have a free and full view from one's own perspective. So it is also with the three paths of knowledge. One is the Oriental path of Yoga, the second is the Christian-Gnostic path, and the third is the Christian-Rosicrucian path. These three paths lead to the single truth.

There are three different paths because human nature is different around our earth. One has to distinguish three types of human nature. Just as it would not be right for someone trying to reach a mountaintop to select a remote path rather than the one next to him, so it would also be wrong if a man wanted to take another spiritual path than the one appropriate to him. Many muddled ideas about this prevail today in the theosophical movement, which must still develop upwards from its initial stage. It is often supposed that there is only a single path to knowledge, by which is meant the Yoga path. The Oriental Yoga path is not the only path to knowledge, however, and is in fact not a propitious path for those who live within European civilization. He who considers this matter only from outside certainly can have scarcely any insight into what we are concerned with here, because one could easily come to the conclusion that human nature actually appears to differ little in various lands. If one with occult powers observes the great differences in human types, it becomes clear that what is good for the Orientals, and perhaps also for some other men in our culture, is by no means the proper path for everyone. There are people, but only a few within European circumstances, who could follow the Oriental path of Yoga. But for most Europeans, this is impracticable. It brings with it illusions and also the destruction of soul-forces. The Eastern and Western natures, although they do not appear so different to today's scientists, are totally different. An Eastern brain, an Eastern imagination, and an Eastern heart work completely differently from the organs of Westerners. What can be expected of someone who has grown up within Eastern circumstances should never be expected of a Westerner. Only one who believes that climate, religion, and social environment have no influence on the human spirit might also think that the external circumstances under which a spiritual training is undergone are also a matter of indifference. But one who knows the deeply spiritual influences exerted upon human nature by all these outer circumstances understands that the Yoga path is impossible for those who remain within European culture, and can only be tread by those few Europeans who radically and fundamentally detach themselves from European circumstances.

Those persons who today are still inwardly upright and honest Christians, those who are permeated with certain principle themes of Christianity, may choose the Christian-Gnostic path, which differs little from the Cabbalistic path. For Europeans in general, however, the Rosicrucian path is the only right path. This European Rosicrucian path will be spoken of today, and indeed the different practices this path prescribes for people and also the fruits it holds for those who follow it will be described. No one should believe that this path is only for scientifically trained men or for scholars. The simplest person can tread it. If one takes this path, however, one will quickly be in the position to encounter every objection which can be made against occultism by European science. This was one of the main tasks of the Rosicrucian Masters: to arm those who take this path so that they could travel this path and defend occult knowledge in the world. The simple man who holds only a few popular ideas about modern science, or even none at all, but who has an honest craving for truth, can tread the Rosicrucian path alongside trained men and scholars.

Among the three paths of knowledge exist great distinctions. The first important distinction is in the relationship of the pupil to the occult teacher, who gradually becomes the guru or who mediates the relationship to the guru. A characteristic of the Oriental Yoga schools is that this relationship is the strictest imaginable. The guru is an unconditional authority for the pupil. If that were not the case, this training could not have the right outcome. An Oriental Yoga training without a strong submission to the authority of the guru is totally impossible. The Christian-Gnostic or Cabbalistic path allows a somewhat looser relationship to the guru on the physical plane. The guru leads his pupil to Christ Jesus; he is the mediator. With the Rosicrucian path, the guru becomes always more a friend whose authority rests on inner agreement. Here it is not possible to have any relationship but one of strong personal trust. Should but the slightest mistrust arise between teacher and pupil, then the essential bond which must remain between them would be ruptured, and any forces which play between teacher and pupil would no longer work. It is easy for the pupil to form false ideas about the role of his teacher. It might seem to the pupil that he needs to speak to his teacher now and then, or that his teacher must often be physically near him. Certainly it is sometimes an urgent necessity for the teacher to approach the pupil physically, but this is not so often the case as the pupil may believe. The effect that the teacher exercises on his pupil cannot be judged in the right way at the beginning of their relationship. The teacher has means which only gradually reveal themselves to the pupil. Many words which the pupil believes to have been spoken by chance are actually of great importance. They may work unconsciously in the pupil's soul, as a force of right, leading and guiding him. If the teacher exercises these occult influences correctly, then the real bond is also there between him and his pupil. In addition, there are the forces of loving participation working at a distance, forces that are always at the teacher's disposal and which later are ever more revealed to the pupil if he fords the entrance to the higher worlds. But absolute trust is an unconditional necessity; otherwise it is better to dissolve the bond between the teacher and the pupil.

Now the various precepts which play a certain role in the Rosicrucian training should be mentioned briefly. These things need not meet him in the exact sequence in which they are enumerated here. According to the individuality, the occupation, and the age of the pupil, the teacher will have to extract this or that from the different spheres, and rearrange them. Only an overview of the information shall be given here.

What is highly essential for the Rosicrucian training is not sufficiently attended to in all occult trainings. This is the cultivation of clear and logical thinking, or at least the striving for it! All confused and prejudiced thinking must first be eliminated. A man must accustom himself to viewing the relationships in the world broadly and unselfishly. The best exercise for one wishing to undergo this Rosicrucian path unpretentiously is the study of the elementary teachings of spiritual science. It is unjustified to object: What good does it do me to learn about the higher worlds, the different races and cultures, or to study reincarnation and karma when I can't see and verify it all for myself? This is not a valid objection because occupying one's thoughts with these truths purifies the thinking and disciplines it so that people become ripe for the other measures that lead to the occult path. For the most part, people think in ordinary life without bringing order into their thoughts. The guiding principles and epochs of human development and planetary evolution, the great viewpoints which have been opened by the Initiates, bring thought into ordered forms. All of this is a part of Rosicrucian training. It is called the Study. The teacher will therefore suggest that the pupil think deeply into the elementary teachings about reincarnation and karma, the three worlds, the Akashic-Chronicle, and the evolution of the earth and the human races. The range of elementary spiritual science as it is diffused in modern times is the best preparation for the simple man.

For those, however, who wish to cultivate even sharper faculties of thinking and to undertake a still more rigorous molding of the soul life, the study of books written expressly for bringing thinking into disciplined paths is recommended. Two books written for this purpose—in which there is no mention of the word “theosophy”—are my two books, Truth and Science, and The Philosophy of Freedom. One writes such a book in order to fulfill a purpose. Those who have a foundation in an intensive training in logical thinking and who wish to arrive at a wider study would do well to submit their spirits once to the “gymnastics for soul and spirit” which these books require. That gives them the foundation upon which Rosicrucian study is erected. When one observes the physical plane, one perceives certain sense impressions: colors and light, warmth and cold, smells and tastes, and impressions from the senses of hearing and touch. One connects all of these with one's activity of thought and intellect. Intellect and thought belong still to the physical plane. You can perceive all of that on the physical plane. Perceptions on the astral plane are completely different in appearance. Perceptions are again entirely different on the Devachanic plane, not to mention in even higher spirit regions. The person who has not yet acquired a glimpse into the higher worlds can still try to picture them to himself. I am also seeking to give a view of these worlds through pictures in my current manner of representation. He who ascends to the higher regions sees for himself how they work on him. On every plane a man has new experiences. But there is one which remains the same through all worlds up to Devachan itself, one which never changes: that is logical, trained thinking. Once on the Buddhi-plane, this thinking no longer has the same value as on the physical plane. There, another form of thinking must enter. But for the three worlds below the Buddhi-plane, for the physical, astral, and Devachanic planes, the same form of thinking is valid. One who therefore schools himself in orderly thinking through this study in the physical plane will find in this thinking a good guide in the higher worlds. He will not falter as easily as one who seeks to enter the spirit realms with confused thinking. Therefore, the Rosicrucian training advises a person to discipline his thinking in order to move freely in the higher worlds. He who reaches up into these worlds learns new methods of perception, which were not there on the physical plane, but he can master these with his thinking.

The second thing which the pupil must learn on the Rosicrucian path of knowledge is Imagination. The pupil prepares for this in that he gradually learns to immerse himself in pictorial concepts which represent the higher worlds in the sense of Goethe's words, “All that is transitory is but a likeness.” As man ordinarily goes through the physical world, he takes things up as they appear to his senses, but not that which lies behind. He is pulled down in the physical world as if by a dead weight. Man only becomes independent of this physical world when he learns to consider the objects around him as symbols. He must, for this reason, seek to acquire a moral relationship to them. The teacher can give him much guidance in learning to regard outward appearances as symbols of the spirit, but the pupil can also do a great deal for himself. He can, for example, look closely at a meadow saffron and a violet. If I see the meadow saffron as a symbol for a melancholy disposition, then I have regarded it not only as it outwardly comes to meet me, but also as a symbol of a certain quality. In the violet, one can behold a symbol for a calm, innocent disposition. So you can go from object to object, from plant to plant, from animal to animal and regard them as symbols for the spiritual. In this way, you make your imaginative capacities fluid and release them from the sharp contours of sense perception. One comes then to behold the symbol for a characteristic quality in every species of animal. One perceives one animal as a symbol for strength, another as a symbol for slyness. We must try to pursue such things, not fleetingly, but earnestly and step by step.

Fundamentally, all of human language is spoken in symbols. Language is nothing but a speaking in symbols. Every word is a symbol. Even science, which claims to view every object objectively, must make use of language, in that its words work symbolically. If you speak of the wings of the lungs, you know that there are actually no wings, yet you nevertheless cherish this designation. He who wishes to remain on the physical plane would do well not to lose himself too strongly in these symbols, but the advanced occult pupil will not lose himself in them. If one investigates, one will perceive the primordial depths in which human language is founded. Such deep natures as Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme owed much of their development to the opportunities they had—which they did not shun—for studying the imaginative significance of language through conversations with vagrants and farmers. There the words “nature,” “soul,” and “spirit” worked completely differently. There they worked more strongly. When out in the country, the farmer's wife plucks a goose's feathers, she actually calls the interior of the feather “the soul.” The pupil must find for himself such symbols in language. In this way he loosens himself from the physical world and learns to raise himself to the realm of Imagination. If the world is thus viewed as a likeness of man, it has a strong effect. If the pupil practices this for a long time, he will notice corresponding effects. In observing a flower, for example, something gradually loosens from the flower. The color, which once clung to the surface of the blossom, ascends like a small flame, and hovers freely in space. Imaginative cognition forms itself out of these things. Then it is as if the surfaces of all objects loosen. The whole space fills with colors, the flames hovering in space. In this way, the whole world of light seems to detach itself from physical reality. When such a color picture detaches itself and hovers freely in space, it soon begins to adhere to something. It presses towards something. It does not just stand still arbitrarily; it encloses a being, which now itself appears in the color as spiritual being. The color which the pupil has detached from the objects of the physical world clothes the spiritual beings of astral space.

Here is the point where the occult teacher's counsel must intervene, as the pupil could very easily lose his bearings. This could happen for two reasons. The first is that each pupil must go through a definite experience. The images which are peeled off from the physical objects—they are not only colors, but also aural and olfactory sensations—may present themselves as strange, hideous, or perhaps beautiful shapes, as animal heads, plant forms, or even hideous human faces. This first experience represents a mirror-image of the pupil's own soul. The particular passions and desires, the evils that still lie within the soul, appear before the advancing pupil as in a mirror in astral space. Here he requires counsel of the occult teacher, who can tell him that it is not an objective reality that he has seen, but a mirror-image of his own inner being.

You will understand just how dependent the pupil is on his teacher's advice when you hear more about the manner in which these pictures appear. It is often emphasized that everything is reversed in astral space, that everything appears as a mirror-image. The pupil can, for this reason, easily be misled through illusions, especially with respect to a mirroring of his own being. The mirror-image of a passion does not only appear as an approaching animal—that would still be quite manageable—but it is something quite different with which one must reckon. Let us suppose that a man has a hidden evil passion. The reflection of such a desire or lust often appears in an alluring form, whereas a good characteristic may not appear at all alluring. Here again we are discussing something which has been wonderfully portrayed in an ancient saga. You find a picture of this in the legend of Hercules. As Hercules goes on his way, good and evil characteristics stand before him. Vices are clothed in the enticing form of beauty, but virtues are in modest garb.

Still other hindrances can stand in the pupil's way. Even when he is already in a position to see things objectively, there is still the other possibility of his inner will directing and influencing these phenomena as an outer force. He must bring himself to the point where he can see through this and understand the strong influence that the wish has on the astral plane. All things which have a directing force here in the physical world cease to exist when one arrives in the imaginative world. If on the physical plane you imagine yourself to have done something you actually have not done, you will soon be persuaded by the facts of the physical world that this is not so. This is not the case in astral space. There, pictures of your own wishes deceive you, and you must have knowing guidance which will piece together how these imaginative pictures work in order to perceive their true significance.

The third task in the Rosicrucian training is to learn the occult script. What is this occult script? There are certain pictures, symbols, which are formed by simple lines or the joining of colors. Such symbols constitute a definite occult sign-language. Let us take the following as an example. There is a certain process in the higher worlds which also operates in the physical world: the whirling of a vortex. You can observe this whirling of a vortex when you look at a star cluster, as in the constellation of Orion, for example. There you see a spiral, only it is on the physical plane. But you can view this also on all planes. It can present itself in the form of one vortex entwining itself into another. This is a figure to be found on the astral plane in all possible forms. When you understand this figure, you can grasp through it how one race transforms itself into another. At the time of formation of the first sub-race of our present main race, the sun stood directly in the sign of Cancer. At that time, one race entwined itself in the other; for this reason, one has this occult sign for Cancer. All of the signs of the Zodiac are occult signs. One must only come to know and understand their meaning.

The pentagram is also such a sign. The pupil learns to connect certain sensations and feelings with it. These are the counterpart of astral processes. This sign-language, which is learned as occult script, is nothing other than a reproduction of the laws of the higher worlds. The pentagram is a sign which expresses various meanings. As the letter B is used in many different words, so can a symbol in the occult script have diverse meanings. The pentagram, hexagram, angle, and other figures can be combined into an occult script which acts as a signpost in the higher worlds. The pentagram is the sign for the fivefold organization of man, for secrecy, and also for that which underlies the species-soul of the rose. When you connect the petals of the rose's image, you get a pentagram. Just as the letter B signifies something different in the words build and bond, so do the signs in the occult script also signify various things. One must learn to order them in the right way. They are the signposts on the astral plane. One who has learned to read the occult script bears the same relationship to one who only sees these symbols as a literate man does to an illiterate one in the physical world. Our symbols for writing on the physical plane are for the most part arbitrary. Originally, however, they were likenesses of the astral sign-language. Take an ancient astral symbol, Mercury's staff with the snake. That has become the letter E in our system of writing. Or take the letter W which depicts the wave-movements of water. It is the soul-sign of man and at the same time a sign for the Word. The letter M is nothing other than an imitation of the upper lip. In the course of evolution, it has all become more and more arbitrary. On the occult plane, by contrast, necessity prevails. There one can live these things.

The fourth step is the so-called “Rhythm of Life.” People know such a life-rhythm only very slightly in everyday life. They live carelessly and egotistically. At most, for the children in school, the lesson plan still bears a certain life-rhythm in that the sequence of daily lessons is repeated from week to week. But who does that in normal life? Nonetheless, one can ascend to a higher development only by bringing rhythm and repetition into one's life. Rhythm holds sway in all nature. In the revolutions of the planets around the sun, in the yearly appearance and withering of the plants, in the animal kingdom, and in the sexual life of the animals, everything is ruled rhythmically. Only man is permitted to live without rhythm in order that he can become free. However, he must of his own accord bring rhythm again into the chaos. A good rhythm is established by undertaking occult exercises every day at a definite time. The pupil must carry out his meditations and concentration exercises daily, at the same hour, just as the sun sends its forces down to earth at the same time each spring. This is a way of bringing rhythm into life. Another is one in which the occult teacher brings the proper rhythm into the pupil's breathing. Inhaling, holding the breath, and exhaling must be brought into the rhythm for a short period daily, as determined by the experience of the teacher. Thus through man a new rhythm is put in place of the old one. Making life rhythmic in such a way is a prerequisite for ascent into the higher worlds. But no one can do this without the guidance of a teacher. It should be brought to awareness here only as a principle.

The fifth step is that in which one learns the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. This consists of the teacher instructing the pupil on how to concentrate his thoughts on certain parts of the body. Those of you who heard the lecture about the relationship of the senses to the higher worlds will recall that the whole cosmos took part in the formation of the human physical body. The eye was created by light, by the spirits who work in light. Every point of the physical body stands in connection with a particular force in the cosmos. Let us examine the point at the root of the nose. There was a time when the etheric head protruded way beyond the physical body. Even in Atlantean times, the forehead was a point where the etheric head stood far out beyond the physical head, as is still the case today with the horses and other animals. With horses the etheric head today still protrudes beyond the physical. In modern man this point in the etheric head has been brought under protection of the physical head and this gives him the capacity to develop those parts of the physical brain which enable him to call himself “I.” This organ, which enables man to call himself “I,” is connected with a definite process which took place during the Atlantean development of the earth. The occult teacher now instructs his pupil thus: direct your thoughts and concentrate them on this point! Then he gives him a mantra. In this way, a certain force in this part of the head is aroused which corresponds to a certain process in the macrocosm. In such a way a correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm is evoked. Through a similar concentration on the eye, the pupil acquires knowledge of the sun. One finds the entire spiritual organization of the macrocosm spiritually within one's own organs.

When the pupil has practiced this long enough, he may go on to immerse himself in the things he has thus discovered. He may, for instance, seek out in the AkashicChronicle that point during the Atlantean epoch in which the root of the nose reached the condition upon which he had concentrated. Or he finds the sun in concentrating on the eye. This sixth step, this immersion in the macrocosm, is called Contemplation. This gives the pupil cosmic knowledge, and through it he expands his self-knowledge beyond the personality. This is something different from the beloved chatter about self-knowledge. One finds the self not when one looks within, but rather when looking without. This is the same self which produced the eye brought forth by the sun. When you wish to seek that part of the self which corresponds to the eye, then you must seek it in the sun. You must learn to perceive as your self that which lies outside of you. Looking only within oneself leads to a hardening in oneself, to a higher egotism. When people say, “I need only let my self speak,” they have no idea of the danger that lies therein. Self-knowledge may only be practiced when the pupil of the white path has bound himself to self-renunciation. When he has learned to say to each thing, “That am I,” then he is ripe for self-knowledge, as Goethe expresses in the words of Faust:

Thou leadest past mine eyes the long array
Of living things, mak'st known to me my brethren
Within the silent copse, the air, the water.

All around us are parts of our self. This is represented, for example, in the myth of Dionysos. It is for this reason that the Rosicrucian training places such a great value upon an objective and quiet contemplation of the external world: If you wish to know yourself, behold yourself in the mirror of the outer world and its beings! What is in your soul shall speak to you far more clearly from the eyes of companions than if you harden yourself and sink into your own soul. That is an important and essential truth which no one who wishes to walk on the white path may ignore. There are many people today who have transformed their ordinary egotism into a more refined egotism. They call it theosophical development, when they have allowed their ordinary, everyday selves to rise as high as possible. They wish to bring out the personal element. The true occult knowledge, by contrast, shows man how his inner nature is elucidated when he learns to perceive his higher self in the world.

When a man has developed himself through the contemplation of these convictions, when his self flows out over all things, when he feels the blossom that grows before him as he feels his finger moving, when he knows that the whole earth and the whole world is his body, then he learns to know his higher self. Then he speaks to the flower as to a member of his own body: You belong to me, you are a part of myself. Gradually he experiences what is called the seventh step of the Rosicrucian path: Godliness. This represents the element of feeling which is necessary to lead man up into the higher worlds, where he may not merely think about the higher worlds, but learn to feel in them. Then the fruits of his striving to learn, under the constant guidance of his teacher, will be shown to him, and he need not fear that his occult path might lead him into an abyss. All things which have been described as dangers of occult development do not come into question if one has been guided in the right way. When this has happened, the occult seeker becomes a true helper of humanity.

During Imagination, the possibility arises for the individual to go through a certain portion of the night in a conscious condition. His physical body sleeps as usual, but a part of his sleep-condition becomes animated by significant dreams. These are the first heralds of his entrance into the higher worlds. Gradually, he leads his experiences over into his ordinary consciousness. He then sees astral beings in his entire environment, even here in the room between the chairs, or out in the woods and meadows.

Man reaches three stages during Imaginative knowledge. On the first stage, he perceives the beings which stand behind physical sense-impressions. Behind the color red or blue stands a being, behind each rose; behind each animal stands a species- or group-soul. He becomes day-clairvoyant. If he now waits for a while and practices Imagination quietly, and steeps himself in the occult script, he also becomes day-clairaudient. On the third level, he becomes acquainted with all the things one finds in the astral world which draw man down and lead him into evil, but which actually are intended to lead him upwards. He learns to know Kamaloca.

Through that which forms the fourth, fifth, and sixth parts of Rosicrucian training, that is, the life-rhythm, the relation of microcosm to macrocosm, and contemplation of the macrocosm, the pupil reaches three further stages. In the first, he attains knowledge of the conditions of life between death and a new birth. This confronts him in Devachan. The next is the ability to see how forms change from one state to another, transmutation, the metamorphosis of form. Man did not always have the lungs he has today, for example; he acquired them first in Lemurian times. During the preceding Hyperborean epoch they had another form; before that, another form, because he found himself in an astral condition; and before that, yet another form, because he was M Devachan. One could also say: at this stage, man becomes acquainted with the relationships between the different globes, which is to say that he experiences how one globe or condition of form passes over into another. As a last step, before he passes over into still higher worlds, he beholds the metamorphosis of the conditions of life. He perceives how the different beings pass through different kingdoms, or rounds, and how one kingdom passes over into another. Then he must ascend to still higher stages, which cannot, however, be discussed further today.

What has been pursued here will give you enough material to ponder over for the present. Those things must be really pondered over; that is the first step to ascend to the heights. Therefore, it is a good thing to have the path sketched once in an orderly way. It may be possible to take a journey on the physical plane without a map of the country. On the astral plane, however, to be given such a map is necessary. Regard these communications as a kind of map, and they will be useful to you not only in this life, but also when you step through the portal into the higher worlds. Whoever takes up these things through spiritual science will be served well by this map after death. The occultist knows how wretched it often is for those who arrive on the other side and have no idea where they really are and what they are experiencing. One who has lived with the teachings of spiritual science knows his way about and can characterize these things to himself. If man would not shrink from treading the path of knowledge, this would bring him great benefit in the other world.

Let us try to think once about the fact how many people are still able to evoke a clear, somewhat more in-depth idea in their souls walking through the streets and looking at the preparations of Christmas everywhere. There are slightly clear ideas about this festival today and they correspond less to the intentions of those—we are allowed to speak as theosophists this way—who once used these great festivals as symbols of the infinite and imperishable in the world. You can convince yourselves of it adequately if you have a look at the so-called Christmas considerations of our newspapers. There probably cannot be anything bleaker and stranger at the same time to that which it concerns than what is disseminated by the printed paper into the world at this time. Let a kind of summary of that pass before our souls that these various autumn talks on the spiritual-scientific horizon have brought us. It should not be a pedantic, schoolmasterly summary, but a summary of the kind as it can arise in our hearts if we link on Christmas from the spiritual-scientific point of view. The spiritual-scientific view of life should not be a grey theory, not an external confession, not a philosophy, but it should pulsate in our life directly. The modern human being is estranged to the immediate nature, much more than he thinks, much more than still at the time of Goethe.

On the other hand, does anyone still feel the whole depth of that saying by Goethe, which the great poet spoke when he entered the circles of Weimar and began a life epoch extremely important for him at the same time? At that time, he addressed a hymn, a kind of prayer to Nature with her mysterious forces:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her—unable to come out of her, and unable to go deeper into her. Uninvited and not warned she takes us up in the circulation of her dance and drifts away with us, until we are tired and drop out of her arm.

She creates forever new figures; what is there was never, what was does not come again—everything is new and, nevertheless, always the old.

We live in the middle of her and are strange to her. She speaks continually with us and does not betray her mystery to us. We continuously work on her and, nevertheless, do not exercise power over her.

She seems to be out for individuality of everything and makes nothing of the individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her workshop is inaccessible.

She lives in nothing but children; where is the mother? She is the only artist: from the simplest material to the biggest contrasts; by all appearance without effort to the biggest completion—to the most precise assertiveness, always covered with something soft. Any of her works has own being, any of her phenomena the most isolated concept, and, nevertheless, everything constitutes one.

She plays a game: whether she sees it herself, we do not know, and, nevertheless, she plays it for us who stand in the corner.

It is an everlasting life, becoming and moving in her, and, nevertheless, it does not move further along. It changes forever and no moment of standstill is in her. She has no concept of remaining and curses the standstill. She is firm. Her step is measured, her exceptions are seldom, and her principles are unalterable...

We all are her children. If we believe to act according to her principles least of all, maybe, we act most of all according to this big principle that floods through Nature and streams into us. Who does feel the other significant saying by Goethe so deeply even today with which Goethe tried not less to express the empathy with the concealed forces common to Nature and the human being, where Goethe approaches Nature not as a lifeless being like the modern materialistic thinking where he speaks to her like a living spirit:

Spirit sublime, all that for which I prayed,
all that you now have granted me. In fire
you showed your face to me, but not in vain.
You gave me for my realm all Nature's splendour,
with power to feel and to enjoy it. You grant
not only awed, aloof acquaintanceship,
you let me look deep down into her heart
as if it were the bosom of a friend.
You lead the ranks of living beings past me,
and teach me thus to know my fellow creatures
in air and water and in silent wood.
And when the storm-swept forest creaks and groans,
when, as it falls, the giant fir strips down
and crushes neighbouring boughs and trunks, and when
the hill echoes its fall as muffled thunder,
you guide me to the safety of a cave,
reveal my self to me, and then my heart's
profound and secret wonders are unveiled.

(Faust I, Forest and Cave, v. 3217-3234)

Goethe tried out of his feeling of nature to refresh something of that, which flowed out of emotion and knowledge at the same time by this mood. This is the mood of the times in which wisdom still was in league with nature, when those symbols of empathy with nature and the universe were created, which we recognise as the great festivals from the spiritual-scientific point of view. Such a festival has become something abstract, almost uninteresting to the soul and to the heart. Today often the word about which we can argue to which we can swear weighs much more than that which should apply to this word originally. This external word should be the representative, the announcement, the symbol of the big creative word that lives in the outside nature and in the whole universe. It revives again in us if we recognise ourselves correctly, and all human beings have to become aware of it with those opportunities that are in particular suited to it according to the course of nature. This was the intention when the great festivals were established. Let us attempt to apply our knowledge we have got in the course of the spiritual-scientific talks to understand something that the old sages expressed in the Christmas.

Christmas is not only a Christian festival. It existed where religious feeling expressed itself. If you look around in old Egypt, thousands and thousands years before our calendar, if you walk across to Asia, even if you go up into our areas, again many years before our calendar, everywhere you find this same festival during the days in which also the birth of Christ is celebrated by the Christians.

What a festival was celebrated everywhere on earth since ancient times during these days?—We want to refer to nothing but to those marvellous fire festivals, which were celebrated in the areas of Northern and Central Europe in old times. During these days, that festival was mainly celebrated in our areas, in Scandinavia, Scotland, England, within the circles of the old Celts by their priests, the so-called druids. What did one celebrate there?

One celebrated the ending wintertime and the springtime announcing itself again bit by bit. Of course, we still approach wintertime advancing to Christmas. But in nature a victory has already announced itself there which can just be the symbol of a festival of hope for the human being, or better said—if we use the word that exists for this festival almost in all languages—the symbol of a festival of confidence, of trust and faith.

The victory of the sun over the opposing powers of nature: this is the symbol. We have felt the shorter and shorter growing days. This decreasing in length of the days is an expression of a decease, better said of the natural forces falling asleep up to the day at which we celebrate Christmas and at which our ancestors celebrated the same festival. During this day, the days start becoming longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Today, this appears to us, thinking materialistically, even more than we believe it, as an event about which we do no longer think in particular. It appeared to those who had a lively feeling and wisdom connected with this feeling as a living expression of a spiritual experience, of an experience of the divinity, which leads our life. As if in the single human life an important event takes place that decides something, one felt such a solstice in that time as something important in the life of a higher being. Yes, even more: one did not feel this decreasing and increasing of the days immediately as an expression of such an event in the life of a higher being, but still more like a reminiscent sign of something much bigger, something unique. Thus, we conceive of the great basic idea of Christmas as a universal festival, a festival of humanity of the highest rank.

In the times in which a real secret doctrine one saw something occurring in nature at Christmas that was considered as a commemoration of a great event which had taken place once on earth. The priests, who were the teachers of the peoples, gathered the faithful around themselves during these days at midnight and tried to reveal a great mystery to them and spoke about the following. I do not tell anything sophisticated to you here, anything found by the abstract science, but I say something that lived in the mysteries, in secret cult sites, because the priests gathered their faithful around themselves by that which they said to them to give them strength for their teachings.

Today, they said, we see the victory of the sun over the darkness announcing itself. Thus, it also was once on this earth. There the sun celebrated the great victory over the darkness. This happened in such a way: until then all physical, all bodily life on our earth had almost only reached the stage of animals. What lived on our earth as the highest realm was only on the level to be prepared to receive the immortal human soul. Then a moment came in this prehistoric time, a great moment of human development, when the immortal imperishable human soul descended from divine heights. The wave of life had developed up to that time in such a way that the human body had become able to take up the imperishable soul in itself. Indeed, this human ancestor ranked higher than the materialist naturalists believe. However, the spiritual part, the immortal part was not yet in him. It descended only from another, higher planet to our earth, which should now become the scene of its work, the place of residence of that which is now undetachable to us, of our soul.

We call these human ancestors the Lemurian race. The Atlantean race and then ours, which we call the Aryan race, followed it. Within this Lemurian race, the human bodies were fertilised by the higher human soul. Spiritual science calls this great moment of human development the descent of the divine sons of the spirit.

Since that time, this human soul forms and works in the human body for its higher development. Unlike the materialist natural sciences imagine, the human body was fertilised by the imperishable soul at this time. At that time contrary to the view of the materialist naturalists, something happened in the big universe that belongs to the most important events of our human development.

At that time, that constellation, that mutual position of earth, moon, and sun gradually appeared, which made the descent of the souls possible. The sun became significant for growth and thriving of the human being and of the plants and animals belonging to him. Only somebody who realises spiritually the whole becoming of humanity and earth correctly sees this connection of sun, moon, and earth with the human beings living on earth.

There was a time—one taught this at these old times—, when the earth was one with the sun and moon. They were one body. The beings still possessed figures and appearances different from those living on earth today, because they were adapted to that world body which consisted of sun, moon and earth together. Everything that lives on this earth received its being because first the sun and then the moon separated, and that these heavenly bodies interrelated now externally with our earth. The mystery of the togetherness of the human spirit with the entire universal spirit is based on this relationship. Spiritual science calls the universal spirit logos, which encloses sun, moon, and earth at the same time. We live, we work and we are in it.

As well as the earth was born out of the body which enclosed sun and moon at the same time, the human being was born out of a spirit, of a soul to which sun and earth and moon belong at the same time. If the human being looks at the sun, at the moon, he should see not only these external physical bodies, but he should regard them as external bodies of spiritual beings. Modern materialism has admittedly forgotten this. However, who can no longer regard sun and moon as the bodies of spirits can also not recognise the human body as the body of a spirit. As true as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, as true the heavenly bodies are the bearers of spiritual beings.

The human being also belongs to these spiritual beings. As well as his body is separated from the forces which prevail in the sun and moon, and, nevertheless, as his external physical accommodates forces which are active in the sun and moon, the same spirituality, which rules on the sun and the moon is also active in his soul. While the human being became this being on earth, he became dependent on that effect of the sun, which it causes as a special body shining on the earth.

Our ancestors felt as spiritual children of the whole universe that way, and they said to themselves, we have become human beings because the spirit of the sun caused our spiritual form. The victory of the sun over the darkness signifies to us a memory of the victory, which our soul gained in those days, in the times in which the sun appeared for the first time in such a way as it shines now onto the earth. It was a victory of the sun, when the immortal soul entered the physical body in the sign of the sun, when it descended into the darkness of desires and passions.

Let us imagine the life of the spirit. The darkness precedes the solar victory. It followed a former solar time only. Thus, it was also with the human soul. This human soul originates from the original divinity. However, it had to disappear for a while in unconsciousness to build up the lower human nature within this unconsciousness; since this human soul itself built up the lower human nature gradually to inhabit this house built by itself. If you imagine that a master builder builds a house, according to his best forces, and enters it later, you have a right simile of the entry of the immortal human soul into the human body. The human soul could work only unconsciously in that time on its house. This unaware work is expressed in the simile by the darkness. The emergence of consciousness, the lighting up of the conscious human soul is expressed in the simile by the solar victory.

Thus, this solar victory signified to those who still had a lively feeling of the connection of the human being with the universe the moment in which they had received the most important of their earthly existence. This great moment was maintained in that celebration.

At all times one imagined the way of the human being on earth in such a way that this human being becomes more and more similar to the regular rhythmical way of nature. If we look from the human soul at that which encloses its life now, at the way of the sun in the universe and at all with which this way of the sun is connected, something becomes clear to us that is infinitely important to feel. It is the big rhythmical, the big harmonious in contrast to the chaotic, to the unharmonious in the own human nature. Look at the sun, pursue it on its way, and you see how rhythmically, how regularly its phenomena return in the course of the day and of the year. You see how regularly and rhythmically everything is connected in nature under the influence of the sun.

On occasion, I have already emphasised that everything is rhythmical with the beings ranking below the human being. Imagine the sun deviating for a moment, for a fraction of a second only, and imagine the unbelievable, indescribable mess, which would be caused in our universe.

The rhythmical life processes of all beings that are dependent on the sun are connected with this harmony. Imagine the sun in the course of the year how it evokes the beings of nature in the spring, imagine how little you are able to think that the violet blossoms at a time different from that when you are used. Imagine that the seeds are sown at another time and the harvest may take place at another time than it takes place. Up to the animal life, everything appears to you depending on the rhythmical way of the sun. Even with the human being, everything is rhythmical, regular, and harmonious, as far as it is not subjected to the human passions, instincts or even to the human mind. Observe the pulse, the way of digestion, and admire the big rhythm and feel the great, infinite wisdom that floods through the whole nature, and then compare the irregular, the chaotic to it which prevails in the human passions and desires and in particular in the human mind and thinking. Try once to let the regular of your pulse and your breath pass yourselves by, and compare it to the irregularity of your thinking, feeling and willing. They wander around aimlessly.

On the other hand, imagine how wisely the life powers are arranged how the rhythmical has to overcome the chaos. Which crimes do not all human passions and hedonism commit against the rhythm of the human body! On occasion I have already mentioned here how marvellous it is for him who gets to know the heart by anatomy, this wonderfully arranged organ of the human body, and must say to himself what has it to bear because the human being enjoys tea, coffee and so on that has an effect on the rhythmical, harmonious heartbeat. Thus, it is with the entire rhythmical, divine nature that our ancestors admired and the soul of which is the sun with its regular way.

While the sages and their followers looked at the sun, they said to themselves, you are the picture of that which is not yet this soul, which is born with you, but which it should become.—The divine world order presented itself to these sages in its whole glory. The Christian worldview also says that the glory is in the divine heights (Latin gloria in excelsis deo). The word “glory” means revelation, not honour, or splendour.

One should not say, glory to God in highest heaven—but God is revealed in the heavens today.—This is the true meaning of the sentence. In this sentence, one can fully feel the glory flowing through the world. In former times, one felt in such a way that one established this world harmony as a great ideal for that who should be the leader of the remaining humanity. Therefore, one spoke at all times and everywhere where one was aware of these matters of the “sun hero.”

In the temple sites where the initiation was carried out one distinguished seven degrees. I use the Persian terms of these degrees. The first degree is that where the human being went beyond the everyday feeling, where he came to a higher mental feeling and to the knowledge of the spirit. One called such a human being “raven.” Hence, the ravens are those, which announce to the initiates in the temples what takes place outdoors in the world. When the medieval poetry of wisdom wanted to portray an initiate in the person of a medieval ruler, for example, Barbarossa who should wait inside of the earth with the treasures of wisdom of the earth for that big moment when Christianity should rejuvenate humanity, it let the ravens be again the messengers. Even the Old Testament speaks of the ravens of Elias (Elia, Elijah).

The initiates of the second degree are the “occult.” The third degree is that of the “fighters,” the fourth degree is that of the “lions.” The initiates of the fifth degree are called with the name of their own people: Persian or Indian and so on, because only the initiate of the fifth degree is the true representative of his people. One called the sixth degree “sun hero” or “sun runner.” The seventh degree had the name “Father.”

Why did one call the initiate of the sixth degree a sun hero? Who had climbed up so high on the ladder of spiritual knowledge had to have developed such an inner life at least that it ran after the pattern of the divine rhythm in the whole universe. He had to feel, to think in such a way that anything chaotic, anything arrhythmic, anything inharmonious no longer existed with him. This was the demand, which one made on him in the sixth degree of initiation. One considered them as holy human beings, as a pattern, as ideals, and said about them, as big as the misfortune would be to the universe if it were possible that the sun deviated from its way for a quarter of a minute. It would also be a big misfortune if it were possible for a sun hero to deviate from the way of the big morality, from the road of the soul rhythm.—One called somebody a sun hero who had found such a sure way in his mind like the sun outdoors in the universe. All nations had such sun heroes.

Our scholars know so little about these matters. Indeed, it strikes them that sun myths about the lives of all great religious founders formed. However, they do not know that one was in the habit of creating the leading heroes sun heroes with the ceremonies of initiation. It is not miraculous at all, if that which the ancient peoples had attempted to put into them is found out again by the materialist research. With Buddha and even with Christ, one looked for such sun myths and found them. Here you have the reason why one could find this with them. They were put into them first, so that they showed an immediate imprint of the solar rhythm. Then these sun heroes were the big pattern that one should try to equal.

What did one imagine what happened in the soul of such a hero who had found such an inner harmony?—One imagined that in such a way that now no longer only a single human soul lived in him, but that in him something of the universal soul had emerged which flows through the whole universe. In Greece, one called this universal soul, which flows through the whole universe, Chrestós, and the most elated sages of the East know it as buddhi. If the human being has stopped only feeling as the bearer of his individual soul and if he experiences anything of the universal, then he has created an image of that in himself, which combined at that time as a solar soul with the human body; then he has reached something tremendously important on the road of humanity.

If we look at this human being with such an ennobled soul, we are able to put the future of the human race and the whole relationship of this human future with the idea, the image of humanity generally, before ourselves. As humanity faces us today, one can imagine only that certain matters are decided by the fact that people bring about a decision in quarrel and discord by a kind of majority, by a majority decision. Because where one still looks at such majority decisions as something ideal, there one has not yet understood what truth is. Where does truth live in us? Truth lives in us where we pledge ourselves to think logically. On the other hand, would it not be nonsense to decide by majority decision whether two times two are four or three times four are twelve? If the human being has recognised once what is true, then millions may come and say, it is different, nevertheless, he has his assurance in himself.

So far, we are in relation to the scientific thinking, to that thinking, which is no longer affected by human passions, desires, and instincts. Where passions, desires and instincts play a part, the human beings are still in quarrel, in confused mess as the instincts form a wild chaos generally. However, if once the desires, instincts, and passions are purified, have become what one calls buddhi or the Chrestós, if they are developed up to that height on which today the logical thinking is without passion, then that the human ideal is attained which shines to us in the old religions of wisdom, in Christianity, in the anthroposophic spiritual science. If our thinking and feeling is so purified that that which one feels harmonises with that which our fellow men feel, if on this earth the same epoch has arrived for the feeling and the sensation, as it has come for the equalising intellect, if buddhi is on this earth, if the Chrestós is embodied in the human race, then the ideal of the old teachers of wisdom, of Christianity, of anthroposophy is fulfilled. Then one needs to vote just as little about that which one regards as good, noble and right as one needs to vote about what one has recognised as logically wrong or right. Everybody can put this ideal before his soul, and doing this, he has the ideal of the sun hero before him, the same that all esoteric teachers also have who are initiated in the sixth degree.

Even our German mystics of the Middle Ages felt this, while they pronounced a word of deep meaning, the word deification or apotheosis. This word existed in all religions of wisdom. What does it signify? It signifies the following: once also those at whom we look today as the spirits of the universe passed a chaotic stage which humanity experiences today. These leading spirits of the universe brought themselves up to their divine stage where their manifestations of life sound harmoniously through the universe. What appears to us today as the harmonious way of the sun in the course of the year, with the growth of the plants, in the life of the animals, was once chaotic and brought it to this great harmony. Where these spirits stood once, the human being stands today. He develops from his chaos to a future harmony that is modelled after the present sun, the present universal harmony.

The anthroposophic mood of Christmas results from this, not as a theory, not as a doctrine, but as a living feeling lowered into our souls. If we feel it so sure that the splendour, the revelation of the divine harmony, appears in the heights of the heavens, and if we know that the revelation of this harmony sounds once from our own soul, then we feel the other that will happen within humanity due to this harmony. Then we feel the peace of those who are of good will (Latin: et pax hominibus bonae volutatis). Thus, two feelings are connected as Christmas feelings. If we look into the divine world order, into the revelation, at its splendour in the heights of the heavens, and look at the human future, we can already feel that harmony in advance which takes place on earth in the human beings in the future who have the feeling and the sensation of it. The more that lowers itself into us what we feel outdoors in the world as harmony, the more peace and harmony will be on this earth.

Thus, the great ideal of peace places itself as the highest feeling of nature before our souls if we feel the way of the sun in nature in the right way during Christmastide. If we understand the victory of the sunlight over the darkness during these days, we take the big confidence, the big trust from it that connects our own developing souls with this world harmony, and then we let that be known not for nothing, which lives in this world harmony in our souls. Then something lives in us that is harmonious, then the seed falls into the soul that brings peace on this earth, in the sense of the peace between the religions. Those human beings are of good will who feel such peace, such a peace, as it spreads over the earth if that higher stage of the unity of feeling is attained which is attained only in the equalising intellect today. Then love flowing through everything replaces quarrel and discord. Goethe said in the same hymn I have quoted that a few swallows from this cup of love compensate a life full of trouble.

That is why Christmas was a festival of confidence, of trust and hope in all religions of wisdom because we feel during these days that the light must be victorious. Out of this big universal feeling, the Christian church determined in the fourth century to reschedule the birthday celebration of the Saviour on the same day in which with all great religions of wisdom the victory of the light over the darkness was celebrated. Until the fourth century Christmas, Christ's birthday celebration was completely variable. Only in the fourth century, one decided to let the Saviour be born on that day when this victory of the light over the darkness has always been celebrated.

Today we cannot deal with the Christian teachings of wisdom, which will be an object of a talk next year. But one thing should and must be said already today that nothing was more justified than to reschedule the birthday celebration of that divine individuality in this time, which offers the guarantee, the confidence to the Christian that his soul, his divinity will carry off the victory over everything that is darkness in his only outward world. Thus, Christianity is in harmony with all great world religions. When the Christmas bells sound, the human being may probably remember that during these days this festival was celebrated all over the world. Everywhere it was celebrated where one had understood the true big progress of the human soul in this world, where one knew something of the significance of spirit and spiritual life, where one tried to practice self-knowledge in the practical sense.

We have today not spoken of an uncertain, an abstract feeling of nature, but we have spoken about a feeling of nature in any lively spirituality. If we go back to the word of Goethe: “Nature, we are surrounded and embraced by her” and so on, we may be clear in our mind that we interpret nature, not in the materialistic sense, but that we see the external expression and the physiognomy of the universal divine spirit in her. As the physical is born from the physical, the mental and spiritual from the divine-mental and divine-spiritual, and as the physical, the body combines with merely material forces, the soul combines with the spirit.

The great annual festivals are there as symbols for humanity to feel this in connection with the whole universe and to use our knowledge, our thinking to feel one with the whole universe not uncertain but most certain. If one feels anything about it again, these festivals will be different from today, then they will plant themselves again vividly in soul and heart, then they will be to us that which they should be really to us: nodal points of the year, which connect us with the universal spirit.

If we have fulfilled our duties, our tasks of everyday life all the year round, at these points of the year, we look at that which connects us with the everlasting. Even if we know that we had to grind out quite a few in the course of the year, during these days we get a feeling of the fact that there is peace and harmony beyond all fight and chaos. Therefore, these festivals are annual festivals of the great ideals; and Christmas is the birthday celebration of the greatest ideal of humanity, the ideal that humanity must gain if it wants to reach its destination generally. The birthday celebration of that which the human being can feel and want is Christmas if one understands it properly.

The anthroposophic spiritual science wants to go making understandable this festival again. We want to announce not a dogma, no mere doctrine, or philosophy to the world but life. This is our ideal that everything that we say and teach, and is included in our writings, in our science passes into life. It passes into life if the human being practices spiritual science also in the everyday life everywhere, so that we do no longer need to speak of spiritual science, if from all pulpits spiritual-scientific life sounds through the words, which are spoken to the believers, without saying the word theosophy or spiritual science. If at all courts the human actions are considered with spiritual-scientific feeling, if at the sickbed the doctor feels spiritual-scientifically and heals spiritual-scientifically, if at school the teacher develops spiritual science for the adolescent child, if in all streets one thinks, feels, and acts spiritual-scientifically, so that the spiritual-scientific doctrine becomes superfluous—then our ideal is attained, then spiritual science will be mundane. Then, however, spiritual science will also be in the great festive turning points of the year. The human being connects his everyday tasks with the spiritual using the spiritual-scientific thinking, feeling, and willing. On the other hand, he lets the everlasting and imperishable, the spiritual sun shine in his soul at the great annual festivals. They remind him that in him a true, higher self is, a divine, a sun-like, a light that will forever win over all darkness, over all chaos, that gives a soul peace, that will always compensate all fight, all war and strife in the world.