The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The last time we gathered here I was able to speak to you of the deep foundations underlying the ideas of the Threefold Commonwealth. I was able to carry the lecture far enough for us to see in what sense one may say that we are living at the present time in a definite period of transition. You will not misunderstand that remark, for I have often told you that when I talk of a transition it is not meant in the trivial sense in which people often speak when they talk about living in a period of transition. Naturally as I have often said, every period is a period of transition from what went before to what is to follow. The essential thing is to direct our attention to what is changing. And from that point of view there are more important and less important moments in the great world evolution of mankind. And it is clear that beneath the surface, as it were, of outer events something is happening in our time with respect to enormously important impulses of human evolution. In my last lecture I drew your attention to the fact that one must see into the so-called unconscious, or subconscious, of the human being if one would recognize what is really vitally involved in the transition mankind is undergoing today. Not much in our consciousness today tells us about the evolution of mankind in general, although we are living precisely in that world-age in which a development of the consciousness-soul is normal for the individual. Mankind as a whole, as distinguished from the individual, is in this age passing through a development of inner soul and spiritual forces, and for that reason the development is more in the subconscious. For mankind as a whole we must look for the most important forces of transition in the subconscious; while for the individual, we will find the most important forces today in the tendency to develop complete consciousness. In the individual an instinctive, more naive soul-life is changing more and more to a conscious soul-life; in mankind as a whole, however, an important change is taking place unconsciously, without the individual often being aware of it unless he has deepened his vision by work in spiritual science.

This vital change, this most important happening, is not so easy to describe, for our language has been made fundamentally for the purpose of reproducing outer sense reality in the soul. This makes it difficult for us to describe precisely, or adequately, something that does not belong to sense reality, but to supersense existence. Often one has to make use of comparisons—not abstract ones but such as you are well acquainted with in spiritual science, where one phenomenon of life is placed by the aide of another so that one will throw light on another. If such comparisons are used it must at the same time be made very clear that only flexible thinking, thinking that does not stamp the concepts, the words, into a set shape, in really compatible with the sense of what is presented. If I want to characterize the most important thing that is happening to mankind as a whole at the present moment of world evolution (I have already pointed it out) I must compare it with the experience that an individual has (consciously, however) when he crosses the threshold, as it is called, into the supersense world. You all know from the description I have given of this individual experience in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment that the crossing of the threshold is an event of deepest significance for the human being. On this side of the threshold is the sense world for man's consciousness, and on the other, the supersense world. Truly, on that other side everything is different from things of the sense world here. And man experiences something there that is named by those who went through the same experience in the manner of former ages in the significant words, “passing through the gate of death”. Indeed, he who crosses the threshold has to learn to know death in its reality. He has to become acquainted with death in its meaning for humanity.

Now you know from the description which I have given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds that in this crossing of the threshold the entire soul being of man goes through a transformation—but only, of course, for those times in which one remains consciously in the supersense world. The constitution of soul that one has here in the sense world, that is suited to life, to work and action, in the sense world: one cannot come into the supersense world with that. Here in the sense world our soul forces are as it were melted together, so that we never have the experience in our sense life of these soul forces being separated. Anyone who did not have a certain amount of willing in his soul at the same time that he was thinking, even though in a latent form, would not be really healthy physically. We are not in a position in our sense life to separate these three soul forces one from another, so that really we never develop a pure isolated thought, or a pure isolated feeling, or a pure isolated willing. In our conceptions, feelings, actions, and will, these three soul forces are still interwoven always, mixed up with one another. But as soon as we cross the threshold into the supersense world—that is, as soon as we get our soul to the stage where we are actually surrounded by supersense beings, by supersense deeds of these beings, just as formerly we were surrounded by a world of sense things and sense happenings—then, my friends, then there takes place in our soul an absolute separation of thinking, feeling, and willing. As you hove been able to gather from the description in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, a man must have so schooled himself that he is able then to summon sufficient power to hold together with his ego these three elements of the soul life, thinking, feeling, and willing:—otherwise he would split up into three persons.

Yes, my dear friends, one meets with a significant experience of inner activity when one has crossed the threshold; this finding oneself within in the most enhanced activity of the ego, in the highest manifestation of the ego, for the purpose of holding together the separated soul forces, thinking, feeling, and willing. And that accounts for the fear that a faint- hearted man today feels: fear of actual supersense knowledge, fear before the highest kind of inner soul activity. He would like all of his activity to be of such a kind as is aroused by the outer world and has effect in the outer world. Inner activity is not yet natural to him; more and more it must be developed by him for the future. And so, because at first this development is a task, because it is not actually already inherent, man is afraid, man is cautious about entering the supersense world. Unconsciously he is afraid of himself (if I may so express it) in face of the exertion necessary there to hold the separated soul forces together.

I am picturing this inner experience of the individual in order to have some way by which to characterize for you that which is happening in this age inside the soul life—and you know that one can speak of such a thing—of mankind as a whole. That which I have just described as an individual's experience when crossing the threshold into the supersense world is naturally a fully conscious experience for him, much more so then any conscious experience of his ordinary waking day consciousness. It is a heightened consciousness in which one crosses the threshold and in which one perceives in the supersense world the threefold nature of the human soul being. Something similar to that—but now not consciously—the whole of mankind is going through in the present age as a cosmic historical experience. It is not noticed, this unconscious process that is going on in all mankind, unless one in studying consciously in spiritual science. You know our age is the fifth since the great Atlantean catastrophe which made the configuration of our earth surface as it now exists. We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean period; and in this period mankind must go through in its evolution as a whole something similar to what the crossing of the threshold into the supersense world is for an individual. Mankind as a whole, I said, in its cosmic—or we can say if we like terrestrial—evolution, is crossing a threshold on one side of which, or in other words, for the time preceding which, an entirely different kind of world conception and knowledge was necessary for mankind as a whole than is necessary on the other side, or in other words, for the time afterward.

This process going on in the unconscious of all mankind today is what one must discover through spiritual science. It shows also how necessary spiritual science is to mankind today. For the crossing of this threshold must truly not remain in the unconscious. Men must become aware of it, otherwise they will sleep right through, or at least dream right through, an event that is very important for them. And this fifth post-Atlantean period is the very period in which we should be extending consciousness. But we cannot extend our consciousness of the most vital thing that is happening to mankind in any other way then by rising out of mere sense-science into spiritual science.

If you think about this, my dear friends, you will perhaps remember something that has been said again and again in the course of spiritual scientific, lectures which have been held now for such a long time in Stuttgart.

You remember I have had to emphasize this fact again and again: that Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, is not just something as it were to satisfy an individual's subjective thirst for knowledge. Spiritual Science is something that is connected with the taking up in thought, feeling, and will, of the fundamental impulse of mankind for our time. Therefore activity in spiritual science should not be a mere satisfying of an individual's longing for the newest thing, nor a mere satisfying of his desire, for knowledge. Spiritual Science should be the fulfilling of a certain duty that one has toward mankind as a whole, in order that it shall realize what is going on precisely at this moment in the depths of its evolution.

I showed you when I spoke to you last time that certain individuals who have a degree of external cleverness developed by the scientific training of the present day, are definitely aware of a phenomenon that is present in mankind in this epoch and that corresponds to something in the depths of mankind of which they are not aware. I showed you how such individuals as for example Fritz Mauthner, say that first and foremost in man is his sense perception; and that that is the only true reality of which one can speak. He reflects this reality in its highest form by his creation in art of the beautiful and the sublime. But it does not permit him to arrive at any satisfaction. He wants to penetrate things more deeply. If he tries to penetrate into the being of things through his inner self, then—Mauthner says—he does not arrive at a real contact with the true being of the world, but only comes to dreaming—dreaming which may be pleasing because he imagines it is connected with the central forces of the world, but which nevertheless, so far as knowing is concerned, is after all just dreams, just mysticism. Mysticism then is, for these persons, the second stage of man's inner soul-striving. Then they assert that mysticism is, from their point of view, dream knowledge, they are right, because they deny a supersense knowledge. The third stage, for Fritz Mauthner, is man's struggle to attain knowledge by busying himself with natural laws, historical laws, etc.; and he describes all that as docta ignorantia, on the ground that when we think we know something through science we are not merely dreaming, as in mysticism, but sleeping—sleeping as compared with what would be a real contact with the central forces of the world. Thus persons like Fritz Mauthner think that at the most man has a waking sense perception and can ennoble it through art; that he is doomed to dream when he attempts to connect himself with true reality in religion or mysticism through his inner nature; and that he is doomed to sleep when he believes he is connecting himself with things in any way through science and wisdom.

My dear friends, speaking in an absolute sense, that is all a mistake. But speaking relatively of the special soul-condition that mankind has evolved through the 19th century into the 20th century, speaking quite specifically of this mankind and not of mankind in general, it is a truth. With the means that natural scientific knowledge has made great, by which we have come to such a shipwreck of the social older, with those means the only possible soul life is what Fritz Mauthner has described; that is, the three stages—waking, in sense perception; dreaming, in mysticism; and sleeping, in science.

Such a man as Fritz Mauthner feels the crossing of the threshold by mankind as a whole. Whoever has read his Critique of Speech in which he criticizes not only concepts but speech itself -- or the two thick volumes of his Philosophical Dictionary, or even one or two of the articles in it (it is arranged alphabetically)—that person knows the soul condition he gets into as a result of this very work of Mauthner. I suggest especially—you will perhaps only be grateful for my suggestion from one point of view—that you read the article on “Christianity” in this Dictionary of Philosophy—or the article “Res Publican”, or “Goethe's Wisdom”, or “Immortality”. Everywhere you will have the feeling: first one reads a sentence; in the second sentence what one has just read is modified; in the third the modified statement is again modified; in the fourth one gets back to the first; in the fifth the entire thing is picked up again with all the assertions and modifications included. One undergoes a twisting of one's whole intellectual, rational, and soul system, and it is frightful what one experiences after such a reading. It is a frightful inner soul torture. And if one describes the inner soul torture that a man experiences after such reading—man, that is, who has sufficient courage to admit the final outcome of the present day condition of soul (there are many who have not that courage)—then in the exposing criticism that one would make, and such as I have just made, one will not be censuring Fritz Mauthner, for his very article is a confession that he suffers from the same condition of soul himself. For he says: With human knowledge one can come to nothing else than a kind of “spirit dance” in which one does not discover oneself. He mistakes the lack of knowledge that became necessary in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century for a supposed absolute incapacity for knowledge in all mankind.

What actually is the truth? Something quite different from what Mauthner believes.

In former ages, as you know, in the clairvoyance of Atlantean times, man did not dream in mysticism but had contact through mystic knowledge with reality. Also, he did not merely sleep in wisdom. We realize from what still remains of older wisdom, Plato, for instance—that they knew things to tell mankind. In Aristotle, that is already no longer true. Mankind of former ages did not have just a docta ignorantia; it had a wisdom in which it was connected with the central forces of he world, that are at the same time the central forces of the human being. But these faculties ebbed away. They had to, in order that man might then seek within himself for those strong powers that were previously given him by spiritual beings without any effort on his part. Today we are crossing the threshold, mankind as a whole; and we must develop out of our inner self the power with which to awaken mysticism, which otherwise by its very nature sleeps within us—by our own power to call mysticism from its dreaming to an experience of the spirit; and also by our inner activity, inner force, to raise what is otherwise dead abstract science to actual experience of supersense spiritual reality. Today, my dear friends, this is in our power. We must undertake the necessary training.

And men who are are willing to accept spiritual science will, like Fritz Mauthner, be obliged to experience the tragic soul condition that has been a necessary accompaniment to the evolving of man's inner forces. Men like Mauthner, who do feel such things and yet are not willing to accept spiritual science, will indeed have to despair of all possibility of contact with the central forces of existence which are at the same time the central forces of the human being. Therefore they will have to despair of the possibility of any knowledge of life. My dear friends, if you think earnestly of what I have just said, will you not have to say to yourselves: Man is confronted today in his evolution, through the fact of his unconscious crossing of the threshold, by a mighty test. It is that indeed. For if he will not develop activity of soul, intense activity of soul, then he is condemned to sink into inactivity, passiveness, and thereby into unbelief in existence—at the very least into some degree of uncertainty—when he considers his place in the whole current of world evolution. That is approximately the soul-condition of men of whom Mauthner is a type.

There are many such men in the present day; but Mauthner had sufficient inner courage to acknowledge it in many writings, while others are in the same condition of soul and do not acknowledge it. He finally had sufficient resignation to retire to Southern Bavaria after he had spent his whole life in journalism as a profession; and there he thought out the Critique of Speech, his book of bitter doubt of human knowledge; then afterwards he wrote his Philosophical Dictionary. He has withdrawn, but he still writes all kinds of articles that truly no more than his book tend to lead to a positive, forceful position within human evolution. They always show a kind of despair of the possibility of one's really comprehending existence, because as a matter of fact one cannot comprehend existence through knowledge. He has finally accepted the consequence, he has given in and withdrawn to a profession that to him is equivalent to journalism, and in which one can be a skeptic, a pessimist.

But there are pupils of Fritz Mauthner who have not been so resigned. Let us ask, what will become definitely, what will become of these pupils who subscribe wholeheartedly to Mauthner's conception of life? They will never be able to arrive at a living comprehension of reality at any comprehension that can penetrate reality fruitfully. They are unable to adapt themselves to life when they are placed in it. Fritz Mauthner got out of it. They only comprehend the sense life, and they believe that anything that goes on outside of that is only a dream or sleep. Look at one of these pupils of Mauthner—Gustav Landauer, for instance—noble, upright, but altogether useless or the social life of the present day. He is a real pupil of Fritz Mauthner. It is not enough today merely to judge life from the surface. We are confronted with tasks that can only be master- edit we are willing to go down into the foundations of life. We may not seek thought impulses today for a new social order—as do such men as I have described—out of whet the time has already brought. No we must seek even social impulses out of the age that is dawning, out of the impulses that are just arising, the impulses of spiritual knowledge. Otherwise we will not arrive at real social impulses. Then when they are found, they can be comprehended, like all spiritual scientific knowledge by a healthy human understanding. It is in such a sense that I wanted to speak of the Threefold Commonwealth.

Today it is essential that men learn to speak in all things with deepest earnestness, first for true self knowledge, secondly for true world knowledge.

Consider Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, from the most varied points of view. Certainly the need for self knowledge and the need for world knowledge are emphasized by it, just as in abstract mysticism and in much abstract occultism. But they are spoken of in a different way. And in that way I should like to write the very heart of our time: One can never attain real self knowledge without seeking this self knowledge through world knowledge. Brooding within oneself does not bring self knowledge. World knowledge must first discipline one so that one can then come to self knowledge. Also, one cannot attain world knowledge without making the way through one's self. World knowledge is not possible without self knowledge. The two things seem to contradict each other, perhaps, but this contradiction is living and fruitful. No world knowledge without self knowledge, no self knowledge without world knowledge. It is like the swinging of a pendulum back and forth. Man must seek continually in his life the swing of the pendulum from self experience to world experience, from world experience to self experience. That will give the strength of soul, that inner activity of soul, which becomes today, and in the future will become, ever more and more necessary to all mankind. Because it is so very easy today for men to brood within themselves, out of a certain egoism that is natural in this age of the development of the consciousness-soul; for that reason they have fallen in love with abstractions. They themselves cannot really judge correctly how strong their love is, in this age, for mere abstractions. For that reason it is all-important—in order to cross the threshold which I have described in the right way—that we arouse ourselves from a mere abstraction-necessity, a mere thought-necessity, to fact. From mere abstract knowledge to an experiencing of fact. To a thinking within ourselves that is not mere thoughts but that sinks us into the things, that thinks with the things and events of the world. Only then can we wake to the present.

I will give you an example of what I mean. But first I would say that, you should not interpret what I am going to say as if, when I have to characterize this or that world conception, I wanted also to take a stand against them. I only want to characterize, not criticize. What one calls “the natural scientific world conception”, or thinking orientated in the direction of natural science, has evolved in a way that I have characterized for you from most varied points of view. It has finally reached such an outlook as Mauthner's; and it has expressed itself in other variations. I wonder whether you remember a man whom I mentioned here once years ago in another connection: the man who wanted to describe the difficulty of self knowledge in one of his books called An Analysis of Experience. He wants to describe the external difficulty of self knowledge, and for that purpose gives two instances of his having been thoroughly illusioned with respect to knowledge of his own external self. Once, he says, he was walking up the street and suddenly someone was approaching him (the writer was a professor), and he thought to himself, “What a strange looking school master that is coming toward me! The person was very unattractive to him, he says. Then he noticed what actually had occurred: he cam in front of a show window and found he was facing himself in the glass. On another occasion he got into an onmibus. Opposite the door by which he entered was a mirror. He was extremely tired. He sw the image and said to himself:“What a funny looking tramp that is coming in the opposite door!” It took him a long time to realize that it was himself. There is the tale, and you will be able to judge that after all here is a man to be taken seriously: Ernst Mach, who from a natural researcher became a philosopher. He has various pupils. His world conception is not unlike Mauthner's except that he came less to uncertainty, less to skepticism; he simply believes in the play-quality of thought. The ego itself is merely a myth to him, as also to Mauthner, only Mach is content. One must study Ernst Mach, and then become acquainted with his life and his whole personality. I remember when I saw him for the first time, in the Vienna Academy of Science, where he was giving a special lecture on the Economy of Thinking, in the course of which he explained all thinking as merely an arrangement according to the principle of the smallest amount of force. I was greatly enraged at the time by this presentation of the thought process. Afterwards he elaborated the theory and wrote his books, and they had a great influence over many people. One who knows his life knows that he was undoubtedly a very excellent citizen, obedient to the city he served throughout his teaching career, and in his teachings a typical example of the thinking that has evolved in recent times.

I might name another similar thinker. Mach himself did not teach in Zurich, but a pupil of his, Adler—the same Adler who shot the Austrian minister Stürgkle. But there was even a much more abstract thinker in Zurich, and his world conception was very similar to the philosophy of Mach—Richard Avenarius. I shall not recommend that you read his books; You would throw them away after the second page. They are written in unintelligible language. And the most unintelligible thing for you would be, how it happens that so very many people have wormed their way into Avenarius's books and have formed a world conception out of his philosophy.

You see, these are extreme cases to show you the difference between a logic of mere abstract thoughts and a logic of fact. Avenarius was also in his life a good middle-class citizen, an excellent citizen of the state in the best sense of the word. But such people as Ernst Mach, his pupil Adler, in whom it was even more apparent, and Avenarius—let us take just Mach and Avenarius—they feel nothing of that logic of fact within which they stand through their on actions. For, look you, what became of the world-conception of this Ernst Mach, solid Bourgeois teacher? What became of it? It became the political philosophy of the Bolshevists; it is the world-conception that lies at the bottom of Bolshevism. Only it went through other human temperaments, through other human soul conditions. That is the actual consequence! The consequence according to fact-logic, of what Ernst Mach and Avenarius taught. It was not just by external chance that some gifted young Russians studied with Avenarius and then with Adler in Zurich; and that then this philosophy happened to be carried over into Russia. No, there is an inner spiritual connection there. It can only be grasped by one who does not think about things, but who thinks in things; he then knows that no system of abstract logical consequences leads from Avenarius and Mach to Lenin and Trotsky, but only a very living logic leads from one to the other. Those are the things upon which so much depends today. They are only comprehensible to one who has sufficient earnestness to study fro the inside how things become, how things metamorphose. We have come to a time when inner life is complicated: when anyone can believe, just as Mach and Avenarius did, that he is a law-abiding man who lives only “on the heights in spiritual serenity”, and does not for a moment suspect that his teachings are capable of becoming political dynamite when they are passed on to other minds.

The great call to men today is to develop in themselves a sense for the deeper connections of life. Without that sense we can go no further. If we want to arrive at fruitful social, ideas then we must not search, as Mach and Avenarius did, for the dead ruins of old self-annihilated world-conceptions. We must turn to the new structure, the world-conception that can only be found in Spiritual Science and that alone understands how to ask: That kind of social order must come, since from now on man, as he passes through the world, will be ever more and more threefolded in his inner nature—for that is how he is crossing the threshold. The external social order must also be threefold. Then outer and inner fact will correspond. This threefolding, if one will really examine it earnestly through Spiritual Science, is not something invented; it is something, that has been learnt from listening to the actual inner metamorphosis of mankind as it moves from the present into the future.

Among all the necessities confronting the man of the present day, is this one: that he develop the willingness to concern himself with the spiritual world; that he develop first of all the willingness so to observe himself—that he is able to see the spiritual man that is underneath. The materialism of natural science has not been worthless. It has been significant and useful even in the form of Haeckelism. That is all a test that must be undergone. It classes man with the animals, because with respect to practically everything that it considers important, man appears to be nothing more than a highly developed animal. However, as soon as we begin to consider man in his relation to the world with respect to self knowledge, then at once the thing is different. Then facts which before were of no importance become important, and vice versa. From a certain perspective a new light streams upon the whole being of man. We know it is a fact (and the exceptions only teach more bout the fact) that the animal walks about the earth with his backbone parallel to the earth's surface. Man makes himself erect in the very first period of his life; he places his body, or his backbone, at right angles with the earth's surface, and thereby forms a cross with the earth's surface and also a cross with the position of the animal's backbone. That fact expresses clearly man's relation to the outside world. It is different from the animal's relation. Of course you can read in Haeckel: Man has just as many bones and muscles as the higher animals. But there are other things to he compared which in an intuitive, or, better, an imaginative grasp of various relations between them, demonstrate the common form of the cosmos and the earth; and this manner of comprehension of the human form is more important than counting bones and muscles, more important than what comparative morphology has to say about man.

I could say a great deal in this connection that would show you,that where the old world conception which has ripened such thought-habits in man as have plunged him into his present misfortune—that where this thinking and these thought-habits end, now a new world conception must begin which, for instance, will comprehend the human form. Then it will give a spiritual view of the world that will fructify the independent spiritual member of the social organism. And at a still higher stage one will have a living knowledge of that existence which is always around us, the “open secret”, as Goethe called it. From there one will rise to an “awakening” such as I have described in my books, Human Riddles and Soul Riddles; one will rise beyond mere comprehension of the relation of the human form to the cosmos to the stage that is actual participation in the great rhythmic swing of the cosmos.

You know that man consists of these three members: nerve-sense system, rhythmic system, and metabolic system. He stands within his nerve-system in such a way as to be able to comprehend the relation of his form to the cosmos. With respect to his feelings—his rhythmics or breathings or breast-system—he stands with this rhythm within the rhythm of the whole world. We can only just touch upon this rhythm now from one angle—we could naturally do much more, but we have mentioned it often in the course of these years from the most varied points of view. I will only repeat what I have often said.

Look at our breathing. Normally, we take 18,breathe a minute. That makes about 25,920 breaths a day. So that in a day we breathe in and out alternately 25,920 times. That is the average number of breaths that a man takes. Now you know that the Old Testament puts the age of a patriarch at 70 years. Naturally one can grow older or die younger, but that is the average age of man. How many days of life is that? An average of 25,920 days. Now if you count that huge breath that we take when we enter in the morning with our ego and astral body into our etheric and physical bodies, so that in the morning we breathe in our spiritual psychic being, and in the evening we breathe it out again—if we count that as a a breath that is drawn every day, then our life-day which consists on the average of 71 years, draws 25,920 breathe. In other words, that great spirit that breathes when we are born and when we die, breathes in his life-day which includes our whole human life, the same number of inhalations and exhalations as we do in our day of 24 hours. So we are related with our human breath to that breathing of the the product of his breath in our waking and sleeping life. And the sun—which you can at least suspect to have some relation to our life—men observe how its rising moves back in the Zodiac a certain number of degrees every year, in such a way that if spring comes at a certain place in a certain constellation one year, the next year it shifts back a few degrees. So the rising of the sun circles around the whole ellipse in what is called a Platonic world-year, which consists of 25,920 years. A life-day for and death consists of 25,920 life-years. A life-day for us consists of 25,920 breaths; our life between birth and death consists of 25, 920 life-days; a great sun-year consists of 25,920 of our life-years. Thus we are brought to what is breathed in the whole sun-earth-process through a Platonic world-year. There you see into a world rhythm of which is a part within the cosmos.

Without at least the willingness to gain an active knowledge of man's relation to the cosmos you can attain no knowledge of man. You can comprehend nothing more through the natural science of today—however strangely this sounds—than man's life up to birth. After man is born something enters into his lie that natural science can no longer comprehend. Therefore natural science has to stay dallying in the method it especially loves, embryology. That is especially apparent today in the fact that the entire teaching of evolution is only an elaboration of embryology. All the rest is phantasy. As soon as man begins to live on earth the necessity immediately arises of contemplating him in imaginative and inspired knowledge. For that is the only means by which one can perceive what man experiences at death, and what death is. At the highest stage of knowledge, true Intuition, which you find described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, one attains to that insight into being which is wonderfully indicated in the German language, for one says when a man dies—with a certain fitness—he verwest. (perishes) If today one could still feel something in words, one would truly feel that verwesen means ins Wesen übergehen, ins Wesen hineingehen, mit dem Wesen eine werden. (To go over into being, to go into being, to become one with being) When the language speaks of verwesen it truly is not talking of vergehen (to pass away) [Translator's Note: Although in English one says “pass away”, the German word vergehen which means that, is apparently never used in connection with death; verwesen is the word in common use.] And that mysterious process the deep knowledge of which will create a natural science of the future, the process that is only completed when the human body apparently perishes or is reduced to ashes, is not a destructing; it is a significant constructive part of the event.

Through this kind of consideration I should like to arouse a feeling for the inner connection that lies between what is the dying world-conception and scientific tendency of the old time, and the Spiritual Science that is still in the seed today, really just emerging, in the sense of what it will be in the future. But now the two things are roughly pushed together, and that is the deep tragedy of modern life which we must overcome by inner human power. What I call—one may perhaps be offended by it—the dying bourgeois conception of the world and of life, is at an end; it has brought about its on ruin. What is emerging today as proletarian longing—although still very far from what it will be—has other human foundations. While the bourgeois world-conception is dying in the ether body, what is evolving out of the proletarian world is springing to in the astral body. An extraordinarily significant symbol of the dying world-conception was the egoism of Max Stirner. You will find it described in my book Riddles of Philosophy. We live in an age when we must always try not to judge the thing that is just arising by its outside. However many mistakes it may be making here and there, we must be able to see that the social movement is evolving today among the proletariat out of man's spiritual outlook as the seed of the future. We must be able to see that mankind is passing over a threshold and has to enter into supersense knowledge. And the key that reveals this tendency to one who has supersense—spiritual—knowledge, is precisely the fact that the proletarian world is behaving itself very materialistically indeed, in this or that leader, this or that political boss, fighting against that which it will be someday. It fights against it. It has accepted the bourgeois way of thinking as a final bequest; but it is called in human evolution to cross the threshold consciously, to work its way out of materialistic delusion to real knowledge of the supersensible.

These things that we are considering must be studied by observing their spiritual foundations, so that they do not merely become abstract knowledge but, become an inner impulse for our will. Then we will be able to establish our position within this present social order at the right time and in the right way, with full consciousness.

Bearing in mind what we sought to study yesterday, let us consider how matters actually stand in regard to what we call man's Saturn evolution.

If we remember the course of yesterday's lecture,¹ we know that there is concealed within us, within our human being, something that was first implanted in us during the Saturn period, namely, the first rudiments of our physical bodily nature. What we have acquired from the ancient Saturn evolution can be met with nowhere today in the external world. In primeval ages the Saturn evolution arose and again passed away; it possessed characteristics, forces, which seek in vain if we look around us today. For even if we look out to the stars in cosmic space we do not at first find what prevailed within the old Saturn evolution.

After this ancient Saturn evolution had died away, there came as you know, the Sun evolution and then the Moon evolution and today we are living in the Earth evolution. Three evolutionary periods have gone by. And all that formed their peculiar characteristics has passed away with them and is no more to be found in our field of vision. We can only find the characteristics of the Saturn evolution among the hidden occult activities which pulsate through the world. We can still, as it were, uncover the forces which at that time worked upon our physical body.

If you recollect what was shown in my book Outline of Occult Science you are aware that there was an active co-operation at that time between the Spirits of Will and the Spirits of Personality. This co-operation still exists today though it cannot be discerned externally. We find it if we look into what we call our personal karma. Please note, my dear friends, that our personal karma is woven in such a way that what befalls us in successive earth lives is connected as cause and effect. The forces active in our personal stream of destiny cannot be investigated by the official Natural Scientist. He will find nothing among the forces disclosed in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology etc., which calls forth the connection of cause and effect that comes to expression in our personal karma. The laws prevailing there are withdrawn from physical observation as well as from the historical observation pursued today by the so-called cultural-scientist of a materialistic colouring. The modern investigation of historical evolution, the history which is written nowadays of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, up to our own time, contains laws which have nothing to do with the forces active in our karma. Thus the historian, the modern materialistic scientist studying civilization does not discover the laws dependent on man's personal karma.

History is looked upon as a continuous stream and no one considers to what extent historical evolution depends on the fact that human souls, for instance, who were personalities in ancient Roman times are present again today. The fact that they participate in current events and that the way in which they do so flows out of their personal karma finds no place in modern materialistically coloured history.

If we seek therefore for forces having something of the nature-forces of old Saturn we have to go to the law of our personal karma. Only when we learn to read what is in the surrounding cosmos and not merely to observe it, do we gain an insight into how the laws of ancient Saturn are still in a certain way active.

If we turn our attention to the ordering and out-streaming of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac as a cosmic script, and consider what radiating forces pour into human life from Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., we are then thinking in the sense of forces which were Saturn forces. And if we try to bring personal karma into connection with the constellations which relate to the zodiacal signs, we are then living approximately in the sphere of that world-conception which must be employed for the laws of the ancient Saturn epoch.

Thus nothing visible has remained, nothing that may be perceived, and yet there is still remaining an invisible element which may be interpreted out of the signs of the cosmos. Anyone who thought that Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., made his destiny would be living under the same delusion as a man who had been sentenced by a certain legal passage and then conceived a special hatred of this paragraph in the law and believed that it had sent him to gaol. Just as little as a legal paragraph printed on the white page can sentence a man, can Aries, Taurus, or Gemini, bring about destiny. Yet one can read from the star-script the connection between the cosmos and human destiny. And thus we can say that what follows from the star script is a remainder of the ancient Saturn evolution, is indeed the ancient Saturn evolution become entirely spiritual, but leaving its signs behind in the star-script of the cosmos.

When we proceed from the Old Saturn evolution to the Moon evolution we must be clear that at first there is nothing so directly (I said; at first, so directly) in our surrounding field of vision; external nature contains in the first place in the main no forces which resemble those of the Old Moon evolution. These forces of the Old Moon have also drawn back into concealment, but they have not yet become spiritual to the same degree as the Old Saturn laws. The Saturn laws have become so spiritual that we can only investigate them in the laws of our personal destiny, that is to say, quite outside space and time. When we observe human life as a whole we still find today these ancient Saturn laws, still find what cannot be seen when we confront a man in the physical world.

We have said that in meeting man in the physical world, we have the physical body as coming from the Old Saturn evolution, the etheric from the Old Sun evolution; the astral body from the Old Moon, and the Ego. And when we look at man externally and observe his form it is solely this embodiment of the ego which is not a relic from other periods of evolution. It is the laws of Earth which prevail and are active when the ego fashions man for itself and embodies itself. The laws of the Moon evolution, the laws of the astral body have already withdrawn and are no longer outwardly active. Now if we encounter a man we shall say: “You, O Man, as you confront me as material man are an embodiment of the Ego. But deep in the background of your being lies your invisible personal destiny.” How this invisible human destiny is determined comes under the rule of ancient Saturn laws. There we are already appealing to something entirely spiritual when, from the earthly laws of the embodiment of the Ego, we look towards the ancient Saturn laws. If, however, we look from what stands before us in the human being towards what still prevails in him from the Old Moon laws we find something not so spiritual. But this too has withdrawn from the external activity of the world, this too is not directly under the active forces of Earth-existence.

Where then must we seek for what has remained behind from the ancient Moon activity? We must we seek it protected and embedded, veiled from Earthly existence. For it is active in the period before man enters Earth existence through his physical birth, it is active before the external physical ray of light can penetrate his eye, it is active before he can first draw breath. It is active from the conception to birth, active in the embryonic life. I beg you expressly to notice, however, it is not active in that which develops from the ovum to the external physical human being; in what grows from the ovum, becoming greater and greater through continuous division, the forces of the Earth are working. But it is active in what exists only in the mother and dies away during the embryonic development, in what is lost with the birth and perishes. In all that envelops the earthly human being and cares for its nourishment before it is born, in all that ensheaths the growing human being and then falls away from it—in that rule the ancient Moon laws. And with this we have something that goes beyond the single human life, that forms a connection between the individual man and his ancestors and is included in the concept of heredity.

Thus we see something that existed during the Old Moon evolution still playing an active part, though not in the external world. In the outer world it acts only, so to say, as a dying away in human development, as something that is overcome as soon as the human being draws the first active breath for earthly life.

If one would study the laws of the Old Moon existence—or at any rate a part of them—purely physiologically and not clairvoyantly, the only way to do so today would be to study the laws at work in the sheaths surrounding the human embryo before it draws the first breath, enfolding it and nourishing it. What is there enclosed in the mother's body, what can only thrive during earthly evolution within the protecting sheath of the maternal body was the whole nature during the Old Moon evolution; it filled the whole field of vision.

Thus there die not only beings in so far as they have a sheath-nature, but whole types of natural laws, and exist in succeeding ages solely as last remains. Now you will have to ask the question: How does it stand with what is derived from the Sun?

Let us look at yesterday's diagram. We have seen that through all complications that appear here, we have to do with the complete human being, with his physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego,—etheric body, astral body, ego,—astral body, ego, and with the ego itself.

All that is above the dividing line is really the hidden part of human nature. If we wish to study the laws underlying the foundation of the physical body we must look to super-sensible laws determining man's destiny. If we look towards that which rules in the astral body and finds its embodiment in the physical body, we have something that is not so spiritual, so super-sensible, but something that melts from the sense-perceptible into the super-sensible. For the part that falls away from the human embryo becomes so to say more and more atomistic. The nearer the human being approaches birth the more it dissolves materially and becomes increasingly spiritual. For that which is attached to the human being as astral body and etheric body has originated through the spiritualising of those parts of the embryonic sheaths which fall away.

The question could now arise: how does it stand with regard to the Sun part? Can we find the Sun portion somewhere in the world? This too withdraws from sense perception. Whereas what we call karma, personal destiny, or, one might say, the Saturn part of man, lies in lofty spiritual regions, we have seen that we need not ascend so high in the case of the Moon part, for we found it still ensheathed in the sensible. Nor in the case of the Sun part need we ascend so high as for the Saturn part. One can still apprehend it but it is not easily recognised.

I should like to give you an example of something where you can still recognise the Sun-part that is active, although attention can only be directed to it in a veiled way. Those of you who have acquainted yourselves with the new edition of my book, Riddles of Philosophy in Outline will have found that four periods in the development of Philosophy are distinguished. I have called the first period “The World-conceptions of the Greek Thinkers”. This lasted from 800 B.C.—in round numbers—or 600 B.C. to the birth of Christ, i.e. into the age of the origin of Christianity. A second period lasted from the rise of Christianity to about 800 – 900 A.D. up to the time of John Scotus Erigena. Then came a third period which I have called “the World-conception of the Middle Ages”, and which lasted from 800, 900 A.D. to 1600 A.D. And then there is the forth period up to our own time; we are just in this period. Eight-hundred year periods have been assigned to the history of philosophy, presented in such a way as was possible in a book meant for a public still quite unacquainted with Spiritual Science.

The intention was to give everything that could stimulate the mind and let the spiritual structure of these periods work upon one. The characteristic of the first period consists in the fact that a transition is found from a very remarkable ancient thinking to what one can call the life of thought in ancient Greece. Our age has not made much progress in the understanding of such differences, the difference, for instance, between the thought life of our own time and that of ancient Greece. Our clumsy thinking believes that thought lived in an ancient Greek head just as it lives today in the head of modern man. Thought lived in Socrates, Plato, even in Aristotle quite differently from how it lives in present-day mankind; this present thought-life first awoke in the 7th, 6th century B.C. Before that there was no actual life of thought. As my book sets out, one can speak of a beginning, of a birth of thought-life in this age of ancient Greece.

People have conceived that most curious ideas about the great philosophical figures of Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, etc. It has been pointed out, for instance, that Thales believed that the world originated out of water, Anaxagoras out of air, Heraclitus from fire. I have shown how these ancient philosophers formed their philosophies from the human temperament. They were not based on speculation, but Thales established water as the original ground of things because he was of a watery temperament; Heraclitus founded the fire-philosophy because he was of a fiery temperament and so on. You find that shown in detail in my book.

Then comes the actual thought-life. And in the epoch described here the thought-life is still essentially different from that of modern times. The Greek thinker does not draw up thoughts from the depths of his soul, but thought is revealed to him just as external sound or colour is revealed to modern man. The Greek perceives the thought; he perceives it from outside and when we speak of Greek philosophy we must not speak of such a mode of thinking as is normal today, but of thought-perception. Thus in the first period we are concerned with thought-perception. Plato and Aristotle did not think in the way the modern philosopher thinks, they thought as today we see, perceive. They looked out into the world, as it were, and perceived the thoughts which they expound to us in their philosophies just as much as one perceives a symphony. They are thought-perceivers. The world reveals to them a thought-work; that is the essential character of the Greek thinker. And this perception of the thought-work of the world was brought to the highest pitch of perfection by the Greek thinker.

If the philosophers of today believe that they understand what Plato and Aristotle perceived as a universal symphony of thoughts, that is only due to a childish stage of the modern philosopher. The modern philosophers have a long way to go before they can fully grasp what Aristotle represents as Entelechy, what he gives as the members of the human soul nature—Aesthetikon, Orektikon, Kinetikon etc. The inner activity of thinking, where one draws the thoughts out of oneself, where one must make subjective efforts in order to think, did not as yet exist in Greece. It is completely foolish to believe that Plato thought he perceived thoughts. To believe that Aristotle already thought in the modern sense, is nonsense ... he perceived thoughts.

Modern man can hardly imagine what that is, for he makes no concepts of actual evolution. He gets slight goose-flesh if one tells him that Plato and Aristotle did not think at all in the modern sense, and yet it is a fact. In order that thinking in the modern sense might take root in the modern human soul, an impulse had to come that seized its inmost part, an impulse that has nothing to do with the thought-symphony in the surrounding world but which grips man's inmost being. This impulse came from Christ and hence this period of philosophy lasts up to the time of Christ.

In the second period we are concerned with a thinking that is still not man's own individual thought, but is stimulated by the impulse coming from the external world. If you go through all the systems of thought of the philosophers of the second period up to the time of Scotus Erigena you will find everywhere how the Christ-Impulse rules in them. It is what has flowed out of Christ himself, one might say, that gives man the first stimulus to create thoughts from within outwards. This gave the stamp, the physiognomy of the patristic philosophy of the Church Fathers, the philosophy of Augustine and others up to Scotus Erigena. We can therefore say that we no longer have thought-perception, but thought-inspiration stimulated by the spirit.

It was different again in the third period when the inner impulse proceeding from Christianity began to be seized by men themselves. In this third period man begins to be conscious that it is he who thinks. Plato and Aristotle did not think, but they could as little doubt that thought has a fully objective validity as a man seeing green on a tree can doubt that it has a fully objective validity.

In the second period it was the intense belief in the Christ Impulse that gave certainty to the awakening thought. But then began the period when the human soul began to say: “Yes, it is actually you yourself who thinks, the thoughts rise up out of you.” The Christ-Impulse gradually faded and man became aware that the thoughts arose out of himself. It began to occur to him that perhaps he framed thoughts that had nothing at all to do with what is outside. Was it possible that the objective external world had nothing to do with his thoughts?

Think of the great difference between this and the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle: Plato and Aristotle perceived thoughts and therefore they could not doubt that the thoughts were outside. Now, in the third period men became aware: ‘One creates thoughts oneself ... well, then, what have thoughts to do with objective existence outside?’ And so the need arose to give certainty to thinking,—to prove thinking as was said. Only in this period could it occur to Anselm of Canterbury, for instance, to create validity for the idea of God;—for one did not see thoughts as perception. In the former Greek thinking that would have been a complete nonsense, because at that time thoughts were perceived. How can one doubt that God exists when thoughts of the Godhead are as clearly to be seen outside as the greenness of the tree? Doubt first began in the third period when men became aware that they themselves produced the thoughts. The need arose to establish the connection of that which one thinks with that which is outside. In essentials this is the epoch of scholasticism—the becoming aware of the subjectivity of thinking.

When you consider the whole thought-structure of Thomas Aquinas it stands entirely under the aegis of this epoch. The consciousness is present throughout; concepts are created within, concepts are linked together in the same way as the laws of subjectivity. Thus a support must be found for the idea that what is created inwardly also exists outside. There is still at first an appeal to traditional dogmatism, but there is no longer the same attachment to the Christ-Impulse as in the second period of philosophical development.

Then comes the fourth evolutionary period; the independent rule of thought from the external thought-perception, the independent creation of thought from within: free creation of thought, that free creation that comes to light so magnificently in the thought-structures of Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Decartes, and their successors, Leibniz etc. If we follow up these edifices of thought we observe that they are produced entirely out of the inner being. And everywhere we find that these thinkers had an intense desire to prove that what they created in themselves had also real validity externally. Spinoza creates a wonderful ideal-edifice. But the question arises: Now is that all merely created within, in the human spirit, or has it a significance in the world outside? Giordano Bruno, and Leibniz create the monad which is supposed to be a reality. How does something thought out by man as monad exist at the same time as a reality in the outer world? All the questions which have arisen since the 16th, 17th century are concerned with the endeavour to bring free thought-creation into harmony with external world existence. Man feels isolated, abandoned by the world in his free thought creation. We are still standing in the midst of this.

But now what is this whole diagram?

If we go back to the perception of thoughts which prevailed in the time of the old Greek philosophers then we must say: Philosophic thought in ancient Greece—in spite of the fact that it was the age of the intellectual or mind-soul in ancient Greece—was still a perceptive thinking, was still deeply influenced by the sentient soul, in fact by the sentient, the astral, body. It still clung to the external. The thinking of Thales, of the first philosopher was still influenced by the etheric body. They created their Water—Air—Fire—Philosophies out of their temperament, and the temperament lives in the etheric body. One can therefore say that the philosophy of the sentient body goes into the philosophy of the etheric body. Then we come into the Christian period. The Christ- Impulse penetrates into the sentient soul. Philosophy is experienced inwardly but in connection with what one can feel and believe; the influences of the sentient soul are present. In the third period, that of scholasticism, the intellectual or mind-soul is the essential element of philosophical development. Now the development of philosophy follows a different course from that of human evolution in general. And for the first time since the 16th century we now have philosophy coinciding with the general evolution of mankind, for we have the free thoughts ruling in the consciousness soul.—Consciousness soul! The magnificent example of how free thought prevails from the abstraction of existence up to the highest spirituality, how a thought-organism, leaving aside the world entirely, rules purely in itself, that is the philosophy of Hegel—the thought that lives solely in the consciousness.

If you follow this scheme it is actually the part that I could not show in my book for the public, though it lies in it. And if you read the descriptions given of the separate epochs you will, if you are proper Anthroposophists, very clearly connect them with what I have written here (see diagram). There is thus a development corresponding to that of man himself: from the etheric body to the sentient body, to the sentient soul, to the intellectual soul, to the consciousness soul. We follow a path like the path of man's evolution, but differently regulated. It is not the path of human evolution, it is different. Beings are evolving and they make use of human forces in the sentient soul, in the intellectual soul etc. Through man and his works pass other beings with other laws than those of human development.

You see—these are activities of the Sun-laws!

Here we need not ascend to such super-sensible regions as when we investigate human destiny. It is in the philosophical development of mankind that we have an example of what remains from the Sun-laws.

We had yesterday to write here Angeloi as corresponding to the etheric body (see diagram).

Such Angeloi evolve. And while men believe that they themselves philosophise, Sun-laws work in them—inasmuch as men bear within them what the Sun-evolution laid down in their physical and etheric bodies. And the laws of the Sun-existence, working from epoch to epoch, cause philosophy to become precisely what it is. Because they are Sun-laws, the Christ, the Being of the Sun, could also enter them during the second period. Preparation is made in the first period and then the Christ, the Sun-Being, becomes active in the second period.

You see how everything is linked together. But inasmuch as the Christ, the Sun-Being, enters in, he comes into connection with an evolution which is not the human evolution, not man's earthly evolution, but actually Sun-evolution within Earth existence.

Sun-evolution within Earth existence! Just think what we have actually reached in these reflections. We are considering the course of philosophical development, philosophical thought since the time of ancient Greece, and when we consider how this has evolved from philosopher to philosopher we say to ourselves: there are active within not earthly laws, but Sun laws! The laws which at that time held sway between the Spirits of Wisdom and the Archangels come to light again on earth in the philosophical search for wisdom. Read in the book Occult Science how the Spirits of Wisdom enter during the Sun-evolution. Now during earthly evolution they enter again not into what is new but into what has remained from the Sun-evolution. And man develops his philosophy not knowing that in this development the Spirits of Wisdom are pulsing through his soul. The Old Sun existence lives in the evolution of philosophy; it really and truly lives within something that has stayed behind, something that is connected with the Old Sun-evolution.

Human beings, passing from generation to generation, evolve as external personalities in earthly evolution. But an evolution of philosophy goes through it from Thales up to our present time; the Sun-evolution lies within it. This gives opportunity for beings who have stayed behind to make use of the forces of philosophical evolution in order to carry on their ancient Sun existence; beings who remained behind during the Sun-evolution, who neglected at that time to go through the development that one can pass through in one's etheric body, sentient body, and sentient soul—in cooperation with Spirits of Wisdom and Archangeloi. These Spirits that missed their evolution during the Sun time can use man's philosophical evolution in order to be parasites within human evolution. They are Ahrimanic spirits!

Ahrimanic spirits yield to the enticement of creeping parasitically into what men strive for in philosophy and so of furthering their own existence. Men can thus evolve philosophically but at the same time they are exposed to Ahrimanic, Mephistophelean spirits.

You know that Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful spirits as long as one is not aware of them, as long as they work in secret. As long as they do not emerge and let men face them eye to eye spiritually Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful in one or another way. Let us suppose that a philosopher appears who develops thought of such a nature that one can grasp it in merely earth existence. He develops thoughts that can live through the instrument of earthly reasoning. That is Hegelian thought! It is pure thought, but only such as can be grasped with the instrument of the physical body and this as we know ends at death.

Hegel has achieved thought that is the deepest which can be thought in earthly life—but which must lose its configuration with death. Hegel's tragedy lies in the fact that he did not realise he grasped the spirit in logic, in nature, in soul-life, but only the spirit that exists in the form of thought and does not accompany us when we go through death. To have put this clearly before his mind he would have had to say: If I could believe that what goes through thought, that is to say what I think about abstract being by means of logic, thoughts of nature, thoughts of the soul and up to philosophy—if I could believe that this leads me behind the scenes of existence than I should be deceived by Mephistopheles!

This was realised by another: Goethe realised it and represented it in his Faust as the conflict of the thinker with Mephistopheles, with Ahriman. And in this fourth period of the evolution of philosophy we see how Ahriman presses into the Sun-evolution and how one has to face him consciously, really recognising and comprehending his nature.

Hence today we are also standing at a turning point of the philosophical thought of the outer world. In order to avoid falling prey to the allurements of Ahriman and becoming mephistophelean wisdom, philosophy must get behind this wisdom, must understand what it is, must flow into the stream of Spiritual Science.

Read the two chapters preceding the last one in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy. You will see that I tried to present the world concepts prevailing in the world, the philosophical concepts of the world, in order then in a concluding chapter to add A brief view of an Anthroposophy. There you will see how philosophy today in the free emancipated life of thought represents something which, to be sure, rises into the consciousness soul, but how this life, through the consciousness soul, must lay hold of what comes from Spirit itself, philosophically at first, otherwise philosophy must fall into decadence and die.

Thus you see at least one example of the working of the Sun-evolution in human earthly life. I said that one could encounter these sun-laws if one studied the course of philosophical evolution, though one does not always recognise that it is sun-law which is active in it. This must be recognised by Spiritual Science. Just reflect that in reality a Being is evolving which little by little acquires the same members as man himself.

If one were to go still farther back into ancient times one would find that not alone the etheric, but the physical body too gave rise to the forming of world concepts. It is difficult to give clear characteristics of the age that goes back beyond the 12th – 14th centuries B.C.; it lies before Homer, before historical times. But then something was evolving which is not man as man lives upon the earth.

Something lives in history which passes through the etheric body, the sentient body etc., a real, actual Being. I said in my book that in the Grecian era thought was born. But in modern times it comes to actual self-consciousness in the consciousness soul: thought is an independent active Being. This could not of course be said in an exoteric book intended for the public. The anthroposophist will find it however if he reads the book and notes what was the prevailing trend of its presentation. It is not brought into it, but results of itself out of the very subject matter.

You see from this that very many impulses of transformation as regards the spiritual life are coming forward in our time. For here we see something evolving that is like a human being except that it has a longer duration of life than an individual man. The individual man lives on the physical plane: for seven years he develops the physical body, for seven years the etheric body, for seven years the sentient body etc. The Being which evolves as philosophy (we call it by the abstract name ‘philosophy’) lives for 700 years in the etheric body, 700 – 800 years in the sentient body (the time is only approximate), 700 – 800 years in the sentient soul, 700 – 800 years in the intellectual or mind-soul and again 700 – 800 years in the consciousness soul. A Being evolves upwards of whom we can say: if we look at the very first beginnings of Grecian philosophy this Being has then just reached the stage of development which corresponds in mankind to puberty; as Being it is like man when he has reached the 14th – 16th year. Then it lives upwards to the time when a human being experiences the events between the 14th and 21st year; that is the age of Greek philosophy, Greek thought. Then comes the next 7 years, what man experiences from the age of 21 to 28; the Christ Impulse enters the development of philosophy. Then comes the period from Scotus Erigena up to the new age. This Being develops in the following 700 – 800 years what man develops between the ages of 28 and 35 years. And now we are living in the development of what man experiences in his consciousness soul: we are experiencing the consciousness soul of philosophy, of philosophical thought.

Philosophy has actually come to the forties, only it is a Being that has much longer duration of life. One year in a man's life corresponds to a hundred years in the life of the Being of philosophy. So we see a Being passing through history for whom a century is a year; evolving in accordance with Sun-laws though one is not aware of it.

And then only there lies further back another Being still more super-sensible than the Being that evolves as humanity except that a year is as long as a century. This Being that stands behind evolves in such a way that its external expression is our personal destiny, how we bear this through still longer periods, from incarnation to incarnation. Here stand the Spirits regulating our outer destiny and their life is of still longer duration than the life of those for whom we must say that a century corresponds to a year.

So you see, it is as if we look there into differing ranges of Beings, and how, if we wished, we might even write the biography of a Being who stands spiritually as much higher than man as a 100 years is longer than a year.

An attempt has been made to write the biography of a such a Being as had its puberty at the time of Thales and Anaxagoras, and has now reached the stage of its self-consciousness and since the 16th century has entered, so to say, into its ‘forties’. The biography of this Being has furnished a ‘History of Philosophy’.³

From this you see, however, how Spiritual Science gives vitality to what is otherwise abstract, and really animates it. What dry wood for instance, is the usual ‘History of Philosophy’! And what it can become when one knows that it is the biography of a Being which is interwoven in our existence, but evolves by Sun-laws instead of Earth-laws!

It was my wish to add these thoughts to what we have been considering lately about the life-forces which arise in us when we look at Spiritual Science not as a theory but seek it in the guidance to living. And it is just through Spiritual Science that we find the living. What is so unalive, so dry, and withered as the history of philosophy comes to meet us out of the mist as though we looked up to it as a Goddess who descends from divine cloud-heights, whom we see young in ancient times, whom we see grow even if with the slowness where a century corresponds to a year of human life. Yet all this becomes living—the sun rises for us like the Sun within Earth existence itself. For just as the sun rises on the physical plane, so do we see the ancient Sun still radiate into the earthly world in a Being that has a longer lifetime than man. As we follow man's development on the physical plane from birth to death so we follow the development of philosophy by seeing a Being within it. When in this way we look at what Anthroposophy can be to us we reach the point of seeing in it not only a guide to knowledge but a guide to living Beings who surround us even though we are unaware of them.

Yes, my dear friends, something of this was only felt by Christian Morgenstern. And by feeling this, feeling it in the deepest part of his soul, our friend Christian Morgenstern could put into writing a beautiful sentiment, a true anthroposophical sentiment which shows how a soul can express itself which in its inmost being knows itself to be one with our Anthroposophy—not merely as with something giving us various facts of knowledge—but as something that gives us life. In the wonderful poem Lucifer by Christian Morgenstern we have a wonderful example of this. The feeling of this poem lives entirely in the inspiration of which ones feels a breath when, as we have tried to show today, one finds the transition from the presentation of the idea in Anthroposophy to the grasping of living beings.

Lucifer

“I'll keep my light from light of your excluded,
I want you not, your light shall be precluded,
Until my light's my own and separated.

So do I bring the Evil to expression
As Spirit of negation, self-possession,
Yet is new world by ranks of mine created.

By off'ing to un-erring Beings resistance,
A race of err-ant gods has found existence
Who act on their—and not your—discretion.

Who have not walked in Truth from the beginning
Who only reach the Truth through suffering, sinning,
Who only read the truth through sin's transgression.”

Luzifer

“Ich will mein Licht vor eurem Licht verschliessen,
ich will euch nicht, ihr sollt mich nicht geniessen,
bevor ich nicht ein Eigenlicht geworden.

So bring ich wohl das Bose zur Erscheinung
Als Geist der Sonderheit und der Verneinung,
Doch neue Welt erschafft mein Geisterorden.

Aus Widerspruch zum unbeirrten Wesen,
Aus Irr-tum soll ein Gotterstamm genesen,
Der sich aus sich—und nicht aus euch—entscheidet

Der nicht vom Anbeginn in Warheit wandelt,
Der sich die Wahrheit leidend erst erhandelt,
Der sich dies Wahrheit handelnd erst erleidet.”

Christian Morgenstern

If the feeling in this poem leads you to reflect how alive something can becomes that is understood theoretically in Anthroposophy, so that, as it were, one can grasp the Beings who approach us out of the dark abyss of existence, if you take this poem, stimulated by feelings I wished to arouse through today's lecture, then you will see that this figure of Lucifer is really perceived, fashioned in a wonderful way. It is a model example of how what is brought to us by Anthroposophy can become alive and grip our whole soul.

• 1. “The Ego perceived externally as Speech and Song, as creative fantasy, as inner experience.” Dornach, 9th Jan. 1915 (Z69)
• 3. Riddles of Philosophy

Today, we want to talk about some peculiarities of the occult development of the human being, in order to then prepare for something else. We are allowed to speak of this occult development because, basically, engaging with spiritual science is the beginning of a real occult development. Even if most people do not recognize the fact that simply occupying oneself with spiritual science is really the first step towards occult development, it is nevertheless the case. And it has been emphasized time and again, and must always be emphasized, that spiritual science is not meant to merely convey knowledge to us, a theoretical knowledge, but that spiritual science is meant to give us something that transforms our whole being, that makes something different out of our whole being than the external culture of the present can do.

Now we will gain an insight into the difficulty that spiritual science has in impressing itself not only on our memory but also on our whole cultural life of the present, if we familiarize ourselves with the peculiarities of spiritual scientific research, with the way in which the results of spiritual scientific research relate to us humans. They relate to us differently than other knowledge that we acquire in life. We acquire knowledge through our experiences, through our experiences; because even if we acquire scientific knowledge, it is either through direct or indirect experience. Wherever we acquire knowledge, we acquire it first through experience and then we store it in our memory, in our recollection. We keep these results of life.

We have often made it clear what it means, in more intimate terms, to store something in our memory, especially in recent times we have talked a little more about what memory is. In any case, for life, memory is an extraordinarily important thing. Just think: if we did not have memory, if we could not remember what we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, a year ago or ten years ago, how very different our lives would have to be. It is inconceivable to us that the ordinary life of the soul, taking place on the physical plane, could take place without memory.

But compare the power that enables you to retain experiences of the physical plane in your memory with the much lesser power that enables you to retain dream experiences in your memory. Consider how much more easily you forget a dream than experiences in the physical world. One may initially ask the question: Why do we forget dream experiences more easily than experiences of the physical world? Well, the answer to this question will also give us an important point of view for higher knowledge.

How are dream experiences acquired? They are acquired by not being completely inside the physical body. When we are completely inside the physical body, we do not dream. Then we experience through the senses on the physical plane and through the mind bound to the senses. When we dream, we must at least be partially outside the physical body. What does the physical body do when it works through the power of memory? Yes, as difficult as it is for a person to think at first, it is nevertheless true: every time a person has an experience and stores this experience in their memory through a thought, an imprint, a kind of cliché of the experience, is formed in our etheric body. But – and I have already discussed this – it is not the case that this imprint would photographically depict the experience. Just as the letter of a writing has nothing to do with the sound, what exists in our body as an imprint has just as little to do with the experience itself. The imprint is only a sign. And this sign is strangely similar to the human form itself. And if you take the upper parts of the human form, the head and at most a little of the upper body and the hands, you have what can be observed in the etheric body every time a person forms a memory of an experience.

So, we can say: I experience something; the experience remains with me, whether it be a small or a great experience, as a memory. An impression is formed, something like this (see drawing). Something like this arises in your etheric body every time a memory is formed, and if it were to be extinguished, you would no longer be able to remember the experience.

Think of how many things you remember in life! You have just as many thousands and thousands of such ethereal images of people within you. Your etheric body, and also your physical body, allow so many different images to be there. If two were the same, you would not be able to distinguish the experiences. If you observe a person occultly, you will find thousands and thousands of such images of people within him. But they do not only arise in the etheric body; a fine impression of each such human image also arises in the physical body, and these impressions also all remain, insofar as the person has memories. So thousands upon thousands of such homunculi are present in a person.

Let us say you are listening to today's lecture. Just by listening to this lecture, hundreds and hundreds of such homunculi are forming in your soul. These also make impressions in your physical body when you remember them later, and these impressions also remain.

But what about dreams? Yes, you see, in a dream the homunculus is formed in the etheric body, but

but it does not leave an impression on the physical body. It leaves a weak impression, or sometimes no impression at all. Then the person is well aware that he has dreamt, but he cannot remember what he dreamt. Dreams leave a weak impression, much weaker than any experience on the physical plane. This is why it is so difficult to retain a memory of them.

The strength of the memory therefore depends entirely on how strong the impression is that the homunculus of the etheric body makes on the physical body. However, what the spiritual researcher finds, what he experiences in the spiritual world, is initially such that it cannot make any impression on the physical body at all. For if an experience can make an impression on the physical body, then it is no longer a purely spiritual experience; then it has already been acquired with regard to the physical body. This must be the peculiar thing about the spiritual experience, that at first nothing at all happens in the physical body, while the spiritual is being experienced.

What follows from this? It follows that the spiritual researcher has to understand that there is no memory for the results of spiritual research. The experiences of the spiritual researcher cannot be memorized. They pass away the very moment they arise.

This is the difficulty of knowing anything of the spiritual world while living in the physical world and wanting to live only through the physical body. Since man has a poor memory even for dreams, which still have a loose connection with the physical body, it shows how understandable it must be that man has no memory for what he really experiences occultly.

There are now people who begin to apply to themselves the rules of my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds,” the rules that are called the rules of occult development. They may apply them for a very long time; but then, after years, they come and say, “I have practiced over and over again, I have done all kinds of exercises; I see nothing, I hear nothing of the spiritual world. My sense for the spiritual world does not want to open up. Perhaps what these people say is completely wrong; it can be completely wrong. The people in question may have long since found entry into the spiritual world and may have perceptions in the spiritual world. But these perceptions disappear the moment they are made, because these perceptions cannot be incorporated into the physical memory. The fact that one can know something from one's spiritual experiences depends on something quite different from memory. And I would now like to make clear to you what it depends on.

Imagine that you make a toy for a child. The child can enjoy this toy. You can make it today and the child can enjoy it. You take the toy and put it in the cupboard. Tomorrow you give it to the child again, and the day after tomorrow, and so on. And the child can always enjoy the toy that you made today.

But something else can also happen. Let us assume that you are not interesting the child by making a toy, but that you are putting something together for him out of random things. Or you might even just make something up for him by imitating gestures or something similar. Let us assume that you attract the child's attention by imitating something with your hands or fingers in a very specific way, by pre-evolving something, for example. You cannot put this in the cupboard, take it out again tomorrow and the day after and give it to the child again and again like a toy. What is to make such an impression on the child must be done afresh each time. You can make a doll and keep it; the child can have it again and again. But if you use something you have done yourself, through gestures or the like, to attract the child's attention, you must do it freshly each time.

This is something that can explain to us the difference between what we acquire on the physical plane and what can become memory, and what we experience on the spiritual plane and what cannot immediately become memory. When we have experiences on the physical plane, something like a homunculus forms in our etheric body and an imprint of it is imprinted in the physical body. It remains, like a doll with a child. You can store it and find it in yourself again and again. This then points to the experience of the past. The experience you have in the spiritual world passes. But you had to do something to bring it about. You had to use the rules that you apply to the soul in the sense of “How to Know Higher Worlds” to put the soul in such a state that the occult experience could occur. You can evoke this state in yourself again and again, so that you can have the experience again and again, but you cannot store it like a memory image. For the physical plane, experiences become memories by preserving after-images, by being remembered. The re-occurrence, the re-memory - if we now use the word “memory” in a figurative sense - of occult experiences can only occur if we create the same conditions through which we experienced the event for the first time.

Let us be clear about one thing: we really have to be infinitely more active and engaged with experiences in the spiritual world than with experiences in the physical world. In contrast to experiences in the physical world, something really forms in us that, I would say, gradually acquires the greatest density. Something internally diverse and manifold is this in us. These many people that you have inside you go through life with you and are something complete. This makes life in the physical world easier for you, because you are spared the work that you have to do over and over again in the occult experiences in the spiritual world if you want to have the experience again. You can only remember the conditions under which you brought about the experience, so never the occult experience itself, but only the way in which it was brought about. And you have to bring about these conditions again to have the occult experience again.

If we – and I say this not comparatively but in the real sense – if we go down a path and there is a church or a house at the end of that path and we go back, we can carry the memory of this image of the church or the house with us on the whole way back. This is because the experience of the church or the house is an experience on the physical plane. If a spirit had stood there instead, and the spirit would only manifest itself at this place, then it would be necessary each time to go to the same place again to see this spirit. One must bring about the same conditions, for one can only remember by which route, through which conditions, one arrived at this experience.

That is the strange thing about these things, that a good memory is of no immediate use for retaining occult experiences, but that on the contrary, something that supports us in ordinary life in consciously developing a good memory can be a hindrance to us in the occult. Certain people are born with a good memory right from the start. Now they live and have a good memory. Others have a less good memory. This is based on very specific karmic conditions: A good memory is something that comes into the world from a previous incarnation in such a way that the soul's penetration of the whole body is as late as possible, and that certain parts of the physical body remain untouched by the soul for as long as possible. In this case it is possible that, without our doing anything, these impressions, these homunculi, which I have described, are formed.

But when someone enters life through physical birth and their personality is so inwardly disposed for their individual physical experience that the impressions take complete possession of their physical body as quickly as possible, then they will not be able to develop a particularly good memory because they fill their memory with themselves; and then it is too hard for so many impressions of such homunculi to enter it. Therefore, we will preferably find a good memory in those people who, I might say, have an otherwise vague egoistic interest in the experiences of the physical plane.

On the other hand, memory can also be developed to a certain extent. But it can only be developed by stimulating attention and interest. Interest, attention and memory belong together. If you try to take a very intense interest in some experiences, in some area of life, to be very much involved with it with your whole self, your memory, your recollection of these experiences will also become better and better. So if someone wants to develop their memory for something, the best way to do it is to sharpen their interest in the subject as much as possible. There is nothing we remember for which we do not create an intense interest. Thus, attention and interest are something that can help us to improve a poor memory in the physical world.

For the right approach to occult experiences, so that these experiences do not constantly flash past us like dreams and we are unaware of them, loving attention and loving interest for the spiritual in general is of the utmost importance. Without this spiritual interest, without this loving attention, we cannot have spiritual experiences again and again that we have had once. It is quite possible to have an occult experience. It flits by. Only through this will one be able to create not memories, but the conditions under which one can have the experience again and again, and again and again, by intensifying one's interest in the events in the spiritual world.

That is why it is so important that we do not just acquire as much knowledge as possible about the spiritual world by way of memory; that is actually the least important thing. The more important thing is that we never pursue these matters of the spiritual world without love, never without the most intense interest. If we absorb knowledge from spiritual science indifferently, perhaps just so that we can boast about it or for some other reason, as we so often absorb other knowledge of the world, then it has no significance. What is important is the degree of love, of sympathy for the spiritual world that we acquire. That is the important thing, that is the meaningful thing. And that is why we try to present the events of the spiritual world from so many points of view, again and again from different points of view; because this way we are more and more encouraged to actively approach the knowledge of the spiritual world, and not to come to the desire to understand this knowledge of the spiritual world in the same way as the knowledge of physical things. That is actually the most fatal thing for the real occultist: when the longing arises in a person to gain spiritual knowledge, but when one desires to gain this knowledge in a different way than physical knowledge.

People would prefer to have books about the spiritual world, just as they have books about the physical world; they would like to acquire knowledge about the spiritual world in the same way that they acquire knowledge about the physical world. But it is not at all possible to acquire knowledge of the spiritual world in this way; instead, books that deal with the spiritual world must stimulate our inner activity each time anew, setting our inner powers in motion. Therefore, it is not the same as when we acquire knowledge about the physical world, where we have to repeat it over and over again in order not to forget, when we acquire knowledge about the spiritual world. When we read a cycle again and again or a spiritual science book, then that is actually not a repetition, but an immersing ourselves in the activity through which we arrive at the knowledge. And that is the most important thing, that is the essential thing. You see, if someone were asked to pray when they went to church, you would look at them rather strangely if they said: I don't need to pray today; when I was seven years, three months and two days old, I read the prayer once. I will always remember that I have prayed it; I do not need to pray it again, because I know that I have prayed it; I will just remember it now. You would look at this person strangely, you would make it clear to him that it is not important to remember the prayer once it has been said, but to keep bringing it up because it is alive in every renewal. This is precisely how we should understand our experience in occult science. We should not say, as we do about ordinary science: Yes, we have absorbed it, we remember it - but we want to get used to delving into the subject again and again, to going through the activity again and again. But people of the modern age do not like this at all. Rather, people of modern times love to stop at what they have once attained. Isn't it true that one feels most happy when one has acquired some knowledge and then carries this knowledge in one's inner “backpack,” as it were, through life, and when one needs it, takes it out and remembers it again. This is something that modern humanity is increasingly in danger of falling into. But in modern times, I would say, there is an immediate need to transform this sitting on the acquired content so that human work, human striving, corresponds to the

Only he earns freedom and life who
must conquer them daily.

This beautiful saying from Faust.

And it is truly the case that nothing more than the Faust attitude, which we have often considered here, awakens and stirs in the human soul that which gradually leads to the occult, to the occult attitude.

Goethe wrote the first great monologue of Faust in the 1770s, in keeping with his mood at the time. Today it has become trivial for many, but it is something that, when viewed in its originality, weighs on the soul with all the tragedy of life:

I have now, alas! studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and, unfortunately! theology,
with great zeal.
There I stand, poor fool that I am!
And I am as wise as before.

Goethe wrote this himself, from his own nature, from the depths of his soul, as a young man in the 1770s. Then came the time when a high point of human philosophical development was experienced in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. But this high point of philosophical development was connected with legal development. Hegel wrote a natural law, Fichte wrote a natural law; Schelling published a medical journal. Something mighty and great has passed through the human soul, leading to Goethe's saying:

Have now, alas! Philosophy,
Jurisprudence and medicine,
And unfortunately! also theology,
studied thoroughly, with ardent endeavor.

But do you think that if Goethe had lived in 1840 and had begun his “Faust” only in 1840 instead of in 1772, do you think that because great and mighty things have been achieved in the cultural development of humanity, and that he had really searched in a truly philosophical way for what goes on in the human soul, do you think he would have said: “Now, thank God, I have found the answer!” studied philosophy, law and medicine and, of course, theology with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel: “There I stand now, I clever, wise man, and am no longer as foolish as before, but have become quite wise, as wise as one can only be”? Do you think that Goethe would have said that? Suppose it took much longer for the Earth's culture to develop, would this opening monologue of “Faust” have been written exactly the same way in 1840 as it was in 1772, exactly the same way? All these things are part of the real understanding of “Faust.” This great, gigantic idea cannot be understood if you do not grasp it in its details. And if Faust were to be started today, it would have to begin with the same words.

And once countless facts from the humanities have been brought to light, the following sentiment will no longer be shared: “Thank God I have studied philosophy, law and medicine, and thank God theology too, and of course theosophy as well, and am as wise as can be.” That would never be the true Faust mood! Only the one to whom the following applies would have the true Faust mood: “Only he earns freedom, like life, who must conquer it daily.” This is the mood that underlies “Faust” and at the same time shows us where the impulses lie that lead from the old, frozen culture to the new culture of humanity. Man must never cease to acquire something new and different, and I have also advocated this within the spiritual scientific movement to which we belong. It was truly terrible when one repeatedly heard in the old society: Yes, we need schemas, and when I presented this or that, then there should be schemas and tables hanging on the walls so that one has something to remember by. And people were dissatisfied when one came and basically reversed what was once there, what was established; since it always has to be acquired anew. Because it is this never-resting, never-ceasing striving forward that matters.

It can be said directly: By having driven out of itself a Faust, the newer culture has really built the bridge from the merely external materialistic culture to the new spiritual culture that must come over humanity.

But much, very much, in relation to the right view of life is connected with all this, with these peculiarities of the new knowledge, which must indeed be drawn from occultism, and which therefore makes demands on the active impulses of men. Thus it is connected with the principle of taking everything as it is finished, as it is complete, when people strive to preserve that which cannot be preserved. For example, something that I have really tried to explain for decades now, I can say, cannot be preserved; something that is called human freedom.

Freedom as an external institution, as an external condition in the human organization on earth, is something impossible, something unthinkable. Preserved in this way, as it was once conceived for a particular point in time, freedom would be a terrible fetter for man at the next point in time. Freedom is something that must constantly be unleashed as it arises, and man can only acquire freedom in each moment by developing within himself a sense of relating to the whole spiritual world. You can read about this in my book 'The Philosophy of Freedom'. There you will find that the whole mood is expressed there. There you can see that freedom is truly a key to that which leads into the spiritual world.

But it is obvious that freedom can only be understood by people who gradually develop the will to study spiritual science. Freedom cannot be understood by other people, because other people will always confuse certain peculiarities of external institutions with freedom, whereas freedom can only ever exist in the state that a person can acquire at any given moment.

We impair our freedom, namely, already through one thing by which we usually do not believe our freedom to be impaired: we impair our freedom already through our memory. For suppose, for a moment, that you have acquired certain sympathies and antipathies through the experiences you have undergone since your birth; then your freedom is already impaired by what has remained of these sympathies and antipathies. These acquired sympathies and antipathies, everything that is stored in the memory, impairs your freedom. And all knowledge that humanity strives for and that is then executed in order to become memory, that also distances us more and more from a real concept of freedom. On the other hand, with every acquisition of occult knowledge, one is brought closer to the true concept of freedom, genuine freedom.

But this whole thing is connected to something else: consider that with everything that takes root as memory, we are actually planting a homunculus within us. And everything that takes shape in us as a homunculus is really the case that by setting our inner life in motion, we do not get any further with our activity than this homunculus, than these impressions. We cannot get beyond them. If we could break through what has accumulated as memory, if we could really bring out of ourselves everything we have experienced since the time of our childhood, up to the time we can remember back to, we would break through something like a skin of life. But behind this skin of life is the spiritual world. There it is, right behind it! And by beginning to build up a picture of his own life from earliest childhood, by retaining from all his experiences that which makes up the content of his memory, he weaves a veil throughout his life, and this veil covers the spiritual world.

We could not stand in the physical world if we did not spin this web, for we are, insofar as we remember, this web itself.

But we arise as human beings in the physical world only by forming ourselves out of the veil, which we at the same time hold up before the spiritual world. It is really as if someone, well, I would like to say, wants to look at a stage and says: I want to look in there now. But he does it by hanging a curtain in front of it. In doing so, he covers up bit by bit what is behind it. That is what man does in life. The memories man stores up are a curtain that is hung over spiritual reality, woven before the spiritual world. This is a contradiction that we face in life, but it must not be blamed or criticized because it is the condition for our being in the physical life. It can only be characterized, but not blamed. If we did not spiritually weave the curtain before us, we would not be there in the physical world. And that is precisely what matters: that we know such a thing, that we do not mistake ourselves for a reality when we are only a curtain.

We immediately penetrate all deception by considering ourselves a curtain and not a reality, in the moments when we say to ourselves: You are actually only what stands before the true world, and your own form, what you yourself are, stands behind the form that you yourself weave throughout life. - When you keep this fact in mind, you stand in truth. Then you do not consider yourself to be reality, but only a curtain. But people are afraid of considering themselves a mere curtain. They want to consider themselves a reality in what they are. But that is why they cannot come to any clarity about the most important things in life.

All people thirst for preservation after death, for immortality, they all thirst to know something about the fact that they still exist after death. But they secretly think: if everything that is in me, that I have on the physical plane, perishes, what will then still be there? That this must go away after death, that the curtain not only tears, but must be dissolved, so that the human being can emerge: this is self-evident for the one who ascends in spiritual knowledge.

Thus we must accept such things, as they have been touched upon today, in such a way that we really say more and more to ourselves: For spiritual science, different human attitudes must be inwardly adopted than those in the culture up to now. There must arise a much greater striving for constant activity among people, for activity, for being there. The idea that one has grasped something and can retain it and carry it through life must disappear. If that disappears, all the other things that stand in the way of clear perception will disappear as well. I have often pointed out how people, even in science, have the most confused ideas about what is true. For example, you will often read in physiological works today that people sleep because they experience this or that in their waking state and become tired from it. Sleep would therefore be a result of fatigue. I have pointed out that the reindeer, which does not need to work very hard, should not have any need for sleep either. But if you listen to the reindeer, you will learn that if you do nothing at all, you feel most tired and you fall asleep without having done the slightest thing. From this you can see that fatigue has nothing to do with sleep, and sleep has nothing to do with fatigue, any more than day has to do with night.

At most, minds like Hume or Kant will have difficulties because they confuse what follows from each other. No one will consider the day as the cause of the night and the night as the cause of the day. Day and night arise one after the other. Day arises from the sun rising above the horizon, and night from the sun going below the horizon. The sun's standing above the horizon is the cause of day, and the sun's going below the horizon is the cause of night. Just as night is not the cause of day, or day the cause of night, so it is not essentially true that waking is the cause of sleeping or sleeping the cause of waking. Rather, it is rhythmic states that alternate, just as the positions of the sun above and below the horizon alternate, and these have nothing to do with a cause-and-effect relationship.

But just as it is true that the sun, when it goes below the horizon, causes twilight, and when it goes further down, causes darkness, so the truth is not that because we feel tired, we also want to sleep, but we feel tired because we want to sleep. We must have a desire for sleep, then we feel tired.

This seems to contradict everything that is thought today, but it is true, just as true as that day is not the cause of night and night is not the cause of day. So tiredness is not the cause of sleep. But just as night occurs when the sun goes down, so tiredness occurs because one wants to sleep. Here, cause and effect are completely confused and mixed up.

Today I want to draw attention to something else. There is an enormous difference between the relationship between day and night, the relationship between the sun and the earth, and the relationship between sleeping and waking in humans: you cannot imagine that the same thing can happen to the sun as can happen to humans. I mean, a person has a good meal and sleeps at the wrong time, or sleeps at the wrong time for some other reason. The sun does not do that. Because, think about what it would be like if the sun suddenly decided not to rise above the horizon at a certain time and everything that makes day into night happened all at once. You cannot possibly imagine that a constellation will arise in the universe that is analogous to man sleeping when he wants, arbitrarily arranging his waking and sleeping times. How far removed the sun is from that! It is impossible for the sun to overdo itself and stop shining in the middle of the day, so that night falls. As far as it is from anyone falling asleep during the day – it is easy, it just needs to be a little hot and one thinks that one has to sleep with the heat – so far away from freedom are natural necessity and natural law, so far away from the spirit is nature. But so far is the understanding that humanity has today, that the present time has, from the understanding that it will have to acquire through spiritual science.

We must always bear in mind that it is not only a serious but also a great task to find our way into the aspirations that spiritual science wants to bring to human culture. And there are many things that have not yet been overcome that will have to be overcome if spiritual science and its results are to be incorporated into the spiritual development of humanity.

Today, I would like to draw attention to two things – we will see more tomorrow – that must be acquired by anyone who wants to enter the field of spiritual science and make it fruitful for the spiritual life of the future: the first is a certain shyness, a certain reverence for the truth. One need only open one's eyes to see that, especially today, everything that happens in the world seems to be a revolt against this awe, against reverence for the truth. Those who have reverence for the truth will wait a long time before making an assertion about something or passing judgment on it. Today there is a tendency to do the opposite, to feel as little respect as possible for the truth, but rather to shape the truth to suit one's own convenience, to suit one's own feelings and perceptions. The ability to wait until the truth reveals itself as the chaste divinity of the human soul is a feeling that can be said to It is truly necessary for today's humanity to acquire it. But external culture resists this acquisition; it is a culture in which it is important to fabricate messages and to communicate all facts as quickly as possible, as today's journalism does. The opposite mood is present to that which our spiritual science must produce in us. The way in which the world is presented today through the press and the media is the opposite of what must be striven for by spiritual science, by those who mean well by humanity. This must be admitted by those who want to belong to the spiritual science movement. The first is reverence for the truth.

The second is reverence for knowledge. It must weigh heavily on the soul of those who recognize the impulses of the times and strive to introduce new impulses into the development of humanity that people do not take reverence for knowledge seriously enough. It is sad that people everywhere show that they do not have reverence for knowledge.

Particularly in our time, in view of the terrible events of the present, we do indeed see that people - most of all those who write and have it printed, but unfortunately the others do it too - judge as if the world were really created, say, in June or July 1914.

Strangely enough, when the events of the present are being discussed, one repeatedly hears the beginning of the story “In 1914” being repeated, and there the events are jumbled up and mixed up, and people believe that something can come of it. Nothing can come of it. One cannot understand why things are as they are in the present if one does not have the reverence for knowledge that leads to the times of the distant past and sees that the events of the present are the consequences of these distant pasts and are deeply connected with them.

The heart bleeds for those who are serious about the development of humanity when they see how thoughtlessly people judge the way cause and being are connected here or there. And these judgments are made by people whose judgments show that they basically do not know what is important.

Now one could object: You cannot demand that everyone should be able to judge. - Yes, certainly not. But what one can demand is reverence for knowledge, an awareness that one must first know something before judging.

This is something one would like to wish for people above all today: that they should not judge before knowing. It is one of the most terrible evils of the present day that people judge without knowing. It is what makes the products of contemporary culture so terrible, because you can see everywhere that they breathe exactly the opposite of what reverence for real knowledge is, what reverence for truth is.

Reverence for truth, reverence for knowledge, that is what we should acquire. I say: reverence for knowledge. I do not, of course, say reverence for scientific authority – so as not to distort things – but reverence for knowledge, especially for one's own knowledge. You have to acquire that first; then you can also have reverence for your own knowledge. As long as you do not possess it, you cannot, of course, have reverence for what does not exist. Then you also lack the necessary reverence in life.

But above all, it is important that we penetrate into our souls, that we experience new feelings and emotions, and that we do not try to make progress in the same way, now on the paths, on the paths of spiritual science, as has been attempted in material culture. Our serious task here must be to acquire the ability to distinguish.

My intention is to give a series of lectures which will enable you to understand the present time and the immediate future in some aspects at least. It should be a coherent whole, but it may sometimes be necessary to go a long way back. There will be a continuous thread through it all, but I would ask you to see the parts always in the context of the whole. I will sometimes go far and wide to collect the material we need to understand the present time, and some of it may seem remote.

When I say ‘the present time’ I mean quite a long period of time, going back several decades and also looking decades ahead. It is important to realize that it will be necessary to present truths based on the science of the Spirit that in many respects go utterly against current and generally accepted beliefs. The world holds opinions that not only differ but often are the direct opposite of the truths that have to be spoken out of anthroposophy. It is only to be expected, therefore, that people will consider these truths to be incredible, warped and downright foolish.

When truths which differed from generally accepted views had to be said in the past, in order to open up a road to the future, the difference between those truths and common opinion was probably never as marked as it inevitably is today. This may not be absolutely the case, but, relatively speaking, it is so, for people are tremendously intolerant in their hearts today and less able to accept views which differ from their own.

In the immediate future, people will feel more strongly than ever before that the new and different views presented to them are fanciful and absurd. Nevertheless, truths that until now were closely guarded by small groups of people, with strict silence demanded of anyone to whom they were made known, must increasingly be made public. It does not matter how public opinion and those who hold it react to these truths; nor do the prejudices and counter-currents matter that are provoked by them.

The reason for this will be discussed later on in these lectures. To begin with, I must speak of some of the ways in which people will react to truths today and in the immediate future. People believe they have long since outgrown the illusions and superstitions of the past, yet in some respects they are entirely given up to illusion. There is a growing tendency to live in illusion concerning some important and essential aspects of the great scheme of things, and this to such an extent that these illusions become powers that rule the world, nations and, indeed, the whole earth. It is important to realize this, for illusory ideas are a major element in the chaos in which we find ourselves today; in fact, they make it a chaos.

Let me tell you of one common illusion which exists today and is closely bound up with the materialistic trends of the age. It is the growing tendency to form utterly wrong opinions about what in the science of the spirit is called the physical plane. And the New Testament words that are fundamental in this respect: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’,¹ are increasingly less understood today. They are misunderstood in so far as the leading personalities of the outer world are caught up in the illusion that their kingdom should be very much of this physical world.

What do I mean to say? Anyone who is able to see the reality, and to see through it, knows that this world on the physical plane can never reach perfection. Yet people who think materialistically have the illusion that perfection can be achieved on the physical plane. This is the source of many other illusions, and particularly and characteristically the socialist illusion of the present age.

People's illusions come in all shades of meaning; they are coloured by party politics and so on. People who take a liberal view of the world and of life have constructed their own ideal of the physical world and believe that if they realize this we shall have paradise on earth. All that the socialists are able to think of is how to arrange things on this physical plane so that everybody can live what they consider to be the good life, the same for everybody, and so on. Their vision of the future on this physical plane is of a wonderful paradise. Do examine the programmes put forward by people who see themselves as belonging to the many different socialist parties and you will see for yourselves.

They are not the only people, of course, who have such views and opinions. Teachers also do, for instance. Today, every educational agitator and writer is absolutely convinced that it is up to him to establish the best possible educational system, the best principles of education one can think of. And in an absolute sense they really are the best, one cannot imagine anything better.

To go against such endeavours must seem sheer madness to people. The way things are today, people simply must consider anyone who does not want things to be the best possible in the world to be evil-minded. One can understand people feeling this way. Yet it is not evil-mindedness that stops us from thinking their way but a clear vision of the truth. It tells us that it is illusory to think such levels of perfection can be achieved in the physical world. And if it is a law that there never can be perfection in the physical world, just as it is a law that the three angles in a triangle add up to 180°, then people will simply have to face such a truth boldly and not shrink from it.

So there you have the kind of illusion which arises from entirely materialistic premises. Many say they believe in the world of the spirit, but with many of them this is mere words, nothing but hot air. In their innermost hearts, in their feelings and unconscious impulses, lives something different—the inclination to think materialistically. However much people may pretend to themselves that they believe in something else, in reality they believe only in the physical world. And since they do not believe in anything more than just the physical world around them, the only ideal they can possibly have is to arrange things in the physical world in such a way that it becomes a paradise; otherwise the whole world would make no sense to them. Until materialists are prepared to say that the world makes no sense at all, they can only live in the illusion that, however imperfect this physical world may be, it will be possible to create conditions that will put an end to imperfection and let perfection take its place.

Everything coming to the fore today in this respect—in general terms, with all kinds of political, social and other agitators making great words about it, or in specific instances, such as in education—is based on illusion because people are unable to see the connections between the physical world and the other spheres of the world. In no way can they gain an idea of what Jesus Christ meant when he said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, and why Jesus Christ did not want to bring a kingdom of perfection to realization here in the physical world. There is nothing in the gospels to show that Christ intended to reform this outer kingdom of the physical world and make it into one of perfection. He certainly did not cherish that illusion. But he made up for this lack of desire to establish paradise in the physical world by giving people something which is not of this world: to let impulses enter into their souls which are always alive in the world but are not of this physical world.

Illusions of this kind dominate the human race today in the widest possible sense, and this creates an unhealthy climate. People are free individuals and therefore free to live in illusion. In more down-to-earth contexts their illusions would immediately be seen to be illusions. When we are dealing with physical objects, fools who invent things which merely work in theory are instantly seen to be under an illusion. It is not immediately obvious, however, in the vast field of social and political life.

The following story is one I have told before. When I was a young fellow of 22 or 23, one of my fellow students came to me one day, his head aglow, absolutely fired with enthusiasm, and told me he had just made an important, epoch-making invention. Oh, I said, that is nice; what are you going to do with it? Well, he said, I'll have to go and see Ratinger—our professor of mechanical engineering at the university—and tell him about it. No sooner said than done, and off he went. Ratinger was not free at the moment and so the student came back; he had been given an appointment for later on. So I said to him: Why don't you tell me about it in the meantime? We have some time to spare. Tell me about your invention. It was a very clever thing. He had invented a steam engine that needed just a very small amount of coal to heat it up; after that no more coal would be needed, for a special mechanism kept it going of its own accord. One merely had to start it up. This was certainly epoch-making! You will be wondering why we do not have it today. I got him to explain it all to me and then told him: You know, that is really clever; but if one looks at the whole thing it is no different from wanting to get a railway truck going by getting into it and pushing as hard as you can from inside. Someone standing outside can, of course, get it to move, but anyone inside will not get it to move a millimetre, even if they apply the same amount of energy. This is what it all came down to.

Things can be extremely logical and clever, developed by applying all kinds of technical principles, and they may still be nonsense, having been thought up without taking account of reality. What matters is not to be merely clever, or logical, but to relate to reality. In the end the student never went to see the professor.

When one is dealing with physical matter and mechanics, such a thing will soon be obvious. But in social and political affairs, and with reference to what in its widest sense may be defined as making everyone happy, it will not be immediately obvious. You can easily put forward ideas of exactly this kind; people will be impressed and believe you. Yet it is all a matter of being inside the truck and pushing from there. A time will come when a certain basic characteristic of the present time may actually be labelled with a particular name, a name that will typify a way of thinking which at heart is utterly illusory and unreal. I am very sure that in future people will speak of early twentieth century ‘Wilsonianism’. For Wilson's ideas are typical of those of someone who wants to push a railway truck from inside.

All the basic ideas of ‘Wilsonianism’ which make such an impression today are utterly unreal, though they also have a major influence on people for other reasons. They are powerful for the very reason that they cannot be realized. Any attempt to implement them it would soon show them to be meaningless. But people are able to imagine they could be implemented. If we were able to implement Wilsonian ideas, world philistinism would be realized throughout the world. Woodrow Wilson² really deserves to be made the universal saviour of general philistinism. Of course, philistines would not actually do all that well in a world organized by Wilson, which anyway cannot be realized, but at least they imagine that if Wilson's ideas were to conquer the world we would be able to live according to our ideals.

A time will come when people say: At the beginning of the twentieth century a peculiar ideal arose, which was to make the world into a perfect image of philistine, or bourgeois, ideals. Wilson's ideas will be analysed one day and presented as typical of the early twentieth century.

You see, we have not only small but also big examples of illusory ideas in our time. These illusions and unreal ideas are held not by otherworldly sects, but by groups whose beliefs spread far and wide.

Important and vital genuine truths must now be proclaimed to the world. For the reasons and because of the kind of conditions we have been discussing, they will show little relationship to the general opinions of today. Different conditions have to be created to enable people to grasp the truth. The truths which must inevitably come up are repulsive to many people today; they are thoroughly uncomfortable. The truths people like and ask for are convenient truths, for that is the way people are today.

Some of these uncomfortable truths will have to be presented in the course of these lectures. They need to be made known out of a feeling of responsibility, and above all they must relate not only to the physical plane. They must cut across the illusions people have of the physical plane and offer reality rather than fantasy. The most unrealistic and fantasy-ridden people today are those who consider themselves to be more or less entirely realistic. One makes the strangest discoveries in this respect.

I was recently sent a kind of lexicon listing the names of writers.³ It purports to list the names of all writers who have a connection with Judaism and anything which seeks to bring Judaism to realization in this world. I am one of the writers listed in the book, the reason being that, according to the author of the lexicon, I have many similarities with Ignatius de Loyola who is stated to have founded the Jesuits precisely because of his Judaism. Furthermore, I come from a border region between Germans and Slavs—which is where I happen to have been born, though my family certainly do not come from there—and apparently the fact that I come from there indicates that I am Jewish in origin—I have no idea why. This does not really surprise me, for I think you will agree that even odder things are published today. But the lexicon also includes Hermann Bahr as someone who is promoting Judaism—I was merely leafing through the book. Yet he is an out-and-out Upper Austrian. It is really and truly impossible to think of any way in which he can be connected with Jewish blood or the like. Nevertheless, this literary lexicon quotes a well-known literary historian as saying that Hermann Bahr definitely had Jewish traits.

Well, when I was said to be Jewish on one occasion—these things are not new—I had a photograph of my certificate of baptism made. Hermann Bahr also had to jump through those hoops, because a literary historian had said he was Jewish.⁴ Bahr wanted to establish the truth. The literary historian then said: Well, his grandfather may have been a Jew. But it simply is not possible to find anything in Bahr's family which is not absolutely Upper Austrian German. This was of course an embarrassment for the literary historian, but he would stick to is opinion. He went so far as to say that if Hermann Bahr were actually to present the certificates of baptism for the last twelve generations to show that he did not have a drop of Jewish blood rom anywhere, then he, the historian, would believe in reincarnation if forced to do so. So you see, the reason for believing in reincarnation is a highly peculiar one in the case of this renowned and widely-read literary historian.

There are times today when it is really difficult to take what is said by famous people at all seriously. It is a pity, of course, that it is so difficult to convince the wider public of this. People are rather in the habit of believing in authority, despite the fact that modern people do not believe in authority at all, of course! Such, at least, is their opinion. Yesterday we were able to learn something about the opinions people have of themselves.

Today, when people's basic instincts sometimes take them so far from the truth, it is extremly difficult to accept the truths relating to the region which borders immediately on the physical world. To characterize anything relating to this region one has to appeal to healthy, incorrupt minds, and this presents the greatest difficulties one can imagine. For when it comes to the truths which must now be made known, the whole constitution of the human soul will be affected even if people merely get to know them, let alone gain direct perception of them.

External knowledge about the physical world has a certain effect—let us say on the human head. But truths which go deep, even if only to the depth where they relate to the world immediately next to the physical world, touch the whole human being and not only the head. To proclaim such truths one must be able to depend on a sound, incorrupt mind.

In many spheres of life today a sound, incorrupt mind is almost a rarity, whilst unsound, corrupt minds are far from uncommon. And the way individuals accept truths today strongly reveals the particular nature of their life of instincts and drives, the whole constitution of their souls, and their state of mind. People with corrupt instincts who are unwilling to apply some degree of discipline to their life-styles quickly tend to take an attitude which is completely determined by the base mind, particularly when the truths to be accepted relate to the world bordering on the physical world. This happens only too easily. If people do not take a healthy objective interest in what goes on in the world, if they are essentially only interested in anything that relates to themselves, this will often corrupt their mind and attitudes to such an extent that they do not have the right instincts for occult truths and particularly for truths relating to the world bordering on the physical world.

With respect to the physical world and anything relating to it, and to all the great advances humanity has made, I think I can say that physical nature makes sure this corruption does not go too far in human minds. People are confined within the Limits imposed by physical nature; they cannot get very far with their instincts and have to obey the laws of nature. When we move from the physical world into the one bordering on it, we are no longer on those leading reins; guidance has to take another form and a different, inner certainty is needed. This is only possible, however, if the mind is incorrupt as we go beyond the physical level; otherwise we lose all control in that other region where we are no longer controlled by physical nature, nor by social and traditional prejudices. We are suddenly quite free and cannot bear such freedom. For instance, the physical world has many ways of preventing people from lying: If someone were to say at 6 o'clock in the evening that the sun had just come up, nature would soon demonstrate this to be wrong. It is like this with many things relating to the physical world. If people insist on talking nonsense about things relating to the higher worlds, even if it is only the one immediately next to our own, the physical world will not immediately show them to be wrong. This, then, is the reason why people may lose all control if they rush to escape the discipline which is imposed in the physical world.

Here we have one of the great problems which may arise when truths relating to the non-physical world are presented. Yet the answer always has to be that it is simply necessary to present these truths today. We must not forget that truths relating to the non-physical world cannot be received in the same frame of mind as truths relating to the physical world. To take them in we must slightly loosen the etheric and astral bodies; otherwise we shall only hear words. The state of mind has to be such—and with reference to the phenomena of the subjective inner life it merely is a state of mind—that for any real understanding of the things of the spirit one has to loosen the etheric and astral bodies a little. This loosening should only be a means of gaining understanding of the world of the spirit. It must not become an end in itself; this would be a very serious matter.

Imagine—to take an extreme case—someone comes to an anthroposophical lecture, not in order to gain insight into the realms of the spirit, which would be the right thing, but because he thinks this is truly mystical. As he listened he would let the words flow through him, as it were, because this would slightly loosen the ether body and the astral body. People certainly do come to lectures of this kind, sometimes also to those on pseudospiritual science, and listen in a kind of sleepy ecstasy; they are not really interested in the content, but more in the feeling of voluptuous pleasure which comes when the ether body and the astral body go partly outside the physical body. There may be other situations in life when to be thus ‘given up’, or ‘warm’, is a good thing; it is no good at all when it comes to revealing the truths relating to things of the spirit.

This must be properly understood. If spiritual truths are rightly understood, and if people are in all seriousness following the lines of thought used to develop concepts which may make the world of the spirit accessible to our understanding, their humanity will be enhanced and they will learn the things which have to be known at the present time for the salvation and further development of humanity. People who take these truths into themselves in the right way will also find their drives and instincts ennobled and raised to a higher level. By merely listening to spiritual truths they go through a development that is for the good.

Anyone who is not willing to accept anthroposophical truths in this sense but is perhaps doing so from some kind of purely personal interest—let us say he wants to belong to a society and has not found another one which suits him as well as the Anthroposophical Society does—anyone who comes to this Society with personal interests may indeed find that spiritual truths will first of all activate low instincts, and perhaps even the lowest of the low. It therefore does not come as a surprise that people who really should not be members but nevertheless do come and hear such things, find their lowest instincts brought to life. It is something that cannot be avoided at this time, for these things have to be made public and it is difficult to draw the line. The right way will only be found if those who have the inner justification to be part of such a movement use their wide-awake judgement and take themselves to task. People who in any way bring personal interests to bear, before or after leaving the Society, merely show that they never should have been members. And I think it is not really difficult to distinguish between personal interests and interest in objective understanding.

But it is not surprising that in the situation which has arisen because it is now necessary to make things generally known, it happens again and again that some of the instincts of the lower human nature come to the fore. The potential dangers must be consciously and clearly considered and ways must be found to correct them. If we take the right attitude to these dangers we shall certainly be able to meet them. This is very much a time—it is part of the chaotic situation we are in—when aberrations of this kind are far from uncommon. The tragic situation of today makes tremendous demands on the powers of many people. It is true to say that people who were not in the habit of working hard in the general rather than merely personal interest really have learned to work hard in the last three years. Many people have learned to work and to acquire general interests.

People who rightly belong to our movement will have come to it out of more than personal interest. Nevertheless, the present age does offer enormous opportunities for a kind of lazy outsider attitude. The specific constellation created by the war means that some people have really nothing to occupy them. If they are part of our movement they will also be aware of it. Before the war we had many lecture tours; a whole raft of people would get together and travel from one lecture to the next. Outer interest may have been lacking, but excitement could be found, and if this did not come from outside, people created their own excitements. This has now become difficult. It cannot be done. However, some people have not found a way of occupying themselves usefully. And that is why a lazy outsider attitude is to be found in our ranks exactly at this time, with people whiling away the time by creating all kinds of opposition. Being unable to get the excitement of travelling from lecture cycle to lecture cycle they find other ways of entertaining themselves. This merely shows the true nature of the interest that formerly made them travel from lecture cycle to lecture cycle.

When there is an inner obligation to represent anthroposophical truths before the world, in all seriousness and with dignity, you also know that more than fifty out of an audience of a hundred may well become opponents. That is a law; it is the way it is. If these fifty per cent of such people do not actually become opponents, there will be a reason for this, but it will not be because they are consistent. For reasons which have already been given and others that will be given, this is how matters are. Someone who represents anthroposophical truths is therefore not in the least surprised if there is opposition. We might take up the points that these opponents keep coming up with all the time, things they generally know better than anyone else to be untrue—for they do of course know that they are not true—but it would be much more useful to consider the sources from which such Opposition has Sprung.

All kinds of peculiar things will happen when we do so, and we shall then no longer feel inclined to take up the points that our opponents want us to take up. Instead, we are going to discover their true reasons. This can sometimes be more of an effort than to take up the points the opposition is making. Think of all the years in which lectures have been given here and how it has been necessary over and over again to say the same things I am also saying today, though this is always pointed out. But it is necessary to consider them with profound seriousness and dignity, and to consider them in a way which is fitting for an anthroposophical movement.

Believe me, I have more important things to do, if I am to lead this movement and be fully responsible for it, than to take account of the fact that three or four people, or even more if you will, get together and invent all kinds of gossip. I have more important things to do and never feel the inclination to go into such matters. But unfortunately this is so little understood! Even within this Society, there is more interest in excitement and sensation than genuine scientific interest. From the scientific point of view it is, for instance, interesting to study not only useful but also poisonous plants, but one has to find the right point of view. Very few of those who profess to follow anthroposophical spiritual science have even the least notion of the immense seriousness and importance of what it really should be. Forgive me for saying this. If there were the right seriousness and if the importance of this were really understood, people's attitudes would in many respects be very different from what they are. Of course I am not saying that people should turn their attention elsewhere. Rather the opposite: We should not turn our attention away from the phenomena which go hand in hand with the will to destroy this anthroposophical movement. But we have to find the right approach.

People may, for instance, write volumes in the way in which I have contradicted myself in my written works and with reference to all kinds of other things. One way of countering this would be to say that Luther was shown to have contradicted himself in hundreds of ways, not just a few dozen. His answer was: These asses are talking of contradictions in my works. I wish they would make the effort to try and understand just one of the things that appears to be in contradiction to other things!⁵ So one way would be to point out something like this. But there is no need for this. For when people speak in opposition today it is not because they are interested in finding and revealing contradictions but for quite a different reason.

Someone⁶ offered a manuscript to Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag,⁷ for instance. The publishing house was unable to use it and therefore returned it to the author. From this moment the author, who until then had been running after me wherever I went, became an opponent. The real reason was not that he had found contradictions. If that were the real reason we might use Luther's words. But we cannot do that, for the individual concerned can only be seen in his true colours if we know he is giving vent to his spleen because the publishing house was not able to publish his book. This was the real reason. So if we simply listen to the things people say, we shall have little opportunity for getting at the truth—just as little, perhaps, as the literary historian who would convert to reincarnation if this allowed him to continue in the belief that Hermann Bahr had Jewish connections. Conversion would be necessary if he were to be shown certificates of Christian baptism for Hermann Bahr's ancestors down to the twelfth generation.

Much is said about the courage which people are showing today. To assert the truths humanity needs today, in the sense I have spoken of, will need quite a different kind of courage—inner courage. But the place where this courage should be in the soul is occupied by cowardice, reluctance to take action, and this is tremendously widespread. In many respects it is due to this cowardice that anthroposophical spiritual science finds it so difficult to make its way today. It will make its way. But one should not sit back and accept; one should not think that things will go the right way without human involvement. One thing you will have to get used to—and it will be different from what you have been used to so far—is that I myself will have to be a lot less lenient in some respects than I have been until now. Do not think this is because I have changed my will and intention; you must look for the reasons in the existing situation.

You will have to understand that I cannot let the movement which I have to represent before the world go to the dogs in any old way. Forgive the expression. Higher duties are involved than people may dream of. I cannot be involved in whatever excitements or sensations some group or set may be desiring. Consideration must be given to many general and more important interests and impulses than to the purely personal ambitions which rule one set of people or another. To find the right way of presenting anthroposophy we simply must be able to set aside the purely personal element which for many is about the only thing that interests them today.

And so I must conclude here today with something which I have also been saying in all the other places where I have been speaking these days. There are many members of our anthroposophical science of the spirit who are truly dedicated and who have a clear idea of the seriousness of our work. But again and again there are others who do not belong and who behave in a way that simply would not happen if membership of the Society were limited to those who rightfully belong to it. Things keep coming up among members which are far removed from what is really intended; some of these can only be said to relate to what is really intended if one takes a totally distorted view.

Things are said by groups of people who have to be ignored—for our real interests go far beyond giving one's attention to the ambitions which are alive in those groups—things are said there, and people are beginning to believe them, which have no more to do with our true intentions than a dung beetle has to do with a pendulum clock. It is quite impossible to see how they go together. Yet fantastic stories created out of base instincts that are left to run riot are set in circulation. And this despite the fact that the people who generate them know full well that not a word is true. Such things can be explained in natural science, but we must also draw the logical conclusion and take the necessary actions. In the first place I am going to impose two rules an myself. Anyone who is going to speak of the one rule without the other, will be saying something which is not true. I have made these two rules known in all the places where I have been giving lectures in recent months.

In principle, I shall no longer continue to give private interviews to members of the Anthroposophical Society. For all those private interviews have led to reports which are full of lies. I have better things to do than refute the tales told by people who let their imaginations run riot, and so there is no other way but to discontinue these private interviews. Some individuals have a true esoteric impulse, and I will find other ways of making sure they are able to progress; it will just take while. The measure should not prevent anyone from progressing in esoteric development. But, generally speaking, all private interviews must now stop. This, then, is the first rule. Do not come to me, as people have done in some local groups, and say it is a harsh rule. No, do not come to me, go to those who are responsible.

The second thing is that I release everyone who has ever had a private interview with me from the promise not to talk about it, if they wish to do so. Anyone can tell anything they like about what has happened or been said in those private interviews—that is, in so far as they wish to do so. I am not going to prevent anyone from telling the whole truth about anything ever discussed with me in a private interview.

These two rules go together. The one does not apply without the other. And, as I said, if you think they are harsh, go to those who are responsible. Unless I am less lenient in these matters than I have been until now, the problems I am speaking of will not stop. As I said, I shall find other ways to make sure this does not harm anyone's esoteric development. Ways and means will be found. But, people being as they are today, it is not possible to establish such a science without things going badly astray on occasion, with people always jumping to the wrong conclusions. This is why there will have to be these rules.

People who take a serious and dignified approach to our spiritual-scientific development may find it difficult to understand how such things could come about, but they will accept the two rules as inevitable. From now on, everything will be entirely in the open. For there is nothing there which needs to shun the light! This is what is so shameful about it all: The truth and the whole truth could be told by everybody without leaving the least stain on our movement. But people have grown attached to something which has survived in our work as a continuation of earlier practices: to have individual interviews. 1f talking to individuals had not resulted in lies, the rule would not have been necessary. But everything ever said to any member can be truthfully told. Our movement can only gain from the truth—go and tell as much as you like. The truth will not be affected by the lies which are told; but it must not even appear to be affected, for it is important for humanity that anything presented out of a background of spiritual science is presented in a serious and dignified way.

So let me repeat once more: Without causing any loss to those who are seriously seeking esoteric development, I will generally no longer give private interviews for members. Everyone is free to tell everything they want about the interviews which have been given, but it must be the truth. I release everyone from whatever vow of silence there may be. But it should only be because individuals want to tell others for their own sake; they do not have to do it for my sake. And I have no objection to people spreading it about far and wide that these rules exist and are characteristic of our movement. Then the world will realize the infamous nature of the things that are so often said, especially about our Society.

• 1. John 18:36. The German for ‘kingdom’ in this sense is Reich (Trans.).
• 2. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), President of the United States 1913–1921. (Wilson propagated ‘open’ diplomacy but refused to permit publication of his discussions at the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris. His Fourteen Points were to be the basis for the armistice in November 1918. Trans.)
• 3. Semi-Kuerschner oder Literarisches Lexikon der Schriftsteller, Dichter, Bankiers, Geldleute, Schauspieler, Kunstler, Musiker, Offiziere, Rechtsanwlte, Revolutionre, Frauenrechtlerinnen, Sozialdemokraten usw. jdischer Rasse und Versippung, die von 1813–1913 in Deutschland ttig oder bekannt waren (Semi-Kuerschner or literary lexicon of authors, poets, bankers, financiers, physicians, actors, artists, musicians, officers, lawyers, revolutionaries, women's rights activists, social democrats, etc., who were Jewish by birth or marriage and were active or known in Germany from 1813–1913), published by Philipp Stayff, Berlin 1913. The passage about Hermann Bahr reads as follows: ‘It is said, and people have assured me over and over again, that Hermann Bahr is not a Jew, but I believe in the adage: ‘Tell me who your friends are’ (Bahr's first wife was Jewish), and would maintain that Bahr is of Jewish origin even if he were to show me the certificates of baptism of his forebears for the last ten generations, and indeed if really pushed into a corner I would rather subscribe to belief in the transmigration of souls.’
• 4. Adolf Barthels in his Kritiker und Kritikaster, Leipzig 1903.
• 5. Martin Luther (1483–1546) religious reformer who led the German Reformation. He translated the Bible into the vernacular to make it accessible to everyone and wrote many works, their vigour still much appreciated today. The actual quote is: ‘How can these asses form an opinion on contradictory elements in our doctrine if they don't understand any aspect of those contradictory elements?’ From Ricarda Huch, Luthers Glaube, 10. Brief (translates as ‘10th letter’).
• 6. Max Seiling (1852–1928), Austrian poet and writer.
• 7. Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag is the publishing house established by Marie von Sivers in 1913 in Berlin for the publication of Rudolf Steiner's works. It moved to Dornach in November 1923.

The original idea of any sacred festival is to make the human being look upward from his dependence on earthly things to those things that transcend the Earth. The Easter Festival especially can bring these thoughts near to man's heart. During the last three, four or five centuries humanity of the civilised world has undergone an evolution of soul and spirit which led man farther and farther away from the thought of his connection with Cosmic powers and Cosmic forces. Man became more and more restricted to those relationships alone which hold good between himself and the Earthly powers and forces. Indeed it is true to say that by the methods of knowledge recognised today, no other relationships can be considered. If a man who stood near to the sanctuaries of Initiation in pre-Christian times, or even in the first centuries of Christianity, could learn to know the character and trend of our present scholarship—if he could approach it with the mood of soul belonging to that ancient time—he simply would not understand how it is possible for man to live without a consciousness of his non-earthly, cosmic relationships.

I will now give a brief outline of certain facts, the precise details of which you will find in one or other of the Lecture-Courses. The purpose of these present lectures is to bring especially the Easter thought near to our hearts; I cannot therefore go into all the details now.

We may transplant ourselves in thought into one of the many different religious systems of antiquity. Take for example the one that is least far removed from the modern man—the Hebrew or Jewish system of religion. In such religious systems of antiquity—in so far as they are monotheistic—we shall find the reverence for, the worship of, the One God. It is the Divinity of whom we speak in the Christian conception as the First Person of the Godhead—the Father God.

Now all those religions in which this conception of the Father God was living were more or less aware—the Priests indeed were fully aware—of the connection of the Father God with the cosmic Moon forces—with all the forces that now flow down from Moon to Earth. Scarcely anything is left today of that ancient consciousness of man's connection with the Moon forces—unless it be the imaginative inspiration which the poetic mind still feels that it receives from thence, or again in Medicine the counting of the embryo period as ten lunar months. But the older world-conceptions had a clear consciousness of the fact that when man descends to this physical life from the spiritual world where he dwelt as a soul-spiritual being in his pre-earthly life, the currents of those forces and impulses which proceed from the Moon pour through him.

To understand what shapes him in the fulness of his life—what lives in him as the forces of nutrition, breathing and the like, in a word, as the general forces of growth—man must look not to the earthly forces but to forces from beyond the Earth. Man can indeed become aware, if he considers the matter truly, how the earthly forces are related to himself. If we did not hold our body together by forces from beyond the Earth—if our body did not receive its form through these what could the earthly forces do to hold our body together? The moment the forces from beyond the Earth have left it, this body is indeed exposed to the earthly forces. Then it disintegrates and dissolves; it becomes a corpse. Earthly forces can only make a corpse of man; they cannot form and mould him. But there are other forces in him which lift him out of the earthly realm. These forces make him a connected organism, a connected form and figure within the earthly realm between birth and death. They prevent him from falling a victim to the forces which take hold of him in death and destroy him. Throughout his earthly life they battle against the destruction of his form; indeed they must be battling all the time. For these forces man is indebted to the Moon influences.

While on the one hand, therefore, we may state this somewhat theoretic truth: The Moon forces contain the formative principle of the human body, we must realise on the other hand that the ancient religions revered and worshipped in these forces which guide man, so to speak, through birth into this physical existence, the forces of the Divine Father. The Initiates of the ancient Hebrew culture were clearly aware that the forces which guide man into this Earth-existence, which maintain him here, and from which—as physical man—he escapes when he passes through the gate of death, stream from the Moon.

To love the Divine Father forces with heart and mind, to look up to them and to express this reverence in sacred ritual, in prayer and praise—such was the content of certain monotheistic religions of ancient time. But the old religions were more consistent than we generally think. History describes these things quite wrongly for it only has the outer documents to go upon and is unaware of what can be observed by spiritual sight.

The religions which looked up to the Moon—to the spiritual Beings in the Moon—belonged really to a later period. The primeval religions possessed not only this conception of the Moon, but also had a clear idea of the Sun forces; nay more (as we may also mention at this point) of the Saturn forces. Here indeed we are entering a realm of history for which no outer documents exist. For the time we are now considering lies many thousands of years before the founding of Christianity. These are the epochs which I called in my Occult Science, the ancient Indian (since one must have a name and the civilisation of that first epoch existed on the soil that afterwards was India), and the ancient Persian. In those old civilisations man's evolution was very different from what it was in later times. Moreover his religious beliefs depended on this unfolding of his life.

Our lives today (and it has been so for more than two thousand years) unfold in such a way that a certain break in our earthly life and development escapes our notice. Indeed it is scarcely perceptible today. The inner change that takes place in the human being about the thirtieth year of life remains for present day humanity to a large extent in the subconscious, in the unconscious. But it was very different eight or nine thousand years before the Christian era. In those epochs man developed until about the thirtieth year of his life so that one might call this development continuous. But in the thirtieth year a far-reaching metamorphosis took place in him. I will describe it in a radical way. I admit it is radical, but this way of expressing it will serve to characterise the facts.

The following thing might well happen in those olden times. Before the thirtieth year of his life a man had made the acquaintance of another man, say, three or four years younger than himself. His friend would therefore undergo this metamorphosis about the age of thirty, a little later than he did. Now if the two had not seen one another for some time and then met once more—I am speaking in modern terms, which make it seem still more radical—it might well happen that he who had undergone the change, being addressed by the other, simply failed to recognise him. So deeply was the memory transformed.

The small communities of those very ancient times were connected with the Mystery Schools, and in these the lives of the young folk were registered. For they themselves, in that they underwent this revolutionary transformation, forgot their earlier life. They had to learn over again what they had experienced in life until about the thirtieth year. So they became aware, ‘In my thirtieth year I have become an altogether different man. I must go to the Registry (a modern expression, needless to say!) to learn what was the content of my life before this change.’ Yes, indeed it was so! And in the instruction which they then received, they learned that it was the Moon forces which had worked upon them exclusively until the thirtieth year, and that then the Sun forces had entered into the development of their earthly life. The Sun forces and the Moon forces work upon man in very different ways. What does the man of today know of the Sun forces? He knows only the outward and physical aspect. He knows—forgive me saying so—that the Sun forces make him perspire, that they make him warm. He knows, maybe, one or two other things. We have Sun baths and the like. Thus certain therapeutic properties are known and so forth; but all these ideas are quite external. The man of today simply does not conceive what the forces that are spiritually connected with the Sun are doing with him.

Julian the Apostate, the last of the pagan Caesars, had still received instruction in what was left of the ancient Mysteries, concerning these forces of the Sun. He wished once more to make this knowledge an influence in the world and for this very reason was murdered on his campaign into Persia. So strong were the powers in the first Christian centuries which intended that all knowledge of such things should disappear. No wonder if this knowledge cannot be attained in any ordinary way today!

Now the Moon forces represent that element in man which determines him, which fills him with an inner necessity, so as to act according to his temperament, his instincts, his emotions—in a word, according to the whole nature of his physical and etheric bodies. It is the spiritual Sun forces, on the other hand, which free him from this necessity. They as it were melt away the forces of necessity within him. Through the Sun forces, man becomes a free being.

In those ancient times the two things were sharply separated from one another in man's development. In the thirtieth year of his life he became a Sun man, that is to say, a free man. Until the thirtieth year he was a Moon man, that is to say, an unfree man. Today these things merge into one another. Today the Sun forces work already in childhood alongside of the Moon forces, and the Moon forces work on into a later age. Today, therefore, Necessity and Freedom are mingled; they work into one another. But it was not always so. In the pre-historic times of which I am now speaking, the Moon influences and the Sun influences were sharply separated in the course of human life. Hence in those olden times it was said: Man is born not once, but twice. This was said of the great majority of human beings—and it was considered abnormal, pathological, if a man did not experience this fundamental metamorphosis of life at the age of thirty.—This second birth was the Sun-birth of the human being; the first was called the Moon-birth. And when in the further course of evolution this Sun-birth became less clearly noticeable, certain exercises, sacred rituals and actions were applied to those initiated in the Mysteries. Thus the Initiates underwent what was no longer there for mankind in general. They were the “Twice-born”.

We can still find the term “Twice-born” in oriental writings, but the expression is already a derived one. Indeed I would like to ask any Orientalist or Sanskrit scholar (I believe our friend Professor Beckh is here and you may ask him whether these things are so according to his special studies)—I would like to ask any Sanskrit scholar whether modern scholarship can explain in clear terms what the expression “Twice-born” signifies. No doubt there are plenty of formal explanations, but of the substantial meaning of the term our scholars are quite unaware, for it can only be known by those who are aware of the real facts of life from which it is derived. Spiritual research alone can give information on these matters. But when spiritual research has had its say, I would ask any open-minded scholar who knows the available documents—who knows all that external scholarship can lay hands upon: Does not external scholarship subsequently confirm, piece by piece, the researches of spiritual science? It will do so indeed, if things are only seen in the true light. But I have to draw attention to matters which must take precedence of all documentary research; for by documentary research alone one simply cannot understand the life of man.

Thus we look back upon an ancient time when they spoke of a Moon-birth of man as of his creation by the Father. And as to the Sun-birth, they knew that in the spiritual rays of the Sun, the power of Christ the Sun is working; and this is the power that makes man free. Think for a moment: what does the spiritual Sun force bring about? We owe it to the Sun that we, as human beings upon Earth, are able to make anything of ourselves. We should be strictly determined, placed in an inexorable Necessity—a Necessity not even of Destiny but of Nature—if the liberating forces of the Sun, the impulses that melt away Necessity, did not come near to us.

In those ancient world-conceptions, as man gazed upward to the Sun he was aware of these things. “This Eye of the World, whence radiates the power of the Christ, this Eye of the World brings it about that I must not remain subject to the iron Necessity with which I was born out of the Moon forces. I need not remain, my whole life long, a human being evolving by Necessity. These Sun forces—these forces of the Christ, looking down upon me through the cosmic Eye of the Sun—bring it about that I, during my earthly life, by my own inner freedom, can make of myself something which I was not yet by virtue of the Moon forces when they placed me into this earthly life.”

The consciousness in man that he could transform himself, that he could make something of himself—this was attributed to the Sun forces.

In parenthesis and for the sake of completeness, I will add that they also looked up to the Saturn forces. In these they recognised all that maintains the human being when he passes through the gate of death—that is to say, when he undergoes the third earthly metamorphosis.

 Birth: the Moon-birth second Birth: the Sun-birth third Birth: Saturn-birth, earthly death 

In earthly death man was maintained by the forces holding sway at the outermost limit (as they conceived it) of the planetary system of the Earth—the Saturn forces. The Saturn forces hold man upright and carry him out into the spiritual world, preserving his being as a connected whole when the third metamorphosis takes place. Such indeed was the world-conception of an olden time.

But humanity evolves. There came a time when the ancient knowledge of how the Sun forces work upon man, was preserved only within the Mysteries. And it was preserved longest of all in the medical departments of the Mysteries. For the same Sun forces which in the normal course of man's development give him his freedom—give him the opportunity to make something of himself—the same Sun forces, the forces of the Christ, are also working in many different ways in certain plants upon the Earth, and in other earthly beings and earthly creatures. Here they represent medicaments and means of healing.

But mankind in general has lost this connection with the Sun. While the consciousness that man depends upon the Moon forces—the Divine Father forces—remained for a long time, the consciousness of his dependence on (or as we should rather say, his liberation by) the Sun forces was lost. What we today call the forces of Nature—the forces of which we speak almost exclusively in our modern world-conception—are indeed simply and solely the Moon forces, which have become abstract and all-powerful.

But the Sun forces were still known to the bearer of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who not only knew them, but was able to direct his whole life by them. Indeed He had to know them; for the same Sun forces which had been attainable only in the ancient Mysteries by human beings looking upward to the Sun—this in their own down-pouring to the Earth, He was destined to receive into His own Body.

I described it yesterday. At the time of the founding of Christianity this was felt to be the essential point.—In the body of Jesus of Nazareth, in the thirtieth year of his life, a transformation had taken place. It was the same transformation which all human beings had undergone in primeval times, but with this difference: that in those olden times the rays of the spiritual Sun had entered into all men at this point in their life. Now the essence and Being of the Sun Himself—the Christ—descended into human evolution and took up His abode in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the truth underlying the Mystery of Golgotha, as the primal foundation of all earthly life.

We shall recognise the full connection of these things by turning our attention now to the ancient Mysteries and the way in which men there celebrated the Easter Festival in its full human form, by which I mean the Act of initiation. For Initiation was in truth an Easter Festival. It took place, to begin with, in three stages. But before the candidate could attain true Knowledge or initiation, the first requirement was that through all that had come toward him out of the Mystery, he should have grown truly humble—so humble that no one today can have any real conception of such humility. True, the men of today think themselves very humble in respect of knowledge; but to anyone who can see through these things, they still appear possessed by the greatest arrogance.

At the starting point of his Initiation, this above all had to come over the human being, that he no longer considered himself a human being at all, but said: “I must first become a human being.” Of course we cannot expect the man of today at a given moment in his life no longer to consider himself a human being. But in those times it was the very first requirement. The candidate must in all truth, not consider himself a human being. He must say to himself: Certainly I was a human being before I descended into an earthly body. In the pre-earthly existence I was a human being in soul and spirit. Then the soul and spirit entered into the physical body which it received from the mother—from the parents. The soul and spirit—I will not say ‘clothed itself’, for that would be a wrong expression—the soul and spirit permeated itself with the physical body. But as to how the soul and spirit in the course of time permeates the physical—permeates the nerves-and-senses system, permeates the rhythmic system, permeates the system of metabolism in the limbs—of this the human being has no consciousness. He looks outward through the senses and becomes aware of the surrounding physical world. But what after all can a man do when at last he has so far penetrated his physical body with the soul and spirit that he considers himself a fully evolved and grown-up human being? What can he do? He can but look outward from his eyes, hear outward through his ears, feel outward with his skin, perceiving warmth and cold, roughness and smoothness. He cannot perceive inward, he cannot look through the eyes into himself. At most he can flay the physical corpse of man, and then imagine he is looking into himself. But he is not really doing so. It would be childish to believe that he is.

Suppose that I have a house before me here, and instead of looking in through the windows I pick up all manner of instruments and—if I am strong enough—break the house to pieces. There indeed I have the single bricks lying before me. I stare at the pile of bricks. This is what man does today. He flays the human being and dismembers him in the hope of knowing him. But he cannot; for it is not the human being that one learns to know in this way. If we would learn to know the human being, then even as we look outward through the eyes, so we must become able to look back again through the eyes, and to hear back again inward through the ears. All these things taken together—the eyes, the ears, the whole skin as an organ of touch, of warmth, the organ of smell, and so forth—all these together were called in the ancient Mysteries, the Gate or Portal to the human being. Indeed the starting-point of Initiation was this: Man came to realise that he knew nothing of the human being. Therefore, since he had no self-consciousness of man, he could not be one. He must first look inward through the senses, whereas in ordinary life he looked only outward.

Such was the first stage of Initiation in the ancient Mysteries. Now the moment the man learned thus to look inward he also experienced himself in the pre-earthly life. For then he knew: I am in my own being of soul and spirit.

We may draw it diagrammatically. Here is the head. Man looks outward. Now, instead, he learnt to look inward.

But in thus looking inward he became aware of what had entered into him as the pre-earthly life and being, which had entered in through eye and ear and skin, etc. Of this he now became aware. Here it was that he possessed his pre-earthly existence. Moreover it became clear to him that only now could he learn to know what we today should call Natural Science. When we study Natural Science today, how do we set about it? We are led to see the things of Nature, to describe them and so forth. But this is just as though I had known a human being for a long time; now I am about to see him again, and someone lays on me the strict injunction: “When you see him again you must forget all you had in common with him; you must not remember anything at all of what you had in common with him before.” Think of it! It is inconceivable what it would mean to husbands and wives, for instance, if on some occasion when they are about to meet again, they were strictly commanded to forget all that they had undergone together in the past. I can conceive that in some cases this might sometimes be not unpleasant to them! Still, life could not subsist under such conditions. Yet this is what is required of the modern man with regard to Nature through the very ordering of present-day civilisation. For he already knew the kingdoms of Nature—he knew them in their spiritual aspect—before he descended to the Earth. The human being of today is led to forget all that he learned of minerals and plants and animals before his descent to Earth. The ancient Initiate, on the other hand, was thus instructed in what was called the first Degree within the Mysteries: “Behold the crystal quartz!” Thereupon everything was done to make him remember what he had known of the quartz before he came down to the Earth, or again what he had known of the lily or of the rose. Recognition was taught as knowledge of Nature. And when a man had learned this Nature—lore recognition of what he had seen before he came down to earthly life—then he was received into the second Degree.

In the second Degree he learned Music; he learned the Architecture, the Geometry, the Mensuration of that time, and so forth. For what did the second Degree contain? It contained all that the human being perceives when he now no longer gazes into himself through the eyes, or hearkens inward through the ears, but when he actually enters into himself. At this stage it was said to the candidate: “Thou enterest the human Temple Grove”. He learned to know the Temple Grove of man—permeated physically by the forces of soul and spirit, of which man consisted before he descended into earthly life. Thus he entered into himself. And it was said to him: There are three chambers in this Temple Grove. The one was the chamber of Thinking. Seen from outside it is the head. It is but small, but when one sees it from within, it is great as the universe; one learns to know its spiritual nature. This was the first chamber. In the second chamber the candidate learned to know the life of Feeling, and in the third chamber the life of Willing. Moreover in discovering how man is organised in his organs of Thinking, Feeling and Willing, the candidates were learning to know what holds good on Earth.

The knowledge of Nature holds good not only on the Earth. Man already acquires it before he descends to Earth. Here on Earth he is only called upon to recollect it. But houses are not built in the spiritual world as they are built with earthly architecture. Music is yonder, it is true, but that is spiritual melody. Whatever is earthly music has been cast downwards into the earthly air; it is a projection of the heavenly Music, but in the form in which man experiences it, it is earthly. Likewise all that we measure is earthly. We measure earthly space: Mensuration, Geometry, is an earthly science. This in fact was the important thing for the candidate for Initiation in the second Degree: he became aware that all talk of knowledge by mere earthly methods is vague and void, save in so far as it be related to Geometry, Architecture and Mensuration. He saw that a real science of Nature must be pre-earthly knowledge, remembered, recognised; and that the true sciences of Earth are Geometry, Architecture, Music and Mensuration. For these can be learned here on the Earth.

Thus man descended into himself, and learned to know the three-chambered Man as against the single human incarnation which one perceives in ordinary life, when, without entering inside the human being, one merely knows him from outside.

And in the third Degree man learned to know the human being when he no longer dives merely down into himself and knows himself as a spiritual being, but when this spiritual being learns to know the body itself. Hence in all ancient Mysteries the path one had to take was through the Gate of Death. One became aware what man is like when he has laid aside the earthly body. Only there was a difference between the real death and the death of Initiation. I shall explain in the following lectures why there must be this difference; now I will only state the facts.

When man actually dies, he lays his physical body aside. He is no longer bound to it. He no longer follows the earthly forces, he is freed from them. But when he is still connected with the physical body—as was the case in the act of initiation in ancient times—then he must attain by dint of inner strength the freedom from the body which he has as a matter of course in real Death. That is to say, for a certain length of time, he must hold himself free. Hence for Initiation it was necessary to achieve the strong inner forces of the soul, whereby one could hold oneself in soul free from the physical body. And the same forces which gave man power to hold himself free from the earthly body, these same forces gave him the higher knowledge—knowledge of things which can never be seen by the senses nor conceived by the intellect. These forces transplant the human being into the spiritual world, just as his physical body transplants him into the physical world. At this stage the Initiate was able to know himself as soul-spiritual Man even during the earthly life. Henceforth, for the Initiate, the Earth was a Star—a Star external to the human being—while he himself (notably in the more ancient Mysteries) must live with the Sun instead of with the Earth. He knew now what man receives from the Sun. He knew how the Sun forces work within him.

This then was the third Degree; and it was followed by the fourth, which worked upon the candidate somewhat as follows.—When a man eats on Earth, he knows he is eating cabbage, wild-fowl, and so forth, and drinking all manner of things. He knows: These things are now outside me, and now they are within me. He breathes the air. First it is outside him, then it is within, and then it is outside again. So he stands in connection with the earthly forces; he bears within himself the forces and substances which are otherwise outside him on the Earth. “Before thou art initiated”—thus it was explained to the candidate for Initiation in ancient times—“before thou art initiated thou art an Earth-bearer, a cabbage-bearer, bearer of wild fowl, of veal, and so forth. But when thou hast been initiated into the third Degree, and art given what can be given to thee when freed from the body, then thou will be not a cabbage-bearer, a pork-bearer, a veal-bearer, but a bearer of that which the Sun forces give thee.” Now in many of the Mysteries that which the Sun forces spiritually give to man was called Christos. Hence he who had passed beyond the three Degrees was called a Christopher, or Christophorus. For he felt himself henceforth bearer of the Sun forces (even as on Earth he might feel himself as a cabbage-bearer and the rest). In most of the ancient Mysteries Christophorus was the name for those who attained the fourth Degree.

In the third Degree man had to understand certain things; above all he had to understand that for the moments of Knowledge the craving for the physical body must cease. He must perceive that while man in his physical body belongs to the Earth, yet in reality the Earth is only there to destroy the physical body, not to build it. Henceforth he learned to know the upbuilding forces, whose origin is in the Cosmos. But he learned something else besides when he became a Christophorus. Then above all he learned to know that spiritual forces are at work even in the substance of the Earth, only they are not visible to earthly sight. Speaking in modern words—though they spoke with the same meaning I can only tell you of these things in modern language, not in the words of that time—they explained to him: “If thou wouldst learn the science of substance—how the substances are combined and separated—thou must behold the spiritual forces which permeate the substance out of the Cosmos. Thou canst not know these things when thou art uninitiated. Thou must first be initiated into the fourth Degree and be able to see through the forces of the Sun-existence. Then thou canst study Chemistry.”

Just imagine, if we today required of a man wishing to take his degree as a chemist or pharmacologist that he would first feel himself in relation to the forces of the Sun even as he feels himself in relation to the cabbage of the Earth. What madness this would seem! Yet these were the realities. It became fully clear to men: With all the forces that are living in the body and that we make use of for ordinary knowledge, we can study only Geometry, Mensuration, Music and Architecture. With these forces we cannot study Chemistry; and if we do study it, we shall be talking in superficialities.

And so indeed it is. Since the time when the ancient Initiation Science was lost, all talk of Chemistry has been superficial. It drives anyone who is seeking for real knowledge to despair when he has to study the official Chemistry of today. For it rests only on external data, not on an inner penetration of things. If men only had an open mind they would say to themselves that something quite different is necessary. We must acquire a different mode of knowledge if we would truly study Chemistry. It is the present cowardice of knowledge which is instilled into the human being and prevents him from awakening to such an impulse.

When man had attained this stage he was ripe to become an Astronomos, which was a still higher Degree. To learn to know the stars outwardly by calculation and the like, was considered altogether meaningless. In the stars, spiritual Beings live. They can be known only if one has overcome bodily vision, nay, if one has even overcome Geometry and can live within the Universe, thus learning to know the spiritual essence of the stars. At this stage man was truly resurrected. And now he could behold how the Moon forces and the Sun forces work, even into the earthly man.

I have had to bring these things near to you from two sides today. In the ancient Mysteries—not at a certain season of the year but at a certain Degree in a higher development of man—Easter took place as an inner experience: Easter as the Resurrection of the man of soul and spirit, out of the physical body into the spiritual Universe. And in this way those who still had knowledge of the Mysteries at that time looked up to the Mystery of Golgotha. They said to themselves: What would have become of mankind if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place? In bygone ages there was the possibility of being initiated into the secrets of the Cosmos. For in very ancient times man had experienced as a matter of course his second birth, about the thirtieth year of his life; and in subsequent times there still remained at least the memories of this; there was a science of the Mysteries, preserving in tradition what had actually been experienced in former times.

But in the age when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, all these things had been wafted away and forgotten. Mankind would have fallen into utter decadence had not the Power to whom the Initiates in the Mysteries ascended when they became Christophorus, descended into Jesus of Nazareth to be present henceforward on the Earth; so that man might henceforward be united with this Power through Christ Jesus.

Thus what appears before our eyes in the Easter Festival today is connected with a certain chapter in the historic evolution of the Mysteries. Truly we only become aware of the content of the Easter Festival when we call this ancient sacred history to life again.

These things will be the subject of our further study. But you will now at any rate be able to draw near to what the candidate for Initiation in ancient times experienced. He could say to himself: Through my Initiation I have come to understand how the Sun and Moon work within me in their mutual and heavenly relationships. For now I know that I, as physical man, am shaped and formed in such and such a way; that I have such and such eyes and nose and other bodily forms both inwardly and outwardly throughout my body; that this bodily form could grow, and grows to this day in the process of nutrition—all this is dependent on the Moon forces. All that is Necessity depends on them. But that I can live and move as a free inner Being within my bodily nature—that I can transform myself, that I have myself in hand—this depends on the Sun forces, the forces of the Christ. These are the forces I must kindle in my inner being if I would mould with conscious knowledge, and attain by my own inner work, what the Sun forces would otherwise have to do within me, once more by a kind of Necessity.

In this way we shall also understand why man even today looks upward to the Sun and Moon and determines from their mutual constellation the time of the Easter Festival. For this alone has still remained. We calculate when is the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Spring Equinox. The Easter Festival of the year is fixed for the Sunday following the first full Moon, indicating (as I shall explain in greater detail tomorrow) that we recognise in the form and structure of the Easter Festival something that must be determined from above, out of the Cosmos.

But the Easter thought must be regained. And it can only be regained by looking back to the ancient Mysteries, where the human being was made aware how it is when he looks within himself and beholds—the Gate of Man! And when he actually enters into himself—the Three-chambered inner Man! And when he makes himself free—the Gate of Death! When he lives and moves freely in the spiritual world, he becomes a Christophorus.

The Mysteries themselves receded in the age when the free development of man had to take place. But now the time is come when they must be found again. Of this, my dear friends, we must be fully conscious. Institutions must be created today to find the Mysteries once more.

Out of this consciousness we held our Christmas Foundation Meeting. For it is an urgent necessity that there should be a place on Earth where the Mysteries can once more be founded. The Anthroposophical Society in its further progress must become the path to the Mysteries renewed. This will also be our task: out of a right and true consciousness to cooperate towards this end. And to this end the life of man will have to be considered according to the three stages: the stage where we turn our gaze into the human being; the stage where we strive to enter right within him; and the stage where we become, in consciousness, what in the outer reality we become only in Death.

Let us then take away with us these words as a solemn remembrance of this lesson which we have held today, and let us make them active in our souls:

 Stand in the porch at Man's life-entrance, Read thereon the World's writ sentence, Dwell in the soul of Man within, Feel in its pulsing, Worlds begin. 

In ordinary life we do not see the World's Beginning, but only this or that within the World.

 Think upon Man's earthly ending. Find therein the Spirit's wending. 

Let this then, be the extract from today's lesson:

 Stand in the porch of Man's life-entrance, Read thereon the World's writ sentence. Dwell in the soul of Man within, Feel, in its pulsing, Worlds begin. Think upon Man's earthly ending, Find therein the Spirit's wending. 

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 (original text) Steh' vor des Menschen Lebenspforte; Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte. Leb' in des Menschen Seeleninnern; Fühl' in seinem Kreise Weltbeginnen. Denk an des Menschen Erdenende; Find' bei ihm die Geisteswende. 

One may say that the original idea of Festivals was to make people lift their eyes, turning them from dependence on earthly things to dependence on super-earthly ones. And it is consideration of the Easter Festival that can especially bring about such thoughts. In the course of the last four or five hundred years the civilization of the world has gone through a spiritual evolution which has inclined humanity to turn its attention more and more away from its connection with cosmic forces and cosmic powers. Human attention has been restricted increasingly to the study of those conditions prevailing between man and earthly forces and powers. It is also the case that with those means of knowledge which are considered legitimate to-day it is impossible to keep other connections in view. If anyone in pre-Christian times, or even in the first Christian centuries, who was closely associated with the Mysteries could have experienced our present-day knowledge, he would not in the least have understood—if he approached things with the thoughts and feelings of those days—how it was possible for people to live without a consciousness of their super-earthly, their cosmic connections.

I might here give an outline of many things which you find more fully described in different cycles of lectures; but as these present lectures are intended to give a more intimate understanding of the thought of Easter, I naturally cannot bring forward every particular but can only hint at how things are.

If we were to transfer ourselves in thought into the various ancient religious systems of the past, we might choose as an example that one most familiar to modern people, the ancient Hebrew-Jewish system; we would find, when these ancient systems are mono-theistic, the worship of the one Godhead. This is that Godhead of whom, in accordance with Christian acceptance, we call the Father.

Now, in all those religions in which the thought of this Father-God lived, there has existed more or less, but especially among the priests of the Mysteries, a connection between this God and the cosmic moon-forces, a connection with everything streaming down to earth as force from the moon.

Of this ancient consciousness of the connection between man and the moon forces, hardly anything has remained other than the stimulus given to the poetic fancy of the soul by the moon, and the number of months in the gestation period of man, in accordance with the ten lunar months as reckoned in medicine. But in the older ideas concerning such things a clear consciousness did exist, that when man came down from the spiritual world, where in pre-earthly times he had lived as a psycho-spiritual being, into physical life, he was filled with and strengthened by impulses that streamed to him from the moon. When a man considers what it is that has formed him as living being, what lives in him as the forces of nutrition and ˂ breathing, and as forces of growth generally, he must not look to the forces of the earth but to forces outside the earth.

It is easy for him to see how, when looking to earthly forces, these are connected with him. But if our body were not held together by forces outside the earth, if it did not receive its form from forces beyond the earth, what could the mere earthly forces do towards its preservation and cohesion (Zusammengehalt)?

The moment the non-earthly forces—those coming from beyond the earth—leave it, the body is exposed to the forces of the earth: it then perishes, disintegrates, and becomes a corpse. The forces of the earth can only make corpses of men, they cannot construct their human form. Those forces living in man, by which he is raised above what is earthly, so that between birth and death he can live on earth as a coherent organic form and not succumb to the forces of earth that lay hold of him at death and destroy him, against which he wages a life-long struggle here—for they must be struggled against—these forces he owes to the influences of the moon-world.

If on the one hand we can state theoretically that the moon contains the forces by which the human body is formed, we must realize on the other hand that ancient religions reverenced these as the divine Father-forces which were the means of bringing man into physical existence at birth. The ancient Hebrew Initiate had a distinct consciousness of the fact that the forces leading man to earthly existence streamed to him from the moon, maintained him on earth, and were torn from him as physical man when he passed through the gates of death.

A kindly feeling of love for these Father-forces, a looking up to them in the practice of their cult by means of prayers, etc., was the content of certain ancient monotheistic religions. These ancient mono-theistic religions were more consistent than people think. Such matters are very incorrectly represented in history, because history can only go by external documents, not by what is observed with the help of spiritual vision.

Those religions which looked up to the moon, and to that which existed in the moon as spiritual Beings, belonged to a later period. Compared with the opinions held by them concerning the moon, those held by earlier religions concerning the Sun-forces, and even the Saturn forces, of which I shall have something to say later, were very clearly defined, but they concerned themselves principally with the Sun-forces.

With these early religions we enter an historical field of study for which external documents no longer exist, lying as they do many thousands of years earlier than the foundation of Christianity. In order to provide this age with a name I have called it in my book, “An Outline of Occult Science,” the “Old Indian,” which was followed by the “Old Persian,” age. In these civilizations human development was very different from what it became later, and religious beliefs depended upon this development. During the last two thousand years and more we have developed so that we are not aware that a split has occurred in our earthly evolution. This has hardly been noticed. What takes place in the greater part of present-day humanity, inwardly, at about their thirtieth year, has also hardly been noticed. It has remained to a great extent in the subconscious; it has not entered into man's consciousness. Conditions were very different in a humanity that lived eight or nine thousand years before the foundation of Christianity. The development of individuals was then more continuous up to about the age of thirty. With the thirtieth year a great change took place. What I have now to say about this change has naturally to be spoken of somewhat crudely, but these simple descriptions are in accordance with the facts that concern us at the moment.

In those remote times the following might happen: A man might have contracted a friendship with someone (before his thirtieth year who was considerably younger than himself—perhaps three or four years younger. This man shortly afterwards experienced the change that took place about the age of thirty. It might happen, these two men not having seen each other for a long time, that the one who had experienced the change at his thirtieth year was spoken to by the other without his knowing who he was. His memory had been so completely changed. I have had to put this in the language of to-day, hence it may strike you as being somewhat crude. In olden times the control of certain arrangements (Einrichtungen) stood in close connection with the Mystery schools; and by these, in the small societies then existing, a register of the lives of the young people was kept, because they themselves forgot, owing to the great alteration (Umschwung) that had taken place in them, and had to be taught again what they had experienced in life before their thirtieth year. These men then knew: I have become a quite different being in my thirtieth year, I must go to “the registry” (a modern expression, of course) in order to learn what I had previously experienced. This is actually what happened! Through instructions they received, at the same time they were told: Before your thirtieth year the Moon-forces worked in you exclusively; after attaining this age the Sun-forces entered into the development of your earthly life. The Sun-forces work on man with an entirely different purport from the Moon-forces. What does present-day humanity know of the Sun-forces? Only the outer physical part. Man knows that they warm him, that they cause him to perspire; he knows besides this that people practise sun-bathing, that there is something therapeutic connected with the forces of the sun, but all this he learns in a merely external way. He has no idea what the forces that are spiritually connected with the Sun do to him.

Julian the Apostate, the last of the heathen Cæsars, had experienced something of these forces in the last lingering note of the Mysteries, and just when he desired to make proof of these experiences he was murdered on his expedition into Persia; so powerful in the early Christian centuries were the forces which desired all knowledge of such things to be lost.

It is therefore not to be wondered at that even to-day no knowledge concerning them can be acquired. While the Moon-forces are those which determine what man is, which permeate him with an inward necessity (Notwendigkeit), as to his actions, and determine his instincts, his temperament, his emotions and the nature of his physical-etheric body generally, the spiritual Sun-forces free him from this compulsion. They caused this necessity or compulsion to dissolve, as it were, and man became really a free being through the Sun-forces. In that ancient time to which I have referred, the difference between these two forces in human evolution was strictly defined. In his thirtieth year a man then became a Sun-man, a free man; up to his thirtieth year he was a Moon-man, and was not free. To-day these two conditions slide one into the other. To-day the Sun-forces work along with the Moon-forces even in childhood, and the Moon-forces continue to work on into later years; so that to-day these two things, compulsion or necessity and freedom, work one into the other. This was not always the case. In the early pre-historic times of which we are speaking the action of the sun and that of the moon were absolutely distinct in the course of a man's life. This is why it was said at that time concerning the greater part of humanity: a man was born not once but twice. For it was held to be abnormal, something pathological, if a man did not experience this great change of life in his thirtieth year. It came about in the course of human evolution that the second of these births—they were spoken of as the Moon-birth and the Sun-birth—that the Sun-birth was no longer so noticeable in man, and certain ceremonies were carried out, certain exercises and actions were performed on those who desired initiation into the Mysteries. Such persons then experienced, in the Mysteries, what could be no longer experienced generally by men, and they became the “twice-born.”

When this expression “twice-born” is found in Oriental literature to-day it is misleading. Any Oriental scholar, any Sanskrit expert, might be asked—I think Professor Beckh is present here and you can ask him—if it is not the case that, as a matter of fact, no Oriental science can clearly and distinctly put before you, in a few words, what the content of the expression “twice-born” really is. Formal explanations there certainly are in plenty, but what it means in substance no one knows. Only those who are aware that it reaches back to a reality know the reality I have just explained to you. In such things spiritual observation alone can speak. And when once it has spoken, I would like to ask all those who hold with what can be learned from documents, with everything external science can discover—I would like to ask, taking for granted that science has gone to work in an unprejudiced manner, if this science does not corroborate in every particular the investigations made by spiritual science? Your attention must, however, be directed to certain things which take precedence of all documentary science; for the understanding of life, of man, cannot be gained by a science of documents.

Let us turn our gaze back to a very far-off age when people spoke of the Moon-birth of man as creation through the Father. With regard to the Sun-birth, people were quite clear that in the spiritual Sunlight the power of Christ, the Son, was active, and that this was the power that freed people. Consider for a moment what this force, this Sun-force, does. It is the force that enables us as men on earth to make something out of ourselves. We would have been strictly confined within an unchangeable, natural—not fateful—necessity, if the liberating Sun-forces had not by their influence dissolved this necessity.

This fact was known to those who held the more ancient opinions concerning the world. They looked up to the sun and said: This eye of the world, from which the power of Christ streams forth, is the cause of my not having to remain always under that brazen necessity with which I was born from out of the forces of the moon, as a man whose whole life had to evolve under compulsion. It is the Christ-force looking down on me through that cosmic Sun-eye that enables me through my inner freedom to make something of myself during my life on earth, something I could not have been, through the Moon-forces which placed me here.

This consciousness that he could transform himself, could make something out of himself, is what men saw in the forces of the Sun.

I would like to add here, but only by way of parenthesis, that Saturn was also looked up to as a third source of birth. In the Saturn forces these men saw all that preserved them when they passed through the gate of death: the third earthly metamorphosis. Birth on earth, meaning birth through the Moon; the second birth, meaning birth through the Sun; the third birth, meaning Saturn birth or earthly death. Man was here upheld by the mighty forces of Saturn, forces then holding sway at the extreme limit of the planetary system of the earth. These forces preserved him, bore him out into the spiritual world, and provided a connecting link for his being, when the third metamorphosis took place. This was absolutely the mental outlook of the men of those ancient times.

But human evolution goes on. A time arrived when it was no longer known in the Mysteries how the Sun-forces affected mankind. Knowledge concerning these forces was preserved longest among the medical workers in the Mysteries. For the forces which in his ordinary development give man freedom, and the possibility of making something out of himself—the Sun- or Christ-forces—live also under various conditions in certain plants and in other earthly beings and things, and reveal in these earthly things properties of healing.

Generally speaking, all sense of their connection with the sun was lost to humanity; and while for a considerable time the consciousness still remained that man is dependent on the Moon-forces, or Father-forces, all consciousness of his dependence—or rather his liberation by means of the Sun-forces—had long been lost. What to-day we call Nature-forces, almost the only ones we do speak of when discussing our conceptions of the world, are but Moon-forces that have become entirely abstract. But the Sun-forces were still known to One, even Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ, who lived His life in accordance with them. He knew them because he was ordained to receive these forces into his own body as they streamed to earth from the sun—forces which men had only been able to come in touch with in the Ancient Mysteries when they looked up to the sun. This I explained in the last lecture. What was of greatest importance was this, that in the thirtieth year of His life a change took place in the body of Jesus of Nazareth similar to that change which in primeval times took place in everyone, only it was but the reflection (Schein), as it were, of the Spiritual sun that shone into these men, while now the original Lord of the Sun, the Christ himself, came down into human evolution and took up His abode in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This fact lies behind the Mystery of Golgotha as the supremest event (Urergebnis) affecting all earthly life.

You will realise the full connection of these things when we now consider how the festival of Easter, which in those days was an entirely human concern, was actually carried out in the Ancient Mysteries—the Festival of Easter was, in fact, an initiation. The ceremony progressed through three stages. The first requirement, before the neophyte could attain true knowledge, before he could be initiated, was that through all that came to him from the side of the Mysteries he should be made so humble that people to-day can hardly form an idea of this deep, inner humility. People imagine to-day that they have the appearance, as regards knowledge, of being exceedingly modest, while for those who can see into the matter they are really possessed by pride. When about to enter upon initiation a man has, in the first place, to feel convinced that he cannot consider himself to be a man at all, but says rather: I have first to become a man!

It cannot be said of people to-day that at any point in their lives they consider themselves not to be men. But this was the first demand made on them, that they should hold themselves not to be men and should address themselves as follows: I certainly was a man before I came down into an earthly body; in pre-earthly existence I was a man of soul and spirit. The Soul-Spirit then entered a physical body, which it had received from its parents.

It, then, not clothed itself with the physical body—that would be to express it incorrectly—but it permeated itself with this physical body (durchdrungen mit diesem physischen Leibe). Men have really no idea of the manner and means by which the Soul-Spirit, in the course of long ages (das Geistig-Seelische durchsetzt das Physische), permeates the physical, permeates the nerves and sense-system, permeates the rhythmic-system, the digestive-system, and the limbs of man. They have no idea of this. They know very well that they are able to perceive the physical world by means of their senses. But what is a man capable of when he has reached the point where he has permeated his physical body so profoundly with his soul and spirit nature that he considers his development to be complete, when he is a fully evolved, fully developed man. ... What is he then capable of? At present he can certainly see external objects, he can hear external sounds, perceive through his skin things warm or cold, smooth or rough: he can perceive things outwardly; but he cannot perceive inwardly. He cannot look into himself with his eyes; he can at most remove the skin from a dead body and think that he sees into it, but he does not do so really. It is childish to think, for instance, here before me is a house, it has windows but I cannot see through them, so I will take all kinds of instruments, and, if I am strong enough, smash the house down, but then I will have only a heap of broken bricks before me, and these ruins are all I see. This is what people do to-day. They flay, they dissect people, in order to learn about them; but by such means they learn nothing. It is not the man at all they learn to know by such methods. If it is desired really to know something of man, you must be able to turn your eyes inwards and view him exactly as we view him to-day when we direct our eyes to him outwardly, and in the same way you must hear inwardly with your ears. All these activities taken together—those of the eyes, the ears, the whole skin as organ of touch, the organs of smell, etc., all these were called in the Mysteries the door to man (das Tor zum Menschen).

Initiation depended principally upon a person becoming aware that he knew nothing at all of human nature (vom Menschen); therefore, as he had no self-consciousness of human nature, he could not be a man. He had first to learn to look inward through his senses as ordinarily he looked outward. This was the first stage or degree of initiation in the ancient Mysteries. As soon as the pupil learnt to look thus inwards, in that same moment he became conscious of his pre-earthly existence. At that moment he knew: I am now “in my soul and spirit.”

The ordinary man looks outwards; instead of this the pupil of the Mysteries learnt to look inwards. In this inward gazing he became aware of what had entered into him in his pre-earthly existence, what had passed into him through his eyes, his ears, his skin, and so on. He was aware of these things, and through this was also aware of his pre-earthly existence. At this stage he was told that he would learn to know what we call natural science.

When we study natural science to-day, how do we do it? We are led to observe the things of Nature, to describe them, and so on. But this is much the same as if I were to meet a man again whom I had known long ago, and someone were to insist: You have to forget everything you did in company with this man; on seeing him again you are not to recall the intercourse you had with him. It is unbelievable that responsible people would do such a thing as this! I can indeed believe that occasionally this might be agreeable.... but under such conditions life could not go on. But this is imposed on the man to-day simply through the laws of civilization. For he knew the kingdoms of Nature; he knew them from their spiritual side before he came down to earth. To-day he is told to forget all that he knew of the mineral, plant, and animal world before he came down to earth, whereas the ancient Initiates taught him about them in what was called the first stage of the Mysteries. The Initiate said: Look at this piece of quartz. ... And then he did everything he could that might enable the pupil to recall what he had known about quartz before he came down to earth, what he had known, say, of the lily, the rose, etc. What was thus imparted as knowledge of Nature was a remembrance, a re-cognition (wieder erkennen). And anyone who had learnt the teaching regarding Nature as a remembrance of what he had seen before he descended into earthly life was received into the second degree.

In the second degree the pupil learnt Music, which at that time was Architecture, Geometry, Surveying, etc. For in what did this second degree of initiation consist? It comprised all that a man perceived when he not only looked inwards into himself with his eyes, or listened inwardly with his ears, but when he actually entered into himself (in sich hineinsteigt). The neophyte seeking initiation then said to himself: Thou enterest now into the grotto of the human temple (Tempelgrotte). He now learnt to know this grotto of the human temple. This was that physical part of him which was permeated by the soul and spiritual forces which were man before he came down into earthly life. Into this he now entered. He was told that this hidden place had three chambers. The first was the chamber of Thought; there he learnt all that was connected with this. ... Verily seen from outside the head is small.... when a man enters and sees it from within it is as vast as the whole universe. Here he learnt to know his spiritual nature. This was the first chamber. The second chamber was that in which he learnt to know Feeling. The third chamber was where he learnt to know Will.

He then learnt how a man is organised according to his instruments of thought, feeling, and will; he learnt what was of value on earth. Knowledge of Nature was not only of value on earth; man had already acquired knowledge of Nature before he came down to earth. But here we must remember that houses are not built above in the spiritual world as they are here with the help of earthly architecture. Over there, there is music, but it is spiritual Melos. Earthly music is something projected into earthly air; it is a projection of heavenly music, but as experienced by men it is earthly. It is the same when we measure things here on earth. We measure earthly space; the art of measuring, geometry, or surveying is an earthly science. It was important that those seeking initiation in the second degree should be made to realize that all talk of knowledge gained by mere earthly means, unless connected with geometry, architecture, or the art of surveying, is illusory; that true natural science is a recollection of pre-earthly knowledge; and that geometry, architecture, music, and the science of measuring are sciences that have to be learnt here on earth.

Thus in the second degree of initiation a man descended into his own self and learnt to know the men of the three chambers in respect of the single earthly incarnation, as he would otherwise learn to know them from outside, without descending into their inner being.

In the third degree the pupil learnt to know men, not simply by sinking down into himself (wenn er nun nicht bloss in sich untertaucht), by getting to know himself as spiritual being, but when this spiritual part of him learnt further to know the body. Therefore in all the Ancient Mysteries this degree was known as the gate of death. Here he learnt how it is with a man when he lays aside his earthly body; only there is a difference between actual death and that experienced during initiation. Why this must be I will explain in the next lecture; at present I only mentioned the fact.

When man really dies he lays aside his physical body. He is no longer bound to it, nor does he follow any longer the forces of the earth, having been freed from them. But while still bound to his physical body, as was the case in olden times at initiation, he had to attain liberation from the body (which at death comes of itself), and had to maintain it for a certain time through his own inner power. The attainment of those strong powers by which a man is able to maintain his soul in freedom, apart from the body, was necessary to initiation. It is these that give him a higher knowledge concerning the things he can never perceive through his senses, never think through his understanding. They place him as man in the spiritual world as the physical body places him as man in the physical world. He had then advanced so far as to be able to realize what he was as man of soul and spirit, to know that he had been initiated while still in earthly life. From this time onwards the earth for the Initiate was as a star existing outside humanity (Von da ab war die Erde ein ausser dem Menschen befindlicher Stern für den Initiierten), and in the ancient Mysteries he had before all else to learn to live with the sun instead of with the earth. He knew what he had received from the sun, and how the Sun-forces worked in him.

This third degree that I have just described was followed by a fourth. It affected the man seeking initiation in the following way: When on earth a person eats vegetables or game, when he drinks various things, he knows that such things were outside him and that now they are within him. He breathes the air; at first it is outside, then within him, then outside again. He is so closely bound up with the forces of the earth that he bears within him earthly substances and forces which otherwise were outside him. It was clearly explained to those seeking initiation in ancient times: Before initiation thou art a bearer of Earth, of vegetables, game, pork, etc. But when once initiated in the third degree, and when all those things have been imparted to thee that can be imparted to one who is free of the body, thou art no longer a bearer (träger) of cabbage, pork, or veal, but thou then dost become a bearer of those things which the Sun-forces give to thee.

That which the Sun-forces give spiritually was called, in all the Mysteries, Christos. Therefore, he who had surmounted the first three degrees of initiation—though on earth he might feel himself to be a bearer of cabbages—knew that he was a bearer of the Sun-forces and that he was called a Christophoros. In nearly all the Ancient Mysteries this was the name for those who had entered the fourth degree.

In the third degree certain things had to be grasped; the Neophyte had principally to realize that, in moments of knowledge, desire according to the physical body must cease, that as regards his physical body he belonged to the earth, but that really the earth has only to do with the destruction of his physical body, not with its construction. If the man of those former ages had been addressed in the words of to-day, he would have had things explained somewhat as follows (the sense would certainly have been made clear to him, but to you I can only say these things in the language of to-day, not in that of those former times): If you would know the teaching concerning substances, how these unite and separate, you must look up to the spiritual forces that from out the cosmos permeate all substance. This you cannot do unless initiated. For this you must have been initiated in the fourth degree. You must be able to perceive with the forces appertaining to Sun-existence; you can then study chemistry.

Supposing that someone to-day, wishing to take a degree in chemistry or in pharmacy, had first to submit to the necessity of feeling as a cabbage feels with regard to the forces of the sun, how absurd this would seem! But this was a fact. It was made absolutely clear that with such forces as people have in life, and which are generally employed during life, only geometry, surveying, music, and architecture can be studied ... not chemistry. If people speak of studying chemistry to-day, they speak in an entirely external way. All talk of chemistry has been entirely external ever since the time when the ancient initiation-wisdom was lost. This is a fact. It is enough to drive to desperation those who really wish “to know,” when they have to learn modern official chemistry, for it is founded only on assertion, not on any inward understanding of the matter. If men were only unprejudiced they would acknowledge that something else is needed, that people must be able to understand or realize differently if they wish to study chemistry. It is the modern timidity regarding knowledge or realization (erkennen) that has been implanted in people that holds them back from such an impulse.

After this a man was ripe. When sufficiently ripe to become Astronomos, which was a still higher grade (for to learn something of the stars externally, through calculations and the like, was considered absolutely unreal), he knew that in the stars spiritual beings dwelt who can only be known when physical perception has been overcome, when geometry has also been overcome, when man actually lives in the universe (Weltenall) and learns the spiritual nature of the stars—he was then a “Risen One.” He could then see how the Moon-forces and the Sun-forces actually work within earthly humanity.

I must therefore endeavour to-day to help you to understand from two sides how Easter was experienced inwardly in the ancient Mysteries—how this Festival did not take place at any fixed season of the year but when a man attained a certain degree of development. Easter was then experienced by him as a resurrection of his soul and spirit-nature out of the physical body, as a rising into the spiritual universe (Weltenall). It was thus that those who still knew something of the wisdom of the Mysteries at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha regarded this Mystery. They said: What would have happened to mankind if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place? In olden times it was possible for man to be initiated into the secrets of the cosmos, for in quite ancient times he experienced a second birth naturally, as one might say, when he was about thirty years old. At that time at least there were still memories of this, and there was a science of the Mysteries which preserved in its traditions what an earlier age had experienced. All this had faded and been forgotten by the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Mankind would have become entirely decadent, if the Power to which Initiates of the Mysteries rose when they became Christophoroi had not entered into One Jesus of Nazareth—so that it has remained on the earth ever since—and men, through Jesus Christ, have been able to unite themselves with it.

Thus what rises before our eyes to-day in the Festival of Easter had already formed a part of the history of the Mysteries. Men will only know the real meaning of Easter when they revive this ancient portion of the history of the Mysteries. They will only approach an understanding of the real meaning of Easter when they endeavour in some way at least to understand what men seeking initiation experienced in olden times. Such an Initiate said to himself: Through initiation I have become aware of how sun and moon work in me in their reciprocal relations to each other; I now know that I have been formed as physical man in a certain way; that I have eyes of a certain kind, a nose, a whole bodily form constructed within and without as it is; and the fact that this form is able to grow and continue to grow to-day through the nourishment it receives depends on the Moon-forces. All I require comes from them. That I am inwardly free, that I can be active as a free being within my bodily nature, that I can transform myself, take myself in hand, depends upon the Sun-forces, upon the Christ-forces. These I must stimulate, if I wish to achieve consciously by my labour what the Sun-forces accomplished in me under other conditions through a sort of natural necessity.

From this we can understand how man still looks up to Sun and Moon to-day and from their reciprocal constellations fixes the time of the Easter Festival. This method of reckoning is something that has remained from former times. People ask: When is the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring equinox? And they fix the Easter Festival of the year on the first Sunday after the full moon; indicating thereby that people see something in the structure, in the form of the Easter Festival, that comes from the cosmos and must accord with it. The thought of Easter must be grasped once more. It can only be understood when people look back to the content of the Ancient Mysteries, where man was first made aware of what took place when he looked into himself: the door of humanity! When he entered into himself, living inwardly in himself: the three-chambered inner man! When he made himself free: the Gate of Death! When he moved freely in the spiritual world: when he was a Christophoros.

The Mysteries themselves went back to a time when free human development had to find a place. And the time is now come when the Mysteries have to be found once more. They must be found again. People must realize consciously that preparations have to begin now, by which they can be found again.

Out of this consciousness the “Christmas Session” (Weihnachtstagung) was held, for it is an urgent necessity that a place should exist on the earth where Mysteries can once more be established. The Anthroposophical Society in its further development must provide the means for a renewal of the Mysteries. Your task, my dear friends, must be to co-operate towards this end, doing so out of the right consciousness. This demands that life be considered according to its three stages—according to the stage in which a man looks into the nature of men; according to the stage when he strives towards the inner being of men; according to the stage in which he is in that state of consciousness which otherwise he only experiences in the reality of external death.

As a remembrance of the lesson that has been given here to-day, let us take with us the following words, allowing them to work powerfully in our souls:—

Stand before the portals of the lives of men,
Behold on their lintels words of power.

Live in the inward souls of men,
Feel in this realm the beginning of worlds.

—otherwise world-beginning is not always perceived, but only what is in the world—

Ponder the earthly-end of man;
Find in it the Spirit's turning-point.

In these words you have the essence of to-day's lesson—

Steh' vor des Menschen Lebenspforte;
Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte.

Leb' in des Menschen Seeleninnern;
Fühl' in seinem Kreise Welt beginnen.

Denk an des Menschen Erdenende;
Find' bei ihm die Geisteswende.

To-day I should like to make some introductory remarks to what I am going to lay before you in the coming days. My reason for doing this is that you may know the purpose of these talks from the outset.

It will not be my task during the following days to deal with any narrowly defined, special branch of science, but to give various wider viewpoints, having in mind a quite definite goal in relation to science. I should therefore like to warn people not to describe this as an ‘Astronomical Course’. It is not meant to be that. But it will deal with something that I feel is especially important for us to consider at this time. I have therefore given it the title “The relation of the diverse branches of Natural Science to Astronomy,” and today in particular I shall explain what I actually intend with the giving of this title.

The fact is that in a comparatively short time much will have to be changed within what we call the sphere of science, if it is not to enter upon a complete decline. Certain groups of sciences which are now comprised under various headings and are permitted to be represented under these headings, in our ordinary schools, will have to be taken out their grooves and be classified from quite other aspects. This will necessitate a far reaching regrouping of our sciences. The grouping at present employed is entirely inadequate for a world-conception based upon reality, and yet our modern world holds so firmly to such traditional classification that it is on this basis that candidates are chosen to occupy the professorial chairs in our Universities. People confine themselves for the most part to dividing the existing, circumscribed fields of Natural Science into yet further special branches, and they then look to the specialists or experts as they are called. But a change must come into the whole scientific life by the advent of quite different categories, within which will be united, as in a whole new field of science, things that today are dealt with in Zoology or Physiology, or again, let us say, in the Theory of Knowledge. The older forms of scientific classification, often extremely abstract, must die out, and quite new scientific combinations must arise. This will meet with great obstacles at first, because people today are trained in the specialized branches of science and it will be difficult for them to find an approach to what they will urgently need in order to bring about a combination of scientific material in accordance with reality.

To put in concisely, I might say: We have today a science of astronomy, of Physics, of Chemistry, of Philosophy, we have a science of Biology, of Mathematics, and so on. Special branches have been formed, almost, I might say, so that the various specialists will not have such hard work in order to become well grounded in their subject. They do not have too much to do in mastering all the literature concerned, which, as we know, exists in immense quantities. But it will be a matter of creating new branches which will comprise quite different things, including perhaps at the same time something from Astronomy, something from Biology, and so on. For this, a reshaping of our whole life of science will of course be essential. Therefore, what we term Spiritual Science, which does indeed aim to be of a universal nature, must work precisely in this direction. It must make it its special mission to work in this direction. For we simply cannot get any further with the old grouping. Our Universities confront the world today, my dear friends, in a way that is really quite estranged from life. They turn out mathematicians, physiologists, philosophers, but none of them have any real relation to the world. They can do nothing but work in their narrowly confined spheres, putting before us a picture of the world that becomes more and more abstract, less and less realistic.

It is the change here indicated—a deep necessity for our time—to which I want to do justice in these lectures. I should like you to see how impossible it will be to continue the older classifications indefinitely, and I therefore want to show how other branches of science of the most varied kinds, which, in their present way of treatment, take no account of Astronomy, have indeed definite connections with Astronomy, that is, with a true knowledge of universal space. Certain astronomical facts must perforce be taken into account in other branches of science too, so that we may learn to master these other fields in a way conformable to reality.

The task of these lectures is therefore to build a bridge from the different fields of scientific thought to the field of Astronomy, that astronomical understanding may appear in the right way in the various fields of science.

In order not to be misunderstood, I should like to make one more remark about method. You see, the manner of presenting scientific facts which is customary nowadays must undergo considerable change, because it actually arises out of the scientific structure which has to be overcome. When today facts are referred to, which lie somewhat remote from man's understanding,—remote, just because he does not meet with them at all in his scientific knowledge,—it is usual to say: “That is stated, but no proved.” Yet in scientific work is often quite inevitable that statements must be made at first purely as results of observation, which only afterwards can be verified as more and more facts are brought to support them. So it would be wrong to assume, for instance, that right at the beginning of a discourse someone could break in and say, “That is not proved.” It will be proved in the course of time, but much will first have to be presented simply from observation, so that the right concept, the right idea, may be created.

And so I beg of you to take these lectures as a whole, and to look in the last lectures for the plain proof of many things which seem in the first lectures to be mere statements. Many things will then be verified which I shall have to handle at first in such a way as to evoke the necessary concepts and ideas.

Astronomy as we know it today, even including the domain of Astrophysics, is fundamentally a modern creation. Before the time of Copernicus or Galileo men thought about astronomical phenomena in a way which differed essentially from the way we think today. It is even extraordinarily difficult to indicate the way in which man still thought of Astronomy in, say, the 13th and 14th centuries, because this way of thinking has become completely foreign to modern man. We only live in the ideas which have been formed since the time of Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus; and from a certain point of view that is perfectly right. They are ideas which treat of the distant phenomena of universal space, in so far as they are concerned with Astronomy, in a mathematical and mechanical way. Men think of these phenomena in terms of mathematics and mechanics. In observing the phenomena, men base their ideas upon what they have acquired from an abstract mathematical science, or an abstract science of mechanics. They calculate distances, movements and forces. But the qualitative outlook still in existence in the 13th and 14th centuries, which distinguished Individualities in the stars, an Individuality of Jupiter, of Saturn ... this has become completely lost to modern man. I will make no criticism of the things at the moment, but will only point out that the mechanical and mathematical way of treating what we call the domain of Astronomy has become the exclusive one. Even if we acquaint ourselves with the stars in a popular fashion without understanding mathematics or mechanics, we still find it presented, even if in a manner suitable for the lay-mind, entirely in ideas of space and time, of a mathematical and mechanical kind. No doubts of any kind exist in the minds of our contemporaries—who believe that their judgment is authoritative—that this is the only way in which to regard the starry heavens. Anything else, they are convinced, would be merely amateurish.

Now, if the question arises as to how it has actually come about that this view of the starry heavens has emerged in the evolution of civilization, the answer of those who regard the modern scientific mode of thought as absolute, will be different from the reply which we are able to give. Those who regard the scientific thought of today as something absolute and true, will say: Well, you know, among earlier humanity there were not yet any strictly scientifically formed ideas; man had first to struggle through to such ideas, i. e., to the mathematical, mechanical mode of regarding celestial phenomena of the Universe, a later humanity has worked through to a strictly scientific comprehension of what does actually correspond to reality.

This is an answer that we cannot give, my dear friends. We must take up our position from the standpoint of the evolution of humanity, which in the course of its existence, has introduced various inner forces into its consciousness. We must say to ourselves: The manner of observing the celestial phenomena which existed among the ancient Babylonians, the Egyptians, perhaps even the Indian people, was due to the particular form which the development of the human soul-forces was taking in those times. Those human soul-forces had to be developed with the same inner necessity with which a child between the 10th and 15th year must develop certain soul-forces, while in another period it will developing other faculties, which lead it to different conclusions about the world. Then came the Ptolemaic system. That arose out of different soul-forces. Then our Copernican system. That arose from yet other soul-forces. The Copernican system did not develop because humanity had happily struggled through to objectivity, whereas before they had all been as children, but because humanity since the middle of the 15th century needed precisely the mathematical, mechanical faculties for its development. That is why modern man sees the celestial phenomena in the picture formed by the mathematical, mechanical faculties. And he will some day see them again in a different way, when in his development he has drawn up out of the depths of the soul other forces,—to his own healing and benefit. Thus it depends upon humanity what form the world-concept takes. But it is not a question of looking back in pride to earlier times when men were “more childlike,” and then thinking that in modern times we have at last struggled through to an objective understanding which can now endure for all future ages.

There is something which has become a real necessity to later humanity and has given color to the requirements of the scientific mind. It is this: Men strive on the one hand for ideas that are clear and easy to control—namely, mathematical ideas—, and on the other hand they strive for ideas through which they can surrender most strongly to an inner compulsion. The modern man at once becomes uncertain and nervous when he does not feel the strong inner compulsion presented, for instance, by the argument of the Pythagorean theorem, but realizes, let us say, that the figure which is drawn does not decide for him, but that he must develop an activity of soul and decide for himself. Then he at once becomes uncertain and nervous and is no longer willing to continue the line of thought. So he says: That is not exact science; subjectivity comes into it. Modern man is really dreadfully passive; he would like to be led everywhere by a chain of infallible arguments and conclusions. Mathematics satisfies this requirement, at least in most cases; and where it does not, where man have interposed their own opinion in recent times,—well, my dear friends, the results are according! Men still believe that they are being exact, while they hit upon the most incredible ideas.

Thus in mathematics and mechanics men think they are being led forward by leading-strings of concepts which are linked together through their own inherent logic. They feel then as if they had ground under their feet, but the moment they step off it they do not want to go on any further. Concepts which are easy to grasp on the one hand, and the element of inner compulsion on the other: this is what modern man needs for his “safety.” Fundamentally, it is on this basis that the particular form of world-conception, supplied by the modern science of Astronomy, has been built up. I am not at the moment speaking of the single facts, but merely of the world-conception as a whole.

This attitude towards a mathematical, mechanical conception of the world has so penetrated the consciousness of humanity, my dear friends, that people have come to regard everything that cannot be treated in this way as more or less unscientific. From this feeling proceeded such a phrase as that of Kant, who said: In every domain of science there is only so much real science as there is mathematics in it; one ought really to bring Arithmetic or Geometry into all the sciences. But this idea, as we know, breaks down when we think how remote the simplest mathematical ideas are to those, for instance, who study Medicine. Our present division of the sciences gives to a medical student practically nothing in the way of mathematical ideas.

And so it comes about that on the one hand what is called astronomical knowledge has been set up as an ideal. DuBois-Raymond has defined this in his address on the limits of the knowledge of Nature by saying: We only grasp truths in Nature and satisfy our need of causality inasmuch as we can apply the astronomical type of knowledge. That is to say, we regard the celestial phenomena in such a way that we draw the stars upon the chart of the sky and calculate with the material which is there given us. We can state exactly: There is a star, it exercises a force of attraction upon other stars. We begin to calculate, having the different things, to which our calculations apply, visibly before us. This is what we have brought into Astronomy in the first place. Now we observe, let us say, the molecule. Within the complex molecule we have the atoms, exercising a force of attraction on one another, moving around each other,—forming, as it were, a little universe. We observe this molecule as a small cosmic system and are satisfied if it all seems to fit. But then there is the great difference that when we look out into the starry sky all the details are given to us. We can at most ask whether we understand them rightly, whether after all, there might not be some other explanation than the one given by Newton. We have the given details and then we spin a mathematical, mechanical web over them. This web of thought is actually added to the given facts, but from a scientific point of view it satisfies the modern need of man. And now we carry the system, which we have first thought out and devised, into the world of the molecule and atom. Here we add in thought what in the other case was given to us. But we satisfy our so-called need of causality by saying: What we think of as the smallest particle, moves in such and such a way, and it is the objective counterpart of what we experience subjectively as light, sound, warmth etc. We carry the astronomic form of knowledge into every phenomenon of the world and thus satisfy our demand for causality. Du-Bois Raymond has expressed it quite bluntly: “When one cannot do that, there is no scientific explanation at all.”

Yes, my dear friends, what is here claimed should actually imply that if, for example, we wished to come to a rational form of therapy, that is to say, to understand the activity of a remedy, we should have to be able to follow the atoms in the substance of the remedy as we follow the movements of the Moon, the Sun, the planets and the fixed stars. They would all have to become little cosmic systems. We should have to be able to calculate how this or that remedy would work. This was actually an ideal for some people not so very long ago. Now they have given up such ideals. Such an idea collapses not only in reference to such a far off sphere as a rational therapy, but in those lying more within reach, simply because our sciences are divided as they are today. You see, the modern doctor is educated in such a way that he masters extraordinarily little of pure mathematics. We may talk to him perhaps of the need for a knowledge of astronomy but it would be of no use to speak of introducing mathematical ideas into his field of work. But as we have seen, everything outside mathematics, mechanics and astronomy should be described, according to the modern notion, as being unscientific in the strict sense of the word. Naturally that is not done. People regard these other sciences too as exact, but this is most inconsistent. It is, however, characteristic of the present time that the demand should have been made at all for everything to be understood on the model of mathematical Astronomy.

It is hard today to talk to people in a serious way about such thing; how hard this is I should like to make clear to you by an example.

You know of course that the question of the form of the human skull has played a great role in modern biology. I have also spoken of this matter may times in the course of our anthroposophical lectures. Goethe and Oken put forward magnificent thoughts on this question of the human skull-bones. The school of Gegenbauer also carried out classical researches upon it. But something that could satisfy the urge for a deeper knowledge in this direction does not in fact exist today.

People discuss, to what extent Goethe was right in saying that the skull-bones are metamorphosed vertebrae, bones of the spine. But it is impossible to arrive at any really penetrating view of this matter today, because in the circles where these things are discussed one would scarcely be understood, and where an understanding might be forthcoming these things are not talked of because they are not of interest. You see, it is practically impossible today to bring together in close working association a thoroughly modern doctor, a thoroughly modern mathematician,—i.e., one who is master of higher mathematics—, and a man who could understand both of them passably well. These three men could scarcely understand one another. The one who would sit in the middle, understanding both of them slightly, would be able at a pinch to talk a little with the mathematician and also with the doctor. But the mathematician and the doctor would not be able to understand each other upon important questions, because what the doctor would have to say about them would not interest the mathematician, and what the mathematician would have to say—or would say, if he found words at all,—would not be understood by the doctor, who would be lacking the necessary mathematical background. This is what would happen in an attempt to solve the problem I have just put before you. People imagine: If the skull-bones are metamorphosed vertebra, then we ought to be able to proceed directly, through a transformation which it is possible to picture spatially, from the vertebra to the skull. To extend the idea still further to the limb-bones would, on the basis of the accepted premises, be quite out of the question. The modern mathematician will be able, from his mathematical studies, to form an idea of what it really means when I turn a glove inside out, when I turn the inside to the outside. One must have in mind a certain mathematical handling of the process by which what was formerly outside is turned inward, and what was inside is turned to the outside. I will make a sketch of it (Fig. 1)—a structure of some sort that is first white on the outside and red inside. We will treat this structure as we did the glove, so that it is now red outside and white inside (Fig. 2).

But let us go further, my dear friends, and picture to ourselves that we have something endowed with a force of its own that does not admit of being turned inside out in such a simple way as a glove which still looks like a glove after being inverted. Suppose that we invert something which has different stresses of force on the outer surface from those on the inner. We shall then find that simply through the inversion quite a new form arises. The form may appear thus before we have reversed it (Fig. 1): we turn it inside out and now different forces come into consideration on the red surface and on the white, so that perhaps, purely through the inversion, this form arises (Fig. 3). Such a form might arise merely in the process of inversion. When the red side faced inward, forces remained dominant which are developed differently when it is turned outward. And so with the white side; only when turned towards the inside can it develop its inherent forces.

It is of course quite conceivable to give a mathematical presentation of such a subject, but people are thoroughly disinclined nowadays to apply to reality what is arrived at conceptually in such a way. The moment, however, we learn to apply this to reality, we become able to see in our long bones or tubular bones (that is, in the limb bones), a form which, when inverted, becomes our skull bones! In the drawing, let the inside of the bone, as far as the marrow, be depicted by the red, the outside by the white (Fig. 4). Certain forms and forces, which can of course be investigated, are turned inward, and what we see when we draw away the muscle from the long bone is turned outward. But now imagine these hollow bones turned inside out by the same principle as I have just given you, in which other conditions of stress and strain are brought into play;

then you may easily obtain this form (Fig. 5). Now it has the white within, and what I depicted by the red comes to the outside. This is in fact the relationship of a skull-bone to a limb-bone, and in between lies the typical bone of the back—the vertebra of the spinal column. You must turn the tubular bone inside out like a glove according to its indwelling forces; then you obtain the skull-bone. The metamorphosis of the bones of the limbs into the skull-bones is only to be understood when keeping in mind the process of inversion, or ‘turning inside-out’. The important thing to realizes is that what is turned outward in the limb-bones is turned inward in the skull. The skull-bones turn towards a world of their own in the interior of the skull. That is one world. The skull-bone is orientated to the world, just as the limb-bone is orientated outward, towards the external world. This can be clearly seen in the case of the bones. Moreover, the human organism as a whole is so organized that it has on the one hand a skull organization, and on the other a limb-organization, the skull-organization being oriented inward, the limb-organization outward. The skull contains an inner world, the limb-man an outer world, and between the two is a kind of balancing system which preserves the rhythm.

My dear friends, take any literature dealing with the theory of functions, or, say, with non-Euclidean geometry, and see what countless ideas of every kind are brought forward in order to get beyond the ordinary geometrical conception of three-dimensional space;—to extend the domain—widen out the concept of geometry. You will see what industry and ingenuity are employed. But now suppose that you have become an expert at mathematics, who knows the theory of functions well and understands all that can be understood today of non-Euclidean geometry. I should like now to put a question concerning much that tends in this direction (Forgive me if it seems as if one did not value them highly, speaking of these things in such trivial terms. And yet I must do so, and I beg the audience, especially trained mathematicians, to turn it over in their minds and see if there is not truth in what I say.) The question could be put as follows: What is the use of all this spinning of purely mathematical thoughts? What is it worth to me, so to speak, in pounds, shillings and pence? No one is interested in the spheres in which it might perhaps find concrete application. Yet if we were to apply to the structure of the human organism all that has been thought out in non-Euclidean geometry, then we should be in the realm of reality, and applying immeasurably important ideas to reality, not wandering about in mere speculations. If the mathematician were so trained as to be interested also in what is real,—in the appearance of the heart, for example, so that he could form an idea of how through a mathematical process he could turn the heart inside out, and how thereby the whole human form would arise,—if he were taught to use his mathematics in actual life, then he could be working in the realm of the real. It would then be impossible to have the trained mathematician on the one hand, not interested in what the doctor learns, and on the other, the physician, understanding nothing of of how the mathematician—though in a purely abstract element—is able to change and metamorphose forms. This is the situation we must alter. If not, our sciences will fall into decay. They grow estranged from one another; people no longer understand each other's language.

How then is science to be transformed into a social science, as is implied in all that I shall be telling you in these lectures? A science which leads over into social science is not yet in existence.

On the one hand we have Astronomy, tending more and more to be clothed in mathematical forms of thought. It has become so great in its present form just because it is a purely mathematical and mechanical science. But there is another branch of science which stands, as it were, at the opposite pole to Astronomy, and which cannot be studied in its real nature without Astronomy. It is however, impossible, as science is today, to build a bridge between Astronomy and this other pole of science, namely, Embryology. He alone is studying reality, who on the one hand studies the starry skies and on the other hand the development of the human embryo. How is the human embryo generally studied today? Well, it is stated: The human embryo arises from the interaction of two cells, the sex-cells or gametes, male and female. These cells develop in the parent organism in such a way as to attain a certain state of independence before they are able to interact. They then present a certain contract, the one cell, the male, calling forth new and different possibilities of development in the other, the female. The question is put: What is a cell? As you know, since about the middle of the 19th century, Biology has largely been built upon the cell theory. The cell is described as a larger or smaller, spherule, consisting of albuminous or protein-like substances. It has a nucleus within it of a somewhat different structure and around the whole is an enclosing membrane. As such, it is the building-stone for all that arising by way of living organisms. The sex-cells are of a similar nature but are formed differently according to whether they are male or female, and from such cells every more complicated organism is built up.

But now, what is actually meant when it is said that an organism builds itself up from these cells? The idea is that substances which are otherwise in Nature are taken up into these cells and then no longer work in quite the same way as before. If oxygen, nitrogen or carbon are contained in the cells, the carbon, for instance, does not have the effect upon some other substance outside, that it would have had before; such power of direct influence is lost to it. It is taken up into the organism of the cell and can only work there as conditions in the cell allow. That is to say, the influence is exerted not so much by the carbon, but by the cell, which makes use of the particular characteristics of carbon, having incorporated a certain amount of it into itself. For example, what man has within him in the form of metal—iron for instance—only works in a circuitous way, via the cell. The cell is the building-stone. So in studying the organism, everything is traced to the cell. Considering at first only the main bulk of the cell, without the nucleus and membrane, we distinguish two parts: a transparent part composed of this fluid, and another part forming sort of framework. Describing it schematically, we may say that there is the framework of the cell, and this is embedded, as it were, in the other substance which, unlike the framework, is quite unformed. (Fig. 6) Thus we must think of the cell

as consisting of a mass which remains fluid and unformed and a skeleton or framework which takes on a great variety of forms. This then is studied. The method of studying cells in this way has been pretty well perfected; certain parts in the cell can be stained with color, others do not take the stain. Thus with carmine or saffron, or whatever coloring matter is used, we are able to distinguish the form of the cell and can thus acquire certain ideas about its inner structure. We note, for instance, how the inner structure changes when the female germ-cell is fructified. We follow the different stages in which the cell's inner structure alters; how it divides; and how the parts become attached to one another, cell upon cell, so that the whole becomes a complicated structure. All this is studied. But it occurs to no-one to ask: With what is this whole life in the cell connected? What is really happening? It does not occur to anyone to ask this.

What happens in the cell is to be conceived, my dear friends, in the following way,—though to be sure, it is still a rather abstract way. There is the cell. For the moment let us consider it in its most usual form, namely the spherical form. This spherical form is partially determined by the thin fluid substance, and enclosed within it is the delicate framework. But what is the spherical form? The thin fluid mass is as yet left entirely to itself and therefore behaves according to the impulses it receives from its surroundings. What does it do? Well, my dear friends, it mirrors the universe around it! It takes on the form of the sphere because it mirrors in miniature the whole cosmos, which we indeed also picture to ourselves ideally as a sphere. Every cell in its spherical form is no less than an image of the form of the whole universe. And the framework inside, every line of the form, is conditioned by its relationship to the structure of the whole cosmos. To express myself abstractly to begin with, think of the sphere of the universe with its imaginary boundary (Fig. 7). In it, you have here a planet, and there a planet (a,a₁). They work in such a way as to exert an influence upon one another in the direction of the line which joins them. Here (m) let us say—diagrammatically, of course,—a cell is formed; its outline mirrors the sphere. Here, within the framework it has a solid part which is due to the working of the one planet on the other. And suppose that here there were another constellation of planets, working upon each other along the line joining them (b,b₁).

And here again there might be yet another planet (c), this one having no counterpart;—it throws the whole construction, which might otherwise have been rectangular, out of shape, and the structure takes on a somewhat different form. And so you have in the whole formation of the framework of the cell a reflection of the relationships existing in the planetary system,—altogether in the whole starry system. You can enter quite concretely into the formation of the cell and you will reach an understanding of this concrete form only if you see in the cell an image of the entire cosmos.

And now take the female ovum, and picture to yourselves that this ovum has brought the cosmic forces to a certain inner balance. They have taken on form in the framework of the cell, and are in a certain way at rest within it, supported by the female organism as a whole. Then comes the influence of the male sex-cell. This has not brought the macrocosmic forces to rest, but works in the sense of a very specialized force. It is as though the male sex-cell works precisely along this line of force (indicated by Dr. Steiner on the blackboard) upon the female ovum which has come to a condition of rest. The cell, which is an image of the whole cosmos, is thereby caused to relinquish its microcosmic form once more to a changing play of forces. At first, in the female ovum, the macrocosm comes to rest in a peaceful image. Then through the male sex-cell the female is torn out of this state of rest, and is drawn again into a region of specialized activity and brought into movement. Previously it had drawn itself together in the resting form of the image of the cosmos, but the form is drawn into movement again by the male forces which are, so to speak, images of movement. Through them the female forces, which are images of the form of the cosmos and have come to rest, are brought out of this state of rest and balance.

Here we may have some idea, from the aspect of Astronomy, of the forming and shaping of something which is minute and cellular. Embryology cannot be studied at all without Astronomy, for what Embryology has to show is only the other pole of what is seen in Astronomy. We must, in a way, follow the starry heavens on the one hand, seeing how they reveal successive stages, and we must then follow the process of development of a fructified cell. The two belong together, for the one is only the image of the other. if you understand nothing of Astronomy, you will never understand the forces which are at work in Embryology, and if you understand nothing of Embryology, you will never understand the meaning of the activities with which Astronomy has to deal. For these activities appear in miniature in the processes of Embryology.

It is conceivable that a science should be formed, in which, on the one hand, astronomical events are calculated and described, and on the other hand all that belongs to them in Embryology, which is only the other aspect of the same thing.

Now look at the position as it is today: you find that Embryology is studied on its own. It would be regarded as madness if you were to demand of a modern embryologist that he should study Astronomy in order to understand the phenomena in his own sphere of work. And yet it should be so. This is why a complete regrouping of the sciences is necessary. It will be impossible to become a real embryologist without studying Astronomy. It will no longer be possible to educate specialists who merely turn their eyes and their telescopes to the stars, for to study the stars in that way has no further meaning unless one knows that it is out of the great universe that the minute and microscopical is fashioned.

All this,—which is quite real and concrete,—has in scientific circles been changed into the utmost abstraction. It is reality to say: We must strive for astronomical knowledge in cellular theory, especially in Embryology. If DuBois-Raymond had said that the detailed astronomical facts should be applied to the cell-theory, he would have spoken out of the sphere of reality. But what he wanted corresponds to no reality, namely that something thought-out and devised—the atoms and molecules—should be examined with astronomical precision. He wanted the astronomical type of mathematical thoughts, which have been added to the world of the stars, to be sought for again in the molecule.

Thus you see, upon the one hand lies reality: movement, the active forces of the stars and the embryonic development in which there lives, in all reality, what lives in the starry heavens. That is where the reality lies and that is where we must look for it. On the other hand lies abstraction. The mathematician, the mechanist, calculates the movements and forces of the heavenly bodies and then invents the molecular structure to which to apply this kind of astronomical knowledge. Here he is withdrawn from life, living in pure abstractions.

These are the things about which we must think, remembering that now we must renew, in full consciousness, something which was in a certain sense present in earlier times. Looking back to the Egyptian Mysteries, we find astronomical observations such as were made at that time. These observations, my dear friends, were not used merely to calculate when an eclipse of the Sun or Moon would take place, but rather to arrive at what should come about in social evolution. Men were guided by what they saw in the heavens, as to what must be said to the people, what instructions should be given, so that the development of the whole social life should take its right course. Astronomy and Sociology were dealt with as one. We too, though in a different way from the Egyptians, must again learn how to connect what happens in social life with the phenomena of the great universe. We do not understand what came about in the middle of the 15th century, if we cannot relate the events of that time to the phenomena which then prevailed in the universe. It is like a blind man talking about color to speak of the changes in the civilized world in the middle of the 15th century without taking all this into account.

Spiritual Science is already a starting point. But we shall not succeed in bring together the complicated domain of Sociology—social science—with the observations of natural phenomena, unless we first begin by connecting Astronomy with Embryology, linking the embryonic facts with astronomical phenomena.

Among the ideas advanced by Spiritual Science, that of Reincarnation occupies a foremost place. The idea that the human individuality has to manifest over and over again in a single personality in the course of the development of mankind on the Earth is at present but little understood, and, moreover, it is generally unpopular. As we have seen and shall still see, many questions arise in Spiritual Science, among them that of the meaning of repeated earthly lives.

When we study the evolution of human life on Earth in the light of Spiritual Science, we find that there is a very deep meaning behind the fact that the human individuality passes, not only once, but many times through earthly life. Every epoch and every age has its special content, its special characteristics, and all the varied possibilities which it offers have to be assimilated over and over again by the individual life-germs of man. This is possible because man, with all that composes his being, is connected not once and for all, but over and over again with the living stream of evolution. Looking upon this evolution as a rational progress into which new contents, new qualities are poured, we begin to realise the true significance of those Great Ones who have been the leading and guiding spirits of the different epochs. From each of these Great Ones, new qualities, new impulses for the progressive evolution of humanity have emanated and in the course of these lectures we shall be considering important questions connected with such leaders of mankind.

To-day our attention is turned to an individuality who, so far as historical investigation goes, is shrouded in mystery—an individuality lost in dim prehistoric ages, of whom no documentary records exist. I refer to the personality of Zarathustra.

A personality such as that of Zarathustra, whose gifts to humanity, in so far as they are preserved for us, seem so strange to the present age, makes us realise what great differences arise in the sum total of human nature during the various epochs. Superficial opinion may state that ever since man has been man, he has thought, felt and conceived ideas of morality exactly as he does to-day. But Spiritual Science shows us that the life of the human soul and the nature of man's thought, feeling and will, have undergone great changes in the course of human evolution. Human consciousness in olden times was of quite a different nature and we have reason to believe that, in the future, other stages of consciousness will be reached, again very different from the normal consciousness of to-day.

When we turn our attention to Zarathustra, we must look back over an infinitely long period of time. It is true that certain modern investigators have fixed the date of Zarathustra as contemporary with that of Buddha, which would mean that he lived some five or six centuries before the Christian era. It is however significant that our modern historians, after careful investigation of the traditions referring to Zarathustra, have been obliged to indicate that the personality hidden beneath the name of “Zarathustra,” the original founder of the Persian religion, must be placed a great many centuries before Buddha. Greek historians have repeatedly pointed out that Zarathustra must have lived about five or six thousand years before the Trojan War. We are prepared to state that historical research will, however unwillingly, eventually be forced to admit that the Greek tradition is correct in regard to the epoch in which Zarathustra lived. Spiritual Science, which is based on inner knowledge, agrees with the Greek tradition and it is therefore reasonable to indicate that Zarathustra, living as he did thousands of years before the birth of Christianity, was confronted by a consciousness entirely different from that of the present day.

I have often pointed out, and I shall explain it further, that human consciousness in ancient times was bound up with certain dream states, or rather clairvoyant states, in normal human life. Primeval man did not contemplate the world with the strong, clearly-defined sense perceptions of to-day. We shall best understand the way in which man of those primeval times took his environment into his consciousness, if we think of a last remnant of the ancient consciousness, still left to us in dreams. Everybody knows how dream images appear and disappear, how they emerge and fade away. To our present consciousness they are for the most part dream pictures, meaningless reminiscences of the outer world. Interwoven though they are with higher states of consciousness, they are incomprehensible to people of our time. Images, ever-changing pictures, symbols—of these our dream consciousness consists. Everyone has experienced how a fire, for instance, is symbolised in a dream. Think of the difference between a dream and ordinary waking consciousness. Such as it is, this dream state represents the remnant of a primeval consciousness of man. Man then lived in a world of images—images not vague or empty but proceeding from a real external world. In this ancient consciousness there were intermediate states between waking and sleep and in these states man was face to face with the spiritual world. The spiritual world actually entered into his consciousness. Nowadays the door into the spiritual world is locked against the normal consciousness of man, but this was not the case in olden times; for he then entered into those intermediate states between waking and sleep when the spiritual world appeared before him in dreamlike images. In these dreamlike images he saw the working and the weaving of the spirit behind the physical world of sense. He had direct experience of the spiritual world, although by the time of Zarathustra this was already indistinct and dim. A man of antiquity could say to himself: “I behold the outer physical world and the life of sense, but I also have experiences and perceptions in a different state of consciousness; I know that there is another world behind the world of sense—a spiritual world.”

Evolution consists in one faculty being acquired at the expense of another, and thus as the epochs took their course, the faculty which man once possessed of understanding the spiritual world became less and less. Our clear reasoning and cognitional faculties, our present logical thinking which we regard as the most important feature of modern culture—these did not exist in those early times. They had to be developed by man in the epoch to which we now belong, at the expense of the old clairvoyant consciousness. Clairvoyant consciousness will have to be cultivated again in the future evolution of mankind, but in a different way. It has to be added to the purely physical consciousness that is bound up with the faculty of intellectual logic. A rising and a falling can be traced in the evolution of human consciousness and we see therein a deep purpose in man's development.

The old consciousness described above dates back to a prehistoric age of which there is no documentary evidence. Zarathustra himself belongs to this age of which, as yet, no historical traditions have reached us. He was one of those leading personalities who gave a stimulus for great steps forward in the civilisation of mankind. Whatever the level of human consciousness at the time, these leading personalities must always draw from the source which we may call Illumination, Initiation into the higher mysteries of the universe. Among such personalities were Hermes, Buddha and Moses, as well as Zarathustra, whom we are to study in the course of these lectures.

Zarathustra lived at least eight thousand years before our present era, and the gifts to civilisation which poured from his enlightened spirit shine forth clearly across the centuries. Those who penetrate into the inner currents of human evolution can detect them even after this lapse of time. Zarathustra was one of those whose soul had experienced Truth, Wisdom and Intuition to an extent far transcending the normal consciousness of the age. In that part of the Earth which later on was known as the Persian Empire, Zarathustra proclaimed mighty truths from the super-sensible worlds—regions lying far above the normal consciousness of the men of that time.

If we would understand the significance of Zarathustra's teaching, we must realise that his mission was to communicate a certain conception of the universe to one particular section of humanity, while other streams had, as it were, a different mission in human culture. The personality of Zarathustra is all the more interesting to us in that he lived in a part of the world directly adjoining on its South side another land whose people transmitted an entirely different order of spirituality to mankind. I refer to the peoples of India, from whom arose the Vedic poets. The region permeated with the mighty impulse of Zarathustra lies to the North of the land from which the great teaching of Brahma went forth. Zarathustra's message to the world was fundamentally different from the Brahministic teachings of the great leaders of ancient Indian thought. These Indian teachings have come down to us in the Vedas, and in the profound philosophy of the Vedanta, of which the revelations of Buddha represent, as it were, the final splendour.

We shall understand the difference between the two thought currents—the one proceeding from Zarathustra and the other from the ancient Indian teachings—when we consider that man can reach the spiritual world along two paths of approach. There are two ways by which we may raise the inner powers of the soul above their normal level so that we may pass from the world of the senses into the super-sensible world. One way is to penetrate deeply into our own souls, to immerse ourselves, as it were, in our inner being. The other way leads behind the veils spread around us by the physical world. Both ways lead into the super-sensible world. If in the intimate experiences of soul life we so deepen our feelings, ideas, and impulses that the powers of soul grow stronger and stronger, we can descend mystically into the “Self.” Passing through that part of our being which belongs to the physical world, we may indeed find our real spiritual essence—the imperishable essence that passes from incarnation to incarnation. When we pierce through the veil of the inner being with all the desires, passions and inner experiences of soul (which are only one part of us in so far as we live in a physical body) we then reach our eternal essence and enter a world of spirit. On the other hand, if we develop powers which not only perceive the physical world with its sounds, colours, sensations of warmth and cold—if we so strengthen our spiritual powers that they can penetrate behind the encircling veil of colour, sound, warmth, cold and other physical phenomena—then our strengthened spiritual forces will reach the super-sensible worlds, stretching before us into boundless distances, into infinity. The first way is that of the Mystic; the second the way of Spiritual Science. It was along one of these two ways that the great teachers attained to the revelations of truth which they had to inculcate into mankind as the basis of culture.

In primeval times the evolution of humanity was such that only one of the two ways was open to a particular people. Only later, in the Greek epoch (coinciding with the beginning of the Christian era) did these two currents mingle and gradually become a single current of culture. When we speak to-day of the ascent into higher worlds, it is right to state that the man who would make the ascent must to a certain extent develop both kinds of spiritual powers within his soul—the mystical powers on the path into the inner self and the powers developed by Spiritual Science as it penetrates the outer world. To-day these two paths are no longer strictly separate from one another, for it is part of the purpose of human evolution that the two currents should meet. Before the Greek and Christian eras these two methods of development were practised by different peoples living in regions not very far apart in space. We find traces of them in ancient Indian culture, in the Vedic songs and in the Zarathustrian civilisation to the North. All that we so greatly admire in the old Indian culture—which later on found expression in Buddhism—all this was attained through inner contemplation, by turning away from the outer world. The eye had to become insensitive to physical colour, the ear to physical sound, the senses to turn away from outer impressions, and finally, with his inner powers of soul made strong, man attained to Brahma. In Brahma, he felt himself united with the inner being of the Cosmos, moving and creative. And so there arose the teaching of the Holy Rishis which flowed into the Vedas and lived on in the Vedantic philosophy and in Buddhism.

The other path springs from the teachings of Zarathustra. Zarathustra handed down to his disciples the secret of how to strengthen the powers of understanding in order to penetrate the veil of the outer world of sense. Zarathustra did not teach as did the Indian mystics: “Turn away from colours, sounds and all the outer impressions of the senses, and seek the way into the spiritual worlds entirely by means of inner contemplation, in your own soul life.” On the contrary, Zarathustra taught: “Strengthen the powers of knowledge and understanding for everything that lives, be it plant or animal; understand all living things in air and water, on the mountain heights or in the valleys. Look upon this world!” We know that for the Indian mystic, this world was Maya—illusion; he turned from it in order to find Brahman; but Zarathustra taught his disciples rather to penetrate the world with understanding and to feel, behind the outer realm of physical phenomena, the reality of a spiritual power, active and creative. This is the other path.

It is remarkable how these two paths converge in the Greek age, where the understanding of things spiritual was far deeper than it is in our time. This understanding was expressed in symbolical imagery, in mythology. The two thought currents, the mystic path into the inner self and the other leading into the outer Cosmos, blended in Greek culture. One current derived its name from the mystical God Dionysus, the mysterious being who was to be found when a man descended more and more deeply into his inner being and there discovered the sub-human element which formerly he did not know, and from which he evolved into full manhood. This element, still unpurified, still partly animal, was known by the name of Dionysus. The other element, in which the eyes of spirit beheld the phenomena of the physical world, was expressed by the name of Apollo.¹ Thus we find the teachings of Zarathustra expressed in the cult of Apollo and the mystic doctrine of contemplation in the cult of Dionysus in Greece. In ancient times, these two currents arose separately, but in the Apollonian and Dionysian cults they were united and blended. If we, in our modern culture, undergo a true spiritual training, we can re-experience them both in one.

Nietzsche had an inkling of the significant difference between the cults of Apollo and Dionysus. True, he did not enter very deeply into the matter, but in his first Essay, “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music,” he shows that the Apollonian and Dionysian cults of ancient Greece are represented on the one hand in the mystic current, and on the other in the current which is now expressed by Spiritual Science.

Zarathustra taught his disciples to see the Spirit behind every physical phenomenon. The whole civilisation inspired by him was based on this principle. Now it is not enough to say that behind the world of the senses there is the Divine-Spiritual. Man may think he has discovered a great truth here, but it leads to nothing but a vague Pantheism. We may think we express a truth when we say: “God is at work behind every physical phenomenon”—but this is merely a conception of a nebulous spiritual power behind all things physical. A teacher like Zarathustra, who had actually ascended to the spiritual world, did not speak in this abstract and vague terminology to his disciples and his people. He showed that just as individual physical phenomena are different, so the spiritual essence behind them is at one time more evident, at another less. He taught how behind the physical Sun—the origin of all life and activity—there is the centre of spiritual life.

Let us try to condense into simple language the doctrines which Zarathustra tried to inculcate into his disciples. He spoke thus: “Man, as we perceive him, is not merely composed of a physical body, for this physical body is but the outer manifestation of the Spirit. Just as the physical body is nothing but the manifested crystallisation of the Spiritual in man, so the Sun, in so far as it is a body of luminous matter, is nothing but the external body of a spiritual Sun.” The spiritual part of man is spoken of as the “Aura”—or “Ahura,” to use the old expression—in distinction to his physical body and in the same sense the spiritual part of the physical Sun may be called the “Great Aura,” for it is all-embracing. Zarathustra called that which lies behind the physical Sun, Aura Mazda or Ahura Mazdao—the Great Aura. With this spiritual essence behind the Sun, all spiritual experiences and conditions are bound up, just as the existence and well-being of plants, animals and all that lives on Earth are bound up with the physical Sun. Behind the physical Sun lives the spiritual Lord and Creator, Ahura Mazdao. This is the derivation of the name “Ormuzd,” Spirit of Light. While the Indians searched mystically in the inner self to find Brahma, the Eternal, shining like a luminous centre in man, Zarathustra pointed his disciples to the great periphery, showing them that the mighty Spirit of the Sun, Ahura Mazdao, the Spirit of Light, dwelt in the physical body of the Sun. Ahura Mazdao has to face his enemy—Ahriman, the Spirit of Darkness—just as man, who bears within himself the enemies of his good impulses, strives to raise his real spiritual being to perfection and has to battle against his lower passions, desires, and the delusive images of lying and falsehood.

Zarathustra was able to transmute his conception of the universe from mere doctrine into real feeling, real vision. And so he was able to teach his disciples that within them was an active principle of perfection. Whatever their development might be at the time, they were taught to realise that this principle of perfection could raise them to higher and higher stages of existence. They were taught that passions and desires, lying and deceit within the soul lead to imperfection. Zarathustra taught of the attacks made upon Ahura Mazdao in the outer world by the principle of imperfection, by the evil which casts shadow into the light, by Angra Mainyus—Ahriman.

Zarathustra's disciples were thus enabled to realise that the great universe is reflected in each individual. The real significance of this doctrine lay, not in its theoretical concepts and ideas but in the feeling it called forth in man—a feeling which taught him of his relationship to the universe and made him able to say: “Here I stand—a little world, but a little world which is a replica of the great world. In human beings, the principle of perfection is opposed by evil; in the great universe, Ormuzd and Ahriman face one another. The whole universe is, as it were, a man grown immeasurably great and the highest human forces are Ahura Mazdao—their enemy, Ahriman.”

If man directs his attention truly to the physical world he must finally discover that all phenomena are part of the great cosmic process; he is filled with awe when spectro-analysis reveals the fact that the same substances which exist on Earth exist also on the farthest stars. In the light of Zarathustra's teaching, man felt himself in his spiritual being, part of the Spirit of the whole Cosmos; he felt himself emanating from this Spirit. Herein lies the great significance of the doctrine.

The teaching was not abstract but very concrete. Even when people of our time have a certain feeling for the Spiritual behind the physical world it is very difficult to make them realise that there must necessarily be more than one central spiritual power. But just as there are different natural phenomena—heat, light, chemical forces and the like—so there are different orders of lower spiritual Powers, subordinate forces whose realm of activity is more limited than that of the One All-Embracing Power. Zarathustra made a distinction between Ormuzd and other lower spiritual beings, who were his servants. Before we turn to consider these lower spiritual beings, let us realise that the doctrine of Zarathustra is not mere dualism, a teaching of the two worlds of Ormuzd and of Ahriman. He taught that underlying these two currents in the universe there is one power whence both the realm of light (Ormuzd) and the realm of darkness (Ahriman) proceed. Old Greek writers tell us that the unity behind Ormuzd and Ahriman was worshipped by the ancient Persians as the LIVING UNITY, but it is difficult to re-create this idea nowadays. Zarathustra calls this Zervane Akarene—that which lies behind the light. To get at some conception of the meaning of this, let us think of the course of evolution. We must conceive of all creation as travelling towards greater and greater perfection, so that if we look towards the future, the Ahura of Ormuzd grows clearer and clearer. Looking into the past, we see the Ahrimanic powers in opposition to Ormuzd; in course of time, however, their existence must cease. In all these things we must understand that a survey of the future and of the past leads to the same point. It is very difficult for the man of to-day to realise this. Let us think of a circle, by way of illustration. If we start at the lowest point and pass along one side, we arrive at the opposite, the highest point. If we pass along the other side, we also arrive at the same point. If we enlarge the circle, we have further to go, and the curve of the arc becomes flatter and flatter. Draw the circle larger and larger, and the arc eventually becomes a straight line; thereafter both lines lead to infinity. But before this, with a smaller circle, we arrive at the same point along both sides. Why should we not assume that the same result obtains when the sides of the circle are flat and its fines straight? In infinity, the point must then remain the same on the one side as on the other. Therefore to conceive of infinity, we may imagine a line continuing indefinitely on both sides—in effect, a circle.

This is an abstract conception of what underlies the Zarathustrian doctrine of Zervane Akarene—Zaruana Akarana. Taking the concept of Time, we look into the future on the one side and into the past on the other. Time, however, is welded into a circle; the completion takes place in infinity. This is symbolically represented as the serpent biting its own tail; into the serpent the Power of Light which grows brighter and brighter, is woven on the one side, and on the other the Power of Darkness, which appears to grow deeper and deeper. While we ourselves remain in the centre, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Light and Shadow, are intermingled, and into all this is woven the self-contained, mysterious “Zaruana Akarana”—Time.

This ancient conception of the universe did not merely state vaguely: Outside and behind the world of the senses which works upon eyes and ears, there is “Spirit.” A kind of alphabet, records of the spiritual world were revealed. Suppose we to-day take a page of a book. We see letters on it and we build up words from these letters, but we must first have learnt to read. Those who have not learnt to read in the spiritual sense, cannot understand Zarathustra; they cannot read the sense of his teaching but merely see signs and symbols. Only those who know how to build up these signs into a doctrine to which their souls respond can understand Zarathustra.

Now behind the world of the senses, in the ordered grouping of the stars, Zarathustra perceived a symbolic writing in cosmic space. Just as we have a written alphabet, so Zarathustra saw in the starry worlds of space, a kind of Alphabet of the spiritual worlds, a language through which they became articulate. Thus arose the science of penetrating into the spiritual world and of reading and interpreting the constellations. He knew too, how to decipher the signs in which the Cosmic Spirits inscribe their activities into space. Their language is the grouping and movement of the stars. Zarathustra and his disciples saw that Ahura Mazdao creates and manifests by describing an apparent circle in the heavens, in the sense of our Astronomy, and this circle was for them the outward sign of the way in which Ormuzd manifested his activity to man. Zarathustra showed—and this is a most important point—that the Zodiac is a line which returns on itself, forming a circle as the expression of the rotation of Time. In the highest sense, he taught that while one branch of Time goes forward into the future, the other turns backwards into the past. Zaruana Akarana, the self-contained line of Time, the circle described by Ormuzd, the Spirit of Light, is what was later called the Zodiac. This is the expression of the spiritual activity of Ormuzd. The course of the Sun through the Zodiac is the expression of the activity of Ormuzd. The Zodiac is the expression of Zaruana Akarana. Zaruana Akarana and Zodiac are one and the same word, like Ormuzd and Ahura Mazdao. Two things must here be remembered.

When the Sun passes in summer through the light, his full powers fall upon the Earth; they are the forces of spiritual light sent forth by Ormuzd from his realm of light. The signs of the Zodiac through which Ormuzd passes in the summer or in the daytime reveal his activity unhampered by Ahriman. The signs of the Zodiac below the horizon are symbolical of the realm of shadow through which Ahriman passes. What, then, are the expressions of Ormuzd (who represents the light part of the Zodiac) and of Ahriman (the dark part), in their activity on Earth? Now there is a difference between the influence of the Sun in the morning and at noon time. When Ormuzd ascends from Aries to Taurus, the effect of his rays is not the same as when he is descending. His rays differ in summer and in winter and they differ with every sign through which the Sun passes. The course of the Sun through the signs of the Zodiac revealed to Zarathustra the many sides of the activity of Ormuzd, and he beheld here the expressions of spiritual beings who are, as it were, the servants, the “sons” of Ormuzd, who execute his commands. These subservient powers, each having their own special activity, are the “Amschaspands” or “Ameschas Pentas.” While Ormuzd represents the collective activity of the Zodiac, the Amschaspands have to perform the specialised activities expressed in the raying forth of the Sun from Aries, Taurus, Cancer, and so forth. The activity of Ormuzd is expressed in the raying of the Sun through all the light signs of the Zodiac—from Aries to Libra or Scorpio. According to Zarathustra, Ahriman works from the centre of the Earth, from the darkness where his servants, the Amschaspands, dwell; they are the opponents of the good genii surrounding Ormuzd. Zarathustra distinguished twelve orders of spiritual beings, six or rather seven, on the side of Ormuzd; six, or rather five, on the side of Ahriman. They are symbolised as good and evil genii, or subservient spirits, according to whether the Sun's course runs through the light or the dark signs of the Zodiac. Goethe was thinking of these helpers of Ormuzd when he wrote at the beginning of Faust, in the Prologue in Heaven:—

“But ye, pure
Children of God, enjoy eternal beauty:—
Let that which ever operates and lives
Clasp you within the limits of its love;
And seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts
The fronting phantoms of its loveliness.” (Shelley's translation).

The Amschaspands of Zarathustra are the same beings to whom Goethe refers as the “pure children of God,” who serve the highest Divine Power.

There are twelve Amschaspands or genii; below, there are other spiritual powers of which the teaching of Zarathustra distinguished twenty-eight grades. The number is approximate, for it varies between twenty- four, twenty-eight, and thirty-one. These subordinate powers are called Izerads or Izods. What class of beings are these? If we think of the Amschaspands as the twelve great powers in Space, then the Izods are the subordinate forces behind the lower activities of Nature, and of these, there are from twenty-four to thirty-one. There is yet a third group of spiritual powers—powers which, in our sense, are not really active in the physical world as such. They are called by Zarathustra, Ferruhars or Frawashars. The twelve forces behind which the Amschaspands live are active in all the physical activities of light upon the Earth: behind the Izods we must imagine the forces affecting the animal kingdom. The Frawashars are to be thought of as the spiritual beings guiding the group-souls of the animals.

Thus Zarathustra saw a real super-sensible world behind the world of sense: Ormuzd and Ahriman, behind them Zaruana Akarana, below them the Amschaspands, good and bad. Now what are the Izods and Frawashars? According to Zarathustra they are the spiritual essence pervading the macrocosm, the living essence² of the external physical phenomena we perceive with our senses. Man, as he stands in the world, is a replica of this greater world; therefore he contains within himself all the powers which ensoul the greater world. Just as we have recognised Ormuzd in the struggle of man towards perfection, and Ahriman in man's impure instincts and impulses, so we can also find in man the imprint of the other spiritual beings, the lesser genii.

And now I have to speak of something which may appear extraordinary to-day to the usual conceptions of the Cosmos held by man. The time, however, is not far distant when even external science will discover that there is super-sensible element behind all physical phenomena, a spiritual world behind the world of the senses. It will then be realised that the physical body of man in all its parts, is an image of the whole Cosmos The Cosmos pours itself into, and densifies within the physical body of man. Thus, according to the conception of Zarathustra—which much resembles that of Spiritual Science—we can say that both Ormuzd and Ahriman work upon man: Ormuzd as the impulse towards perfection, and Ahriman as the impulse in opposition to this. But the spiritual activities of the Amschaspands are also at work in man. We must think of these beings as so far densified in man that they are physically manifest.

In the time of Zarathustra there was, of course, no science of anatomy in our sense of the word, but he and his disciples, with their spiritual conception of the world, saw the twelve currents of the Amschaspands as a reality. They saw these currents flowing towards man and working in him. The human head was to them the visible expression of the activities of the seven good and five evil currents of the Amschaspands. How is this truth expressed at the present time? To-day, the anatomist has discovered the existence of twelve pairs of cerebral nerves which are repeated in the body. These are the physical counterparts, the frozen currents, as it were, of the Amschaspands. There are twelve pairs of nerves and by their means man can either attain the highest perfection or sink to the greatest evil. Thus the spiritual teaching given by Zarathustra to his disciples appears again, materialised, in our own age. People may regard it as so much fancy on the part of Spiritual Science to say that Zarathustra was referring to the twelve pairs of cerebral nerves when he taught of the Amschaspands, but the world will have much to learn besides this, for it will be found that all the moving and weaving Cosmos works on further in man. The ancient teachings of Zarathustra are indeed revived in modern physiology. The twenty-eight to thirty-one Izods occupy the same subordinate position to the Amschaspands as do the twenty-eight nerves of the spine to the nerves of the brain. The spinal nerves which stimulate the soul life of man are created by the spiritual currents of the Izods outside; they work into us and crystallise, as it were, into the spinal nerves. And in that which is not of the nature of the nerves but which makes us individuals, which does not now pour in from outside, but lives within—there dwell the Frawashars or Ferruhars. They live in those thoughts which transcend the merely physical activity of the brain and nerves.

There is a remarkable connection between the tendencies of our own time and the doctrines which Zarathustra gave in spiritual pictures flowing behind the veil of the world of sense. There is, however, one significant thing to be remembered. The teachings of Zarathustra influenced the thought of the people for a very long time and then for a while they receded into the background. Sometimes it was the mystical way of thought which predominated, sometimes the occult, after Greek thought had in a measure united the two currents. Nowadays there seems to be a tendency to the mystical way. Many feel drawn towards Indian occultism with its tendency towards introspection and this explains the fact that little heed is paid to the essential features of the doctrines of Zarathustra in the spiritual life of to-day. There is a great deal of ancient Persian thought in our own spiritual life, yet in a sense, its most essential features, the very core of the doctrine of Zarathustra, is lost to our age. When we realise once more that the teachings of Zarathustra are the spiritual prototypes of countless examples of physical research, then the key-note of our present day culture will be replaced by another. Now one important feature in almost all other mystical currents of culture is missing in the religion of Zarathustra. The reason for this is its entire preoccupation with macrocosmic phenomena. Other religious systems have accentuated the contrasts presented by the division of the sexes. In most old religious systems, Goddesses and Gods are contrasting symbols of the two streams active in the world. The religion of Zarathustra rises above this conception in the symbols of Goodness as Light and Evil as Darkness. Hence the sublime purity of this religion and the nobility which lifts it above ideas which play an ugly part in any endeavour to deepen the thought life of our time. Even the Greek writers stated that the highest Godhead had perforce to create Ahriman as well as Ormuzd in order that there might be the necessary contrast. This implies that one Primal Power was set over against another. In the Hebrew religion, woman, Eve, is the symbol for the evil which came into this world. In the religion of Zarathustra there is no element of sex antagonism. The ugly things which nowadays enter so largely into our daily literature, pour into our thoughts and feelings and so unpleasantly accentuate the chief causes of health and disease without touching upon the essentials of life—all these will disappear when the “heroic” conception of Ormuzd and Ahriman is understood, when the true Zarathustrian influence spreads in present-day culture, clothed in the words of its great founder. These things pursue their own course in the world and nothing can arrest the progress of the truth inherent in the culture of Zarathustra. If we follow the progress of culture in Asia Minor, down to later times among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and even up to the Christian era, we find traces of concepts derived from the illumination of the great Zarathustra. And we shall not wonder at the view expressed by a Greek writer, that the great spiritual leaders of the races imparted to the people part of a future culture of which they stood in need. This Greek writer pointed to Pythagoras, showing what he had learned from his great predecessors—Geometry from the Egyptians, Arithmetic from the Phoenicians, Astronomy from the Chaldeans—and how he had turned to Zarathustra's doctrines to learn from them the sacred teaching of the relations of man to the spiritual world and the true conduct of life. The same writer asserts that the conduct of life laid down by Zarathustra leads man above all minor conflicts, that they all culminate in the one great conflict between Good and Evil, where victory can only be gained by purification from evil, lying and falsehood. The worst enemy of Ormuzd bears the name of “Calumny”—one of the chief qualities of Ahriman. The Greek writer tells us that Pythagoras could not find the highest moral idea (the moral purification of man) among the Egyptians from whom he learnt Geometry, nor among the Phoenicians from whom he learnt Arithmetic, nor among the Chaldeans from whom he learnt Astronomy; but that he had to turn to the followers of Zarathustra to understand the heroic conception of the universe, since purification alone can vanquish evil. This shows the high value placed upon the noble teachings of Zarathustra in olden times.

What I have said may be illustrated by quotations from historical documents. Plutarch, for instance, says that Zarathustra teaches the worship of Light because Light is the greatest factor for the well-being of the Earth and the highest spiritual factor is Truth. This is in complete agreement with what has been said.

Let us now return again to the ancient Vedic conceptions. They were the result of a mystic descent into the inner being. Before man can penetrate to the inner light of Brahma, he meets with his own passions, his wild and semi-human impulses. These oppose his entry into the true life of spirit and soul. The Indian mystics realised that the mystic union with Brahma could only be attained by the elimination of all the impressions of the physical world, that the sensuous appeals of colours and sounds must cease. So long as these elements enter into meditation, the opponents of the attainment of perfection are there. The Indian mystic would have said: “Cast away all that may enter the soul from the outer powers; deepen yourself in the innermost core of your own soul; descend into the realm of the Devas, and when you have vanquished the lower Devas you will find the kingdom of Brahman. But shun the world of the Asuras, those beings who would fain penetrate into you from the world of Maya, the outer world. These must on no account be allowed to enter.”

And now listen to what Zarathustra taught his disciples: “The peoples of the South are differently constituted and they seek the spiritual world in another way. Their way would not help a nation whose mission is not only to dream and meditate in this wonderful world, but to teach mankind the art of Agriculture and the conquest of savagery. Do not look upon external things merely as Maya; you must penetrate behind this veil of colour and sound around you. Shun all that threatens to keep your soul within the bonds of egoism, shun all that bears the stamp of the Deva qualities! Make your way through the realm of the lower Asuras and ascend to the higher. Your nature is such that you can do this if you will!” In India the Rishis had taught that man was not so organised as to enable him to seek what lies in the realm of the Asuras, and that he should therefore shun their world and enter that of the Devas.

This is the difference between the Indian and Persian cultures. The Indian peoples were taught that the Asuras are evil spirits and must be avoided, for the organisation of the Indians was such that they only could know the lower Asuras. The Persian peoples, on the other hand, knew only the lower Devas and were therefore taught: ‘Penetrate to the realm of the Asuras and you will be able to rise from there to the realm of the higher Asuras.’

The impulse which Zarathustra gave to the men of his epoch lay in the fact that he had a gift for mankind which could work on through all the ages—a gift which would make clear the upward path and conquer all the false doctrines deceiving man on his path to perfection. Zarathustra therefore looked upon himself as the servant of Ahura Mazdao, and as such, he personally knew the opposition of Ahriman. His teaching was intended to aid mankind to a heroic conquest of the Ahriman principle. We find his words recorded in the documents of a later era. Inspired by the inner impulse of his mission, and fired by the passion with which he felt himself the antagonist of Ahriman, he said: “I will speak! Harken, ye who journey from afar, and ye that come from near at hand, with longing to hear. Mark well my words! No longer shall the Evil One, the false leader, conquer the Spirit of Good. Too long has his evil breath permeated human speech. I will refute him with the speech which the Highest, the Primal One has put into my mouth. I will speak what Ahura Mazdao says to me. And he who hears not my words nor understands their meaning as I speak them will experience much evil ere the end of the world-cycles!” Thus spake Zarathustra.

May we realise from these words that Zarathustra's message to mankind can be felt and experienced through all later epochs of culture. Those of us who have ears to hear the dim echoes still living in our time, will, if they listen with spiritual ears, hear the faint tones of Zarathustra's words to mankind thousands of years ago. For those who have ears to hear, the message of Zarathustra and other great Leaders of whom we shall speak in these lectures, may be summed up in the following words: “These God-sent Spirits shine as stars in the heavens of Life Eternal. May it be vouchsafed to every soul to behold their radiance in the realms of earthly life.”

• 1. See Chapter VI. of “The East in the Light of the West” by Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophical Publishing Company
• 2. das Wesenhafte

At the close of yesterday's exposition we indicated the intention to consider next the cardinal issue within the Christ impulse: the Death on the Cross and its significance. But before turning to a delineation of the death of Christ, and thus to the climax of this study cycle, we must discuss today the true meaning and significance of much that we find in the John Gospel itself, as well as its relation to what the other Gospels offer. In the last few days we have been endeavoring to comprehend the Christ impulse and to establish it as an actual event in human evolution by means of quite a different source: by clairvoyant reading of the akashic record; and in a sense we referred only to those passages in the Gospels which appear to confirm what clairvoyant research justifies us in stating as truths.

Today, in order to follow up our studies, we shall consider the John Gospel itself and characterize this important document of mankind from a certain aspect. We said yesterday that the theological research of our time, in as far as it is affected by materialism, can find no points of contact with this John Gospel, is unable to see its historical value; but regarded with the vision of spiritual science this Gospel proves to be one of the most marvelous documents possessed by the human race. It is not too much to say that not only as a religious document but—to use a profane expression—among all purely literary works in existence it is one of the greatest. Let us now approach it from this literary angle.

From the very first chapters—if rightly understood and if one knows what all lies concealed in the words—this Gospel of St. John shows a rounded beauty of style equal to any in the world, although a superficial study does not reveal this fact. What superficial observation discloses first is that in enumerating the miracles the writer of the John Gospel, whose back-ground we now know, mentions precisely seven up to the Lazarus event proper. (The significance of the number seven will be treated in the following lectures.) What were these seven signs?

1. The sign in connection with the Marriage in Cana in Galilee.

2. The sign given in the healing of the nobleman's son.

3. The sign given in the healing of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years by the Pool of Bethesda.

4. The sign given in the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

5. The sign given in the vision of Christ walking on the sea.

6. The sign given in the healing of the man born blind. And finally:

7. The greatest of the signs, the initiation of Lazarus, the transformation of Lazarus into the writer of the John Gospel.

These are the seven signs. But now we must ask ourselves, What about these signs, this question of miracles? If you listened attentively to a number of things that were told you in the foregoing lectures you will remember having heard that the state of human consciousness has kept altering throughout the entire course of evolution. We cast our gaze back to remote times and found that men did not issue from a merely animalistic stage of development, but from a form in which they possessed the power of clairvoyance as a congenital endowment. People of that time were clairvoyant, even though their consciousness still lacked the ability to say “I am”. The capacity for self-consciousness was something they had to acquire gradually, and for this they had to forfeit their old clairvoyance. In the future the time will come again when all men are clairvoyant, but without loss of self-consciousness, of the “I am”. Those are the three stages which humanity has in part passed through, in part still has ahead of it.

In Atlantis men still lived in a sort of dream consciousness, but this was clairvoyant. Then they gradually achieved self-consciousness, outer objective consciousness, in exchange for which, however, they gave up the old gift of dim clairvoyance. And finally, what man will have in the future is clairvoyant consciousness coupled with self-consciousness. Thus man traverses the path from an ancient dim clairvoyance through an opaque objective consciousness, finally ascending to conscious clairvoyance.

But in addition to consciousness, everything else about man has changed as well. The belief that conditions must always have been as they are today is due to nothing but human shortsightedness. Everything has evolved. Nothing has always been as it is today, not even men's relation to each other. You have already gathered from intimations in the last lectures that in older epochs—up to the time when the Christ impulse entered human evolution—the influence of soul upon soul was much stronger. Such was human disposition at that time. A man did not merely hear what was told him in externally audible words: in a certain way he could feel and know something that the other felt and thought vividly, livingly. Love meant something quite different from what it does today, albeit in those times it was largely a matter of blood ties. Nowadays it has taken on more of a psychic character, but it has lost its strength. Nor will it regain this until the Christ impulse shall have entered all human hearts. In olden times active love possessed at the same time a healing property, a powerful balm, for the soul of its recipient.

Coincident with the development of the intellect and of cleverness, qualities that came into being only gradually, these ancient direct influences of soul upon soul dwindled away. The gift of acting upon the other's soul, of causing one's own soul force to stream into it, was unquestionably peculiar to the older peoples; and you must therefore imagine the force that one soul could receive from another as much greater, the influence one soul could exert upon another as much stronger, than is the case today. The external historical documents may report nothing of all this, the tablets and monuments may not mention it; but clairvoyant study of the akashic record nevertheless discloses the fact that in olden times the healing of the sick, for example, was extensively accomplished through a psychic influence passing from the one to the other. And the soul possessed many other powers as well. Though today it sounds like a fairy tale, it is a fact that in those times a man's will, if he so desired and had specially trained himself for the purpose, had the power to act soothingly upon the growth of a plant, to accelerate or retard it. Today but scanty remnants of all this are left.
Human life, then, was very different at that time. No one would have been surprised—given the right mutual relationship—at the passing over of a psychic influence from one person to the other.

It must be kept in mind, however, that two or more are needed if the exercise of a psychic influence of that sort is to take effect. We could imagine the possibility of a man imbued with the power of Christ entering our midst nowadays; but those with the requisite faith in him would be very few in number, so that he would not be able to achieve all that can be accomplished by the influence of one soul upon another. For not only must the influence be exerted: someone must be present who is sufficiently developed to be affected by it. Remembering that formerly those who could receive such influences were more numerous, we should not be surprised to learn that for the healing of the sick there indeed existed the means by which psychic influences could take effect; but also, that influences which today can be transmitted only by mechanical means were at that time applied psychically.

We should keep in mind that the Christ event entered human evolution at a very special point in time. Only the very last remnants, so to say, of those soul currents that flowed from man to man were left as a heritage of the old Atlantean age. Humanity was about to descend ever deeper into matter, and the possibility for such psychic currents to be effective constantly diminished. That was the moment at which the Christ impulse had to enter, the impulse which in its nature could accomplish so very much for those who were still sufficiently receptive.

Those who are really familiar with evolution as it applied to mankind will therefore find it quite natural that the Christ Being, having once entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth in about the thirtieth year of His life, could unfold very special powers in this sheath, for the latter had been developing since time immemorial. We mentioned yesterday that this individuality of Jesus of Nazareth had in one former life been incarnated in ancient Persia, and then, passing through one incarnation after another, had continued to rise in its spiritual development. That is why the Christ could dwell in such a body, and why this body could be sacrificed to Him. This the Evangelists knew well, hence they presented the entire narrative in such a way as to be wholly comprehensible for spiritual research. Only, we must take everything in the Gospels literally—that is, we must first learn to read them. As has been said, the deeper meanings of the miracles we shall learn in due time; but here we can ask, for example, why, precisely in the first of the miracles, it is specially emphasized in dealing with the Marriage in Cana of Galilee that this took place in Cana “of Galilee”. Seek as you will, you can find in old Palestine within the radius then known no second Cana; and in such a case it would seem superfluous to specify the locality. Why, then, does the Evangelist tell us that this miracle occurred in Cana "of Galilee"? Because the important point to be stressed was that something occurred which had to take place in Galilee. It means that nowhere else but in Galilee could Christ have found just those people whose presence was indispensable. As I said, an influence implies not only the one who exerts it, but the others as well—those who are appropriately fitted to receive it. Christ's first appearance would not have been possible within the Jewish community proper, but it was possible in Galilee with its mixture of many different tribes and groups. Just because members of so many peoples from various parts of the world were assembled in one spot, there was far less blood relationship, and above all, far less faith in it, than in Judea, in the narrow circle of the Hebrew people. Galilee was a heterogenous racial mixture.

But what was it to which Christ, in view of His impulse, felt Himself particularly called? We have said that one of His most significant utterances was,

Before Abraham was, was the I am

;

and the other,

I and the Father are one

.

By this He meant: among those who cling to the old forms of life the ego is entrenched in a system of blood relationships. The words I and Father Abraham are one aroused a very special feeling in the true confessor of the Old Testament, a feeling nowadays very difficult to share. What a man calls his own self, circumscribed by birth and death, he sees as transitory. But one who had true faith in the Old Testament, who was influenced by the widespread teachings of that time, asserted—not allegorically, but as a fact: As regards myself I am isolated; but I am a member of a great organism, of a great living whole reaching back to Father Abraham. Just as my finger can remain a living member only as long as it is part of my body, so my memory is contingent upon my feeling myself a member of the great folk organism that goes back to Father Abraham. I am part of the great complex, exactly as my finger is part of my body. Cut off my finger and it ceases to be a finger: it is safe only as long as it is part of my hand, my hand part of my arm, and my arm part of my body; it ceases to have meaning if severed from my hand. And in like manner, I myself have meaning only when I feel myself a member of all the generations through which the blood flows down from Father Abraham. Then I feel sheltered. My individual ego is transient and fleeting, but not so this whole great folk organism way back to Father Abraham. When I sense and feel myself wholly embraced by it I conquer my temporally transient ego: I am sheltered in one great ego, the ego of my people that has come down to me from Father Abraham through the blood of the generations.

That represents the conviction of the Old Testament adherents: all the great events narrated in the Old Testament, everything that today seems miraculous, occurred through the power of the inner experience contained in the words, I and Father Abraham are one. But the time came when men were destined to relinquish this state of consciousness for another, hence it gradually disappeared. That is why Christ could not address those who, on the one hand, had lost the magic power of influencing by means of blood ties, and on the other, still believed only in the common bond with Father Abraham. Clearly, among these Christ could not find the faith necessary for enabling His soul to flow actively into other souls; and for this purpose He had to turn to those who, owing to their mixed blood, no longer clung to this old belief: to the Galileans. That is where His mission had to commence. Even though the old state of consciousness was generally on the wane, still He found in Galilee a medley of peoples that stood at the beginning of the era in which blood became mixed. From all quarters tribes assembled here that had previously been governed solely by the forces of the old blood ties. They were on the point of finding the transition. They vividly retained the feeling that their fathers were still endowed with the old consciousness states, that they possessed the magic powers which act from soul to soul. Among these people Christ could inaugurate His new mission, which consisted in endowing man with an ego consciousness no longer bound to blood relationship; an ego consciousness which could say, It is within myself that I shall find the connection with the spiritual Father Who, instead of letting His blood flow down through the generations, radiates His spiritual force into each individual soul. The ego which is within me, and which is in direct communion with the spiritual Father, was before Abraham was. It is for me, then, to infuse into this ego a force that will be strengthened through my being aware of my connection with the spiritual Father force of the world. I and the Father are one. No longer I and Father Abraham—that is, a physical ancestor.

Such were the people to whom Christ turned, people who had arrived at the point of understanding this, people who, having broken away from the blood ties by intermarriage, needed to find the strong force—not in consanguinity, but in the individual soul: the force that can lead men gradually to express the spiritual in the physical.—Do not ask, Why do we not see things happening today as they happened then? Aside from the fact that he who has the will to see them can see them, we must remember that men have emerged from that state of consciousness and descended into the world of matter; that the period in question represented the boundary line; and that Christ used the last representatives of the previous epoch of human evolution in whom to demonstrate the power of spirit over matter. The signs that were done while the old state of consciousness was still present, but disappearing, were intended as an example and a symbol—a symbol of faith.

Now let us turn to this Marriage in Cana of Galilee itself. If I were to develop in detail all the implications indicated in the John Gospel, in the entire Gospel content, fourteen lectures would certainly not suffice: several years would be needed. But such a literal development of the subject would only serve to confirm what I can suggest in brief elucidations.

The first thing we are told in connection with this first sign is:

There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee

.

Here we must stop to realize that the John Gospel contains not one word that has not a definite meaning. Well, then: why a marriage? Because a marriage brings about on a single occasion what the Christ mission effects with such far-reaching results: it brings people together. And then, a marriage “in Galilee”? It was in Galilee that the ancient blood ties were severed, that mutually alien bloods came to mingle. Now, Christ's task was intimately connected with this mixing of blood, so we are here dealing with intermarriages having the object of creating progeny among people who are no longer related by blood.

What I am now about to say will seem very strange to you. What would people have felt in such a case in very old times when there still prevailed the close or endogamous marriage, as one is inclined to call it in the spiritual-scientific sense? We must realize that the transformation of this close marriage into a distant or exogamous marriage is very much a part of human evolution, and that what I have already said explains what an endogamous marriage means. Among all people of ancient times it was contrary to law to marry outside of the tribe, away from consanguinity. People related by blood, members of the same tribe, intermarried; and this custom of marrying within the tribe, within blood relationship, resulted in the marvel of engendering intense magical force. This can be verified at any time by means of spiritual-scientific research. The descendants of a blood-related tribe possessed, as a consequence of such intermarriage of relatives, magical powers that permitted one soul to act upon another.

Let us imagine that in ancient times we had been asked to attend a wedding, and that the customary drink—in this case, wine—had given out. What would have happened? Provided the right relations existed among the blood-related members of this wedding party, it would have been possible, through the magical power of love arising out of consanguinity, for the water—or whatever was offered later in place of wine—to be sensed as wine as a result of the psychic influence of the people present. Wine is what they would have been drinking if the right magical influence had been exerted by the one person on the rest. Do not tell me this wine would still have been but water! A sensible person would reply to that: For the human being, things are of the nature in which they communicate themselves to his organism: they are what they become for him, not what they look like. I believe that even today many a wine lover would like water if, by means of some influence or other, it appeared to be changed into wine; that is, if it tasted like wine and produced the same effect in his organism. Nothing else is necessary than that a man should take water for wine.—What, then, was required in olden times to render possible such a sign as that of the water in the vessels becoming wine when it was drunk? The magical power deriving from blood relationship, that is what was required. And furthermore, those assembled at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee possessed the psychic capacity for sensing that sort of thing. Only, a transition had to be brought about.

The story continues in the John Gospel:

And the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

And since they lacked wine, the mother of Jesus drew attention to this, and said to Him:

They have no wine.

I said that a transition must be effected if such an event is to take place: the psychic force had to be assisted by something. By what, then? Here we come to the utterance which, as it is usually translated, is really a blasphemy; for I believe it will strike any sensitive person as offensive when, to the statement “they have no wine”, Jesus replies: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” From any angle it is impossible to accept that in a document of this sort. Imagine the ideal of love, as the Gospels describe the relations between Jesus of Nazareth and His mother, and then try to imagine Him using the expression, "Woman, what have I to do with thee"! It is not necessary to say more: the rest must be felt. But the point is, these words are not in the text. Examine this passage in the John Gospel and then look up the Greek text. This contains nothing more than the words employed by Jesus of Nazareth in indicating a certain event:

Woman, this passeth over from me unto thee.

What He referred to was that subtle, intimate force which passed from soul to soul, from Him to His mother; and that is what He needed at this moment. Greater signs He was as yet unable to perform: for this the time must gradually ripen. Therefore He says: My time—the time when I shall work through my own force—is not yet come.—For the present, that magnetic psychic union between the soul of Jesus of Nazareth and His mother was still indispensable.

“Woman, this now passeth over from me unto thee.” Otherwise—well, after an utterance like “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” why would she turn to the servants and say, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”? She had to possess the old forces of which nowadays people can have no conception; and she knew that He referred to the blood tie between them, to the bond that should then pass over into the others. Then she knew that something like an invisible spiritual force held sway, capable of effectuating something.—And here let me beg you to read the Gospel—really to read it. I ask how anyone can come to terms with the Gospel who believes that something happened at that wedding—I really don't know what—that six ordinary jars stood there “for the purifying of the Jews”, as we are told; and that according to ordinary observation—without reference to anything such as we have just been considering—the water turned into wine. How could such a thing have come about externally?

What is the meaning of this miracle? And what is the belief in it held by him who stands before you—in fact, the only faith anybody can have in a miracle? Can it be that here one substance was transformed into another for the benefit of those present? No ordinary interpretation will get us far.—We must assume that the jars which stood there contained no water, for nothing is said about their being emptied. But it says they were filled, so if they had been emptied and then refilled—assuming the water had really been changed to wine as by a sleight of hand trick—one would really have to believe that the water which had previously been in the jars had been turned into wine. You see, this does not help: nothing squares.

We must understand that the jars must obviously have been empty, because a special significance attached to the filling of them. “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” the mother had told the servants. What sort of water did Christ need? He needed water fresh from the sources of nature; and that is why it was necessary to specify that the water had just been drawn. The only water suitable for Christ's purpose was such as had not yet lost the inner forces that are inherent in any element so long as it is united with nature. As has been said, the John Gospel contains not one word that is not fraught with deep meaning. Freshly drawn water had to be used because Christ is the Being Who had but recently approached the earth and become associated with the forces that work in the earth itself. Now, when the living forces of the water work, in turn, with “that which flows from me unto thee”, it becomes possible for the event described in the Gospel to take place. The governor of the feast is called, and he is under the impression that something unusual has occurred. He does not know what this was—it is specifically stated that he had not seen what happened—only the servants had seen it; but under the influence of what has taken place he now takes the water for wine. That is stated clearly and distinctly, so we know that through psychic force even an outer element—that is, the physical component of the human body—was affected.

And what did the mother of Jesus of Nazareth herself have to possess in order that at this moment her faith might be sufficiently great to produce such an effect? She needed just what she did indeed possess: the realization that He Who was called her son had become the Spirit of the Earth. Then her strong force combined with His, with that which acted from Him upon her, developed so mighty an influence as to produce the effect described.

Thus we have shown, through the whole constellation of conditions surrounding this first sign, how the unison of souls which results from blood ties produces an effect even in the physical world. It was the first sign, and the Christ force is shown at its minimum: it still needed the intensification resulting from contact with the mother's psychic forces, as well as the additional strength residing in certain forces of nature that remained intact in the freshly drawn water. The active force of the Christ Being is here shown at its least; but what is stressed as especially important is its influence upon the other soul and its calling forth from it an activity which the latter is fitted to perform. The essential point is that the Christ force had the power to render the other soul capable of exerting influences: it engendered in the wedding guests as well the ability to taste the water as wine.—But every real force increases through its own exercise, and the second time it is called upon it is already greater. Just as any ordinary force increases with exercise, so is especially a spiritual force strengthened when it has once been successfully applied.

The second of the signs, as you know from the John Gospel, is the healing of the nobleman's son. By what means was he healed? Here again the right answer will be found only by reading the Gospel in the right way and by concentrating on the crucial words of the chapter in question. In the fiftieth verse of the fourth chapter, after the nobleman had told Jesus of Nazareth his story of distress, we read:

Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth.
And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken
unto him, and he went his way.

Again we have two souls in accord, the soul of the Christ and that of the boy's father. And when Christ said, Go thy way, thy son liveth, what effect did this have? It enkindled in the other soul the force to believe all that Christ's words implied. These two forces worked together. Christ's utterance had the power so to kindle the other soul that the nobleman believed. Had he not believed, his son would not have recovered. That is the way one force acts upon another: two are needed. And already here we find a greater measure of the Christ force. At the Marriage in Cana it still required the support of the mother's force in order to function at all. Now it has progressed to the point of being able to impart the kindling word to the nobleman's soul. We behold an intensification of the Christ force.

Passing to the third sign, the healing at the Pool of Bethesda of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, we must again seek the most important words that throw light on the whole subject. They are these:

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

Speaking of his being forced to remain prone, the sick man had previously said that he could not move:

Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

But Christ spoke to him—and it is important that it was on the Sabbath, a day of general rejoicing and great brotherly love—clothing His injunction in the words, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. This utterance we must take in conjunction with the other equally important one in which He tells him:

Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

What does that mean? It means that there was a connection between the man's sickness that had persisted for thirty-eight years, and his sin. We need not enquire at the moment whether the sin had been committed in this life or in a former one. The point is that Christ infused into the other's soul the force to accomplish something that reached right down into his psycho-moral nature. Here again we see an intensification of the Christ force. Previously, all that was involved was something intended to produce only a physical effect; but here it is a question of a sickness of which Christ Himself said that it had to do with the man's sin. At this moment Christ was able to intervene in the sick man's very soul. The previous sign still required the presence of the boy's father, but here the Christ force acts directly on the sick man's soul.

A special magic is lent this event by reason of its having been enacted on the Sabbath. Present-day man no longer has any feeling for such things, but the fact that this happened on the Sabbath meant something to a believer in the Old Testament: it was something out of the ordinary; hence the reason why the Jews were so indignant at the sick man was that he carried his bed on the Sabbath. That is an extraordinarily significant detail—people should learn to think when they read the Gospels. They should not consider it a matter of course that the sick man could be cured, that one now walked who for thirty-eight years had not been able to walk. What they should do is ponder a passage such as the following:

The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, it is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

What struck them was not that the man had been cured, but that he carried his bed on the Sabbath.

So it was an integral part of the healing of this sick man that the whole scene should play on the hallowed day. Christ Himself harbored the thought, If the Sabbath is indeed to be dedicated to God, the souls of men must enjoy special strength on this day by virtue of the divine force.—And it was by means of this force that He worked upon the man before Him; that is, it was transmitted to the sick man's own soul. Hitherto the latter had not found in his soul the force that would overcome the consequences of his sin, but now he has it as an effect of the Christ force. Another intensification.—As I have said, the essential nature of the miracles will be dealt with later, and for the moment we will pass on.

The fourth sign is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Again seeking the most significant passage, we must bear in mind that an event of this sort should not be viewed in the light of present-day consciousness. Had those who wrote about Christ at the time the John Gospel was written believed what our materialistic age believes today, their narratives would have been very different, for quite other things would have struck them as important. In this case they were not particularly surprised even at the phenomenon of five thousand being fed from so small a supply; but what is most important and specially emphasized is the following passage:

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.

Just what is it that Christ Jesus does here? In order to bring about what was to take place He makes use of the souls of His disciples, of those who had been with Him and had by degrees matured to the level of His stature. They are a part of the procedure. They surround Him; and in their souls He can now evoke the power of charity: His force flows forth into that of the disciples. Of the manner in which this event could take place we will speak later, but here we must again observe an increase in the Christ force. At the previous sign He infused His force into the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, whereas here it acts upon the force of His disciples' souls. What is active here is the intensification of forces that proceeds from the soul of the master to the souls of the disciples. The force has expanded from the one soul to the souls of others: it has grown.

Already at this point, then, there dwells in the disciples' souls the same principle that dwells in the soul of Christ. Anyone inclined to ask what happens as a result of such an influence should observe the facts, should consider what actually occurred when Christ's powerful force acted not alone but kindled the force in other souls, so that it then worked on. There are none today with such living faith: they may believe theoretically, but not with sufficient strength. But not until they do so will they be able to observe what occurred there. Spiritual research knows very well what occurred.

So we observe a step-by-step increase of the Christ force.—The fifth sign, told in the same chapter, begins:

And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.

Modern publishers of the Gospels assign to this chapter the highly superfluous title, “Jesus walks on the sea”—as though that were stated anywhere in this chapter! Where does it say, “Jesus walks on the sea”? It says, “The disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea.” That is the point. The Gospels must be taken literally. It is simply a case of the Christ force having again increased in strength. So powerful had it become as a natural result of its exercise in the previous deeds that not only could it now act from one soul upon another—not only could the soul of Christ communicate itself, in its force, to other souls—but the Christ could live in His own form before the soul of another who was ripe for it.

The event, then, occurred as follows: Someone who is absent possesses so great a force that it acts upon men at a distance, far away. But the influence of the Christ force is now so powerful that it does more than set free a force in the disciples, as had been the case with those who had sat with Him on the mountain: there the force had merely passed over into the disciples in order that the miracle might be performed. Now, although their physical sight could not reach the Christ, they had the power to see Him, to behold His very form. Christ could become visible at a distance to those with whose souls His own had united. His own form is now sufficiently advanced to be seen spiritually. At the moment when the possibility of physical vision disappeared, there arose in the disciples all the more intensely the ability to see spiritually—and they saw the Christ. But the nature of this seeing at a distance is such that the image of the object in question appears in the immediate vicinity.—Again an increase of the Christ power.

The next sign is the healing of the man born blind; and this narrative, as it appears in the John Gospel, is again particularly distorted. Doubtless you have often read the story:

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did this sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

And then He healed him.

We need only ask, could any Christian attitude interpret the matter as follows? Here is a man born blind; his blindness is not a result of his parents' sin, nor of his own; but he was rendered blind by God in order that Christ might come and perform a miracle for the glory of God. In other words, in order that a miraculous act might be ascribed to God, God had first to make the man blind.

The original passage was simply not read correctly. It does not say at all that “the works of God should be made manifest in him”. If we would understand this miracle we must examine the old usage of the word “God”. You can do this most readily by turning to another chapter in which Christ is positively accused of asserting of himself that He and God were one. How does He reply?

Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods?

What Christ meant by this answer was that in the innermost soul of man there is the potential nucleus of a God: something divine. How often have we not pointed out that the fourth principle of the human being is the potential human capacity for the divine! “Ye are Gods.” That is, something divine dwells in you. It is not the human being but something different, not the person of a man as he lives on earth between birth and death; and it is different also from what man inherits from his parents. Whence derives this element of divinity, this human individuality? It passes through repeated earth lives from incarnation to incarnation: it comes over from an earlier earth life, from a previous incarnation. Hence we read, not the man's parents have sinned, nor has his own personality—the personality one ordinarily addresses as “I”; but in a previous incarnation he created the cause of his blindness in this life. He became blind because out of a former life the works of the God within him revealed themselves in his blindness. Christ Jesus here points clearly and distinctly to karma, the law of cause and effect.

What principle in man had to be worked upon if this kind of sickness was to be healed? Not upon what lives as a transitory ego between birth and death: the forces must penetrate deeper, must enter the ego that continues from one life to another. Again the Christ force has increased. Hitherto we have seen it influencing only what is directly before it; now it acts upon the principle that survives human life between birth and death, that continues from life to life. Christ feels Himself the representative of the I Am. As He pours His force into the I Am—as thus the exalted God of Christ communicates Himself to the God in man—the blind man receives the force enabling him to heal himself from within. Now Christ has penetrated to the innermost being of the soul. His force has acted upon the eternal individuality of the sick man and strengthened it by causing His own force to appear in this individuality, thereby influencing even the consequences of former incarnations.

What intensification still remains for the Christ force to achieve? None but the ability to approach another and awaken in him the capacity for enkindling the Christ impulse in himself, so that his whole being is saturated with it and he becomes another, a Christ-permeated man. And that is what occurred in the Raising of Lazarus, where we find still another increase in the Christ force. It has progressed step by step throughout.

Where else in the world could you find a lyrical document of such glorious composition? No other author has mastered composition on such a plane. Who would not bow down in reverence when reading the marvellous step-wise upbuilding in the narrative of these events! Even contemplating the John Gospel only as an artistic composition we cannot but feel deep reverence. It all grows step by step and rises steadily.

One point remains to be elucidated. We have pointed out a number of isolated features tending to show the intensification in the sequence of signs, of miracles; but the narrative embraces a great deal in between, and we must examine the organization of the whole. Tomorrow it will be our task to show that, in addition to the admirable intensification in the miracles, there is definite purpose in the way all the connecting links are embodied: we realize that these could not possibly have been filled in better than was done by the writer of the John Gospel. Today we have considered its artistic composition and found it unthinkable that a work of art could be more perfectly or beautifully composed than is the John Gospel up to the description of the Raising of Lazarus; but only one who can read aright and knows what is essential senses its great and mighty meaning. It is the mission of anthroposophy to bring this meaning before our souls. But this John Gospel contains more. Our expositions of it will be followed by others imbued with a wisdom loftier than ours; but this wisdom will in turn serve to find fresh truths, just as during the past seven years our wisdom has served to find what cannot be found without anthroposophy.

Our lecture to-day will consist of a kind of summing up of all we have heard in the course of the various lectures given here this winter, which may be taken as a continuation of the lectures on St. Luke's and St. Matthew's Gospels and of what was given here with reference to the lectures on St. John's Gospel which I gave in Stockholm. From the way in which these lectures were given, it will be clear that there never was any question in a narrow sense of explaining the Gospels, but rather that from the truths which in the first place are truths in themselves and as such can be found in the Gospels if rightly understood, light can be thrown in different ways upon other riddles of life.

When we go back beyond the founding of Christianity, we find two different kinds of Initiation: that of the North, described in more detail in the above-mentioned Stockholm Lectures, and that of the South, the chief characteristic of which is its connection with the Egyptian methods of Initiation. In the world of the ancients there were two different methods by which they could penetrate into the Spiritual world. In old Egypt a candidate for initiation had to descend into the depths of his own soul, beyond all that plays its part in the ordinary soul-life, as thinking, feeling and willing, and the like. There he found that from which the soul itself came forth: the divine Spiritual life of the world. A descent beneath those regions of the soul which are illuminated and permeated by the Ego, was the essential point in the Egyptian, or indeed, in any southern Initiation. In the Northern Initiation, on the other hand, the object striven for was that man should come out of himself, and expand into the phenomena of the world in a state of ecstasy. This was especially the case in the Germanic Druidic Mysteries and those of the Trotten. We heard how these two kinds of Initiation were combined in one stream, in what we call the Christian Initiation, and how this represented a higher unity combining the ecstatic Initiation of the North with the mystical contraction of the South. This gives an indication of a deeper foundation of cosmic Mysteries, permeating all existence. In reality this is in itself as great and mighty a fact as the fusion of the two different forms of Initiation of ancient times into the one single form of Christian Initiation; it is an example of a great and still more comprehensive law permeating all human existence, and also interwoven in the existence of all the outer world-phenomena, in so far as these are known to man. Everywhere we find ourselves confronted by opposites, by two parts of a duality. The Northern and Southern initiations offer one example of two opposite sides—polarities, as we might call them—that confront us in the life of the world. The other, the Christian initiation—in which these two forms of initiation flow together and as it were celebrate a Spiritual marriage—is an example of how opposites, dualities of any sort, reunite. This takes place without cessation; unities are always separating into dualities for the purpose of furthering evolution, while dualities unite again, and once more form unities. We can point externally to one great and mighty fact, extending beyond human evolution, which is an example of this division of unity into a duality, and of the streaming back of the two into one.

We have often thrown light on the Lemurian Epoch, which experienced, among other things, that great fact in the evolution of the world, the separation of the Moon from our Earth. That epoch also saw the first beginnings of that which in the present day sense of man's development, we may call the two opposites: man and woman; whereas in the ages preceding that of Lemuria we should only find unity of sex. There was an original unity, which separated into man and woman. We have already indicated, moreover, that in a future age the two sexes will once more become one, that the duality will again become a unity, a unity will come forth from a duality. That is the external indication of a far-reaching series of facts connected with the relation of two to one, or one to two.

What we thus meet with in the development of mankind is actually the expression, the image, of a still greater cosmic polarity rooted in a unity; greater than the example in our present-world life, of the two that in a distant future will be fused into one. It is necessary that we should take every one of the thoughts given us by Spiritual Science in its full depths, not allowing ourselves to form a habit of taking such thoughts in the same superficial way as other thoughts and conceptions which prevail in the world to-day, and which our present civilisation in its hasty and superficial triviality accepts. The thoughts of Spiritual Science must be taken as earnestly as possible. Therefore such a thought as that often spoken of and which indeed underlies all our teaching—that man as a little world, as a microcosm, is born out of the Macrocosm, the great world—must not simply be taken as an abstract thought, for in its content it is manifold and infinite. Above all, we must realise that the world contains more depth than is supposed; and that even when we have grasped a polarity or a truth in one of its aspects, that does not by any means signify that we know the last truth about it; rather must we patiently wait and observe, so that when we know one side of a thing, we should try to learn what refers to the other side of it.

Man is born out of the whole Cosmos; he must look up it to as to his Father-Mother, of whom he himself is an image. Yes, man is an image of the whole world with which he is acquainted, there is nothing in the being of man which does not in some way relate to what can be found in the great Cosmos. If we compare man, as seen to-day in the light of Spiritual Science, with the human forms of early ages, we find among others one characteristic feature of immense importance for the understanding of the nature of man. This sign can teach every one of us that, as regards what we have known about the world, the fact that some things that have been said are true, is not of sole importance; there is something else besides, something very different. When a man has proved the truth of a thing, he has not even then told us what is of greatest importance in it. For example, there is much truth in what a trivial natural scientist will tell about the resemblance between man and the higher mammals. It is an indisputable truth that man has the same number of bones and muscles, and so on. But after this has been proved, the last word on the subject has not been said. Man must learn, through the deepening and inwardness of Spiritual Science, to acquire a feeling for the value of a particular truth, to sense whether or no it is important and essential for the elucidation of a matter. People come along to-day and speaking from their trivial consciousness, keep on assuring us of the truth of their assertions. We have no wish to contradict them. But the point is, of what value are they for the understanding of the world? Now there is a certain fact—which is undeniably true, and with which everyone is acquainted, because we meet with it over and over again every day—the value of which, in its significance to man should be realised and felt in the right way. That is, the fact that man stands and walks upright and can gaze out into space around him. Man alone is capable of that! For we must say that even though the apes look as though they might possess this power, they have somehow missed it, for they cannot walk upright. Man is the only being who has achieved this, and who has succeeded in raising his countenance freely into the space around him. This fact is immeasurably more important than all those that a trivial Natural Science tells us as to the position occupied by man among the animals. What science says is true, but this is of much greater importance. If we wish to feel the force of this, we must make ourselves acquainted with the reason why man is a being that walks upright, a being certainly still bound to the earth, but one who, through his mental outlook and even through his sense-perceptions, raised himself into an upright position in space. The reason is that there is a certain polarity, a duality in the Cosmos, which corresponds to another duality in man. We can point to a duality in the universe and to a duality in man, as two opposites, existing in the microcosm and the macrocosm. The one alluded to in the macrocosm, in the great world, is that of the Sun to the Earth; and the same polarity that exists between Sun and Earth exists also in man. It is that between his head and his hands and feet; between his head and his limbs. As time goes on these things will be gone into more fully, but we must in the first place make ourselves acquainted with them and learn to feel that in a certain respect the head and limbs of man bear the same relation to each other as the Sun does to the Earth in our solar System. There are, in fact, in our earth those forces which in the course of the ages have brought about the whole form and movement of our hands and feet through certain mysterious forces which bind man to the Earth; while the forces which have lifted his countenance up in space, and which have transformed him from a being which gazes on to the earth to one who can look out into the infinite distances of cosmic space,—these forces have their seat in the Sun. Anyone who really has the right feeling will have the same impression when contemplating the self-evident polarity between man's head and his limbs, as he will if he turns his attention to the polarity between the Sun and Earth. This polarity will some day become a unity in the life of man, just as the Cosmic polarity will do.

Even as the Sun and Earth were once a single being which later divided into a duality, so will they some day be re-united; and the polarity in man between head and limbs will also some day become unity, difficult to imagine as it may seem to the man of to-day, who is not accustomed to such concepts.

We have thus pointed to a polarity in man and to its correspondence in the universe. There are, however, other polarities in man, which also have their corresponding counterparts in the universe. As regards the polarity between the head and limbs, all human beings on the earth are alike. It exists equally in man and woman. In this respect there is no difference between them; for every other polarity, for example that in the configuration of the soul, is not affected by this. If there were no other polarity but that existing between the microcosm and macrocosm, man and woman would be alike, but as it is they form another polarity in the being of man. Now we may ask: can we not also find a polarity in the universe corresponding to that between man and woman in human life? That can be found too. But before we are able to look for it we must make ourselves to some slight extent acquainted, in an occult sense, with the polarity between man and woman. In so doing we must not fall into the error of our materialistic age, which applies the polarity between man and woman—taking it simply as a question of sex—to the whole universe. Not only is that a trivial thing to do, but our learned men are taking a liberty when they consider that what is found in one domain is applicable to every other.

The corresponding polarity in the universe to that existing on our earth between man and woman cannot be called male and female. That would be nonsense. We must investigate the occult foundations of this other polarity. The polarity between male and female in our earthly evolution does not, of course, apply to the ‘human being.’ The human being as such is the same in both man and woman. When we speak of man and woman we only refer to the configuration of their physical and etheric bodies. This has nothing to do with the inner being of man; so that we cannot, in an occult sense, speak as our materialistic age does. A man and woman each possesses an astral body and an ego, but the ordinary perception knows nothing of that which makes a man or woman a human being, it can only speak of them as it sees them. We are not now speaking of the human being as such in man or woman, but of what constitutes a man or a woman, which is merely their outer sheaths. This must be thoroughly understood; for if what is about to be said were to be applied to the human being as such, it would be completely wrong. The polarity between man and woman within the above-named limits is as follows:—

In primeval ages the external human form was totally different. The present human forms—male and female—have gradually evolved out of an earlier single form, which had not yet divided into two. There was formerly a unity, where now there is a polarity, between man and woman. Now we know too, that the earlier uni-form was of a finer, more spiritual kind. Only in the course of ages did man develop a dense material form. When we look back not only do we find uni-form, but one which was more spiritual than the human form to-day. We have a primeval human being neither man nor woman, unity as yet undivided, and finer, more etheric, more spiritual than the later and more material human being, now separated into man and woman. What was the cause of the original unity having later developed into Man and Woman? This cause came about because, when the unity became a duality, the woman formed a physical body for herself which, if we may say such a thing, did not completely pass from the earlier form into the normal material form. The body of woman remained at a more spiritual stage, it did not fully descend into the material. It has certainly become dense and material, but at the same time it has retained an earlier, more spiritual form. Thus a spiritual stage has become material. The body of woman has, as it were, retained an earlier, more spiritual form, which has not descended completely into matter. Though it has become material, it has not done so as regards its form, for it still retains the form the human being originally possessed. Hence we may say: Woman is a manifestation of an earlier formation which was intended to be Spiritual and which, as seen to-day, is actually false, a maya, an illusion. If we accept the idea of a certain point in evolution when a spring-forward was made and when matter was crystallised, we can say: -the woman did not press forward as far as that point, she crystallised an earlier form. To one who can really perceive the facts of life, or who learns them through imaginative cognition, a woman's body is a somewhat truer imprint of the Spiritual behind it only as far as the head and limbs are concerned, that is to say, that her head and limbs alone express in their material appearance, something of a resemblance to their spiritual counterpart. The Spiritual behind the material form does not look like that, because the latter is not a true form.

Thus the saying that the world is ‘Maya’ can be applied to every region of life. It is very easy simply to state that ‘the world is Maya,’ but a man cannot grasp its meaning, if he does not go seriously into it, inquiring: ‘In how far are forms illusion?’ Some are more so and others less. There are those which at any rate approximately do in their outer semblance express the Spiritual behind them; these are the head and limbs. Others there are which are completely wrong and out of drawing; to these belong the rest of the human body, which is quite out of drawing. When the world understands these things it will no longer speak as foolishly as it does to-day, for it will then see that a certain deep, yet more delicate artistic sense tells us that the female form, with the exception of the head and limbs, is out of drawing, and if it is to be artistically represented the defects must be corrected. In better and more artistic times this was actually done, for no one who really has an eye for form can fail to observe that in the Venus of Milo the form has to a certain extent been corrected; but this as a rule is not noticed.

In this way we have divided the human being into two parts, consisting of those members of the body which are less of an illusion and those others that are more so and quite out of drawing. This does not apply to woman alone; but where a man is concerned the whole thing is reversed. He is the opposite pole. Just as the female form did not descend so far as the normal point necessary for rightly expressing the spirit in matter but crystallised at an earlier stage, so the male body on the other hand sprang just as far beyond that normal point as the female form stopped short of it. Thus the male body descended more deeply than the normal into materiality, and manifests this in its outer form. It would have quite a different appearance if it had not sprung beyond the middle point. Only as regards the head and limbs does the human body even approximately correspond to truth. As regards the rest of its form we must say that the female body, having reached a certain point, remained at a standstill; it consolidated before the waves of material existence broke over it; hence it manifest quite a different form from that which we should have seen if it had but waited till it had come in contact with material life before crystallising. The male body on the other hand plunged too deeply down and is just as greatly out-of-drawing as that of woman. Thus the woman's body manifests a distorted form in the Spiritual, while the man's body is distorted in the material. The true form would be between the two; it would consist of a happy average of both. Of course this affects the whole human being in his earth-life, in so far as he has a physical covering. What I have just said has nothing to do with the polarity between the head and limbs, it refers to the whole human being in one incarnation between birth and death. We incarnate either as man or woman. In so doing we have to take into account that which is out-of-drawing in the man or woman; but that extends to the whole human being, and the consequence is that if in one incarnation one has the body of a woman, the whole of this female body is influenced by the fact of its having remained behind at an earlier stage when the form was more pliable. In a male incarnation the whole physical body is permeated with the effects of having plunged down too strongly into coarse solid matter. If people had even the smallest inkling of what it means to think in the spirit, to live in the spirit, using the physical body only as an instrument,—so that one does not feel firmly fastened into it, identifying oneself with it—they would sing psalms about the misery of having to use a male body in an incarnation, for of course these material effects have also filtered into the brain. One observes that the forms of the male brain, through having been deeper into matter, are more difficult to manage than the more flexible forms of the female brain. It is truly a more difficult matter to train a male brain for the ascent into the higher worlds, and to translate the truths into thoughts, than it is to train a female brain for the same purpose. ‘For this reason it is not surprising to people who think, when a new conception of the world arises such as that of Spiritual Science, it is more easily grasped by the more manageable female brain; for it is more difficult for the male brain, being less pliable and obedient, to free itself from certain thoughts which it has absorbed. Hence Spiritual Science will not find an easy acceptance amongst the men who are to-day the leaders of culture and of the cultured ideas prevalent in our day. We must realise how awkward an instrument is the brain of a learned man to-day, not only for the acceptance of Spiritual Science, but also for thinking along those lines. But we must not look at these things in a wrong way and draw our own conclusions—rather should we look upon it as all the more significant that there are so many men whose brains are so pliant that they have become intimately acquainted with Spiritual Science.

These things can at first merely be hinted at, but if you allow them to work on you and then reflect over them, you will find immense perspective opening out regarding the life of man.

When we think of human life in its two opposites of man and woman, we are confronted with two forms, one that has remained at a standstill at an earlier stage, and one which has jumped on beyond the present stage and which draws into the present a form intended for the future, but presents it as a caricature. The female has preserved an earlier form and the male has taken on a later form, but has made it what it must not be in the future. The male form is incorrect, because it has brought later conditions of life into an age as yet too early for them.

Can we find a correspondence in the Cosmos to the polarity between male and female. Is there anything in the Cosmos which on the one hand shows us a development which has retained earlier forms and carried these over into a later age? And are there on the other hand forms which have transcended a certain stage, thus representing the caricatured form of a future state? If we bring to mind the concrete development which we know from the Akashic Records, we may put the question thus: Is there anything in the Cosmos outside, resembling an old Moon-existence which would not enter the Earth-existence, but retained from the old Moon something feminine in the Cosmos?

Is there anything which carries into the present time something like an old Moon existence belonging to an earlier stage? And is there in the Cosmos anything which has gone beyond a certain stage, and has condensed and thickened, so that it represents a later condition, a Jupiter condition?

There is! There is in the Cosmos the same polarity as we have described between male and female; and that is the polarity between a Comet and the Moon. If we wish to understand the nature of a Comet, wandering as it does in cosmic space regardless of the other laws of the Solar System, we must be clear as to the fact that the Comet carries the laws belonging to the old Moon-existence into our own. Those laws it has preserved, and with those it enters our existence. It has taken on the present substance of the solar-terrestrial system; but, as regards its motion and its nature, it has remained behind at that stage of natural law which prevailed in the Solar System when our earth was still Old Moon. It carries a former condition into a later, into the present; just as the woman's body carries an earlier condition into present-day existence. The nature of the Comet is one part of a polarity, and that of the Moon represents the other pole. When, in the Lemurian age the Moon evolved out of the Earth, it took with it certain portions, which had to be removed in order that the human being as such might develop. The earth was not to become as dense as it must have become if it had retained the Moon within it. The Moon actually represents a caricature of the Jupiter-condition. Just as a fresh ripe fruit is found in a petrified state in a stalactite, so the Moon in its configuration transcended the middle form, as has the male form of the human being. Exactly the same polarity that we find in human life between the male and the female, we can find in the Cosmos between the natures of Moon and Comets.

Thus are these things connected: as sun to earth, so head to limbs,—as Moon to Comet, so man to woman in the human being. Here again we must not go home and say:—well, now, we have some nice polarities to observe!—We must take these things very seriously and remember that on other occasions I said something more besides this. We must take into consideration the fact that a man is only male as regards his physical body, for as regards his etheric body he is female; and the woman on the other hand is only female in her physical body. A woman can only be said to be female as far as her physical body is concerned and that can be said of the etheric body of a man; so that the relation of the etheric body of a man to the etheric body of a woman is as that of Comet to Moon. If you like you may perhaps say: this makes everything confused again! But these things are so. In a culture which has created its ideas with a densified brain, those same ideas tend to create dense outlines which cannot be modified, so that when ideas are once formed they must be held on to. But the spirit does not admit of this. That is mobile, and when we form ideas, we must keep them plastic. So we must apply what has just been said as to the relation of the Moon and Comets to Man and Woman, to the male in the woman and the female in the man. It applies to the male and female elements in the human being but not to man and woman as we meet them externally.

We have now found some extremely interesting connections between the development of the human being and that of the Cosmos. Of course, as I have already observed: Those who sit in the high places of ‘true scientific observation’ will consider what has just been put forward about the Comet and the Moon, as utterly wild and absurd. That cannot be helped. They do not desire to investigate the truth. But on the ground of Spiritual Science, we can build a bridge between that which comes from the Spiritual and what is seen on the physical plane. Those others will not do this.

In the year 1906, during the Congress in Paris, I called attention to the fact that Spiritual investigation from its knowledge of the nature of Comets, was able to say: As the combinations of carbon and hydrogen play the same part on our earth as did the combinations of carbon and nitrogen (cyanogen) on the Old Moon, the cometary life must contain cyanogen compounds,—combinations of carbon and nitrogen. Those persons who have followed these things attentively will remember this. Our Spiritual Science, therefore, some time ago announced that the cometary nature must contain cyanogen in some form. During the last few weeks this fact has been mentioned in all the newspapers as an external fact discovered by spectro-analysis. This is only one case—hundreds of others could be quoted—in which Spiritual investigation builds bridges for the facts of external research. In this case spectro-analysis asserts what Spiritual Science stated years before. The results of external materialistic investigation never contradict those of Spiritual research. We may depend upon statements such as the above-mentioned, when those who sit in the high places of true science constantly point to the external facts. Only we must not confuse these facts with the limited conclusions which people draw for themselves. If everything in Natural Science to-day was really a fact, Natural Science would greatly contradict Spiritual Science; but their facts are no facts, only the corrupt conceptions of those who, through the conditions prevailing in our age, are called upon to deal with such matters.

Now, having brought before our minds the polarity to be found in human life as well as in the Cosmos, we may ask: What then is brought forth from the Universe as a result of this?

It is rather difficult to describe in a somewhat short time the immensity underlying such a fact. You will allow me, therefore, by way of example, to describe the life of man as it runs its course seen externally. First of all, we see something of which we may say, it pursues its course like the life of a good citizen, from day to day. He gets up in the morning, eats his breakfast and completes the rest of the day in accordance with the usual rules. There are certain events, however, which can intervene in a man's life at one fell swoop, and may bring about changes in the day's course. Take the case of a man and wife living for a while the life of good citizens with but little variety in the usual programme of their day, till something occurs which actually causes a leap in the ordinary external life of people in such circumstances. When a new human being incarnates, and enters life as a citizen of the world, the event causes a leap, a great change in the ordinary process of everyday life. When a new citizen of the world comes on the horizon of man and wife, something actually occurs which gives the whole family connection a new form. I brought this forward as an example by means of which we can gain some little understanding of the deep occult background of cometary life. In the Cosmos too, life goes on from day to day, from year to year—like the life of the good citizen—one day is like another; the Sun rises and sets, the plants blossom in spring, and wither away in autumn, and when there is rain or sunshine or hail or the like, these correspond to such events in ordinary life as, for instance, when instead of our ordinary five o'clock tea, we have a little party. We see these things happening as a matter of course. All this hangs together with the laws underlying the movements of Sun, earth, and so on, and the way in which these continue day by day and year by year. Into this regular process, there intervenes the rarer, yet in a certain respect recurrent, appearances of the comets. They come upon the process of Cosmic happenings like a new citizen entering the horizon of man and wife. Through the appearance of a comet in the cosmos, something is actually brought about in the life of humanity which could not occur in the ordinary process of life. If evolution is to continue, there must be, not only that which repeats itself day by day, but something new must be introduced into it. Just as something quite special enters the life of a family with the birth of a new earth-citizen, so something quite different enters the progress of the human race on earth through the appearance of a comet, which breaks through the ordinary process of cosmic existence. It is actually as though something new were born, when a comet appears.

One who can investigate these things spiritually is able to indicate quite definitely the different functions of the separate comets, and how each one has to introduce something spiritually new into the world. Thus Halley's comet is one of those which, in its periodic appearances, always introduces something specially new into the life of man. Whereas otherwise things recur in the ordinary way, this comet brings about a new birth in human inner life and culture. I can only characterise what I mean, by referring to the three last appearances of Halley's comet, in the years 1759, 1835, and the one we are now expecting. What are the tasks of these three appearances? Other comets have other tasks. New births in the universe are not always to be greeted with the same joy as the birth of a young citizen into a family. All sorts are born into the universe; those that bring humanity forward as well as those that drive it back. Now the appearance of Halley's comet, or what it signifies spiritually for the further evolution of humanity, is connected with that which humanity had to absorb out of the Cosmos at the various periods of Kali-Yuga in order that thought should descend more and more into materiality. With every new appearance of this comet a new impulse was born, to drive humanity further away from a spiritual cosmic conception by the Ego, and to urge it to grasp the world in a more materialistic way. This does not mean a descent into matter, but rather the driving of that Spiritual substance which the human Ego should draw from the universe for its Spiritual existence, down into the sphere of materialistic conception. All those conceptions of the second half of the 18th century, which are called shallow and superficial and which Goethe so ridiculed in his Truth and Poetry and which found their exponent for instance in Holbach's Systeme de la Nature, are understood in their cosmic sense through the appearance of Halley's comet in the year 1759. The commonplace materialistical literature of the second third of the 19th century was preceded by the appearance of that comet in 1835. Things that take place microcosmically on the earth are macrocosmically connected with events of the great world. A new impulse towards materialism was again given by the appearance of Halley's comet in 1835. Buchner, Vogt and Moleschott are examples of those who were influenced on the earth by what appeared with Halley's comet, as a mighty sign from the Cosmos. We are now to be confronted in the near future—for humanity must be tested, must rise out of itself, must feel the resistance to Spirituality so that it may unfold all the more forces for its re-ascent—we shall be confronted with the forces which the new appearance of this comet will send forth from the universe, forces which may lead humanity down into a still more arid and dreadful materialism. Something may be born, which even the most arid and driest thoughts of the Buchner school could not have imagined. but this possibility is a necessity, for only if man overcomes the opposing forces can he acquire the strong force able to lead him up again.

If we bear this in mind, we shall then encounter in the right way what we call ‘Signs from the Heavens.’ This is really a fact; though what I have said must not be taken in a superstitious sense, as though God were pointing with a wand from Heaven to show men what they have to do! The approaching appearance of Halley's comet is one of these signs, and notice should be taken of it. For a mighty ascending impulse must follow it that we may rise from the depths of materialism into which we have sunk, into Spirituality. Just as we are given the possibility of being swamped in materialism, we are also given the chance to ascend into clearer, spiritual heights.

It was clearly and distinctly indicated in the last lectures that during the first half of the 20th century an etheric clairvoyance will develop in a few single individuals, as a natural capacity. In order that man may not sink more deeply into the materialism indicated by the present sign of 1910, those who have understanding of Spiritual Science have the possibility of developing those forces in the human soul which can lead man beyond materialism. If a man understands these forces, they will teach him how he may himself see the etheric nature of Christ. We are living at an important crossing-point, when men will be taught, even by signs from heaven, that in one direction the path will lead deeper into the mire, while the other path leads to the development in themselves of the forces which, at the conclusion of Kali-Yuga, will lead to etheric clairvoyance. The cry of John the Baptist: ‘Change the disposition of your souls,’ applies to us to-day! This may really be said. Just as on the one hand we are given the possibility of perishing in the materialistic morass, on the other it is possible, through the Sun reaching a certain point in the Constellation of Pisces at the Vernal Equinox, that a certain etheric clairvoyance may be acquired. For the spiritual ascent there are also signs, to show us how the forces come from the Cosmos. If a man is a student of Spiritual Science he will of necessity grow to understand this decision; if he does not, that means that he has not understood Spiritual Science aright. We must pass through the test submitted to us by the sign in the Heavens which we now recognise to be the appearance of Halley's Comet.

Let us now picture the vision of Christ, as it will appear to the first fore-runners during the next 2,500 years, and as it appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus. Man will ascend to a cognition of the spiritual world and will see the physical world permeated by a new ‘country,’ or new realm. Man's physical environment will present a totally different aspect in the course of the next 2,500 years, through the addition of an etheric realm, which indeed is already here now, but which he will learn to perceive. This etheric sphere is even now spread out before the eyes of those who have carried their esoteric training as far as ‘Illumination’—as was the case with the Initiates even in Kali-Yuga. That which men will see more and more in the future is visible in its greatest heights to the Initiates. The Initiate draws from thence at repeated intervals, the forces he requires. When he has to carry out some special work, he draws his forces from those realms within the earth's circuit which are visible to him, but which can only be seen by those who have the vision. It will help us to understand this, when we know that a part of that land from which the Initiate drew his forces during Kali-Yuga, will be thrown open to a great part of humanity during the next 2,500 years. Formerly, in the days of primeval clairvoyance, man, though then without the strong Ego-consciousness, could see into the Spiritual world—and in a way he saw more or less what he will see now,—but he will now enter it with his newly acquired self-consciousness. At that time he saw it in dream-like ecstatic conditions, or by looking into his own soul. That world which during Kali-Yuga became physical was then open to man's gaze. Hence the traditions, which have preserved recollections of the old clairvoyance, tell us of an unknown Fairy-Land which has now disappeared from sight. There are wonderful documents in Eastern literature full of a peculiar tragical enchantment, and telling us that at one time it was possible for human beings to travel to a land where the Spiritual flowed into the physical. It is that Land from whence at certain times the Initiates—and at all times the Bodhisattvas—drew fresh forces. The Eastern writings speak with deep sorrow of that land, asking: ‘Where is it? We are told the names of places, paths are named; but the Land itself is concealed, even from those most initiated among the Lamas of Thibet!’ Only to the highest Initiates is it accessible. But it is always stated that some day this Land will return to earth. That is true; it will return to earth! And the guide thereto will be He Whom men will see, when, through the vision of the Event of Damascus, they reach the Land of Shamballa. ‘Shamballa’—for so this Land is called—has withdrawn from the sight of man. It can only be entered to-day by those who, as Initiates, go there from time to time to be strengthened. The old forces can no longer lead man thither. That is why Eastern literature speaks with such tragic despair of the vanished Land of Shamballa. But the Christ-Event, which will be vouchsafed to man in this century through his newly-awakened faculties, will bring back the Fairy-Land of Shamballa, which through the whole of Kali-Yuga could only be known to the Initiates.

Thus humanity is now called upon to make a decision, whether it shall allow itself, through what comes with the Halley Comet, to be lead down into a darkness even lower than that of Kali-Yuga, or whether through an understanding developed by Anthroposophy it shall not neglect to cultivate the new faculties by which it may find the way to the Land which according to Eastern Literature has disappeared, but which Christ will once more reveal to mankind;—the Land of Shamballa. That is the great question of the dividing of the ways: either to go down or to go up. Either to go down into something which, as a Cosmic-Kamaloka lies still deeper down than Kali-Yuga, or to work for that which will enable man to enter that realm, which is really alluded to under the name of Shamballa.