The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we consider how Karma works,¹ we always have to bear in mind that the human Ego, which is the essential being, the inmost being, of man, has as it were three instruments through which it is able to live and express itself in the world. These are the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. Man really carries the physical, etheric and astral bodies with him through the world, but he himself is not in any one of these bodies. In the truest sense he is the Ego; and it is the Ego which both suffers and creates Karma.

Now the point is to gain an understanding of the relationship between man as the Ego-being and these three instrumental forms—if I may call them so—the physical, etheric and astral bodies. This will give us the foundation for an understanding of the essence of Karma. We shall gain a fruitful point of view for the study of the physical, the etheric and the astral in man in relation to Karma, if we consider the following.

The physical as we behold it in the mineral kingdom, the etheric as we find it working in the plant kingdom, and the astral as we find it working in the animal kingdom—all these are to be found in the environment of man here on Earth. In the Cosmos surrounding the Earth we have that Universe into which, if I may so describe it, the Earth extends on all sides. Man can feel a certain relationship between what takes place on the Earth and what takes place in the cosmic environment. But when we come to Spiritual Science we have to ask: Is this relationship really so commonplace as the present-day scientific conception of the world imagines? This modern scientific conception of the world examines the physical qualities of everything on the Earth, living and lifeless. It also investigates the stars, the sun, the moon, etc.; and it discovers—indeed it is particularly proud of the discovery—that these heavenly bodies are fundamentally of the same nature as the Earth.

Such a conception can only result from a form of knowledge which at no point comes to a real grasp of man himself—a knowledge which takes hold only of what is external to man. The moment, however, we really take hold of Man as he stands within the Universe, we become able to discover the relationships between the several instrumental members of man's nature, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body and the corresponding entities, the corresponding realities of Being, in the Cosmos.

In regard to the etheric body of man, we find spread out in the Cosmos the universal Ether. The etheric body of man has a definite human shape, definite forms of movement within it, and so on. These, it is true, are different in the cosmic Ether. Nevertheless the cosmic Ether is fundamentally of like nature with what we find in the human etheric body. In the same way we can speak of a similarity between what is found in the human astral body and a certain astral principle that works through all things and all beings out in the far-spread Universe.

Here we come to something of extraordinary importance, something which in its true nature is quite foreign to the human being of to-day. Let us take our start from this. (A drawing is made on the blackboard). We have, first, the Earth; and on the Earth we have Man, with his etheric body. Then in the Earth's environment we have the cosmic Ether—the cosmic Ether which is of the same nature as the etheric in man. In man we also have the astral body. In the cosmic environment too there is Astrality. Where are we to find this cosmic Astrality? Where is it? It is indeed to be found, but we must first discover—what it is in the Cosmos that betrays the presence of cosmic Astrality; what it is that reveals it. Somewhere or other is the Astrality. Is this Astrality in the Cosmos quite invisible and imperceptible, or is it, after all, in some way perceptible to us?

In itself, of course, the Ether too is imperceptible for our physical senses. If I may put it so, when you are looking at a small fragment of Ether, you see nothing with your physical senses, you simply see through it. The Ether is like an empty nothingness to you. But when you regard the etheric environment as a totality, you behold the blue sky, of which we also say that it is not really there but that you are gazing into empty space. Now the reason why you see the blue of the sky is that you are actually perceiving the end of the Ether. Thus you behold the Ether as the blue of the heavens. The perception of the blue sky is really and truly a perception of the Ether. We may therefore say: In that we perceive the blue of the sky we are perceiving the universal Ether that surrounds us.

At first contact, we see through the Ether. It allows us to do so; and yet, it makes itself perceptible in the blue heavens. Hence the existence for human perception of the blue of the sky is expressed in that we say: The Ether itself, though imperceptible, yet rises to the level of perceptibility by reason of the great majesty with which it stands there in the Universe, revealing its presence, making itself known in the blue of the vast expanse.

Physical science theorises materialistically about the blue of the sky; and for physical science it is indeed very difficult to reach any intelligent conclusion on this point, for the simple reason that it is bound to admit that where we see the blue of the sky there is nothing physical. Nevertheless men spin out the most elaborate theories to explain how the rays of light are reflected and refracted in a peculiar way so as to call forth this blue of the sky. In reality, it is here that the super-sensible world begins already to hold sway. In the Cosmos the Supersensible does indeed become visible to us. We have only to discover where and how it becomes visible. The Ether becomes perceptible to us through the blue of the sky.

But now, somewhere there is also present the astral element of the Cosmos. In the blue sky the Ether peers through, as it were, into the realms of sense. Where then does the Astrality in the Cosmos peer through into the realms of perceptibility? The answer, my dear friends, is this.

Every star that we see glittering in the heavens is in reality a gate of entry for the Astral. Wherever the stars are twinkling and glittering in towards us, there glitters and shines the Astral. Look at the starry heavens in their manifold variety; in one part the stars are gathered into heaps and clusters, or in another they are scattered far apart. In all this wonderful configuration of radiant light, the invisible and super-sensible astral body of the Cosmos makes itself visible to us.

For this reason we must not consider the world of stars unspiritually. To look up to the world of stars and speak of worlds of burning gases is just as though—forgive the apparent absurdity of the comparison, but it is precisely true—it is just as though someone who loves you were gently stroking you, holding the fingers a little apart, and you were then to say that it feels like so many little ribbons being drawn across your cheek. It is no more untrue that little ribbons are laid across your cheek when someone strokes you, than that there exist up there in the heavens those material entities of which modern physics tells. It is the astral body of the Universe which is perpetually wielding its influences—like the gently stroking fingers—on the etheric organism of the Cosmos. The etheric Cosmos is organised for very long duration; it is for this reason that a star has its quality of fixity, representing a perpetual influence on the cosmic Ether by the astral Universe. It lasts far longer than the stroking of your cheek. But in the Cosmos things do last longer, for there we are dealing with gigantic measures. Thus in the starry heavens that we perceive, we actually behold an expression of the soul-life of the cosmic astral world.

In this way, an immense, unfathomable life, yet, at the same time, a soul-life, a real and actual life of the soul, is brought into the Cosmos. Think how dead the Cosmos appears to us when we look into the far spaces and see nothing but burning gaseous bodies. Think how living it all becomes when we know that the stars are an expression of the love with which the astral Cosmos works upon the etheric Cosmos—for this is to express it with perfect truth. Think then of those mysterious processes when certain stars suddenly light up at certain times,—processes which have only been explained to us by means of physical hypotheses that do not lead to any real understanding. Stars that were not there before, light up for a time, and disappear again. Thus in the Cosmos too there is a “stroking” of shorter duration. For it is true indeed that in epochs when divine Beings desire to work in an especial way from the astral world into the etheric, we behold new stars light up and fade away again.

We ourselves in our own astral body have feelings of delight and comfort in the most varied ways. In like manner in the Cosmos, through the cosmic astral body, we have the varied configuration of the starry heavens. No wonder that an ancient science, instinctively clairvoyant, describes this third member of our human organism as the “astral” or “starry” body, seeing that it is of like nature with that which reveals itself to us in the stars.

It is only the Ego that we do not find revealed in the cosmic environment. Why is this? We shall find the reason if we consider how this human Ego manifests here on the Earth, in a world that is in reality threefold,—physical, etheric and astral. The Ego of man, as it appears within the Universe, is ever and again a repetition of former lives on Earth; and again and again it finds itself in the life between death and a new birth. But when we observe the Ego in its life between death and a new birth, we perceive that the Etheric which we have here in the cosmic environment of the Earth has no significance for the human Ego. The etheric body is laid aside soon after death. It is only the astral world, that shines in towards us through the stars that has significance for the Ego in the life between death and a new birth. And in that world which glistens in towards us through the stars, in that world there live the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies with whom man forms his Karma between death and a new birth.

Indeed, when we follow this Ego in its successive evolutions through lives between birth and death and between death and a new birth, we cannot remain within the world of Space at all. For two successive earthly lives cannot be within the same space. They cannot be within that Universe which is dependent on spatial co-existence. Here therefore we go right out of Space and enter into Time. This is actually so. We go out of Space and come into the pure flow of Time when we contemplate the Ego in its successive lives on Earth.

Now consider this, my dear friends. In Space, Time is still present, of course, but within this world of Space we have no means of experiencing Time in itself. We always have to experience Time through Space and spatial processes. For example, if you wish to experience Time, you look at the clock, or, if you will, at the course of the sun. What do you see? You see the various positions of the hands of the clock or of the sun. You see something that is spatial. Through the fact that the positions of the hand or of the sun are changed, through the fact that spatial things are present to you as changing, you gain some idea of Time. But of Time itself there is really nothing in this spatial perception. There are only varied spatial configurations, varied positions of the hands of the clock, varied positions of the sun. You only experience Time itself when you come into the sphere of the soul's experience. There you do really experience Time, but there you also go out of Space. There, Time is a reality, but within the earthly world of Space, Time is no reality. What, then, must happen to us, if we would go out of the Space in which we live between birth and death and enter into the spacelessness in which we live between death and a new birth? What must we do? The answer is this: We must die!

We must take these words in their exact and deep meaning. On Earth we experience Time only through Space—through points in Space, through the positions of spatial things. On Earth we do not experience Time in its reality at all. Once you grasp this, you will say: “Really to enter into Time we must go out of Space, we must put away all things spatial.” You can also express it in other words, for it is really nothing else than—to die. It means, in very deed and truth: to die.

Let us now turn our eyes to this cosmic world that encircles the Earth—this cosmic world to which we are akin both through our etheric body, and also through our astral body—and let us look at the spiritual in this cosmic world. There have indeed been nations and human societies who have had regard only to the spiritual that is to be found within our earthly world of Space. Such peoples were unable to have any thoughts about repeated lives on Earth. Thoughts about repeated lives on Earth were possessed only by those human beings and groups that were able to conceive Time in its pure essence, Time in its spaceless character. But if we consider this earthly world together with its cosmic environment, or, to put it briefly, all that we speak of as the Cosmos, the Universe; and if we behold the spiritual manifest in it, we are then apprehending something of which it can be said that it had to be present in order that we might enter into our existence as earthly human beings; it had to be there.

Unfathomable depths are really contained in this simple conception,—that all that to which I have just referred, had to exist in order that we as earthly human beings might enter this earthly life. Infinite depths are revealed when we really grasp the spiritual aspect of all that is thus put before us. If we conceive this Spiritual in its completeness as a self-contained whole, if we consider it in its own purity and essence, then we have a conception of what was called “God” by those peoples who limited their outlook to the world of space alone.

These peoples—at any rate in their Wisdom-teachings—had come to feel: The Cosmos is woven through and through by a Divine element that is at work in it, and we can distinguish from this Divine element in the Cosmos that which is present, on the Earth in our immediate environment, as the physical world. We can also distinguish that which, in this cosmic, divine-spiritual world reveals itself as the Etheric, namely that which gazes down upon us in the blue of the sky. We can distinguish as the Astral in this divine world, that which gazes down upon us in the configuration of the starry heavens.

If we enter as fully as possible into the situation as we stand here, within the Universe, as human beings on this Earth, we shall say to ourselves: “We as human beings have a physical body: where, then, is the Physical in the Universe?” Here I am returning to something which I have already pointed out. The physical science of to-day expects to find everything which is on the Earth existing also in the Universe. But the physical organisation itself is not to be found in the Universe at all. Man has in the first place his physical organisation: then in addition he has the etheric and the astral. The Universe on the other hand begins with the Etheric. Out there in the Cosmos the Physical is nowhere to be found. The Physical exists only on the Earth, and it is but empty fancy and imagination to speak of anything physical in the far Universe. In the Universe there is the Etheric and the Astral. There is also a third element within the Universe which we have yet to speak about in this present lecture, for the Cosmos too is threefold. But the threefoldness of the Cosmos, apart from the Earth, is different from the threefoldness of the Cosmos in which we include the Earth.

Let these feelings enter into our earthly consciousness, the perceiving of the Physical in our immediate earthly dwelling-place; the feeling of the Etheric, which is both on the Earth and in the Universe; the beholding of the Astral, glistening down to the Earth from the stars, and most intensely of all from the Sun-star. Then, when we consider all these things and place before our souls the majesty of this world-conception, we can well understand how in ancient times, when with the old instinctive clairvoyance men did not think so abstractly, but were still able to feel the majesty of a great conception, they were led to realise: “A thought so majestic as this cannot be conceived perpetually in all its fullness. We must take hold of it at one special time, allowing it to work on the soul in its full, unfathomable glory. It will then work on in the inner depths of our human being, without being spoilt and corrupted by our surface consciousness.”—If we consider by what means the old instinctive clairvoyance gave expression to such a feeling, then out of all that combined to give truth to this thought in mankind in olden time, there remains to us to-day the institution of the Christmas Festival.

On Christmas Night, man, as he stands here upon the Earth with his physical, his etheric and his astral bodies, feels himself to be related to the threefold Cosmos, which appears to him in its Etheric nature, shining so majestically, and with the magic wonder of the night in the blue of the heavens; while face to face with him is the Astral of the Universe, in the stars that glitter in towards the Earth. As he realises how the holiness of this cosmic environment is related to that which is on the Earth itself, he feels that he himself with his own Ego has been transplanted from the Cosmos into this world of Space. And now he may gaze upon the Christmas Mystery—the new-born Child, the Representative of Humanity on Earth, who, inasmuch as he is entering into childhood, is born into this world of Space. In the fullness and majesty of this Christmas thought, as he gazes on the Child that is born on Christmas Night, he exclaims: “Ex Deo Nascimur—I am born out of the Divine, the Divine that weaves and surges through the world of Space.”

When a man has felt this, when he has permeated himself through and through with it, then he may also recall what Anthroposophy has revealed to us about the meaning of the Earth. The Child on whom we are gazing is the outer sheath of That which is now born into Space. But whence is He born, that He might be brought to birth in the world of Space? According to what we have explained to-day, it can only be from Time. From out of Time the Child is born.

If we then follow out the life of this Child and His permeation by the Spirit of the Christ-Being, we come to realise that this Being, this Christ-Being, comes from the Sun. Then we shall look up to the Sun, and say to ourselves: “As I look up to the Sun, I must behold in the sunshine that Time, which in the world of Space is hidden. Within the Sun is Time, and from out of the Time that weaves and works within the Sun, Christ came forth, came out into Space, on to the Earth.”

What have we then in Christ on Earth? In Christ on Earth we have That, which coming from beyond Space, from outside of Space, unites with the Earth.

I want you to realise how our conception of the Universe changes, in comparison with the ordinary present-day conception, when we really enter into all that has come before our souls this evening. There in the Universe we have the Sun, with all that there appears to us to be immediately connected with it—all that is contained in the blue of the heavens, in the world of the stars. At another point in the Universe we have the Earth with humanity. When we look up from the Earth to the Sun, we are at the same time looking into the flow of Time.

Now from this there follows something of great significance. Man only looks up to the Sun in the right way (even if it be but in his mind) when, as he gazes upwards, he forgets Space and considers Time alone. For in truth, the Sun does not only radiate light, it radiates Space itself, and when we are looking into the Sun we are looking out of Space into the world of Time. The Sun is the unique star that it is because when we gaze into the Sun we are looking out of Space. And from that world, outside of Space, Christ came to men. At the time when Christianity was founded by Christ on Earth, man had been all too long restricted to the mere Ex Deo Nascimur, he had become altogether bound up in it, he had become a Space-being pure and simple. The reason why it is so hard for us to understand the traditions of primeval epochs, when we go back to them with the consciousness of present-day civilisation, is that they always had in mind [Space], and not the world of [Time]. They regarded the world of [Time] only as an appendage of the world of [Space].²

Christ came to bring the element of Time again to men, and when the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, unite themselves with Christ, then man receives once more the stream of Time that flows from Eternity to Eternity. What else can we human beings do when we die, i.e. when we go out of the world of Space, than hold fast to Him who gives Time back to us again? At the Mystery of Golgotha man had become to so great an extent a being of Space that Time was lost to him. Christ brought Time back again to men.

If, then, in going forth from the world of Space, men would not die in their souls as well as in their bodies, they must die in Christ, We can still be human beings of Space, and say: Ex Deo Nascimur, and we can look to the Child who comes forth from Time into Space, that he may unite Christ with humanity. But since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot conceive of death, the bound of our earthly life, without this thought: “We must die in Christ.” Otherwise we shall pay for our loss of Time with the loss of Christ Himself, and, banished from Him, remain held spell-bound. We must fill ourselves with the Mystery of Golgotha. In addition to the Ex Deo Nascimur, we must find the In Christo Morimur. We must bring forth the Easter thought in addition to the Christmas thought. Thus the Ex Deo Nascimur lets the Christmas thought appear before our souls, and in the In Christo Morimur the Easter thought.

We can now say: On the Earth man has his three bodies, the physical, the etheric and the astral. The Etheric and Astral are also out there in the Cosmos, but the Physical is only to be found on the Earth. Out in the Cosmos there is no Physical. Thus we must say: On the Earth—physical, etheric, astral. In the Cosmos—no physical, but only the etheric and the astral.

Yet the Cosmos too is threefold, for what the Cosmos lacks at the lowest level, it adds above. In the Cosmos the Etheric is the lowest: on the Earth the Physical is the lowest. On Earth the Astral is the highest; in the Cosmos the highest is that of which man has to-day only the beginnings—that out of which his Spirit-Self will one day be woven. We may therefore say: In the Cosmos there is, as the third, the highest element, the Spirit-Selfhood.

Now we see the stars as expressions of something real. I compared their action to a gentle stroking. The Spirit-Selfhood that is behind them is indeed the Being that lovingly strokes,—only in this case it is not a single Being but the whole world of the Hierarchies. I gaze upon a man and see his form; I look at his eyes and see them shining towards me; I hear his voice; it is the utterance of the human being. In the same way I gaze up into the far Spaces of the world, I look upon the stars. They are the utterance of the Hierarchies,—the living utterance of the Hierarchies, kindling astral feeling. I gaze into the blue depths of the firmament and, perceive in it the outward revelation of the etheric body which is the lowest member of the whole world of the Hierarchies.

Now we may draw near to a still further realisation. We look out into the far Cosmos which goes out beyond earthly reality, even as the Earth with its physical substance and forces goes down beneath cosmic reality. As in the Physical the Earth has a sub-cosmic element, so in Spirit-Selfhood the Cosmos has a super-earthly element.

Physical science speaks of a movement of the Sun; and it can do so, for within the spatial picture of the Cosmos which surrounds us, we perceive by certain phenomena that the Sun is in movement. But that is only an image of the true Sun-movement—an image cast into Space. If we are speaking of the real Sun it is nonsense to say that the Sun moves in Space; for Space itself is being radiated out by the Sun. The Sun not only radiates the light; the Sun creates the Space itself. And the movement of the Sun is only a spatial movement within this created Space. Outside of Space it is a movement in Time. What seems apparent to us—namely, that the Sun is speeding on towards the constellation of Hercules—is only a spatial image of the Time-evolution of the Sun-Being.

To His intimate disciples Christ spoke these words: “Behold the life of the Earth; it is related to the life of the Cosmos. When you look out on the Earth and the surrounding Cosmos, it is the Father whose life permeates this Universe.³ The Father-God is the God of Space. But I make known to you that I have come to you from the Sun, from Time—Time that receives man only when he dies. I have brought you myself from out of Time.⁴ If you receive me, you receive Time, and you will not be held spell-bound in Space. But you find the transition from the one trinity—Physical, Etheric and Astral—to the other trinity, which leads from the Etheric and Astral to Spirit-Selfhood. Spirit-Selfhood is not to be found in the earthly world, just as the Earthly-Physical is not to be found in the Cosmos. But I bring you the message of it, for I am from the Sun.”

The Sun has indeed a threefold aspect. If one lives within the Sun and looks down from the Sun to the Earth, one beholds the Physical, Etheric and Astral. One may also gaze on that which is within the Sun itself. Then one still sees the Physical so long as one remembers the Earth or gazes down towards the Earth. But if one looks away from the Earth one beholds on the other side the Spirit-Selfhood. Thus one swings backwards and forwards between the Physical and the nature of the Spirit-Self. Only the Etheric and Astral in between are permanent. As you look out into the great Universe, the Earthly vanishes away, and you have the Etheric, the Astral and the Spirit-Selfhood. This is what you behold when you come into the Sun-Time between death and a new birth.

Let us now imagine first of all the inner mood of a man's soul to be such that he shuts himself up entirely within this Earth-existence. He can still feel the Divine, for out of the Divine he is born: Ex Deo Nascimur. Then let us imagine him no longer shutting himself up within the mere world of Space, but receiving the Christ who came from the world of Time into the world of Space, who brought Time itself into the earthly Space. If a man does this, then in Death he will overcome Death. Ex Deo Nascimur. In Christo Morimur. But Christ Himself brings the message that when Space is overcome and one has learned to recognise the Sun as the creator of Space, when one feels oneself transplanted through Christ into the Sun, into the living Sun, then the earthly Physical vanishes and only the Etheric and the Astral are there. Now the Etheric comes to life, not as the blue of the sky, but as the lilac-red gleaming radiance of the Cosmos, and forth from the reddish light the stars no longer twinkle down upon us but gently touch us with their loving effluence.

If a man really enters into all this, he can have the experience of himself, standing here upon the Earth, the Physical put aside, but the Etheric still with him, streaming through and out of him in the lilac-reddish light. No longer now are the stars glimmering points of light; they are radiations of love like the caressing hand of a human being. As we feel all this—the divine within ourselves, the divine cosmic fire flaming forth from within us as the very being of man; ourselves within the Etheric world and experiencing the living expression of the Spirit in the Astral cosmic radiance, there bursts forth within us the inner awakening of the creative radiance of Spirit, which is man's high calling in the Universe.

When those to whom Christ revealed these things had let the revelation sink deep into their being, then the moment came when they experienced the working of this mighty concept, in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. At first they felt the falling away, the discarding of the earthly-Physical as death. But then the feeling came; This is not death, but in place of the physical of the Earth, there now dawns upon us the Spirit-Selfhood of the Universe. “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.”

Thus may we regard the threefold nature of the one half of the year. We have the Christmas thought—Ex Deo Nascimur; the Easter thought—In Christo Morimur; and the Whitsun thought—Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

There remains the other half of the year. If we understand that too, there dawns on us the other aspect of our human life. If we understand the relationship of the physical to the soul of man and to the superphysical—which contains the true freedom of which man is to become a partaker on the Earth,—then in the interconnection of the Christmas, Easter and Whitsun festivals we understand the human freedom on Earth. As we understand man from out of these three thoughts, the Christmas thought, the Easter thought and the Whitsun thought, and as we let this kindle in us the desire to understand the remaining portions of the year, there arises the other half of human life which I indicated when I said: “Gaze upon this human destiny; the Hierarchies appear behind it—the working and weaving of the Hierarchies.” It is wonderful to look truly into the destiny of a human being, for behind it stands the whole world of the Hierarchies.

It is indeed the language of the stars which sounds towards us from the thoughts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide; from the Christmas thought, inasmuch as the Earth is a star within the Universe; from the Easter thought inasmuch as the most radiant of stars, the Sun, gives us his gifts of grace; and from the Whitsun thought inasmuch as that which lies hidden beyond the stars lights into the soul, and lights forth again from the soul in the fiery tongues of Pentecost.

Enter into all this, my dear friends! I have told you of the Father, the Bearer of the Christmas thought, who sends the Son that through him the Easter thought may be fulfilled; I have told you further how the Son brings the message of the Spirit, so that in the thought of Whitsun man's life on Earth may be completed in its threefold being. Meditate this through, ponder it well; then for all the descriptive foundations I have already given you for an understanding of Karma, you will gain a right foundation of inner feeling.

Try to let the Christmas, Easter and Whitsun thoughts, in the way I have expressed them to you to-day, work deeply and truly into your human feeling, and when we meet again after the journey which I must undertake this Whitsun-tide for the Course on Agriculture—when we come together again, bring this feeling with you, my dear friends. For this feeling should live on in you as the warm and fiery thought of Pentecost. Then we shall be able to go further in our study of Karma; your power of understanding will be fertilised by what the Whitsun thought contains.

Just as once upon a time at the first Whitsun Festival something shone forth from each one of the disciples, so the thought of Pentecost should now become alive again for our anthroposophical understanding. Something must light up and shine forth from our souls. Therefore it is as a Whitsun feeling, to prepare you for the further continuation of our thoughts on Karma, which are related to the other half of the year, that I have given you what I have said to-day about the inner connections of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide.

• 1. From February until September, 1924, with intervals of visits to other towns and countries, Rudolf Steiner was giving at Dornach the great series of 49 lectures on Karma, subsequently produced in four volumes now available in English translation. The present lecture was given very shortly before the Whitsun Festival and deals with its specific significance for the problem of human destiny with which the Karma lectures deal.
  
  Lecturing as he was to Anthroposophists, Dr. Steiner begins at once with the fundamental fact of the three ‘bodies’ at work in the human organism. A full exposition of this is to be found in the book Theosophy, chapter I.
• 2. The bracketed words were transposed in the translation. Error brought to our attention by to Lucas Dreier
• 3. Cp. Paul: “God that made the world and all things therein, being Lord of heaven and earth, giveth to all life and breath and all things, and is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.” Acts XVII, 24–28.
• 4. “Time,” as here used, is what we usually designate as “Eternity”, i.e. a continuous, unbroken time-experience. What we usually call “Time” is our spatialised concept of real Time, separate successional events, measured by spatial changes.

In a former lecture I pointed out that Christianity is wider in reach and compass than the sphere of religion as we normally understand it. I said that when, in future times, men have outgrown what they are now wont to call religion, the substance and content of Christianity will have thrown off the outmoded forms of religious life and will have become a potent spiritual influence in the whole of human culture. Christianity has the power in itself of transcending the forms in which, in the cultural development of our day, we quite rightly express our religious life.

Since that lecture, many significant expressions of cultural life have come to my notice. I have had a brief period of lecturing in the Northern countries—in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The week before last I had to give a lecture in Stockholm, among other towns in Sweden. Because of the low rate of population—remember that London alone has as many inhabitants as the whole of Sweden—there is much unoccupied territory, and people are separated by far greater distances than is the case in our Middle European countries. This will help you to understand what I mean when I tell you that the influences of the old Nordic Gods and Beings are still perceptible in the spiritual environment of those districts. To one who has some knowledge of the Spiritual it is in a sense an actual fact, that wherever the gaze turns one can glimpse the contenances of those ancient Nordic Gods who appeared to the Initiates in the Northern Mysteries, in times long before Christianity had spread over the world.

In the very heart of these lands, enwreathed as they are by myth and legend, not only in the poetic, but also in the spiritual sense, another symptom came into evidence. Between the lectures in Stockholm I had also to give one in Uppsala. In the Library there—in the very midst of all the evidences of spirituality dating from the times of the ancient Gods—lies the first Germanic version of the Bible; the so-called ‘Silver Codex,’ consisting of the four Gospels translated in the 4th century by the Gothic Bishop Wulfila. During the Thirty Years' War, through strange workings of karma, this remarkable document was taken as booty from Prague and brought to the North, where it is now preserved in the midst of the spirit-beings who, in remembrance at least, pervade the spiritual atmosphere of those regions. And as though it were right and proper that this document should lie where it does, a strange occurrence played a part in the story. Eleven leaves of this Silver Codex were stolen by an antiquarian, but after some time his heir suffered such pricks of conscience that he sent the eleven leaves back again to Uppsala, where they now lie, together with the rest of the first Germanic translation of the Bible.

The subject of the three public lectures in Stockholm was Wagner's “Ring of the Nibelungs,” and, walking along the streets, the announcements of the last performance at the Opera of Wagner's Ragnarök, the “Götterdämmerung” (Twilight of the Gods), were to be seen on the kiosks. These things are really symptomatic, interweaving in a most remarkable way. Underlying the old Nordic sagas there is a note of deep tragedy, indicating that the Nordic Gods and Divinities would be superseded by One yet to come. This motif and trend of the Nordic sagas reappears in a medieval form in Wagner's. Siegfried is killed by a thrust between his shoulder-blades, his only vulnerable part. This is a prophetic intimation that here, at this place in his body, something is lacking, and that through One yet to come it will be covered by the arms of the Cross. This is no mere poetic image, but something that has been drawn from the inspiration belonging to the world of saga and legend. For this same note of tragic destiny was implicit in the Nordic sagas, in the Mystery-truth underlying them, that the Nordic Gods would be replaced by the later, Christian Principle. In the Northern Mysteries the significance of this ‘Twilight’ of the Gods was everywhere made plain.

It is also significant—and here again I mean something more than a poetic image—that in the very hearts of these people to-day the remembrance of those ancient Gods lives on in peaceful reconciliation with all that has been brought there or made its way thither from Christianity. The presence of the Gothic Bible amid the memories of ancient times is verily a symptom. One can also feel it as a symptom, as a foreshadowing of the future, that in lands where more intensely than anywhere else the ancient Gods are felt as living realities, these Gods should be presented again in their Wagnerian form, outside the narrow bounds of ordinary religion.

Anyone in the slightest degree capable of interpreting the signs of the times will perceive in the art of Richard Wagner the first rays of Christianity emerging from the narrow framework of the religious life into the wider horizons of modern spiritual culture. One can discern quite unmistakably how in the soul of Richard Wagner himself the central idea of Christianity comes to birth, how it bursts the bonds of religion and becomes universal. When on Good Friday, in the year 1857, he looks out of the Villa Wesendonck by the Lake of Zürich at the budding flowers of early spring, and the first seed of “Parsifal” quickens to life within him, this is a transformation, on a wider scale, of what already lives in Christianity, as a religious idea. And after he had reached the heights of that prophetic foreshadowing of Christianity to which he gave such magnificent expression in the “Ring of the Nibelungs,” this central Idea of Christianity found still wider horizons in “Parsifal,” becoming the seed of that future time when Christianity will embrace, not only the religious life, but the life of knowledge, of art, of beauty, in the widest sense of the words.

This is the theme that will be presented to you to-day, in order to kindle the feeling of what Christianity can be for mankind in times to come.

In connection with this, we will penetrate deeply to-day into the evolution of humanity, for the purpose of discovering the real relation between religion in the ordinary sense and Christianity. The present point of time is itself not unsuitable, lying as it does just before the great Festival symbolising the victory of the Spirit over Death. The Festival of Easter is close upon us and we remember, perhaps, those Christmas lectures in which we endeavoured to grasp the meaning of Christmas in the light of the Mystery-knowledge. If from a higher vantage-point we think of the Christmas Festival on the one side and the Easter Festival, with its prospect of Whitsuntide, on the other, the relation between religion and Christianity, if rightly conceived, is brought in a most wonderful way before the eye of spirit.

It will be necessary to go far, far afield in laying the basis of this study, but by doing so we shall realise what has been preserved in such Festivals and what they can bring to life in the soul. We shall go far, far back in evolution—although not so far either in time or space as in our last lectures, when we dealt with the Spiritual Hierarchies. Those lectures, however, will have been a help, because of the vistas they opened up of the earth's evolution and its connection with that of the Beings of the heavens. To-day we shall go back only to about the middle of the Atlantean epoch, when the ancestors of present-day humanity were living in the West, between Europe and America, on the continent now lying beneath the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. In those times the face of the earth was quite different. Where now there is water, then there was land, and on this land dwelt the early ancestors of men who now constitute the civilised humanity of Europe and Asia. When the eye of spirit is directed upon the soul-life of these antediluvian, Atlantean peoples, it is seen to have been quite different from the soul-life of Post-Atlantean humanity. We have learnt, from earlier studies, of the mighty changes that have taken place in earth-evolution since that time, including changes in the life of the human soul. The whole of man's consciousness, even the alternating states of waking consciousness by day and sleep by night, have changed. The normal state to-day is that when a man wakes in the morning he comes down with his astral body and Ego into the physical and etheric bodies, making use of the physical senses: the eyes for seeing, the ears for hearing, and all the other senses, in order to receive the impressions coming from the material world around him. He plunges with his astral body down into his brain, into his nerves, combining and relating his multifarious sense-impressions. Such is the life of day. At night, the Ego and astral body draw out of the physical and etheric bodies, and sleep ensues. The physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed, but the Ego and astral body have passed out of them and all the impressions of the sense-world and of the waking life of day are obliterated; joy, suffering, pleasure, pain—everything that composes man's inner waking life of soul passes away, and in the present cycle of human evolution darkness enshrouds him during the night.

At approximately the middle of the Atlantean epoch it was not so. Man's consciousness in those times was essentially different. When in the morning he entered into his physical and etheric bodies he was not confronted with sharply outlined pictures of the outer, material world. The pictures were much less distinct and definite, rather as when street lamps in thick fog appear surrounded with an aura of rainbow-like colours. This homely illustration will help you to envisage what the mid-Atlantean man saw and perceived, but you must remember that these colourforms surrounding and blurring the sharp outlines of objects, and also the tones resounding from them, revealed a great deal more than the colours and tones familiar to us to-day. These encircling colours were the expressions of living beings—of the inner, soul-qualities of these beings. And so when a man had come down into his physical and etheric bodies he still had some perception of the spiritual beings, around him—unlike to-day when, on waking in the morning he merely perceives physical objects with their sharp outlines and coloured surfaces.

Moreover, when at night the Atlantean left his physical and etheric bodies, the world into which he passed was not a world of darkness and silence; the pictures were hardly less numerous than by day, with this difference only, that whereas in the waking life of day man perceived outer objects, belonging to the mineral-, plant-, animal- and human kingdoms, at night the whole space around him was filled with colour-forms and tones, with impressions of smell, taste and so forth. But these colours and tones, these impressions of warmth and cold of which he was conscious, were the garments, the sheaths, of spiritual Beings who never descend to physical incarnation, Beings whose names and images are preserved in the myths and sagas. Myths and sagas are not just folk-songs; they are memories of the visions which in olden times came to men in these conditions of existence. Men were aware of the spiritual alike by day and by night. By night they were surrounded by that world of Nordic gods of which the legends tell. Odin, Freya, and all the other figures in Nordic mythology were not inventions; they were experienced in the spiritual world with as much reality as a man experiences his fellow-men around him to-day. And the sagas are the memories of the experiences actually undergone by men in their shadowy, clairvoyant consciousness.

At the time when this kind of consciousness had evolved from a still earlier form, the sun in the heavens rose at the vernal equinox in the constellation of Libra (the Scales). As the Atlantean epoch took its further course, the kind of consciousness that is ours to-day gradually developed. The impressions received by man during the night when his Ego and astral body were outside his physical and etheric bodies became dimmer, less and less distinct; whereas the images of waking life coming to him when he was within his physical and etheric bodies by day, increased in clarity and definition. Paradoxically speaking, night became more intensely night, day more intensely day.

Then came the Atlantean Flood and the dawn of the later, Post-Atlantean epochs of civilisation: the ancient Indian civilisation when the Holy Rishis themselves were the teachers of men; the epoch of ancient Persian culture; the epoch of Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian-Egyptian culture; the epoch of Greco-Roman culture, and finally our own. These epochs of civilisation followed one another after the submergence of Atlantis. And the mood-of-soul prevailing in men during early Post-Atlantean times, and to some extent also during the last phases of the Atlantean epoch itself, can be indicated by saying that among the peoples everywhere, including those who, as the descendants of the Atlanteans, had wandered across to the East and settled there, the ancient memories still survived, as well as the old myths and legends describing the experiences of the earlier form of Atlantean consciousness. These legends and myths which originated in Atlantis had come over with the migrating peoples, who preserved and narrated them. They were their inspiration, and the oldest inhabitants of the North were still vitally aware of the power flowing from these myths, because their ancestors remembered that their own forefathers had actually seen what was narrated in the legends.

Something else too had been preserved, namely the things that had been experienced, not it is true by the masses of the people, but by those who were the Initiates in olden times, the priests and sages of the Mysteries. Their eyes of spirit had penetrated into the same depths of world-existence that are disclosed to-day through spiritual investigation. The Initiation-consciousness of man's early forefathers worked in the spiritual world as powerfully as the Folk-Soul. Clairvoyance, although dim and shadowy, was still a real and vital power in those olden days. Folk-lore and saga preserved and proclaimed, in revelations often fragmentary and broken, realities that had once been experienced. What had been seen in vision and cultivated in the Mysteries was preserved in the form of an ancient wisdom. It was then possible, in the Mysteries, to infuse into the individual consciousness of those who became Initiates, a wide, all-embracing vista of the universe. But forms of consciousness which had been natural in remote ages had in the later times of the Mysteries to be artificially induced.

Why was spiritual vision a natural condition in the far distant past? The reason is that the connection between the physical body and the etheric body was different. The connection existing to-day did not develop until the later phases of the Atlantean epoch. Before that time the upper part of the etheric head extended far outside the boundaries of the physical head; towards the end of Atlantis the etheric head gradually drew completely into the physical head until it coincided with it. This gave rise to the later form of consciousness which became natural in Post-Atlantean man, enabling him to perceive physical objects in sharp outlines, as we do to-day. The fact that man can hear tones, be aware of scents, see colours on surfaces—although these are no longer expressions of the inmost spiritual reality of things—all this is connected with the firm and gradual interlocking of the physical body and etheric body.

In earlier times, when the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body, this projecting part of the etheric body was able to receive impressions from the astral body, and it was these impressions that were perceived by the old, dreamlike clairvoyance. Not until the etheric body had sunk right down into the physical body was man wholly bereft of his dim clairvoyance. Hence in the ancient Mysteries it became necessary for the priests to use special methods in order to induce in the candidates for Initiation the condition which, in Atlantis, had been natural and normal. When pupils were to receive Initiation in the Mystery-temples, the procedure was that, after the appropriate impressions had been received by the astral body, the priests conducting the Initiation induced a partial loosening of the etheric body, in consequence of which the physical body lay for three and a half days in a trancelike sleep, in a kind of paralytic condition. The astral body was then able to imprint into the loosened etheric body experiences which had once come to Atlantean man in his normal state. Then the candidate for Initiation was able to see around him realities that henceforth were no longer merely preserved for him in scripts, or in tradition, but had become his own, individual experiences.

Let us try to picture what actually happened to the candidate for Initiation.—When the priests in the Mysteries raised the etheric body partially out of the physical body and guided the impressions issuing from the astral body into this released etheric body, the candidate experienced in his etheric body the spiritual worlds. So strong and intense were the experiences that when he was restored from the trance and his etheric body was reunited to the physical body, he brought back the memory of these experiences into his physical consciousness. He had been a witness of the spiritual worlds, could himself bear witness to what was happening there; he had risen above and beyond all division into peoples or nations, for he had been initiated into that by which all peoples are united; the primal wisdom, primal truth.

Thus it was in the ancient Mysteries; so too it was in those moments of which I told you in connection with the Christmas Mystery, when the boundaries which were to characterise the consciousness of later times disappeared before the gaze of the Initiate. Think for a moment of the fundamental characteristic of Post-Atlantean consciousness. Man is no longer able to see into the innermost nature of things; between him and this innermost core of being a boundary is fixed. He sees only the surfaces of things in the physical world. What man's consciousness in the Post-Atlantean epoch could no longer penetrate, was transparent and clear to the one who in olden times was about to receive Initiation. And then, when the great moment came, in what is called the “Holy Night,” he was able to see through the solid earth and to behold the Sun, the spiritual “Sun at midnight.”

In essentials, therefore, this pre-Christian Initiation consisted in re-evoking what in ancient times had been the natural condition, the normal state of consciousness. Little by little, as civilisation advanced, these memories of olden times receded and the power to experience reality outside the physical body became increasingly rare. Nevertheless, in the earliest periods of the Post-Atlantean epoch there were still many in the ancient Indian, Persian, Chaldean civilisations, indeed even in ancient Egypt, whose etheric bodies were not yet so firmly anchored in the physical body as to prevent them from receiving the impressions of the spiritual world—in the form of atavistic remains of an earlier age. Later, during Greco-Roman times, even these vestiges disappeared and it was less and less possible for Initiation to be achieved in the same way as before. It became increasingly difficult to preserve for humanity the memories of the ancient, primal wisdom.

At this point we are drawing near the time of our own Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch which denotes something of peculiar significance in the evolution of humanity. In the Greco-Latin epoch it was still true to speak of an equal possibility, on the one side of remembering the visions arising in the ancient, shadowy clairvoyance, and on the other, of living wholly within the physical body, and of being thereby completely cut off from the spiritual worlds. Individuals here and there had this experience. The whole trend of modern life goes to show that the man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch has descended still more deeply into the physical body—the outer sign being the birth of materialistic concepts. These made their appearance for the first time in the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, with the Atomists of ancient Greece. Then, having passed from the scene for a time, we find them cropping up again, and during the last four centuries their influence has so greatly increased that man has lost, not only the content of the old memories of the spiritual worlds, but, gradually, all belief in the very existence of those worlds. There you have the true state of affairs. In this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, man has sunk so deeply into the physical body that he has lost even belief! In a very large number of people, belief in the existence of a spiritual world has simply vanished.

And now let us look from a different point of view at the course taken by evolution. Looking back into those ancient Atlantean times of which we have been trying to form a concrete picture, we can say that man was still living with and among his gods. He believed not only in his own existence and that of the three kingdoms of nature, but also in the reality of the higher realms of the spiritual worlds, for in the Atlantean epoch he was an actual witness of them. His spiritual consciousness by night and his physical consciousness by day did not greatly differ; they were in balance, and it would have been foolish of a man to deny the reality of that which was perceptibly around him—for he actually beheld the gods. There was no need for religion in our modern sense. What now forms the content of the various religions was a perceived reality to the majority of human beings in the times of Atlantis. Just as little as you yourselves need religion in order to believe in the existence of roses or lilies, rocks or trees, as little did the Atlantean need religion in order to believe in gods, for to him they were realities. But this immediate reality faded away, and more and more the content of the spiritual worlds became mere memory—partly preserved in traditions of the visions of very ancient forefathers, partly in the myths and sagas, and in what a few individuals gifted with special powers of clairvoyance had themselves witnessed of these spiritual worlds. Above all, however, this content of the spiritual worlds was preserved in the Mysteries, guarded by the priests of the Mysteries. The secret knowledge under the guardianship of the Priests of Hermes in Egypt, of Zarathustra in Persia, and the sages of Chaldea, the successors of the Holy Rishis in India, was nothing else than the art of enabling human beings, through Initiation, to witness what men in days of yore had seen around them in a perfectly natural way. Later, what the Mysteries preserved was expressed in the form of the folk-religion—here in one, there in another religion—according to the constitution of a people, according to its particular faculties and powers of perception, even according to its native climate. But the primal wisdom was the basis of them all, as the one great unity. This wisdom was one and the same, whether cultivated by Pythagoras in his School, by the Chaldean sages in Western Asia, by Zarathustra in Persia, or by the Brahmans in India. Everywhere it was the same primal wisdom—expressed in varied form according to the needs and conditions obtaining in the folk-religions of the different regions. Here, then, we see the primal wisdom as the fount and basis of all religion.

What is religion, fundamentally speaking? It is the intermediary between the spiritual worlds and mankind when men are no longer able to experience these spiritual worlds through their own organs of perception. Religion was the proclamation, the announcement of the existence of spiritual worlds, made for the sake of men who could no longer experience spiritual reality. Thus was the spiritual life spread over the earth as religious culture in the several epochs of civilisation, in ancient India, ancient Persia and the rest, down to our own time.

As I have already said, the purpose of man's descent into a physical body was that he might gain knowledge of the external world, experiencing existence through his physical senses, in order, finally, to spiritualise what he thus experienced, and so lead it to future stages of evolution. But at the present time, having plunged deeply into the physical body, and having already passed the middle point of the Post-Atlantean civilisations, we are facing a very definite eventuality.

The whole evolution of mankind has a certain strange quality. It goes forward in one direction until a certain point is reached and then it begins to stream in the opposite direction. Having streamed downwards to a certain point, it turns again upwards, reaching the same stages as on the descent, but now in a higher form. To-day man stands in very truth before a fateful future, that future when, as is known to everyone who is aware of this deeply significant truth of evolution, his etheric body will gradually loosen itself again, freeing itself from its submergence in the physical body, where the things of the physical world are perceived in their sharply outlined forms. The etheric body must release itself again in order that man's being may become spiritualised and once again have vision of the spiritual world. To-day humanity has actually reached the point when in a great number of individuals the etheric body is beginning to loosen.

A destiny in the very highest degree significant is approaching us, and here we come near to the secret of our own epoch of civilisation.

We must realise that the etheric body, which has descended very deeply into the physical body, must now take the path upwards, carrying with it from the physical body everything that has been experienced through the physical senses. But just because the etheric body is loosening itself from the physical, everything that was formerly reality—in the physical sense—must gradually be spiritualised. It will be essential for mankind in times to come to have conscious certainty that the spiritual is reality. What will happen otherwise? The etheric body will be freed from the physical body while men still believe only in the reality of the physical world, and have no consciousness of the reality of the spiritual, which will be manifest in the loosened etheric body as the fruit of man's past experience in the physical body. In such conditions men may be faced with the danger of losing all relationship to this loosening of their etheric bodies.

Let us consider the point at which a man's etheric body, which has been firmly anchored in the physical body, begins to loosen from it again and to emerge. Suppose that this happens to a man who in his physical existence has lost all belief in, all consciousness of, the spiritual world, and has cut himself off from any connection with it. Let us assume that he descended so firmly and deeply into the physical body that he has been able to retain nothing save the belief that the physical life is the one and only reality. Now he passes into the next phase of human existence. Relentlessly the etheric body emerges from the physical body, while he is still incapable of realising the existence of a spiritual world. He neither recognises nor knows anything of the spiritual world about him. This is the fate which may confront men in the near future, that they do not recognise the spiritual world which, as the result of the loosening of the etheric body, they must inevitably experience, but regard it as a phantasy, illusion, vain imagination. And those who have experienced most ably, with the utmost perfection, the physical body, the men who have become the pundits of materialism and are full of fixed, rigid notions of matter, it is they who, with the loosening of the etheric body, will face the greatest danger of being without a single inkling that there is a spiritual world. They will regard everything that then comes to them from the spiritual world as illusion, fancy, as so many figments of dream.

If in times to come, when the etheric body has again loosened itself from the physical, man is to live his life in any real sense, he must have consciousness of what will then present itself to the etheric body. In order that he may be conscious that what then comes to him is knowledge of the spiritual world, it is essential that realisation of the existence of the spiritual world shall be preserved in humanity and carried through the period when man is most deeply immersed in the material world. For the sake of the future, the link between the religious life and the life of knowledge must never be lost. Man came forth from a life among the gods; to a life among the gods he will again return. But he must be able to recognise them; he must know that in very truth the gods are realities. When the etheric body has loosened he will no longer be able to rely on remembrances of ancient human times. If meanwhile he has lost consciousness of the spiritual world, has come to believe that life in the physical body and things to be seen in the physical world are the only realities, then for all ages of time he must dangle, as it were, in mid-air. He will have lost his bearings in the spiritual world and will have no ground under his feet. He will be threatened, in this condition, with what is known as the “spiritual death.” For around him there is only phantasy, illusion, a world of whose reality he has no consciousness, in which he does not believe, and so ... he dies! That is the death in the spiritual world. It is the doom which threatens men if, before passing again into the spiritual worlds, they fail to bring with them any consciousness of those worlds.

At what point in the evolution of humanity was attainment of consciousness of the spiritual world made possible for man? It was at the point where man's descent into the physical body was countered by victory over that body, and there was placed before men the great Prototype of Christ Himself. The understanding of Christ forms for man the bridge between the memories of his ancient past and the foreshadowings of his future. When Jesus of Nazareth had reached the age of 30, the Christ came down into his body. For the first and last time Christ lived in a physical body. And His victory over death—when it is rightly understood—reveals to man what the manner of his own life must be if, for all ages of time, he is to be conscious of the reality of the spiritual world. That is the true union with Christ.

What will the Christ Mystery, the Christ Deed, come to mean in the life of man in the future? The man of the future will look back upon our present epoch, when he lived wholly within the physical body, just as Post-Atlantean man looks back to those Atlantean times when he was living together with the gods. As he ascends again into the spiritual world, man will know that through the Christ Deed he has gained the victory over what he experienced in the physical body; he will point to the physical as something that has been overcome, surmounted. We should feel the Easter Miracle, then, as a mighty Deed, a foreshadowing of the Future.

Two possibilities lie before the man of the future. The one possibility is that he will look back in remembrance to the time of his experiences in the physical body, and he will say, “These alone were real. Now there is about me only a world of illusion. Life in the physical body—that was the reality.” Such a man will be gazing into a grave and what he sees in the grave is a corpse. But the corpse—the physical thing—will still be for him the true reality. That is the one possibility.

The other is that man will look back upon what was experienced in the physical world, and will know that it is a grave. Then, with deep consciousness of the import of his words, he will say to those who still believe the physical to have been the one and only reality: “He Whom thou seekest is no longer here! The grave is empty and He Who lay within it has risen!”

The empty Grave and the Risen Christ—this is the Easter Mystery, the Mystery that is a foreshadowing, a prophecy. Christ came to establish the great synthesis between the Easter Mystery and the Christmas Mystery. To the Christmas re-enactment of the ancient Mysteries is added the Mystery of future time, the Mystery of the Risen Christ. This is the Mystery enshrined in the Festival of Easter. The future of Christianity is that Christianity will not merely proclaim the existence of higher worlds, nor be mere religion, but an inner affirmation, a powerful impulse in life itself. It will be an inner affirmation, because in the Risen Christ man will behold that which he himself will experience through the ages of time to come. This Mystery is a Deed, a reality of life, inasmuch as man looks up to Christ not merely as the Saviour but as the great Prototype with whom his life conforms, in that he too will eventually overcome death. To live and work in the spirit of Christianity, to see in Christ not merely the Comforter but the One Who goes before us, Who is related in the deepest sense with our innermost being and Whose example we follow—this is what the Christ Idea will be in the future, pervading all knowledge, all art, all life. And if we remind ourselves of what is contained in the Easter Idea, we shall find there a Christian symbol of true Deed, true Life.

In times when men will have long since ceased to need the teachings of religion to tell them of the ancient gods, because they will again be living among gods, they will find in Christ that source of strength which enables them to find their own firm centre among the gods. Men will no longer require religion in order to believe in gods whom they will once again behold, any more than they required religion in former times when they lived and moved among gods. Themselves spiritualised, men will live consciously among spiritual Beings, fulfilling their tasks in communion with these Beings. In a future by no means far distant, man will find that the physical world is losing its importance for him, that physical things are becoming evanescent. Their reality will have already paled long before man's existence on the earth has drawn to its close.¹ But when the things of the physical world of sense cease to be all-important and fade into shadow, man will either find that the physical is losing its importance while he is still incapable of believing in the spiritual realities before him, or he will be able to believe and preserve for himself the consciousness of these spiritual realities—and then for such a man there will be no spiritual death.

To confront a reality that is unrecognisable, means to be shattered in the spirit. And men would come to this pass if, with the loosening of the etheric body, the spiritual worlds were to appear before them without being recognised and known as such. Many a man to-day could have consciousness of the spiritual worlds but has it not. Therefore these worlds take vengeance, and this shows itself in man's restlessness, his neurasthenic condition, his pathological fears, which are nothing else than the consequences of failure to unfold consciousness of the spiritual worlds. Those who realise the significance of these things feel the necessity of a spiritual Movement which, for those who are outgrowing the substance of ordinary religion, preserves belief in man, in the whole man, including, therefore, the spiritual man.

To know Christ means to know man as a spiritual being. To be filled with the Christ Mystery in the future will mean that Christianity as mere religion will be surmounted and will be carried as knowledge to infinite horizons. Christianity will permeate art, will broaden and inspire it, will bestow in abundance the power of artistic creation. Richard Wagner's “Parsifal” is the first foreshadowing of this.

Christianity will flow into all life and activity on the earth and when the formal religions have long ceased to be necessary, mankind will have been strengthened and invigorated by the Christ Impulse which had once to be given in the middle of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, during the Greco-Latin epoch, when Christ came down among men. Just as it was man's destiny to sink into the deepest depths of material life, so must he be lifted again to knowledge of the Spirit. With the Coming of Christ this Impulse was given.

These are the feelings that should inspire us in the days when we have the Easter Mystery in symbols around us. For the Easter Mystery is not merely a Mystery of Remembrance. It is also a Mystery of the Future, foreshadowing the destiny of those who free themselves more and more from the shackles, ensnarements and pitfalls of the purely material life.

• 1. This is the answer to the scientific prognostication of the end of the human race.

We describe the features of the earth in accordance with the principles of physical geography. In the same way, the spiritual impulses at work on earth (and already briefly characterized in these lectures) can be described by a kind of spiritual geography—especially the interplay of Eastern and Western impulses in human life, with all their various differences. What I have to say today in this direction is bound to remain rather sketchy; but it is more important to find a specific point of view for looking at much that I have already outlined than to give a detailed description.

The relationship of East and West is often expressed symbolically by saying that light comes from the East. Looking at the East, Western man—the man of recent civilization in general—receives the impression of a dream-like spiritual life. Modern spiritual life is used to sharply delineated concepts, closely linked to external observation; in contrast, the notions of the Orient—shifting, fluctuating, less closely and less sharply linked to externals—show up as dream-like. Admittedly, from this dream-like spiritual life, embodied in the most splendid poems, the Vedas, there did of course then develop the clear-cut concepts of a comprehensive philosophy—Vedanta, for example. These concepts were not gained by examining external data, that is analytically, but emerged from an inwardly experienced and apprehended spiritual life.

When this dream-like spiritual life works on us, however, and we lovingly submit to it without at first noticing how much it differs from our own, it has a curious effect. Once we allow its various configurations to affect our soul, we cannot stop there. We cannot merely take over its concepts and ideas. In absorbing them, whether from the literature or the philosophy (including such forms of these as have survived in the East down to the present), we feel a spiritual need to go beyond these images, ideas and concepts. When an Oriental idea, such as that of man's relation to the secrets and the mysterious workings of nature and the world, affects us, it is often accompanied in our mind by something that symbolizes it for the Orient too: the flower of the lotus, as it folds its petals about what must remain mysteriously hidden. We may immerse ourselves lovingly in shifting concepts that are more fitted gently to touch external phenomena and surround them with a mist, than to perceive them in sharp contours, and we may enter their intertwining branches; and if we do, there will inevitably appear to us all the intertwining, branching vegetation of the East and, with it, all that the human hand, the human spirit and civilization have produced from stone and other materials in line with these flowing, branching concepts. We may say: in immersing itself in these concepts, our soul inevitably sees before it a nature similar in its life, diversity and imaginative working to the soul's experience of the concepts themselves.

There appears to be no objective reason for man to abandon this Oriental spiritual activity in favour of a “faithful observation of nature;” indeed, it seems to me rather that there is in the Oriental concepts themselves an incentive not merely to accept them, but to apply them to the outside world. Europeans may feel that such things cannot be applied to the outside world, because of their vagueness, their (to them) fantastic character. If so, we may ask: How, then, can we track, with sharply delineated concepts, the shapes of clouds, fluctuating and rapidly changing as they are? Yet track them we must, if we wish to observe nature's workings in immediate revelation, as they appear to the human senses and the human soul.

Why is this so? It seems to me that there can be only one reason: that in what reaches us from this Eastern spiritual activity, there survives an element from which it was once directly created.

At the time when the Oriental was developing the finest part of his philosophy of life (which has since come down to his descendants in a partially decadent condition), the East created everything with devoted love. Love lives in each of its ideas, concepts and images and in them we perceive love. The love seeks to flow out into objects. And it flows out according to its nature, and conjures up before our soul the symbols that the Oriental established, with an inner understanding of much that functions supersensibly, in seeking to establish what he perceived as the spiritual dement in things. Of course, this is not to assert that this configuration of spirit, if extended over all the earth, would be an unmixed blessing for the development of the world. But once it has appeared on earth, and exerted its influence over other regions, it must be considered objectively, especially at a time when we need to foster understanding between men.

Against it, we may set the particular outlook that has developed, certainly with no less justification, but in a quite different form, further West—and in this respect we ourselves belong in many ways to the West. Here, we find, it is regarded as an ideal to stand back from what the senses observe directly, what extends in space and time, and to test what nature offers, and what should lead us to the world's secret, for position, motion, dimensions and weight. What presents itself directly to the eye is dissected and placed under a microscope, and gives rise to notions that could only emerge under a microscope.

Let us imagine for a moment that we are in the laboratory: how heavily equipped we are with these concepts, so remote from direct observation! Look how we regard the light flooding through the world! How we regard it by means of abstract concepts! We need them, if we are to reach understanding. But how remote are the observations we record on light and colour from what we encounter in wood and meadow, cloud-shape and sun! We may say: what we formulate in our sharply delineated concepts—with the balance, the measuring-rod, the most varied counting devices—takes us into some of nature's shallows and solves some riddles, but it does not take us to direct observation of nature. It is all very well to say: direct your attention to sensory observation and then try to derive your philosophy of life from it. But this is not what happens at all! The scientific view of life we establish is far removed from what the senses observe.

What we ought to say is this: if we establish our knowledge by using the equipment of learning with which we have harvested perhaps the finest fruits of present-day natural science, we shall have to retune our soul before we can approach nature again. If as botanists we have used the microscope extensively and learnt about cell-life, and formed concepts in the atomistic manner of today, we shall have to retune our soul before we can recapture a love of the immediate world of plants as it grows and flowers. If we have formed a scientific concept of the structure of animal and man, again we shall have to retune if we want to move on to direct observation of the animal's shape and actions, and to enjoy the way it plays in the meadow or turns its melancholy or unmoving gaze upon us or looks at us confidingly. Equally, we shall have to retune our soul to share in what the eye can see when it looks at the human shape, tracing its planes with an artistic eye. The Oriental has no retuning to do. Since what he called his science was shot through with love, it led him out to immediate observation. And this was a direct echo of what he experienced in his soul.

These are differences of temper in the attitude to life of East and West. And these different tempers multifariously combine in the man of the region between. In what we experience scientifically, artistically and religiously, there flows much of the temper I have just been characterizing as the one that comes to us from the Orient. In other respects again, we are moved by something of the way of experiencing the world kindled by that scientific attitude which the West has developed—by youthful science and knowledge, so to speak, as against the old-established ones of the East. And in every soul in the civilization that lies between, these two currents flow together. In the last analysis, the life that surrounds us in Europe is a fusion—and one whose component currents we really need to understand.

The contact between the tempers of East and West in our present spiritual life can be characterized in another way.

From what I have just said of the East, one thing is clear about the Oriental. In growing into his spiritual life, he experiences it as immediate reality; he bears it with him in his soul as the reality self-evident to him. External nature, and indeed the entire external world right up to the constellations, seems to him an echo which is, however, fundamentally the same as what he bears within him. Yet he cannot regard as reality what strikes him as an echo, what seems to him a reflection, as he can regard as reality what he experiences directly in his soul. He is closely linked with what he experiences in the spiritual sphere and can say “It is,” because he feels its existence as if it were his own, and in this way understands its mode of being. When he looks out at the reflection of this existence, he knows that it is not reality in the same sense. If he did not illuminate it with the light that streams from within him, it would be dumb and dark. And in becoming more and more aware of this, he arrives at a temper of soul that says: truth and reality reside in what the soul experiences directly. What is reflected to it from without is illusion, maya, incomplete reality, becoming reality only when it is touched by what must first reveal itself through the human soul.

Thus we see how the East developed the view that the spiritual world is reality, and the outside world, that of the senses, is semblance, the great illusion, maya. It would, however, be wrong to believe on this account that, in the pre-Buddhist period for example, the Oriental averted his glance completely from the outside world. He accepts) it, even if in a higher sense he must admit that in what extends in space and time he is dealing not with complete reality but with an illusion, the great non-being, maya. But this in turn gives a particular temper to the life of the soul in the East: the soul feels a close link with the spiritual world and sees, in all that exists in the external world of the senses, a replica of the original shape of the world as it exists in the spirit. And in the end this grows into the view that one's own human sensuous substance is a replica of a human being whose true existence is in the spiritual world. And here I would say: the Oriental, quite consistently, regards the world as made up of replicas of a spiritual world, just as he regards himself as a replica of what he was before he descended into the physical and sensuous world. From his standpoint, the view of man and the view of nature are in complete harmony.

This harmony is possible; though no longer consonant with our views, it does indeed express a truth, if somewhat one-sidedly, as we can see once again if, with the research methods of spiritual science, which I have been describing in the last few days, we ourselves take a look at this Oriental mode of knowledge.

As I have shown, by awakening powers dormant in the soul we can attain a view of the spiritual world that yet suits modern man; we can look once more into a spiritual world; and find this spiritual world unfolding before our “mind's eye” just as the physical and sensuous world unfolds before our physical eye. When we develop this vision, however, the spiritual world does not remain a mere pantheistic and nebulous embodiment of universal spirituality; it becomes just as concrete in its individual forms as the world of the senses in those of the realms of nature. There will then follow a view of man that I should now like to characterize.

Let us start with something familiar to us at every moment in our lives: an experience of the outside world. We have entered into this external experience through our sensory perception and perhaps also through setting our will in motion in some activity. We live in conjunction with the data of the outside world. For us, this is an immediate experience. In the last analysis, human existence on earth is composed of such experiences. From them, we retain thought-images, which become our memories. We can look back on our experiences through bearing within us faded, shadowy and, in fact, mental images of them.

Let us be quite honest with ourselves and consider whether, at any moment in life, our consciousness contains very much more than memories of external, factual, sensory experiences. Of course, many a nebulous mystic believes that he can summon up eternal things from the depths of his soul. If he looked more closely and could really test the structures he summons from his soul, he would discover that as a rule they are no more than transformed external perceptions. Within man, memories are not only faithfully preserved; they are also transformed in many ways, and man then fails to recognize them. He thinks that he is acting as a mystic and summoning something from the depths of his soul, when he has only called up from his memory a transformed external experience. Of course, we need only think of mathematical truths to realize that all kinds of mental structures do establish themselves in the life of the soul. But as a rule it is not these structures that the mystic seeks.

However, anyone who simply wishes to accept the everyday life of the soul, as it appears in ordinary consciousness, must say: This life is made up of images that are the remains of our experiences gained-through perceptions, and of other experiences within the external sensuous world. When we look at our soul and at the spiritual element that permeates it, as we have it in physical life on earth, we can therefore say: outside is the physical world extending in space, the world that unfolds its causes and effects in time, the world, that is, of facts. Here within is the world of shadows in the soul; we do indeed experience it in general as something spiritual and vital, but its content we experience only as a replica of the world of facts and of the senses. Now, paradoxical as the outlook of today may find it, for the attitude that I have been expounding in the last few days, the reverse comes about: in empty consciousness, as a result of meditation, the spiritual in the world, the spiritual within natural phenomena, is really experienced; it is observed also as the soul-spiritual element in man himself, as he is before he descends into his physical existence from a spiritual world; the spiritual is observed concretely by the spirit-organ we have developed; the world about us becomes spiritual, just as to our senses it is sensuous and physical. And when all this happens, we begin to perceive—as if in recollection of the times when we lived as spiritual beings in purely spiritual worlds—how in its particulars our physical organism is a replica of the spiritual world that surrounds us. With physiology and anatomy we can observe our lungs, heart and other organs only as outer objects; but when we can see the spiritual world about us, then the lungs and heart as they really are within us will become for us a replica in the physical sphere of what is spiritually prefigured. Just as in our ordinary consciousness the world outside is physical, and our soul creates replicas as its experiences; so now we learn that there is a spiritual world outside and that the replicas of this spiritual world exist in our own organs. We come to know man's structure only in coming to know the spiritual world. What is usually called matter then ceases to have the significance it has assumed in recent civilization, just as spirit ceases to have the significance of something abstract that it has had in recent civilization. We can thus see that in our organic functioning there is in fact a replica of what we were before we descended into our earthly existence.

At this stage, we need no longer be frightened even by materialism, in so far as there is justification for it—and even materialism has done some good and brought us countless discoveries. We look at the human brain and the human nervous system in its physical operation. Of course, we agree that ordinary, everyday thinking is a function of these physical organs. We are entirely in agreement with what exact science must hold about these matters today. But on the other hand we know that the material forms operating within us are themselves simply a transformed reflection of the spiritual sphere. For this reason, the material is acceptable, and because, in transforming itself into mortal man, the spiritual has sought out the capacity of brain and nerves to achieve in a material replica what is spiritually prefigured.

Modern man can see this in his “mind's eye” by developing the powers of cognition of which I have been speaking in the last few days. Yet there is a dream-like anticipation of it, I would say, in the Oriental philosophy of life I have outlined. This philosophy has become old and senile, but certain of its features still work effectively in our heart and soul. In its instinctive clairvoyance, the ancient Orient sensed that the spiritual world is a reality with which it felt closely linked, and that nature, and the natural element in man himself, is a replica of the spiritual; it provides an external garment for the revelation of what is inwardly spiritual.

Yet it would be wrong to say that the Oriental did not observe nature. His organs were finely attuned to its observation. For him, however, from everything that he faithfully observed and lovingly honoured as a replica, something of the spirit shone. Nature revealed spirit to him, shone spirit upon him at every turn. And this spirit was his reality. What lay before him outside was maya.

Even in Buddhism, which gained a far greater influence on Oriental life than we usually think—since it later assumed the most varied forms—we can see how the sense of inhabiting a spiritual world paled as man and world developed. The gaze was increasingly directed upon what was maya, and experience of the great illusion, the great non-being, maya, gradually became predominant. There thus arose an awareness of the need for redemption from what can be experienced within maya—experienced, that is, in the manner of Buddha, who regarded our direct experiences of this maya as a crowd of sorrows that flow in on man.

But it faded, this sense of inhabiting a spiritual world; and this is what justifies us in considering the early Oriental philosophy of life as something instinctive and even partial: if we do return to something like it, we must do so with complete self-possession and lucid consciousness. The impairment of human activity relative to the demands of the physical, external world must not occur a second time in the world's development. Man must never again escape into spiritual activity and so prevent himself from devoting his full strength to earthly tasks—which are what the Oriental perceives as maya, even if in deference to modern concepts he does not say so; whereas he perceives as reality what reveals itself within him. He has within him a light that is a direct reflection of the divine and spiritual elements in the world.

Against what I have thus described as the spiritual geography influencing our modern life, I should now like to set another illustration from the development of the human spirit and the world, but this time from the immediate present. Our civilization, which even in Europe is now of some antiquity, is subject to pressures from certain spheres, whence arise social longings and also social conflicts. Anyone who has moved in these spheres will have come across the phenomenon I am about to describe.

Although no one could properly accuse me of Socialist opinions, I was for some long time a teacher in Socialist circles. My intention was to do something for which in fact the time had not yet come (it is more than twenty years ago now): to propagate a spiritual life that could lead to theories that are in closer accord with reality than those derived from abstract or modified Marxism, which in many respects indeed are not realistic at all. There exists in these circles a basic attitude—something we can recognize as a first step, yet which is as deeply rooted in the soul as was the sense of maya at which the Oriental finally arrived. And in observing this attitude, we are profoundly struck by a word that expresses many unconscious feelings, unconscious ideas and concepts, unconscious longings too, a word that we hear again and again and must recognize as having characterized wide circles of humanity for centuries. Encompassing millions of people is a mood that this word expresses. The word is “ideology,” by which is meant “idealistic theorizing.” It derives from an attitude that the proletarian class in particular has absorbed into its education. The scientific method, with its increasing emphasis on matter, has given rise to the view that historical reality consists simply of economic struggles, economic patterns, class struggles, in short of the immediate material elements, externally sensuous and physical, in human life and history; and that therefore economic forces are the true reality.

This economic materialism, which is far more widespread than many upper-class people today believe, is a consequence of the general materialistic outlook. Nowadays, this is taken to be overcome even in science; yet it has a wide following particularly in the West.

And what is this “ideology?” It is law, morality, the realm of the beautiful, religious concepts, political theory, in short everything that makes up spiritual life. These things are not true reality, but bubbles and baubles arising from true reality, which resides in material struggles and patterns. “Ideology” is a way of indicating that what man experiences within himself—whether it is art or science or law or maxims of state or religious impulses—is maya, to use the Oriental term.

If we do not just take it at its face value, but can feel what millions of people are thinking, then the word “ideology” points to something that must inevitably assume the most formidable dimensions unless it can be set on the right course in good time. What the soul experiences and shapes within is not reality: true reality is only what exists externally in tangible facts.

Inside Western civilization, therefore, there has developed an outlook diametrically opposed to that which long ruled the Orient and still survives even today as a kind of antiquated trimming. There, true reality is what is experienced in the spirit, and maya what proceeds outside in physical actuality; here, maya or “ideology” (which is indeed a translation of the word “maya,” but applied to the spiritual sphere) is what is experienced in the spirit, and reality what is tangibly displayed, palpably there in the world.

In its development, the world aims at complete realization of its various potentialities. Just as the one extreme developed, in the Orient, so too the other was bound in its turn to take hold of humanity. To bring about a fruitful development of man and world, however, and to change the forces of decline into constructive ones, we must understand the significance of this mood, this “ideology.” It is recent and therefore a first step.

Let us look once more at what modern spiritual science can tell us. In the Orient, there was a dreamy, dark, instinctive knowledge that there exists a spiritual reality, with a sensory replica here in the physical realm. Because the soul's attention was devoted primarily to this spiritual reality, sensory reality came to be regarded as unreality, external appearance, maya. Yet this maya is important in more than one way. Although the world may be maya, our efforts, which are a reality for us, must still be applied to it in the first instance. But it is important also for the precept “Know thyself,” for a truly human attitude. Why? Well, it is true that we can now elevate ourselves to a life in the spiritual world, as I have described; that we can see by means of sharply delineated concepts and thus understand what appeared to the Orient like a dream. But the experience of such a world would never have created in human development the impulse to freedom.

When man feels closely linked to the spiritual world, he feels at the same time inwardly determined by and dependent on it. Therefore he and his consciousness had to move out of it and, for a passing phase of history (in which we now are), to turn to a world of mere fact. Confronted with this external actuality, the life of man's soul becomes an image of it. The spirit informing this life turns into abstract concepts and gradually becomes a mere image, to be recognized as a replica.

I have already suggested that, by having images within us, we can be free. Mirror-images do not determine our actions. If we wish to conform to mirror-images, which in themselves are powerless, the impulse to do so must come from us. The same is true of abstract concepts. And in making its appearance in pure thinking, our noblest feature, the moral and religious element, becomes for us an impulse of freedom. It is a most valuable component of human life. But in a period when man finds himself confronted with physical actuality, it makes its appearance in abstract thinking.

At the moment when the moral element, in the shape of moral intuition, makes its appearance in pure thinking, the task of the epoch is fulfilled. The epoch has developed from spirit-reality to the spirit as abstraction and (I would say, exaggerating a little) it now interprets everything spiritual as maya, as mere illusion, as “ideology.” We have a certain right to interpret as “ideology” everything that is a reflection of external natural existence. At the moment when the moral element, in the shape of intuition, enters this maya-thinking, this “ideology,” we reach the first stage at which we can recognize once more that we must awaken this “ideology,” which we experience as mere semblance, to inner life by energizing ourselves and allowing the life that is hidden within us to stream forth. The meaning of the world had to become “ideology” for humanity in order that man himself could infuse it with his own reality.

This was necessary for man's experience of freedom, which is something that has only been attained in the West and in recent civilization. It was necessary that man should first feel himself to be in a sphere of unreality when in contact with everything that is most valuable to him—his art, his science, his moral concepts, in short his entire spiritual life—and that everything transitory that shone on him should appear to be the only reality. For this reality, rightly contemplated, cannot in any way impair his freedom—the freedom that depends on his being himself a spiritual being who creates in physical and sensuous actuality only a replica of the spirit.

We see, therefore, that “ideology” represents in an extreme form an attitude that we really need in face of such concepts of nature as position, motion, dimensions and numbers. If nature were to provide us with anything other than concepts, it would never make us free. Only if we rise to concepts that will then appear as mere “ideology” to someone who is still stranded at the previous stage, can a new and spiritually real form of the higher world infuse these initially unreal concepts. This is the first step, from which must emerge for man a new form of the spiritual world. And when we encounter the exaggerated notion of “ideology,” those of us who are not bogged down in the immediate opinions of the day but can see beyond them to the world's development, must conclude: it was necessary for man to reach a stage of development at which, looking at only one side of the world and himself, he could speak of “ideology;” it is equally necessary now for him to attain the decision, conviction, power and courage to infuse into this “ideology” a spiritually perceived and experienced world. Otherwise, although perhaps it may be discussed philosophically, the “ideology” will remain merely “ideology.” And as we shall see in the second part of these lectures, which will be devoted to Anthroposophy and Sociology, in that case the forces of decline will quite definitely proliferate.

Before us, then, are two pictures: spiritual world as reality and world of the senses as maya—world of the senses as reality and spiritual world as maya. We need a philosophy of life that is capable of injecting the spiritual world, regarded as “ideology,” with spiritual intuition, spiritual imagination and inspiration, so that what today appears unutterably empty is filled once more with spiritual meaning. At the same time, it must be able to perceive that what the Orient regards as illusion and maya is a reality in the sense that it is a true and faithful replica, a transformation of the spiritual world, which was necessary for the development of humanity in freedom. If we are to reach an understanding of these two diametrically opposed world-pictures, we need a philosophy that can combine them and not just add them together mechanically, one that will develop through its own inner life, not from the one or the other, but in a spiritual progression from human substance itself.

And these world-pictures do ultimately affect everything that we experience spiritually. They certainly condition individual features of life and of human attitudes. As a Central European here in Central Europe, I would rather not give my own opinion on this particular point. I prefer to pass on the opinion expressed some years ago by an Englishman who compared Western and

Central Europe in relation to a certain aspect of spiritual life. This Englishman wanted to exemplify the way in which spiritual life has revealed itself in particular phenomena. He referred to the appearance, at the end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties of the last century, of Buckle's important work, The History of Civilization. Buckle, he noted, views history mainly—if not so exclusively as do the Marxists, for example—in terms of economic drives, so that ultimately spiritual life is taken to arise from the action and interaction of economic forces. We do not always have to condemn a view of this kind; we can take a positive attitude, and say: since man is in part an economic being, a historical consideration of human life from this standpoint also was needed at a certain stage in human development. The Englishman then refers to another book that was produced in Central Europe at the same time as Buckle wrote his History of Civilization—Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. The Englishman himself observes that a quite different spirit prevails here; Burckhardt describes how men feel, what their attitude to one another is, and how through the opinions they have of each other they enter into certain relationships, which in turn determine other events occurring among them. And the Englishman finally sums up—I am simply quoting his opinion here—by saying that Buckle describes man as he eats and drinks, whilst Burckhardt describes man as he thinks and feels.

And if I may now add something myself: if, as we have heard, the West looks at eternal actuality and derives spiritual life from it, and the Central European looks at what inhabits the realm of the soul, but the soul in its earthly existence, then one would have to add, thirdly, that Eastern man (and in many respects even the East European) describes man as he preaches and sacrifices.

And so we might say, supplementing the Englishman's verdict: in the West, man is described as he eats and drinks (I say this in no pejorative sense); in the Middle region, as he thinks and feels; in the East, as he preaches and sacrifices. In this preaching and sacrificing is operative what I have described as the attitude of the East. Similarly, in the view of history that has become generally familiar today and that is also reflected in the notion of “ideology,” there operates what I have described as the attitude of the West. But we also need to see how in the mode attributed to the Centre, where man is presented as he thinks and feels, the two currents meet. We are called upon today to understand this confluence correctly, by taking a first step that will gradually lead us onward to spirituality.

I will try to sum up in a single image the two attitudes I have sought to represent, in order to show where understanding is really needed between East and West. To do so, I should like to recall that, at a time when the physical and sensuous world, and human existence also, was already felt as maya in the East, he who is called the Buddha encountered in his wanderings the most varied manifestations of human suffering on earth. Among these manifestations was a corpse; death confronted the Buddha, and through contemplation of death he reached his conclusion: Life is Suffering.

This was the tenor of Oriental civilization six hundred years before the establishment of Christianity. Six hundred years later, Christianity was founded, and henceforward we have a significant symbol: the crucifix, the raised cross with the Redeemer, the human body on it. In the West, countless men look at this body, at the image of it; just as countless men, who have become disciples of Buddha, have looked at the body from which Buddha drew his teaching. The East acknowledged: Life is suffering, we long for redemption. Western men, in looking at the image of the dead body, however, did not simply say: Life is suffering! For them, the sight of death became a symbol of resurrection, resurrection of the spirit through inner human power. It became a symbol of the fact that suffering can be redeemed by overcoming the physical; that it is overcome, not by turning away from it in asceticism, but by keeping it in full view, not regarding it as maya, and overcoming it through work, activity, and the vigour of the will. Out of the introspective life of the East arose a contemplation of the dead body, with the conclusion: Life is suffering, man must be redeemed from life. Out of the life of the West, attempting always activity, there arose, at the sight of the body, the view: Life must develop power within itself, so that even the forces of death can be overcome, and human work can do its task in the development of the world.

The one philosophy is old and jaded. Yet it contains things of such great value that, even though we may treat it as senile, we still approach it as something venerable. We honour an old man without expecting him to profess the views of youth. What we encounter in the West, however, has the character of a first step. We have shown what the “ideology” in its attitude must become. It is young, it must develop youthful power in itself so that it may attain spiritual meaning in its own way, just as the Orient did.

In honouring the Orient for its spirituality, there is something we still need to be clear about: we must build up our own spirituality from the first step we have taken here in the West. We must so shape it, however, that we can achieve an understanding with any view that may exist on earth, especially old and venerable ones. This will be possible if, as Central and Western men, we come to understand that, although our philosophy of life has faults, they are the faults of youth.

If we do understand this, it is a summons to have the courage to be strong. If for all our respect, love and admiration for its spirituality, we take what we need from the East, not with passive receptivity, but with a busy activity rooted in what, today, is still perhaps unspiritual in the West, yet contains the germ of spirituality—if we add strength to respect, then we shall do the right thing for human development.

When I tried in the last lecture to explain the influence exercised on man by the part of the Earth on which he as physical man develops, I had chiefly in mind to point out very distinctly that the whole Earth is an organism, an ensouled organism, permeated by spirit. For, as an organism has its separate, distinct differentiated members, each of which has a special task,—the arms have not the task of the legs, nor the heart that of the brain, and so on, if we consider the Earth as one whole, as an ensouled organism permeated by spirit, each part of the Earth has its own special task. The special task of the separate human organic members is perceptible in the form of these separate members. The arms are formed differently from the legs, the heart from the brain. This difference is not so marked as regards the Earth with respect to the physical. To an external materialistic geographer, who observes the separate continents or any other parts of the Earth arranged according to this or that point of view, it does not occur straight away that these different parts of the Earth have different sorts of activity; that only occurs to one who can, to a certain extent, grasp the nature of the psychic and spiritual element of the Earth. To understand this, really signifies rising concretely to the perception that the Earth is an ensouled, spiritual organism, and that man, living on Earth as physical man, is a member of this organism. All kinds of questions arise if one takes this into account, and he looks at the life of man as if it only ran its course once between birth and death, will not come to any very reasonable conclusions about them. For man, as physical man, can indeed only become a member of a particular part of the Earth. He would therefore be condemned to be quite specialized and differentiated by this particular part of the Earth, and would in a sense not be able to be in any way a complete whole, but only a part of the Earth's organism. On the other hand an important discovery results from this insight into the ensouled spiritualized part of the Earth; the discovery that the real deeper being of man, to which he says “I,” can in the real sense, only be connected indirectly with this differentiation of man over the Earth, that's the psycho-spiritual kernel of man's being in a sense only dwells in what is in us specialized through the peculiarity of the Earth. Thus man can obtain, from this very circumstance, the knowledge that his spiritual-psychic kernel cannot subsist in what immediately confronts us in man; that with which, in a sense, man confronts us, can only be the “dwelling place,” the dwelling place of man determined by virtue of the special circumstances of the Earth. I do not mention this because it might appear to those already acquainted with spiritual science as a very weighty truth; of course it cannot be that. But it is to show that a real searching into and pondering over the relationships of the Earth can lead man to build himself up in spiritual science, by this means, in a purely logical manner. For the belief that Spiritual Science can only be comprehensible to one who sees into the spiritual world, must be swept away as one of the most fatal prejudices. This is a prejudice which has over and over again to be taken into account. I might say, for the satisfaction of all the comfort-loving ones who, because they like to believe that they could never acquire clairvoyant cognition, would like to represent Spiritual Science chiefly as a kind of provisional arrangement, or as something which does not concern mankind at all, that in truth, comprehensive, penetrating thought can really understand the spiritually scientific. Only the thought must be really accurate and comprehensive! It must be prepared to relate the phenomena of life to what Spiritual Science confirms. He who brings what is within his grasp in the way of knowledge of the characteristic traits of the different nations of the Earth, and of the different inhabitants of the Earth, to bear upon what Spiritual Science says, will soon acknowledge that what was here explained in the last lecture is verified. We must really relate what life offers to this knowledge; we must be ready to test, free from prejudice, the teachings of Spiritual Science by the experience of life; then a reasonable penetration of the matter will lead to the acknowledgment of Spiritual Science.

It is very important to emphasize this at the present day. For we may say that traditions, containing many of the truths of Spiritual Science, are far more numerous than is usually believed. There is a certain opinion, however, which was fully justified up to the approach of the recent historical age—but which has also been propagated in our own times by many who possess Spiritual Scientific knowledge—the opinion that one should not communicate publicly certain deeper knowledge about life. I have often explained the reasons which people who know something of these things have, for thus withholding these communications, and I have also pointed out why these reasons no longer hold good at the present day. In a certain respect however these facts present a difficulty. For not only have we the opposition to Spiritual Science of by far the greatest part of mankind to contend with, but we also have to contend with the opinion of those who do know something;—the opinion that one who gives publicity to things which come from the fountain of Spiritual Science as one gives publicity to other truths, is wrong. Those who believe that the veil of secrecy over certain things must not be raised, will be healed of this error when they recognize the importance of what has been said, certainly in a somewhat scientific form, but clearly enough, it seems to me, in the foreword and introduction to my book “Riddles of Man.”

It is necessary to comprehend that the conception of truth and righteousness which most men still have today, will indeed have to be overcome. Most men have the idea: One thing is right—and another is wrong. But I must emphasize the fact over and over again, and have also done so more particularly in the preface to “Riddles of Man,” the man's separate view of things from one particular side is like a photograph of an object from one side only. If one photographs a tree, first from the one side and then another, the second picture is still a picture of the same tree, only it looks different. Now today, when men have become so very abstract, when they have become so accustomed to the theoretical, in spite of believing themselves to be men of reality, one view of a thing is reckoned as all-comprehensive, as comprising the whole reality. People believe that it is possible to express reality in thoughts—or in something else. They are particularly arrogant in this belief of being able to express the reality by means of thought. I mean the “arrogant” somewhat in the following sense. People say, “We today have the Copernican world-conception ... but with regard to the men who lived before Copernicus (this is not expressed so abruptly, but still they think it) they were all children (indeed we might say ‘duffers’), for they did not yet have the Copernican world-conception. That alone is correct, all the other world-conceptions are false.” This is an attitude which must be overcome. Even the Copernican world-conception is just one view, it is one definite way of making pictures, thoughts and ideas of things. Certainly there are men to-day, who oppose Spiritual Science as soon as they observe that it gives one a view, a real and regular view of a thing, by placing something else in opposition to it. No one will contest this who knows that there are different points of view about a thing. Today, however, many people wish for something else, something quite special, which may be compared somewhat to the person in the room saying: “When we have lighted up the room from one point and look at it from there, this gives only the view in perspective; it is not the reality; let us turn out the light and make the room quite dark and touch everything separately, then all who have thus touched the things will have the same opinion.” We all know that when we look at the room in the light, one who stands there has this view, and another who stands somewhere else has that view and so on. So today certain ideal of natural science would be to turn out the light and only ‘touch’ everything. Spiritual Science must certainly “turn the light” on to that. Thus the different points of view implies something surveyed from different places.

Now more especially by us should the effort be made to go about trying to form opinions from different points of view. This has already been striven after for many years. Many might object that the one contradicts the other, but that is precisely the essential thing, that in the above-mentioned sense one view should contradict another; for thereby we get an all-round view of a thing, which is what we want. But this is not at all easy, or people would prefer to have a little book, as slender as possible, in which a whole world-philosophy is tabulated. Or, if they wish to have world-philosophies discussed, they would like to have the same thing reeled off, over and over again. Of course this cannot be. Our printed cycles are increasing, are becoming more and more numerous, so that things may be illuminated from different sides, that we may obtain concepts and views from various sides, which only then give a complete picture of reality. We must certainly offend people in a certain respect (and what has just been said will make this comprehensible to you) if we have to repudiate more and more the accepted prejudices, by the truths of Spiritual Science. But chiefly when we thus ‘sin’ against the demand of certain occultists not to communicate important things publicly, we must speak about things which shock people, perhaps even anger and excite them; for these things, like many others, give offense for instance to all those who say that things can only be ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect.’ Rather must we acquire the view that in the successive stages of the evolution of mankind there can never be a condition in which one can really say: “Now we have the absolute truth in regard to any particular matter for thought,” or: “We now know, what is absolute untruth.” There cannot be absolute truth or absolute truth. Searching great conceptions of life do not originate in order at last to give men what is ‘correct,’ so that they may now look arrogantly upon their forefathers as upon children; they spring up from very different reasons.

Let us call to mind something we all know. In the 15th century of our era, mankind entered the fifth cultural epoch of the Post-Atlantean development, which we call that of the “development of the human Consciousness or Spiritual Soul.” What especially appeared in the fifth cultural epoch began with the 15th century A.D. Till then it was the Intellectual or Rational Soul which, in the course of the cultural development of mankind was specially developed. In order then that the Spiritual Soul might arise, certain thoughts, certain kinds of concepts, took on a quite distinct character. Not because the Copernican world-philosophy is the absolutely correct one—I have affirmed often enough that it had to appear; and that in a certain respect it is the right one for us in accordance with the times. I shall declare again and again—not because it is the absolutely correct one did it appear, but because it serves the evolution of man, in that he can best attain the development of the Spiritual Soul if he allows the Copernican world-philosophy to enter his flesh and blood, if he reaches the point of being able to calculate certain constellations of stars through the Copernican world-philosophy, as has been done in more recent times.

What is then really good in the Copernican world-philosophy? Not that at last it has told us the truth in contradistinction to the ‘untruth’ of former centuries, but that it erected a spiritual wall between Earth and Heaven, between the physical world and the spiritual world. Of course this appears frightfully paradoxical, something which excites opposition as a matter of course among those who have the above-mentioned prejudices. But it is true that man has begun to conceive the circumference, a cosmic circumference of the Earth in the Copernican manner, in that by transferring the Copernican conceptions into the circumference of the Earth, he has constructed this spiritual wall which he cannot get through. He is cut off from the spiritual thereby, and can remain with his concepts limited to the environs of the Earth, and there he develops the Spiritual Soul. Thus, in order that man should limit himself as ‘egotistically’ as possible to what is earthly, the Copernican world-philosophy, which erects its virtual wall around the Earth, fell to his lot. The more completely the Copernican world-philosophy is developed, the more certain is it that, through external perception, man is cut off from the spiritual world; but it also becomes the more necessary that he should again through inner perception, and by animating his inner life, find the connection with the spiritual. Remarkable things, very remarkable things run parallel. When such things are uttered, it is rather difficult to follow them, but if in the whole wide world there are none but the anthroposophists to understand them, they must take all the more trouble to do so.

There exists today a something like a “Theory of Knowledge;” that particular philosophical science which is based on Kant is called “Theory of Knowledge.” Yet this theory of knowledge is really—one might say—a nail in the coffin of human knowledge. Take a main thought about the ordinary theory of knowledge which as a rule runs in the minds of people today. It is said: Over there is an object: but what is out there is really only the vibration of ether, it has nothing to do with color or sound but is the movement of the smallest particles in space. The air moves out there, soundless; these concussions of the air approach our ear,—Schopenhauer spoke somewhat disrespectfully of the theory of knowledge, he said that these concussions ‘drum’ on the ear—and afterwards become what we call ‘sound.’ All is silent without, there are merely ‘concussions’ in the air. Then there are waves of ether outside. They strike upon the eye. But the matter does not end there; the waves strike upon the eye and the image is produced on the retina. Man knows nothing of this image, however, until it is investigated by science. The processes continue further with the optic nerve. These can only be of a material nature however; they go as far as the membrane covering the brain and there a quite mysterious process takes place. Then the soul comes in to make a concept of what is outside, of what is ‘dark and silent,’ a shining and colored concept, a warm and cold concept and so on; it creates the objects there within itself, and ‘dreams’ the whole world.

It is very remarkable that that is the road along which the Theory of Knowledge would penetrate from the external material world to the human spirit. But what is really the substance of this Theory of Knowledge? It is strange: if one remains at the things which have sound and color (the Theory of Knowledge calls what uneducated people believe ‘simple realism’), then at least one has a resounding and a colored world. But now, through the Theory of Knowledge, one brings this world for example before one's eyes. One has the image on the retina; within one has only the continuation of the image in the workings on the optic nerve; in the cerebrum there is nothing of the outer world, but the inner being charms forth the whole world again from the ‘vibrations.’ This makes one feel it is Baron Münchhausen again drawing himself up by his own tuft of hair! First, everything is eliminated and one has nothing left but brain-vibrations; and afterwards the soul recreates the outer world which has first been put away; then like Münchhausen, one lays hold of oneself by one's own tuft of hair and draws oneself up. But this is ‘basic philosophical knowledge,’ anyone who has not this, does not stand at the height of present-day knowledge.

If we try to follow up the whole diversified world as far as man himself, what have we finally? The processes in the membrane covering the cerebrum are not nearly as complicated as those in the optic nerve; they are the simplest of all. If we investigate how the world is in man we come to something extremely simple. We look for the spirit, but yet only come to a spirit which ‘dreams’ the world. There we must make a leap for so far no one has succeeded in distilling the spirit. In the quest of the spirit we come first to the brain vibrations, and we must then make something, which is nothing. This is the method science has followed in order to get to the spirit from the external sense-world.

On the earth we have many different conditions of life, and of life-influences, before the manifold variety of which we stand in respect and awe. Then we observe the difference in human beings in the different parts of the world—no matter whether the individual human characters are sympathetic or unsympathetic to us—if we consider the differentiations in mankind, we find that it is really as diversified as the sense-world outside is in its relation to man. In that bygone period in which the so-called childish ‘duffers’ lived, men try to understand the multiplicity of the Earth by rising to Heaven, by rising from the sensible to the spiritual. This they no longer do today. As we ascend farther and farther away from the diversified Earth, we have the same feeling as if we were coming from the external sense-world to the human Spirit through the eye and the brain; we come to what Copernicanism represents to us as the great Spiritual Cosmos. Just as the physiological theory of knowledge adopted the method of erecting a barrier in the vibrations of the brain in order to avoid coming to the human soul by way of the outer world, so in the same way does Copernicanism board up the world spiritually in the direction of the spiritual world. If we wish to realize the value of a world-conception we must know the point of view from which it is conceived. The point of view of Copernicanism does not pretend to place the true in the place of the false, once and for all; but it ‘boards up the world with planks’ so that man shall cultivate his consciousness soul within this ‘earthly tenement.’ This is the secret of the matter. We must look at these things in cold blood and with energy. We must first be able to shatter in our own selves that on which the easy-going people, who accept the world-philosophies of today, believe themselves to stand so firmly. As long as we are not able to shatter this in ourselves, as long as we are not able to see that really through Copernicanism the world is ‘boarded up with planks’—so long shall we not reach the point of acquiring a relationship to Spiritual Science, for which many things are necessary.

Just imagine for a moment what the Cosmos consists of, apart from the Earth. According to the Copernican world-conception, it is a calculation! It can never be that to Spiritual Science but something that presents itself to spiritual cognition. Why have we a geology which believes that the Earth has only evolved from the purely mineral world? Because the Copernican world-conception has to produce the present-day materialistic geology. For it has nothing in itself which could prove that the Earth, from the point of view of the Cosmos or spiritual world, might be conceived as an ensouled, spiritualized being. A universe as conceived by Copernicus could only be a dead Earth! An animated ensouled and spiritualized Earth must be conceived as coming from a different Cosmos, really from quite another Cosmos from that of Copernicus. But of course one can only mention a few features of the Earth's being, as it appears when viewed from the Cosmos

Is it a quite unreal conception to imagine the Earth's being as coming from the Cosmos? It is no unreal conception, it is a very ‘real’ one. A conception which, for example, once existed in the imagination of Herman Grimm, but he excused himself immediately after having written it. In an essay written in 1858 he says: “One might imagine—(but he immediately adds: I am not presenting an article of faith, this is only a fancy picture)—that when the soul of man is freed from the body it moves around the Earth freely in the Cosmos and that in this free movement it would observe the Earth from the outside; what happens on the Earth would then appear to man in quite another light.” That was the fancy of Hermann Grimm.‘Man would become acquainted with all occurrences from a different point of view. For instance he would look into the human heart “as into a glass beehive.’ The thoughts arising in the human heart would spring up as from a glass bee-hive!” That is a fine picture. And he pictured further that this man who had hovered around the Earth for a time, and had looked at it from the outside, now reincarnated on the Earth. He would have a Father and Mother, a Fatherland and everything usual on the Earth, and would have to forget everything he had experienced from another point of view. And if he were perhaps an historian in the sense of today (Hermann Grimm is here describing from a subjective point of view) he could not then do otherwise then forget what went before, for one cannot write history with the other concepts.

This is a fancy which comes very close to the truth. For it is absolutely true that the human soul between death and rebirth is, as it were, floating around the Earth, and—as I have often depicted—conditioned by karmic relations, it looks down upon the Earth. The soul that has altogether the feeling that this Earth is an ensouled and spiritualized organism—and the prejudice that considers it as something without soul, something purely geological, ceases. And then the Earth becomes very greatly differentiated; to man's perception between death and rebirth it becomes so differentiated that in fact the East looks different from the American West. It is not possible to speak about the Earth to the dead, as one would to geologists; for the dead do not understand the geological conceptions. But they know that looking down from cosmic space at the East—from Asia across into Russia—the Earth appears as if covered with a bluey sheen; blue or bluish-mauve. Thus does that side of the Earth appear, seen from cosmic space. When we come towards the Western Hemisphere, to the American side, it then appears as more or less a fiery red. There we have a polarity of the Earth, as seen from the Cosmos. Of course the Copernican world-conception cannot of itself give this; but it is another perception, from a different point of view. It will be comprehensible to anyone who has this point of view, that this Earth, this ensouled Earth-organism, appears different in its Eeastern half from its Western half, when viewed from outside. In its Eastern half it has a blue covering, in its Western it has something like a flashing-forth from within outwards; hence the fiery red seen externally. Here you have one example by which man between death and rebirth can direct himself by what he then learns. He learns to know the configuration of the Earth, it's a different appearance when seen from the Cosmos and the spiritual world; he learns to realize that on one side it is bluish-violet, on the other fiery red. And in accordance always with the spiritual needs which he will develop from his karma, this knowledge decides for him where he will reincarnate. Of course one must imagine things as being much more complicated than this; but from such conditions does man between death and rebirth, develop the forces which occasion him to reincarnate in a child body having a certain inheritance.

I have only mentioned two modifications of color, but there are of course other modifications besides those of color, many others. For the present I will only mention that in the center between the East and the West, for example, in our regions, the Earth is more of a green shade when seen from outside. So that this gives us a three-foldness which can throw a deal of light on the way in which man can determine, by what he beholds between death and rebirth, whether he is to appear in the East or West or elsewhere on the Earth.

If we bear this in mind we shall gradually gain the idea that in the relations between the man incarnated here in the physical body and the discarnate man, certain things come into play which, for the most part, are not taken into consideration at all. If we go into a foreign land and wish to understand the people, we must learn their language. If we wish to understand the dead you must gradually acquire the language of the dead. But this is at the same time the language of Spiritual Science, for it is spoken by all the so-called living and all of the so-called dead. It is this which passes to and fro between us and the beyond. It is particularly important to acquire pictures such as these of the universe, and not mere abstract concepts. We get a picture of the Earth if we imagine a sphere hovering in space, on the one side glowing bluish-mauve, on the other burning a flashing reddish-yellow, and between these a green zone. Pictorial representations gradually carry man over into the spiritual world. That is the point. One is of course obliged to set up pictorial representations when speaking seriously of the spiritual world, and it is further necessary not merely to think of such pictorial representations as a sort of fiction, but to make something out of them. Let us once again recall the bluish-violet glimmering Orient and the reddish-yellow flashing Occident. Here various differentiations come in. When a dead person in our present era observe certain places, then from the place which here on Earth is known as Palestine, as Jerusalem, something with a golden form, a golden crystal form, is to be seen in the middle of the bluish-mauve color and this becomes animated. That is the Jerusalem as seen from the spirit! This it is which also in the Apocalypse (speaking of imaginative conceptions) figures as the heavenly Jerusalem. These are not ‘thought-out’ things, they are things which can be observed, seen spiritually. The Mystery of Golgotha appeared like what physical observation precedes when the astronomer directs his telescope to space and beholds something which fills him with wonder like, for example the flashing-up of new stars. Seen spiritually, from the Universe, the Event of Golgotha was the flashing-up of a star of gold in the blue aura of the Eastern half of the Earth. Here you have the Imagination for what I developed at the close of my lecture the day before yesterday. It is really a question of acquiring, by means of such Imaginations, ideas of the Universe which bring the human soul into union with the Spirit of the Universe.

Try to think with someone who has passed over, of the crystal form of the heavenly Jerusalem building itself up into golden splendor in the bluish-violet aura of the Earth, and that will bring you near to him; for that is something which belongs to the realm of the Imaginations into which she entered at death: “Out of God we are born, and in Christ we die.”

There are means by which we can shut ourselves off from the spiritual reality and there are means by which we can draw near to it. We can shut ourselves off from spiritual reality by trying to ‘calculate’ it. Certainly mathematics do belong to the realm of the spirit, pure spirit; but in their application to physical reality they are the means of cutting us off from the spiritual. In so far as you calculate, just so far do you cut yourself off from the spirit. Kant once said: “There is just the same amount of science in the world as there is mathematics.” But one might also say, from the other point of view, which is equally justifiable, that there is darkness in the world to the same degree as man has succeeded in judging the world by means of calculation. We approached the spiritual life when we press on from external perception, and particularly from abstract concepts, towards Imaginations, to pictorial ideas. Copernicus has led man to calculate the universe; the opposite perception must lead men once more again to picture the universe, to imagine a universe with which the human soul can identify itself, so that the Earth appears as an organism shining into the universe, blue-violet, with the heavenly Jerusalem radiating golden light on the one side, and the yellowish-red flashing on the other side.

Whence comes the blue-violet on the one side of the Earth-aura? When one sees this side of the Earth-sphere, the physical part of the Earth disappears from external view, the aura of light becomes transparent, and the dark part of the Earth disappears. This creates the blue which penetrates through. You can explain the phenomenon from Goethe's theory of color. But because in the Western Hemisphere the inner part of the Earth flashes up—flashes up anyway which verifies what I described the day before yesterday: namely, that in America man is determined by the subterranean element, by what is under the Earth—for that reason the inner part of the Earth rays out and flashes like a red-yellow shimmer, like a reddish-yellow sparkling fire radiating into the Cosmos. This is only meant to be a picture sketched in quite fine outlines, but it should show you that it is indeed possible to speak, not merely in ordinary abstract thoughts, but in very, very concrete concepts about the world in which we live between death and rebirth. Finally, all this is adapted to prepare our souls to obtain a connection with the spiritual world, with the higher Hierarchies; with that world in which man lives between death and rebirth. But I intend to speak specially about this tomorrow; today I should only like to mention just one other thing.

The present era of human evolution, the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, which exists for the development of the Spiritual or Consciousness Soul, contains manifold secrets. One of these is especially well guarded by those who believe that such truths should not yet be communicated to the humanity of to-day. This again is somewhat difficult. But since in the whole wide world there is no one else inclined to receive such things, you must really condescend to recognize them. In the course of this culture epoch, which began in the 15th century of our era, a remarkable longing began to make itself felt in men, along which lives chiefly in the subconsciousness, but must ever more and more be brought up into consciousness. This longing proceeds from a very definite cause.

I have often said that man is a twofold being. He is a being composed of many more than two parts; but particularly he is a twofold being, and consists as such as head and the rest of the body. The head is in particular that to which we should apply the Darwinian theory, the head is that which can be traced back to animal forms. During the Old Moon period man had animal forms, not those of the present animal kingdom, but a more spiritual, etherical animal form. This has hardened into the human head, and now, when animals on the Earth are developing as they are, man is not developing under the same conditions as were suitable for the head, for that he has inherited; but, according to the requirements of the rest of his body. This however does not descend from the animals. The head descends from the animals, but only from the etheric animals. We therefore carry an animal nature in our head, but it is an etheric animality. That entered men's unconscious nature in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. They noticed more and more that there is something of the animal in man, but they could no longer think of it as anything spiritual. They got it into their heads that man must have ‘animal’ feelings, and this culminated in the Darwinian theory of the descent of man from the animal. This was not only expressed in the Darwinian doctrine of descent. The animal has a different perception from man; it stands in a more intimate connection with things than does man. Man is the superior being of the Earth just because he has cut himself off from the things so as to be obliged to build a bridge again from himself to them. The animal experiences the outer world much more inwardly than does man; if it were philosophically inclined it would not speak of ‘boundaries of knowledge,’ because there are no boundaries to knowledge for the animal such as those of which man speaks; these only exist because of the higher organization of man. The animal feels in a sense the whole universe within it through its group-soul; it has no boundaries of knowledge, knows nothing of them. Man began to feel more and more that he carries an animal within him. He did not wish to conceive this relation spiritually, supersensibly, etherically; he thought man was related to the animals physically. He then wanted to have a knowledge subconsciously, such as the animal has. He was however obliged to prove that he could not have that. The animal lives with the ‘thing in itself.’ The ‘thing in itself’ is unknown to man, when he says: “I should really like to be an animal, I should like to be as well off as the animal, but I cannot be as well off.” To affirm a ‘thing in itself’ which limits our knowledge, proceeds from the longing of man to feel himself animal, while he yet knows that he cannot have such a knowledge as the animal. This is the secret of Kantism. What can be said of the boundaries of knowledge is intimately connected with the impulse of modern humanity towards the consciousness of the animal. The Ancients knew that the animal has no boundaries of knowledge; for that reason they considered it good fortune to understand, for example, the language of the animals. You all know the fable connected with this.

That is one thing which the Ancients knew: that the animal has no boundaries of knowledge, in the sense in which man has them in modern times. But they knew something else as well: they knew that the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels are free beings, beings with freedom of will. And they knew that man is on the way to become an Angel. When the Earth shall have completed the Jupiter-stage man will have reached the stage of the Angel. He is now on the way to freedom. Freedom is developing within him. But what is left for the epoch which is gradually appearing with the evolution of the Spiritual Soul, if mankind turns away from his evolution to the stage of the Angels? There remains only the thought: freedom is an illusion! Man, in respect to his activity, is subject to the necessities of nature. To the degree in which boundaries of knowledge are erected does man turn away from his development to freedom. This is intimately connected with what has appeared—only in a coarser way—in the declaration of the descent of man from the animals; whereas in reality man has a very complicated descent, as I have often explained.

Today I have burdened you with some of the more difficult concepts. But they were necessary, and tomorrow we shall be able to speak principally on the connection between the present earthly life in the physical body and the life between death and rebirth, from a certain point of view. The concepts will then not be so difficult; but what you were so good as to listen to today in respect to more difficult concepts will help you tomorrow in regard to others.

We have been speaking about the tasks facing the leaders of spiritual and cultural life, tasks arising out of the great change that took place in the transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period. I endeavoured to describe the forces which emanated from this, such as those which were made manifest in the figure of Faust and the figure of Hamlet. When you consider the essential core of the matter, you find that spiritual leaders such as the poets who created these figures found themselves faced with the task of answering, in poetic form, the question: What will become of the human being when he has to find inner satisfaction of soul from intellectual life alone, living exclusively in abstract thoughts? For obviously the soul's mood as a whole must arise from the impression made on it because it is forced to contemplate, with the help of abstract thoughts alone, all that is most dear to it, and all that is most important for it. All the evolutionary factors we considered yesterday were what Goethe and Schiller had to draw on in their creative work.

We also saw how Goethe and Schiller felt themselves to be ensnared in these evolutionary factors. We saw how both express the feeling that truly great poetic creation cannot be accomplished without some inclination towards the real spiritual world. But the inclination towards the spiritual world which was still characteristic for western cultural development in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth centuries was no longer possible in ensuing times. It retreated, you might say, in the face of the stark intellectual view. Yet on the other hand this intellectual view, this living in thoughts, had not yet developed sufficiently to allow access to real, genuine spiritual aspects in the thought life.

What typifies the position of Schiller and Goethe within the cultural evolution of humanity is the fact that their most important creative period falls in an age when the old spirituality has gone, but when it is not yet possible for living spirituality to burgeon out of the new intellectualism. I described a little while ago¹ how that which fills the soul in an intellectual way is actually the corpse of the spiritual life lived by the soul in the world of spirit and soul before birth, or before conception. This corpse must be brought back to life. It must be placed once more within the whole living context of the cosmos. But this point had not yet been reached at that time, and what Goethe and Schiller were wrestling to achieve, particularly in their most important period, was a mood of soul which could somehow be satisfying during this period of transition, and out of which poetic creation could be achieved.

This shows most clearly and most intensively in the collaboration between Goethe and Schiller. When they met, Goethe had completed a considerable part of Faust, namely the Fragment which appeared in 1790 and some additional parts as well. Goethe held back the dungeon scene, even though it was by then already completed. The Fragment has no Prologue in Heaven, but begins with the scene ‘I've studied now Philosophy ...’ If we examine this Fragment, and also the parts which Goethe omitted, we find that here Faust stands as a solitary figure wrestling inwardly to find a satisfying mood of soul. He is dissatisfied with stark intellectualism and endeavours to achieve a union with the spiritual world. The Earth-Spirit appears, as in the version now familiar to us. Goethe was certainly striving towards the world of spirit and soul, but what is still entirely lacking, what was still quite foreign to him at that time, was the question of placing Faust within the whole wider cosmic context. There was no Prologue in Heaven. Faust was not yet involved in the battle between God and Satan. This aspect only came to the fore when Schiller encouraged Goethe to continue working on the drama.

Schiller's encouragement inspired him to change Faust's solitary position and place him within the total cosmic context. Encouraged more or less by Schiller, the Faust which reappeared in the world in 1808 had been transformed from a drama of personality, which the 1790 version still was, into a drama of the universe. In the Prologue—‘The sun makes music as of old, amid the rival spheres of heaven’—in the angels, indeed in the whole spiritual world, and in the opposition with Satan, we see a battle for the figure of Faust which takes place in the spiritual world. In 1790, Faust was concerned only with himself. We see this personality alone; he alone is the focus. But later a tableau of the universe appears before us, in which Faust is included. The powers of good and evil do battle to possess him. Goethe wrote this scene in 1797, placing Faust in a tableau of the universe, after Schiller had demanded of him that he continue work on Faust.

As shown in the ‘Dedication’, Goethe felt somehow estranged from the manner in which he had approached his Faust when he was young. We see also in Schiller what was actually going on in the souls of the most outstanding human beings. He began as a realist. I showed you yesterday how the luciferic and ahrimanic elements confront one another in Karl Moor and Franz Moor. But there is no suggestion of any appearance of the spiritual world in some archetypal figure or other; we see the luciferic and the ahrimanic element simply in the character traits of Karl Moor and Franz Moor. It is quite typical of Schiller to make his point of departure a perfectly realistic element. But when he has completed the plays of his youthful phase, when he has met Goethe, and when he takes up writing again in the nineties, we see that now he is compelled to let the spiritual world play into his poetic creations. It is one of the most interesting facts that Schiller now feels compelled to let the spiritual world play into his poetic figures.

Consider Wallenstein (Wallenstein's Camp). Wallenstein makes his decisions in accordance with his belief in the stars. He acts and forms resolves in accordance with his belief in the stars. So the cosmos plays a role in the figures Schiller creates. The Wallenstein (Wallenstein's Camp) drama is comprehensible only when we take into account that Wallenstein feels himself to be filled with the forces which emanate from the starry constellations. At the end of the eighteenth century Schiller felt compelled to return to a contemplation of the stars which was familiar in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to those who thought about such things. He felt he could not depict significant events in human life without placing this human life within the cosmos.

Or take Die Braut von Messina (Bride of Messina). He is experimenting. He tries to shape the dramatic action in accordance with the ancient idea of destiny in connection with the wisdom of the stars. It is perfectly obvious that he is trying to do this, for we, too, can experiment with this drama. Take out everything to do with the wisdom of the stars and with destiny, and you will find that in what remains you still have a magnificent drama. Schiller could have written Die Braut von Messina (Bride of Messina) without any wisdom of the stars and without any idea of destiny. Yet he included these things. This shows that in his mood of soul he felt the need to place the human being within the cosmos. This quite definitely parallels the situation which led Goethe, on once again taking up work on his Faust drama, to place Faust within the tableau of the universe.

Goethe does this pictorially. Angels appear as starry guides. The great tableau of the Prologue in Heaven presents us with a picture of the cosmos. Schiller, who was less pictorial and tended more towards abstraction, felt obliged during the same period to bring into his Wallenstein (Wallenstein's Camp) and his Braut von Messina (Bride of Messina) something which would hint at the position of the human being within the universe. He even went so far as to include the destiny concept of ancient Greek tragedy.

But look at something else too. Just at the time when he was getting to know Goethe, Schiller, in his own way, adopted the French Revolution's ideas about freedom. I mentioned yesterday that in France the revolution was political, whereas in Central Europe it was spiritual and cultural. I would like to say that this spiritual revolution took on its most intimate character in something Schiller wrote which I have quoted here in all kinds of connections: his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Aesthetical Essays).

Schiller asks: How can people achieve an existence which is truly worthy of human beings? Something that might have been called a philosophy of freedom was not yet possible at that time. Schiller answers the question in his own way. He says: A person who follows the course of a logical thought is unfree. Of course he is unfree, because what logic says cannot be developed freely in any way, and so he is subject to the dictates of reasoning. He is not free to say that two times two is six, or perhaps five. On the other hand he is also subject to the dictates of natural laws if his whole organism is given over to the dictates of nature.

So Schiller sees the human being occupying a position between the dictates of reason and the dictates of nature, and he calls the balance between these two conditions the aesthetic condition. The human being shifts the dictates of reason downwards a little into whatever likes and dislikes he may have, thus gaining freedom in a certain sense. And if he can also moderate his urges and instincts—the dictates of nature—raising them up to an extent to which he can rely on them not to debase him to the level of an animal, then they meet up in the middle with the dictates of reason. The dictates of reason take a step down, the dictates of nature take a step up, and they meet in the middle. By acting in accordance with what pleases or displeases him, the human being is in a condition which is subject to neither dictum; he is permitted to do what pleases him, because what pleases him is good by virtue of the fact that at the same time his sensual nature also desires what is good.

This exposition of Schiller's is naturally quite philosophical and abstract. Goethe greatly approved of the thought, but at the same time it was quite clear to him that it could not lead to a solution of the riddle of man. He is sure to have felt deeply for the exceptional spiritual stature of the exposition, for what Schiller achieved in these Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Aesthetical Essays) is indeed one of the best treatises of recent times. Goethe sensed the genius and power of these thoughts. But at the same time he felt that out of such thoughts nothing can come which in any way approaches the being of man. The being of man is too rich to be fathomed by thoughts such as these.

Schiller, if I may say so, felt: Here I am in the intellectual age, but intellectualism makes the human being unfree, for it imposes the dictates of reason. So he sought a way out by means of aesthetic creativity and aesthetic enjoyment. Goethe, though, had a feeling for the infinitely abundant, rich content of human nature. He could not be satisfied with Schiller's view, profound and spiritually powerful though it was. He therefore felt the need to give his own expression to the forces working together in the human being. Goethe, not only by nature, but also because of his whole attitude, was incapable of expressing these things in the form of abstract concepts. Instead, under the influence of the kind of thoughts developed by Schiller, he wrote his fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Here, about twenty figures appear, all of which have something to do with the forces of the human soul. They work together, not only as the dictates of reason and the dictates of nature but as twenty different impulses which, in the end, depict in the most manifold way something signifying the rich nature of the being of man. We must take note of the fact that Goethe gave up speaking about the being of man in abstract concepts altogether. He felt bound to move away from concepts.

In order to characterize the relationship of Schiller to Goethe in connection with the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Aesthetical Essays) and the fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, we have to say the following: Goethe wrote the fairy-tale under the immediate influence of Schiller's letters. He wanted to answer the same questions from his point of view and out of his feelings. This can be proved. Indeed I proved it historically long ago and it was seen to make sense.² So in order fully to characterize what took place between these two personalities we should have to say: In olden times when, in seeking knowledge, human beings caused beings from the spiritual world to visit them; when they still worked in their laboratories of knowledge in order to penetrate to the mysteries of the universe, and when spiritual beings came into their laboratories—just as the Earth Spirit and many another spirit visit Faust—this was very different from how things are today. In those days people felt themselves to be relatives of those spiritual beings who visited them. They knew, although they were living on the earth and had perforce to make use of the instrument of a physical body, that before birth and after death they were nevertheless beings just like those who visited them. They knew that for earthly life they had sought out an abode which separated them from the spiritual world, but that this spiritual world nevertheless visited them. They knew that they were related to this spiritual world and this gave them an awareness of their own being.

Suppose Schiller had visited Goethe in 1794 or 1795 and had said: Here are my letters on the aesthetic education of man, in which I have endeavoured, out of modern intellectualism, to give people once more the possibility of feeling themselves to be human beings; I have sought the ideas which are necessary in order to speak about the true being of man; these ideas are contained in these letters about aesthetic education. Goethe would have read the letters and on next meeting Schiller he would have been able to say: Well, my friend, this is not bad at all; you have provided human beings once more with a concept of their worth, but this is not really the way to do it; man is a spiritual being, but just as spirits retreat from light, so do they also retreat from concepts, which are nothing other than another form of ordinary daylight; you will have to go about this in a different manner; we shall have to go away from concepts and find something else.

You can find everything I have expressed here, in the form of direct speech, in the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller. It is all there, in hints and intimations. In the process, Goethe wrote his fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, which was to depict how the soul forces work in man. It is Goethe's admission that to speak about man and the being of man it is necessary to rise up to the level of pictures, images. This is the way to Imagination. Goethe was simply pointing out the path to the world of Imaginations. This fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily is so very important because it shows that out of his own struggles, and also in his Faust, Goethe felt impelled, at a most important moment, to the path towards Imaginations.

To Goethe, the statement that thinking, feeling and will work together in man would have seemed philosophical. He did not say this, but instead he depicted a place where there were three kings, one of gold, one of silver and one of iron. These images signify for him something which cannot be expressed in concepts. We see that Goethe is on the way to a life of Imagination. This brings us to one of the most profound questions with which Goethe is concerned. He himself did not care to discuss the true profundity of this question with anyone. But we can see how this question concerned him, for it appears in all sorts of places: What is the point of fathoming the being of man by using the kind of thinking to which intellectualism has led? What use would it be? This is a riddle of earthly evolution, a riddle belonging to this epoch, for in this strong form it could only have come into question in this epoch. Sometimes, in all its profundity, it makes its appearance in paradoxical words. For instance in Faust we read

The lofty might
Of Science, still
From all men deeply hidden!
Who takes no thought,
To him 'tis brought,
'Tis given unsought, unbidden!³

This is extraordinarily profound, even if it is only the witch who says it: ‘The lofty might of Science, still from all men deeply hidden! Who takes no thought’—in other words to one who does not think—'tis given unsought, unbidden!’ However much we think, the lofty might of science remains hidden from us. But if we succeed in not thinking, then it is given unsought, unbidden. So we should develop the might to not think, the skill to not think, in order to achieve not science or knowledge—for this cannot of course be achieved without thinking—but in order to achieve the might of science or knowledge.

Goethe knows that this might of science works in the human being. He knows that it is at work, even in the little child who as yet does not think. What I said in my book The Spiritual Guidance of Man⁴ was taken very much amiss. On the very first pages I pointed out that if the human being had to fashion all the wisdom-filled things found in the form of the human body by means of his thoughts—consciously using the might which also holds sway in science—then he would reach a ripe old age without ever discovering those delicate formative forces which work with the skill of a sculptor! The might of science is indeed needed in the early years of childhood to transform this brain from a rather formless lump into the sublime structure it has to achieve.

This is a question with which Goethe is profoundly concerned. He of course does not mean merely a dull absence of thinking. But he is quite sure that the might of science can be discovered if we do not destroy our links with it by means of our intellectual thinking. This is even the reason why he makes Mephisto take Faust to the witches’ kitchen. Commentaries on these things always distort matters. We fail to know Goethe if we do not link his purpose—in creating a scene like that in the witches’ kitchen—with what we sense to be the essence of his own being. Faust is presented with the draught of youth. In one sense he is given a perfectly realistic draught to drink. But the witch says:

See, thus it's done!
Make ten of one,
And two let be,
Make even three,
And rich thou'lt be.
Cast o'er the four!
From five and six
(The witch's tricks)
Make seven and eight,
'Tis finished straight!
And nine is one,
And ten is none.

Now imagine Goethe standing there. If you have a sense for his essential being you cannot but ask: Why is the witch made to declaim this witches’ multiplication table? Goethe did not like speaking about these things, but if he were in the right frame of mind he might reply: Well, the lofty might of science, still from all men deeply hidden! Who takes no thought, to him 'tis brought. You see, the power of thought fades when you are told, make ten of one, and two let be, make even three, and rich thou'lt be, and so on. Thinking comes to a standstill! So then you enter into a state of mind in which the lofty might of science can be given to you without any thinking.—Such things are always an aspect of Goethe's Faust and indeed of all Goethe's poetic work.

So Goethe was faced with this question, which was for him something exceptionally profound. What was it that Faust lacked, but gained through his sojourn in the witches’ kitchen? What did he not have before? If you think of Faust and how he could have been Hamlet's teacher, disgusted by philosophy and jurisprudence, medicine and theology, and turning instead to magic—if you imagine what he is like even in the Easter scene, you will have to admit that he lacks something which Goethe possessed. Goethe never got to the bottom of this. He felt he was like Faust, but he had to say to himself: Yes, all the things with which I have invested Faust are also in me, but there is something else in me as well. Is it something I am permitted to possess? What Faust does not have is imagination, but Goethe did have imagination. Faust gains imagination through the draught of youth which he receives in the witches’ kitchen. In a way Goethe answered his own question: What happens when one wants to penetrate to the universal secrets with the help of the imagination? For this was the most outstanding power possessed by Goethe himself.

In his youth he was not at all sure whether looking into the universal secrets with the help of the imagination was anything more than a step into nothingness. This is indeed the Faustian question. For stark intellectuality lives only in mirror images. But once you come to the imagination you are a step nearer to the human being's forces of growth, to the forces which fill the human being. You approach, even though only from a distance, the formative forces which, for instance, shape the brain in childhood. There is then only one more step from the ordinary imagination to the faculty of Imagination! But for Goethe this was the all-important question.

Thus Goethe takes Faust to the witches’ kitchen so that he can extricate himself from that confounded capacity of thinking—which may lead to science but does not lead to the might of science—in order that he may be allowed to live in the realm of the imagination. Thenceforward Faust develops his imagination. By means of the draught in the witches’ kitchen, Goethe wins for Faust the right to have an imagination. The rejuvenation he experiences is simply a departure from the arid forces he had as, say, a thirty-five year old professor, and a return to his youth where he takes into his soul the youthful formative forces, the forces of growth. Where the imagination flourishes, the youthful formative forces remain alive in the soul.

All this was present as a seed within Goethe, for he wrote the scene in the witches’ kitchen as early as about 1788. It was there as a seed, beginning to sprout and demanding a solution. But from Schiller he received a new impulse, for now he was urged on to the path towards the faculty of Imagination. Schiller was at first nowhere near to seekingfor the faculty of Imagination. But in Wallenstein (Wallenstein's Camp) and in Die Braut von Messina (Bride of Messina) he sought the cosmic element.⁵ And in Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) he endeavoured to fathom the subconscious forces of the being of man.

The immense profundity of the struggle going on may be seen in the fragment Demetrius which Schiller left behind when he died. The dramatic power of this fragment surpasses that of everything else he wrote. In his desk there was also the draft of a play about the Knights of Malta. This, too, if he had succeeded in writing it, would probably have been truly magnificent. The whole principle of the Order of the Knights of Malta—a spiritual order of knighthood resembling that of the Templars—unfolds in their battle against Sultan Suleiman. If Schiller had succeeded in depicting this, he would have been forced to face the question: How will it be possible to bring the vision of the spiritual world down into human creative activity? For this question was indeed alive for him already.

But Schiller dies. Goethe no longer benefits from the stimulus he gave. Later, stimulated by Eckermann—who was less of a spiritual giant than Schiller, if I may put it this way—he finishes Faust, working on the second part from about 1824 until his death. Shortly before his death he has the package containing the work sealed. It is a posthumous work. We have considered this second part of Faust from many different angles, and have discovered, on the one hand, deeply significant, sublime insights into the manifold mysteries of the spiritual world. Of course we can never understand it entirely if we approach it from this one angle, and we must seek ever higher viewpoints.

But there is another angle too.⁶ Goethe felt compelled to complete this poetic work of Faust. Let us examine the development of the philosophy of Faust and go back a stage further than we have done so far. One of the stages was the figure of Cyprianus, about whom we have already spoken. Before that, in the ninth century, the legend of Theophilus was written down.⁷ Theophilus is once again a kind of Faust of the eighth, or ninth century. He makes a pact with Satan and his fate very much resembles that of Faust.

Consider Theophilus, this Faust of the ninth century, and consider the legendary Faust of the sixteenth century, to whom Goethe refers. The ninth century profoundly condemns the pact with the devil. Eventually Theophilus turns to the Virgin Mary and is saved from all that would have befallen him, had his pact with Satan been fulfilled. The sixteenth century gives the Faust legend a Protestant slant. In the Theophilus legend, incipient damnation redeemed by the Virgin Mary is described. The sixteenth century protests against this. There is no positive end; the story is told in a manner suitable for Protestantism: Faust makes a pact with the devil and duly falls into his clutches.

First Lessing and then Goethe now protest in their turn. They cannot accept that a character—acting with worldly powers and in the manner of worldly powers—who gives himself over to the power of Satan, entering into a pact with him, must of necessity perish as a consequence of acting out of a thirst for knowledge. Goethe protests against this Protestant conception of the Faust legend. He wants Faust's redemption. He cannot abide by the conclusion of Part One, in which he made concessions and let Faust perish. Faust must be saved. So now Goethe leads us in sublime fashion through the experiences depicted in Part Two. We see how the strong inner being of man asserts itself: ‘In this, thy Nothing, may I find my All!’⁸ We need only think of words such as these with which a strong and healthy human nature confronts the one who corrupts.

We see Faust experiencing the whole of history up to the time of ancient Greece. He must not be allowed to perish. Goethe makes every effort to arrive at pictures—pictures which, though different in form, are nevertheless taken from the Catholic cultus and Catholic symbolism. If you subtract everything that is achieved out of Goethe's own imaginative life, fuelled as it is by the great riches of the tremendously rich lifetime's experience that was his—if you subtract all this, you find yourself back with the legend of Theophilus in the ninth century. For in the end it is the Queen of Heaven⁹ who approaches in all her glory. If you subtract all that specifically belongs to Goethe, you come back to the Theophilus described by the saintly nun Hrosvitha—not identical, of course, but nevertheless something which has not succeeded in an independent approach to the poetic problem but still has to borrow from what has gone before.

We see how a personality as great as Goethe strives to find an entry to the spiritual world. In the fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily he is seeking for an Imagination which will make the human being comprehensible. In Faust he is also seeking for an Imagination, but he cannot achieve an independent Imagination and has to draw on help from Catholic symbolism. Thus his final tableau resembles the clumsy depiction by Hrosvitha in the ninth century—though of course in Goethe's case it is obviously executed by one of the greatest poets.

It is necessary to indicate the intricate paths followed by the spiritual and cultural history of humanity in order to arrive at an understanding of all that is at work in this spiritual history. Only then can we come to realize how the working of karma goes through human history. You need only consider hypothetically that certain things happened which did not actually happen—not in order to correct history in retrospect, but in order to come to an understanding of what is actually there. Imagine that Schiller, who died young, had remained alive. The drama about the Knights of Malta was in his desk and he was in the process of working on Demetrius. In collaboration with Goethe the highest spirituality developed in him, living in them both at once. But the thread broke. Look at the second part of Wilhelm Meister, look at Elective Affinities, and you will see what Goethe was striving for but failed to achieve. Everywhere he was striving to place the human being within a great spiritual context. He was unable to do so, for Schiller had been taken from him.

All this is an expression of the way in which the recent spiritual and cultural evolution of mankind is striving for a certain goal, the goal of seeking the human being in his relationship with the spiritual world. But there are hindrances on every side. Perhaps something like Goethe's Faust can be comprehended in all its greatness only when we see what it does not contain, when we see the course on which the whole spiritual evolution of mankind was set. We cannot arrive at an understanding of the spiritual grandeur present in human evolution by merely giving all sorts of explanations, and exclaiming: What an incomparably great masterpiece! We can only reach such an understanding by contemplating the striving of the whole human spirit towards a particular goal of evolution. We are forcefully confronted with this when we consider these things. And then, in the nineteenth century, the thread breaks entirely! The nineteenth century, so splendid in the realm of natural science, sleeps as far as the realm of the spirit is concerned. The most that can be achieved is that the highest wisdom of natural science leads to fault-finding with a creation such as Faust.

Goethe needs Schiller, in order to place Faust—whom he first depicted as a personality—within the context of an all-embracing universal tableau. We can sense what Goethe might have made out of the philosophy of Faust if he had not lost Schiller so soon. Yet those who think about these things come along and say that Faust is an unfortunate work in which Goethe missed the point entirely. Had he done the thing properly, Faust would have married Gretchen and made an honest woman of her, and then gone on to invent the electro-static machine and the air-pump. Then mankind would have been presented with the proper Faust!

A great aesthete, Friedrich Theodor Vischer,¹⁰ said: Faust Part Two is rubbish. So he drafted a plan of what it ought to have been. The result was a kind of improved Eugen Richter out of the nineteenth century, a man of party politics, only a bit more crude than were party men in the nineteenth century. It was not an unimportant person but a very important person—for Friedrich Theodor Vischer was such a one—who stated: The second part of Faust is a piecemeal, fragmented construction of Goethe's old age!

Any connection with a striving for the spirit was lost. The world slept where spirituality was concerned. But out of this very situation the people of today must find their tasks with regard to a new path to the spiritual world. It is of course not possible for us to refer back to:

The lofty might
Of Science, still
From all men deeply hidden! Who takes no thought,
To him 'tis brought,
'Tis given unsought, unbidden!

We cannot simply decide to stop thinking, for thinking is a power which came with the fifth post-Atlantean period, and it is a power which must be practised. But it must be developed in a direction which was actually begun by Goethe in his fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. It must be practised in such a way that it leads to Imagination. We must understand that the power of the intellect chases away the spirit, but if the power of the intellect itself can be developed to become the faculty of Imagination, then we can approach the spirit once more. This is what we can learn by considering in a living way what has taken place in the field we have been discussing.

• 1 . For instance see Rudolf Steiner The Bridge Between Universal Spirituality and the Physical Constitution of Man, Anthroposophic Press, New York 1958, lecture of 19 December 1920; and Rudolf Steiner, The Shaping of the Human Form out of Cosmic and Earthly Forces, lecture of 26 November 1920. English text available in typescript only.
• 2 . See Rudolf Steiner, Goethe as Founder of a New Science of Aesthetics [Goethe als Vater einer neuen Ästhetik], Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London 1922; and Rudolf Steiner, Goethe's Secret Revelation and The Riddle of Faust, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., London 1933.
• 3 . Faust, Part One, Witches' Kitchen. The quotation ‘See, thus it's done!’ is also from this scene.
• 4 . Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Man, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1983.
• 5 . See Rudolf Steiner, Schiller und die Gegenwart (Schiller and the Present Time), Dornach 1955, lecture in Berlin on 4 May 1905.
• 6 . See Rudolf Steiner Geisteswissenschaftliche Erlauterungen zu Goethes Faust, (Goethe's Faust Illumined by Spiritual Science), Dornach 1967, GA 272 and 273.
• 7 . This legend, of Greek origin, came to the West some time around the tenth century and was recounted both in prose and in verse in almost every known language. Hrosvitha, the poetess from Lower Saxony, a nun in Gandersheim, told the story in Latin verse.
• 8 . Faust to Mephisto in Faust Part Two, A Gloomy Gallery.
• 9 . Faust Part Two, last scene.
• 10. Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887), philosopher and aesthete. In 1862 he wrote a satire Faust. Der Traglidie dritter Teil (The Tragedy of Faust, Part Three).

My dear Friends,

In the lecture this afternoon the life between death and a new birth was pictured as a journey, and we considered the sense in which the positions of certain stars in the heavens can be taken as viewpoints whence we may behold this journey of man through certain spiritual regions. Before proceeding further, we will study in a little more detail how we must picture this journey through regions indicated for us by certain heavenly bodies.

It might seem that the super-sensible existence of man between two earthly lives has been adequately presented in such a book as Theosophy. For the early stages of study, that is quite true, but you will surely agree that knowledge must also progress and expand. As we go further in our study we have constantly to bear in mind the oneness of the Universe, we have to remember that there is an unbroken, harmonious interplay between the super-sensible and the sensible worlds. The conditions of existence in the different regions through which man passes between death and a new birth express themselves outwardly in the relationships of space and of time that exist between the heavenly bodies concerned. When, therefore, we speak of these spiritual regions in terms of heavenly bodies, we are using a correct picture. There is a connection between the place of a visible star in the heavens and some particular region of super-sensible life. As an objection to this it could be said that the life which stretches between death and a new birth cannot be conceived in terms of space or at most only to a very limited degree. That is perfectly true, but super-sensible existence is nevertheless reflected into space. The world that is beyond space and beyond time, plays into space and into time; and as man's thinking and ideation have necessarily to be in terms of space and time, the imagery of the stars in the heavens is an excellent one for giving a picture of the super-sensible. One thing, however, we must not omit to make clear. We are taught in physics that the processes we have in the physical world—processes that are subject to the force of gravity—undergo a change, when we go out into space. Physical science tells us the exact proportion in which the force of gravity decreases. We are taught that the force of gravity (and also the intensity of light) decreases in proportion to the square of the distance. Science will not, however, admit that the same is true in relation to all knowledge of material things which has been acquired here on Earth. Science has derived this knowledge from the Earth; and if the figures which apply to gravity and light in the immediate environment of the Earth have to be modified as we go out into space, it is not unreasonable to suppose that only so long as we remain in the actual environment of the Earth are we justified in applying the scientific knowledge of to-day. Just as the power of gravity decreases in proportion to the square of the distance, so does the truth of our conclusions decrease, the further we are away from the Earth. When the astronomer or astro-physicist tries with ordinary thinking to determine, for instance, what is happening in some nebula out in cosmic space, it is just the same as if one set out to calculate, according to the conditions prevailing on the Earth, the weight of a stone in that nebula far away in the heavens. It ought not therefore to surprise us when Spiritual Science says: Here on Earth things present such and such an aspect, but out in the cosmos they are in reality quite different. On Earth we see the Moon as it appears in the sky. In reality the Moon is a cosmic colony of many Beings—I described it to you in the last lecture. It is the same with all the stars and constellations. This fact must be borne in mind throughout our present study.

The lectures so far have brought us to the point where, during his life between death and a new birth, man passes into the Sun sphere. In this region the spirit-form of the lower part of the human being is transformed into the head of the next earthly life. It must of course be remembered that man's path between death and new birth is such that he passes through all these planetary spheres twice. After death he passes, first of all, into the Moon sphere, then he goes on into the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere and the Sun sphere. That is as far as we came in our description. In the Sun sphere the lower man begins to be transformed into the upper man. The limb structures are transformed—spiritually, of course, at this stage—into the future head-system. This work of metamorphosis is a work of infinite grandeur and sublimity. Those who study the human head merely as a physical structure have no notion of all the manifold work that has to be performed in the Cosmos in order to bring into being the spirit-germ of the human head,—which later on will unite with the physical embryo. After this work has been begun in the Sun sphere, man passes into the Mars sphere, then into the Jupiter sphere and into the Saturn sphere. The Saturn sphere is really the last, for Uranus and Neptune do not come into consideration here. During all this time, work is proceeding upon the spirit-germ of the head. Man's path then leads him still further out into the cosmic expanse, out into the wide ocean of the cosmos, where the work of metamorphosis continues, until the time comes for him to take the path of return. Then, going back through the regions of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars to the region of the Sun, he comes again at length to the sphere of the Moon. Of the path of return we shall hear later on; at this point we will consider the experiences through which the human being passes, after his time in the region of the Sun is over.

Before he reaches the Sun sphere, man's experiences are for the most part closely connected with himself. In the last lecture I told you how man wears a physiognomy which expresses his good and bad qualities and how this enables him to see other beings similar in nature to himself. I told you how he gradually changes his spirit-form and comes to resemble the beings who belong to the super-sensible world, and how then he is able to behold the Beings of the Third Hierarchy and the Beings also of the second Hierarchy. If we want to describe the human being up to the stage of the Sun existence we must fix our attention on his spirit-form or figure, and describe that. But having entered the Sun region man undergoes an experience which I called living his way into the Cosmic Music, the Music of the Spheres. He hears, in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody, the meaning, as it were, of all the interworking of the starry worlds. For this working together of the stars, which is at the same time an expression of the working together of the Spiritual Beings that are in these regions—this it is, ultimately, that comes to revelation in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody. It is chiefly the life of feeling in its spiritual metamorphosis that is quickened and stimulated in the Sun existence. Every experience man has is like cosmic melody and cosmic harmony vibrating through his entire being. What we need at this stage of life between death and a new birth is not anything of the nature of theory, nor indeed anything that lends itself at all to expression in words. What we need is to feel—with a universal feeling that fills our being through and through—the harmonies and melodies born from the inter-workings of the different orders of Beings in the Cosmos.

Then a further experience comes to us, an experience which reveals unmistakably the connection between the physical world of sense and the super-sensible, superphysical world. When we pass into the Sun existence where the melodies and harmonies of the spheres—the whole Music of the Spheres—sound to us from every direction of the Cosmos, we are still aware of the last remnants of one of the spiritual faculties we possessed during earthly existence, we can still feel the last remnants of speech. At this stage of existence between death and a new birth, our spirit-form has already fallen away and we have come to resemble in form the cosmic sphere itself; our form has undergone metamorphosis into what will become head in the next incarnation. Everything about it that was still reminiscent of the form we bore in earthly existence has by this time fallen right away. But the faculty of soul that enabled us to speak, to make our thought articulate in words, follows us, and being present with us in memory brings a kind of discord into the Music of the Spheres. Yes, discord is introduced into the Music of the Spheres, by reason of the fact that man carries right up into Sun existence the remnants of his faculty of speech. And this discordant element that is brought by man into the Sun existence becomes the basis for the work of certain higher Spirits whose task it is to help forward Earth existence from the Cosmos. For it is when they see what comes to expression in human speech and language as it is to-day, that they take knowledge of how things have degenerated on the Earth and grown corrupt. In none of its European or American forms to-day is speech a faculty that emerges from the being of man with elemental power. It may be that what speech once was will be able to come again on Earth in the following way. Some of us are learning Eurythmy. What happens when one learns Eurythmy? To-day we lightly utter words without the faintest inkling of how the configuration of the words is connected with the inner life and experience of the soul. To speak words to-day is really nothing but an acquiescence in convention. It never occurs to people that when they say “a” (ah)—as a sound, by itself—they are expressing something which as pure sound springs from astonishment or wonder in the soul. When we utter the sound “b,” we mean that we are covering something, enveloping it, wrapping it round. Consonantal sounds invariably signify forms; vowel sounds express feelings, the inner life and being of the soul. The “b” sound is primordially connected with an act of covering. “B” is really the “house.” If I say “a” (ah), this is an expression of a wonder that is felt in the very depths of the soul. The consonantal sound of “t” expresses a settling oneself down, making a halt, staying there. “D” is the same, but has a gentler shade of meaning, less abrupt. Suppose I utter the (German) word “Bad.”* [* English “bath.”] If I were to go back to the origin of the word, to the time when it was still felt and seen, I would have to say: The water is around me like an enveloping sheath: “b.” It is comfortably warm: ah! (Now I am at the sound “a.”) I shall stay in it: “d.” The whole experience is contained in the word itself. To speak in such a way seems to us almost absurd, for nowadays no actual experience is any longer connected with words. If we wanted to experience the word “B-a-d” we should have to say: “The house in which I feel wonder, in which I sit.” In reality speech is filled through and through with soul; man's inner experience of soul streams into and permeates it.

In days of yore this was felt and known. In the original, primitive tongues, speech was born from perception of feeling and of form—feeling in the vowel, form in the consonant. To-day these elements are no longer associated with speech; it has become a mere matter of convention. In Eurythmy, however, the sounds—“b,” “a,” “d”—are changed back again into the gestures that correspond to them. In making the gestures, the Eurythmist begins again to experience speech. One may cherish the hope that if love for Eurythmy is born in ever widening circles, humanity will be able to find its way back to what was contained in primitive tongues,—to a speech that is felt and seen. So will Eurythmy in the future be something more than it is to-day; it will be man's guide and show him how the life of soul and spirit can be borne along on the surging waves of speech. To-day we have come to the point when speech is so little articulated—let alone, ensouled—that numbers of people cannot really be said to “speak” at all. They “spit” the words out! Speech as it is to-day is certainly not born from the life of soul! It is enough to make one despair, when one has to listen to words that have no longer any soul in them, any life,—nay, are not even articulated.

So it comes about that in our day a shrill discord sounds up from Earth into the Cosmic Music when man enters the Sun existence after death. And this quality that has crept into speech makes manifest to certain Spiritual Beings the degeneration that earthly existence has suffered, showing them too at the same time how the right forces and impulses can be found that will lead once again to an ascent.

Man continues his wandering and comes into the Mars existence. What do we mean when we say: Man conies into the Mars existence? It is now no longer possible, you must remember, to speak of man in his spirit-form, for by this time he is wholly changed; he has become a spiritual image of the great cosmic sphere. On and on leads the path, through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, out into the surging waves of the Cosmos. In the Mars region the human being lives among the “population” of Mars—if I may so express myself. The inhabitants of Mars are discovered to be either discarnate human souls or Beings of the Hierarchies, but above all those of the Hierarchies from whose entire being Cosmic Speech sounds forth into universal space. For man is now in the region where Cosmic Music becomes Cosmic Speech. At first he hears it; then he is himself interwoven into the Cosmic Speech. Instead of the imitative speech of humanity, he hearkens to a speech that is creative, a speech out of which things are born and have their being. During man's passage through the sphere of Mars he acquires conscious knowledge of the Beings who people this region. The spiritual population of Mars consists of Beings who are the Knowers of the Cosmic Speech. There are other Beings too,—for example. Beings who are warlike in nature. But so far as man is concerned, the most important Beings in the Mars sphere are those who in their whole nature are Cosmic Word. They are the Guardians of the Cosmic Speech.

Man's journey then leads him into the region of Jupiter where dwell the Beings who are the guardians of the Cosmic Thoughts. These Beings radiate thought-beings into our planetary system and its environment. Through this region also man must pass, and he is involved there in a process of metamorphosis which I can only describe in a rather prosaic way.

Picture to yourselves that man becomes a kind of image of the cosmic sphere; that is to say, his whole being is really the spirit-germ of the head as it will be in his next life on Earth. In the Sun existence, having experienced the shrill discord set up by earthly speech, he learns to lay aside this earthly speech. During his passage through Mars he becomes part of the Cosmic Speech, he grows one with it, and begins also to lay the foundation for an understanding of Cosmic Speech. For it is like this. The metamorphosis of the lower man has begun—the legs into the lower jaw, the arms into the upper jaw, and so on. In community with the Beings of the Hierarchies the human being builds the spirit-germ of his future head. But, to begin with, this head is built for understanding the Cosmos—not the Earth! It learns first to understand Cosmic Speech, Cosmic Thoughts. Cosmic Thoughts and Cosmic Speech find a home in the human head; just as here on Earth man knows of minerals, plants and animals, so, during his journey through the spheres of Mars and Jupiter, he is made acquainted with the mysteries of the spiritual Universe. We shall never have a true feeling or perception of the nature of man until we realise in clear consciousness that between death and rebirth the human being has learned to know the names of the wonderful and majestic Beings of the higher Hierarchies, has learned to understand the work and creative activities of these Beings in the Cosmos, has learned to follow in his thought—not little everyday problems of personal life, such as, How am I to get back to Amsterdam?—but such a question as: How is one world-epoch born out of another through the workings of the higher Hierarchies? So much for man's experience in his passage through Jupiter.

Now comes the passage through the Saturn existence. Saturn bestows upon the human being what I will call Cosmic Memory—for in the Saturn sphere dwell those Spiritual Beings who preserve the memory of everything that has ever come to pass in our planetary system. Saturn is the mighty bearer of the memory of all the happenings of our planetary system. Just as in the Mars sphere man learns the speech of the Gods, and in the Jupiter sphere the thoughts of the Gods, so in his first passage through the Saturn existence he learns to know all that lives in the memory of the Gods of our planetary system. Hence it comes about that man's head in the spiritual spheres—which is the spirit-germ of his future earthly head—receives incorporated into it everything that enables him to be a citizen of the Cosmos and to live in the Cosmos among the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, even as he lives on earth among the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms.

Then, having been so deeply enriched in his spirit-existence that he has learned to understand the speech of the great world, the speech of the Macrocosm in the widest sense of the word, man passes out of the spheres of planetary activity and enters the sphere of activity of the Fixed Stars. Here the work upon the primal germ of the human head, the pre-figuring and shaping of it, is brought to completion by influences pouring in from infinitudes of spiritual worlds.

The time has now come for man to take the path of return. He comes again, first, into the Saturn sphere. The fact that during his earlier sojourn in the Saturn sphere he received into himself the planetary memories, enables the foundation to be laid now in his head for the faculty of memory that will be necessary in his life on Earth. The cosmic memory implanted into his being is, as it were, made “earthly.” Cosmic memory is transformed again into the germ of the faculty of human memory. And in the Jupiter sphere, all that man acquired through having perceived the thoughts of the Gods, is transformed on the path of return into the faculty to conceive human thoughts which can then be reflected in ordinary consciousness when the germ of the head unites with the physical embryo.

On the return path through the Saturn sphere the detailed elaboration of the metamorphosis of the lower man into the various parts of the head-organisation can also begin. This is a wonderful work,—one human being working upon another, in accord too with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Verily, the work that is wrought here for the forming of the human head is like the creation of a whole world. For in the sphere of existence between death and rebirth of which I am now speaking, each single human head is seen to be a wonderful world,—a world of infinite variety and detail; and the work upon it calls for the devotion of human beings who are linked together by destiny, with the co-operation also of Beings of the Hierarchies who, knowing the mysteries of the Cosmos, understand how such a human head must be built and formed.

Wonderful it is beyond all telling, to come in this way to a knowledge of what is in man. Nor can such knowledge ever lead to pride or conceit. Yonder, between death and a new birth, the world in which we live sees to it that we do not succumb to pride! It would be, my dear friends, an absurdity to fall victim to human pride and arrogance among the Beings of the Hierarchies, among Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones! The human being must remain for ever little in comparison with the Beings among whom he works. And when in this earthly existence a man comes to learn of what he is in the great Macrocosm between death and a new birth, he has good reason to say to himself: “You have not brought very much with you into earthly existence! You have no great cause to pride yourself upon your present condition; nor have you any occasion to be particularly proud of what you were among the Gods!” What can grow within us as the result of looking upon the life of man between death and a new birth is a sense of responsibility which makes us say: “We must strive with all our might to be worthy even here on earth, of being ‘man.’” For this is indeed what we feel, when we measure the significance of being “man” by the work performed upon the human being by the Gods in the period that lies between death and a new birth.

Going now further on his path of return, man comes again into the Mars existence, where the work upon his being continues. It is here that the spirit-germs for the new body are added—for the breast system and for the limb structures, as they will be in the next earthly life. For it is really so, that the foundations of the limbs of the previous earthly life come forth as the foundations of the head in the new incarnation, and so now during man's passage through the planetary world on the way to his next earthly life the germs for breast system and limb structures have to be laid anew. It must of course always be remembered that these germs are spiritual; the whole process is a spiritual process. As man passes again through Mars existence, the lofty spirituality with which he was imbued during his first passage through the Mars sphere, and which enabled him to experience the cosmic Word, is now transformed into spiritual substance of a somewhat lower order—into that spiritual substance from out of which, later on, the human Ego manifests itself. It is also during this return journey through the Mars sphere that the spirit-germ of the larynx and lung formations are added.

Man comes then again to the Sun. The second passage through the Sun sphere is significant in the highest degree. Since he completed his first sojourn in the Sun existence, man has passed through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to the world of the Stars, and then made the return journey through Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. All this time his whole being has been given over to the Cosmos; he has become one with the Cosmos, one with the World-All. He has been living in the Cosmos; he has learned cosmic speech, he has learned to weave cosmic thoughts into his being, he has been living, not within his own life of memory—that only dawns for him later—but within the memory of the whole planetary system. He has felt himself one with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies in his memory of the cosmic thoughts and of the cosmic speech. Now however, when he returns once again to the Sun, he begins to shut himself off more as an individual being. Very faintly the feeling dawns that he is becoming separate from the Cosmos. This is connected with the fact that the first foundations of the heart are now being laid within him. The return journey continues. For the second time man passes through the Venus sphere and the Mercury sphere, where the spirit-germs of the other organs have to be implanted within him.

At the moment of entrance for the second time into the Sun existence—all these happenings and processes take a very long time, and long before man enters upon earthly existence he experiences, as we shall see, what is for him a very significant turn of destiny—at the moment when, out in the Cosmos, the spirit-germ of the heart is laid within our being on the return journey to the earth, there is of course not yet a physical heart. True, there is already an indication of a physical heart form, but it is surrounded and inter-woven with all that constitutes the worth of the human being as the outcome of his previous earthly lives. The fact that we receive into ourselves in the Sun sphere the first germ of the physical heart is less important than the fact that in this germ of the heart is concentrated all that we are morally, all our qualities of soul and spirit. Before the spirit-germ of the heart unites with the embryonic germ of the future body, the heart in man is a spiritual being, a moral being of soul and spirit out in the Cosmos; only later does this moral being of spirit and soul—which man now feels living within him, which man has, as it were, acquired in the course of his return journey to Earth—unite with the embryo. This concentration, in the germ of the heart, of his whole soul-and-spirit being is experienced by man in communion with the sublime Sun Beings—those Sun Beings who rule over the creative forces of the planetary system and therewith of earthly existence. Let me try to describe it to you in a picture. The expressions may sound strange but they are really appropriate.

At the time when this cosmic heart is bestowed upon man, he is living among those Spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies in whose hand lies the leadership of the whole planetary system in its connection with earthly existence. The experience is one of infinite grandeur and splendour. It is difficult to find words to describe what the human being experiences in this phase of existence. In a certain respect his feeling resembles a feeling he can have in physical existence. For just as in physical existence he feels that he is bound up with his heart-beat, with the whole activity of the heart, so, out in the Macrocosm, through his macrocosmic spiritual heart, he feels himself at one with his whole being of soul and spirit. The moral being of soul and spirit which he has become at this moment of his experience is, as it were, a spiritual heart-beat within him. His whole being seems now to be in the Cosmos, in the same way as his heartbeat is in him; he becomes aware also of a kind of circulation in connection with this heart-beat. Just as on Earth we feel in the heart-beat the blood circulation and breathing which give rise to it, so, when on the return journey through the Sun existence we begin to be aware of the beating of our spiritual, macrocosmic heart, it feels to us as though streams or currents were uniting this spiritual heart-beat with the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. Even as the blood flows to the heart from the veins in the physical organism, so into our being of spirit-and-soul pour the words of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis,—what they have to say concerning the World and the World's judgement upon man. The words and sounds of the spirit of the World-All are the circulation that now centres itself in this spiritual, macrocosmic heart, in this human being of soul and spirit. There, at the centre, beats the spiritual heart of man. And the beat of the spiritual heart of man is the heart-beat of the world in which he is living. The blood-stream of this world is the deeds of the creative Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the forces which stream out from them. And just as the blood-stream on Earth centres itself in the heart where it is unconsciously experienced by man, so at this point of time between death and a new birth it is given to man, as a grace bestowed, to hold and cherish within him a cosmic heart—one of the organs of perception, one of the cosmic hearts, created out of the pulse-beat of the Macrocosm, even the deeds of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. For let it be remembered that the physical heart is a sense organ, which perceives the movement of the blood, not a “pump” as the physiologists imagine. The spirituality and vitality of the human being—these it is that cause the movement of the blood.

The return journey continues—through the Mercury and the Venus spheres. But before this, indeed in that cosmic moment when the human being feels himself living in very truth within the spiritual heart of the Cosmos, his gaze has already fallen upon the hue of generations, at the end of which stand the parents who will give him birth. The connection with the line of generations is, as you see, made relatively soon. We are born of father and mother, our parents again have each of them father and mother, and these too have their father and mother. This takes us back about a hundred years. But we must go further back, through many centuries; for long before a human being is born on Earth, he has united himself with the line of generations which culminates in the family into which he is born. It is quite early that the connection with the line of generations is determined, namely, when man is passing through the Sun existence for the second time. And in his passage through the cosmic colonies of Venus and Mercury he can, so to speak, arrange for his destiny to be brought as closely as possible into line with the outer experiences that must come to him through being born into a particular family and a particular nation.

After this, man comes again into the sphere of the Moon. Let me remind you how during his first passage through the Moon sphere man's thoughts were directed, for good and also for ill, to the primeval Teachers of the human race, to the starting-point of earthly existence, when superhuman Teachers imparted superhuman wisdom to the men of Earth. When he comes down into the Moon existence for the second time, there is less inducement for him to turn his attention to what was on Earth long ago. For now the period of time that man spends—above, in the Cosmos—in this Moon existence, is the same period of time as takes its course on Earth below between conception and birth. Man's embryonic life runs hand in hand with a particular cosmic development. Up there in the Moon sphere he is passing through a definite phase of evolution while below, stage by stage, the physical embryo is being prepared—the physical embryo with which he then gradually unites.

How does this macrocosmic life of the human being take its course during this second period of evolution in the Moon sphere? What does man accomplish there?

In all the experiences I have been describing, man's consciousness is far clearer and more awake than the ordinary consciousness of his life on Earth. It is most important to distinguish the various degrees of human consciousness. Consciousness during dream-life is dull, consciousness during waking life is clear, consciousness after death still clearer. As a dream is to reality, so is all our life on Earth in comparison with the clarity of our consciousness in the life after death. Moreover, at each new stage in the life after death, consciousness becomes still clearer, still more alert.

When we pass through the Moon existence on the upward journey, consciousness grows clearer owing to the fact that in the Moon sphere we come into the environment of the wise, primeval Teachers of humanity. Clearer and ever clearer grows our consciousness as we pass on through the spheres of Mercury and Venus; and its clarity continues to be intensified every time we enter a new sphere of the heavens. But when we are returning again and approaching a new life on Earth, consciousness is dimmed and darkened stage by stage. During the phase of Mercury existence on the return journey, we still have a consciousness that is clearer than any consciousness can be in ordinary earthly existence. But when we come to the Moon sphere, and are in an environment that reveals to us what man was at the beginning of earthly evolution, then our consciousness begins to be obliterated. In the same sphere where, on the upward journey, the super-sensible world first lit up for us in a clearer consciousness than was possible on Earth, consciousness is now dimmed. We are returning to the Earth and consciousness becomes ever dimmer and dimmer, until it remains in us only as growth-force—the power of growth that is present in the little child, the dreaming little child. Consciousness has dimmed into dream! This is the moment when the being of soul-and-spirit can unite with the physical embryo. In order that this momentous event may come to pass, in order that the human being at a certain point of his development make connection with the physical embryo, he must pass through a Moon evolution in communion with the primeval Teachers of humanity, while the physical embryo down below is passing through its ten lunar months in the body of the mother. And the Moon evolution that he has to undergo consists in this—that a whole host of the Teachers of mankind are engaged in the task of dimming down the cosmic consciousness which the human being still possessed during his Mercury existence, toning it down to the dream consciousness in which he lives at the beginning of his life on Earth.

Physical man, with all that we can see of him here on Earth, is, in truth, only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of super-sensible man. And super-sensible man can never be explained by the facts of Earth, but only by the facts of the great World, the Macrocosm. My object in these lectures has been to show you how earthly man is born as Spirit-man out of the Spiritual Cosmos.

It remains for us in the lecture tomorrow to study in this connection the significance of earthly life itself, in so far as the being who is spiritual and superhuman passes over into this earthly life. We shall come to understand the significance of the fact that when he passes through the gate of death the human being carries out again into the spiritual world what remains to him of all he has acquired and experienced in earthly life. Having, therefore, learned to understand, in some of its aspects, the spirit nature of man, his super-sensible being, we will return tomorrow to the study of the connection between super-sensible man and physical man.

Good morning, gentlemen! Has anyone thought of anything for today?

Mr. Burle asks about the theory of relativity and how it is viewed today. He says that people used to read a lot about it, especially in the past. Now it may have been forgotten again; at least he doesn't hear as much about it as he used to.

Dr. Steiner: Well, you see, the matter of the theory of relativity is a difficult one, and today you will probably have to be very careful and in the end you will have to say that even if you are careful, you are not familiar with it. But that is the case with many people who talk about the theory of relativity today. They talk about it in such a way that they often praise it as the greatest achievement of our time, but do not understand it. I will try to explain it as popularly as possible. As I said, it will be difficult today, but next time we will come to more interesting things.

Einstein's theory is based on the motion of a body. You know that bodies move by changing their position in space. So if we want to record a motion, we say: a body is at a location A and moves to another location B. If you are standing somewhere outside and see a train passing by, you will have no doubt at all that the train is rushing past you, moving, and you are standing still. But you can easily come to doubt it, at least for the moment, of course, if you are not thinking deeply, if you are sitting somewhere in a railway compartment and are asleep at first, then wake up and look out the window: a train is passing by. You have the distinct feeling that a train is passing by. That does not necessarily mean that it is true, however. Before you fell asleep, your train was stationary, and while you were sleeping, your train itself began to move. While you were sleeping, you did not notice that your train was moving, and the other train appears to be passing by. If you look more closely, the train standing outside is completely still, while your train is moving. So while you are moving, you believe that you are at rest, and the other train, which is really at rest, is moving. You know, it can also happen that you look out the window and believe that you are sitting quietly in the train you are currently on, while the whole train is moving in the opposite direction. That's how it looks to the eye. You can see that what we humans say about movement is not always true. You wake up and form the judgment: the train that is outside is moving. Immediately afterwards, you have to correct yourself: that is not true at all, it is standing still; I am moving!

Such a correction of judgment occurred once in a major way, or even more than once, in world history. We need only go back six or seven centuries, when everyone was of the opinion that the earth was stationary in space and that the entire starry sky was moving past. This view was corrected, as you may have heard, in the 16th century. Copernicus came along and said: All that is wrong; the sun, the fixed stars are actually stationary, and we with our Earth fly at breakneck speed through space. We believe to be at rest on Earth - just as one previously believed to be at rest in the railroad car and the other train was driving and have now corrected that. Copernicus corrected the whole of astronomy, saying: It is not true that the stars move; they are stationary. But the Earth, with people on it, rushes through space at a tremendous speed.

You have given the possibility that it is not immediately possible to tell from observation what is actually correct with regard to motion: whether one is at rest oneself and a passing body is really in motion, or whether one is in motion oneself and a body that one believes is passing by is at rest.

Don't you think so? When you consider this, you will say to yourself: Yes, a correction may be necessary for everything we recognize as movement. Take, for example, how long it took for all of humanity to correct its judgment regarding the Earth. That took thousands of years. When you sit in a train, it may take only a few seconds for you to correct your judgment. So it varies how long it takes to correct such a judgment.

This has led people like Einstein to say: We cannot know whether what we see in motion is really in motion, or whether we, who are standing still, are not somehow mysteriously in motion and the other in rest. So we draw the final conclusion from this uncertainty.

Well then, gentlemen, it could be like this: let us assume there is a car here (a picture is shown). In this car, one drives from Haus Hansi up to the Goetheanum. But who can say for sure that the car is really driving up? Who can say that with certainty? The car could be standing still, the wheels could be turning, and the whole Goetheanum that one is approaching could be moving in the opposite direction. We would only have to experience something like this for the Earth as Copernicus did for the Earth! (Laughter.)

Einstein took such things and said: We can never be certain whether one or the other body moves. We only know that they move in relation to each other, that they change their distances; that is the only thing we know. Of course, we know that when we travel to the Goetheanum, because we come closer to the Goetheanum; but whether we come to it or it comes to us, we cannot know. Now, you see, what we can say is that it is in real rest or real motion, that is absolute. So what is an absolute rest or an absolute motion? That would be a rest or motion of which one could say: In the universe, the body is at rest or the body is moving. But of course this is always a fatal thing, because at the time of Copernicus, it was still believed that the sun was stationary and the earth was moving around it. In relation to the earth it is correct, but in relation to the sun it is not correct, because the sun moves very fast, rushing at a tremendous speed through the starry universe, which is in the constellation of Hercules – and of course we are all with it. On the one hand we revolve around the sun, but with the rotation around the sun we rush with it through space. So we cannot say that the sun is at absolute rest in space either. And so Einstein and those who shared his view said: You cannot say at all whether something is at absolute rest or in motion, but you can only speak of things being in relative rest - relative, that is, with respect to each other - it appears to one to be at rest or in motion.

You see, gentlemen, during a course that was held in Stuttgart, someone once believed that we anthroposophists know nothing of note about the theory of relativity. And so, because he was or is a fanatical supporter of the theory of relativity, he wanted to make it clear to people in a very simple way how the theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of relativity, really applies. What did he do? He took a matchbox and said: “Here is a match. Now I hold the box very still and move the match towards it. It catches fire. But now I'm going to do a second experiment. Now I'm going to hold the match very still and move the box towards me. It catches fire again. The same thing happens. What has happened is that fire has been created, but the movement I have made is not absolute, it is quite relative. One time, when the box is there and the match is there, I move the match this way, the other time I move the box. For fire to occur, it does not matter whether the box or the match moves, but only whether they move relative to each other, in relation to each other.

But this can be applied to the whole world. You can say for the whole world: the thing is that you don't know whether one or the other moves, or whether one moves more strongly or weakly, or whether the other moves more strongly or weakly. You only ever know how they move in relation to each other, whether they come closer or further away from each other; you don't know more than that. And you don't know whether one body moves faster or slower than the other. Imagine you are traveling in an express train rushing by terribly fast, and a passenger train passes by outside, you look out the window. You can't judge what is actually going on, because at the moment when you are traveling in the express train and the passenger train is traveling in the opposite direction, you have the feeling that your express train is traveling much slower than it used to. Just try it. At that moment you have the feeling that now the train is moving slowly. In perception, so much of the speed is taken away from the fast as it approaches you. So you get a completely false judgment about the speed of the movement in your own train. If, on the other hand, someone is traveling more slowly next to you, you feel as if your train is traveling faster. So you never have a judgment when you see two movements and how they actually relate to each other, but you only ever get a judgment about how the two bodies relate to each other in terms of their distances.

Now you can stop at this point and say: Gosh, Einstein was a clever guy, he finally realized that in the universe we cannot talk about absolute motion at all, but only about relative motion. That is clever, and as you can see, it is also correct for many things. Because no one can say that when he sees a star at rest, it is a star at rest. If you move at a certain speed, the star appears to be moving in the opposite direction; but it could also be moving towards you. So you can't possibly conclude from looking at it that the star is at rest or in motion. It is necessary to know this, because the fact that we finally know this today means that we would have to change the entire terminology used in certain sciences. I will show you this with an example.

How do you get knowledge from the stars at all? You see, you can't get knowledge from the stars if you have the same view as the prince who went to the observatory. The astronomer naturally had to show him the observations he made of the stars because the prince was the ruler of the country. Well, he also let the prince look through the telescope, and they observed a star. When you point the telescope somewhere, you don't see anything at first. Then you wait a little; then the star comes into the telescope, as they say, and then it comes out on the other side. The prince watched this. Then he said: Yes, now I understand quite well that you know something about the stars, that you know where the stars are and how they move, I can see that quite well now. But how you, when you are so far away, come up with what the stars are called, I still can't understand. — With such views, of course, one cannot pursue astronomy. But how does it happen when you observe stars? There is the telescope; the astronomer sits there, and he looks in with his head from above, and there are crosshairs here; and when the star appears to move like this, you don't see anything yet, and when it is here, you see the star. If it is visible exactly where the threads cross, then you determine the location of the star.

Now, it was always thought that when observing, one could say: either the Earth moved, or the telescope was moved forward and the lens – that's what the glass that is far away is called; the glass that is close is called the eyepiece – was moved so far that the stationary star can now be seen inside. In the past, people believed that the star was moving. Today we have to say: We know nothing about the rest or motion of the star. We can only say: In the viewfinder, the crosshairs of my telescope coincide with the view of the star; the two overlap. We can say nothing more than what we have directly in front of us. We would be uncertain about the whole world as a result.

This has far-reaching consequences. It is important for our view of the motion not only of the heavenly bodies, but even of the bodies on our earth. And the conclusions that Einstein and those who think as he does drew from it are very far-reaching. They said, for example: Yes, if motion is only relative, if it is not absolute, then one cannot say anything real about anything at all, not even about simultaneity or different times. If, for example, I have a clock in Dornach and another in Zurich and the hands are in the same position, I am still not at all sure that, because they are far apart, in reality there is only one erroneous observation; perhaps there is no simultaneity at all!

So you see, the most far-reaching conclusions have been drawn from this. And the question arises: can we not get out of this at all? Can we not say anything at all today about the things themselves when they move? That is the important question. It is quite certain that nothing can be said from the observation of the movements. And in the broadest sense, it is also true that if I drive up to the Goetheanum in my car, it may just as well be that the Goetheanum comes towards me.

Yes, but there is one thing, gentlemen, that does happen. Even the example I gave you with the matchbox is not quite right. Because, you see, I would have liked to shout to the gentleman who made it so finely: “Why don't you nail the matchbox to the table and then try to move it back and forth!” You have to apply at least a great deal of force if you have to drive with the whole table back and forth. — So there must be a catch somewhere.

You can recognize this catch if you only approach the matter attentively. Suppose you drive from Dornach to Basel, and now you could say: It is not true that the car moves; rather, the car remains stationary, only turning the wheels, and Basel comes towards it. — Fair enough. But there is one thing that speaks against this: the car will be ruined after a few years. And the fact that the car is ruined can only be attributed to the fact that it is not the road that moves, but the car that moves and is ruined by what happens inside it. So if you don't just look at the movement, but look inside the body itself to see what the movement does, you will come to the conclusion that you cannot fully grasp Einstein's conclusion. So you can notice that the car is actually being ruined, not just the wheels, because they are turning. Now someone might say: Yes, they would of course also turn if a mountain were to come towards you or Basel were to come towards you, or otherwise the thing would wear out. But you can still say: maybe that's the way it is. With inanimate bodies, the matter cannot be decided at all, and for inanimate bodies one can only say that it is uncertain which way the one or the other moves. But the living organism! Imagine you are walking to Basel and someone else remains standing here in Dornach, remains standing for the whole two hours while you walk to Basel. Now, if it were not you who had moved but Basel who had come to meet you, you would have done almost no differently than the person who remained standing. But you became tired; a change took place in you. From this change that takes place within yourself, you can see that you have moved. And in the case of living bodies, it is possible to determine from the changes that take place within them whether they are really in motion or only in apparent motion, at rest.

But this is also what must lead us to recognize that we cannot form a theory from the external observation of the world, not even from something as clear as movement. Instead, we must form our theory from the internal changes. Well, there you have it again: with the theory of relativity, too, one must say that he who looks only at the outward side of things comes to nothing at all. One must look at the inner side. It is precisely this theory of relativity that leads one to at least begin with spiritual science, with anthroposophy, because anthroposophy points out everywhere that one must look at the inner side.

Einstein's theory has led to some extraordinarily strange consequences. The matter becomes particularly interesting, for example, when Einstein gives his examples. He gives an example in which he wants to prove that the change of location has no significance at all. Because it cannot be determined from the point of view whether a body changes its location or not, the change of location cannot have any significance. That is why Einstein says: If I hurl a clock that has a certain hand position out into space, so that it flies out at the speed of light and then turns around and comes back, this movement has had no significance for the inside of the clock. The clock comes back unchanged. That is how Einstein makes his examples: whether a body moves or not, we cannot decide. The clock is the same whether it is at rest or moving, it is the same for it. - Yes, but, gentlemen, you should just be invited to look at a clock that flies out into space at the speed of light and comes back again! The clock, yes, you won't see it at all anymore. It will be so pulverized that you won't see it.

But what does that mean? It means that you cannot think that way at all. You come to thoughts that are thoughtless. And so you find on the one hand that Einstein is a terribly clever person and that he draws conclusions and makes judgments that are terribly captivating to people. Not true, the ordinary people who are not very good mathematicians, they don't understand much of Einstein's theory; and then they start reading about Einstein's theory in some popular book, read the first page, then yawn; read half of the second page, then stop. And then they say: It must be something terribly clever. Because if it wasn't something terribly clever, then I would have to understand it. Besides, a lot of people say that it's something terribly clever. –That's where the judgment about the theory of relativity comes from. But there are also people who understand it. And it is among such people that Einstein finds his following, and that following grows larger every day. It is not, as Mr. Burle says, forgotten. A few years ago, when you spoke with university professors, they did not want to know anything about Einstein's theory. Today, everything is full of the erudition of Einstein's theory of relativity.

But people also come up with some very strange ideas in the process. For example, I once had a debate with university professors about Einstein's theory. Yes, you see, as long as you stay in the area that I have also discussed with you, Einstein's theory of relativity is correct; there is nothing you can do about it: it is like that with the train, with the solar system, with the movements of the whole world. So far it is quite correct. But now the gentlemen extend it to everything and say, for example: Relative is also the size of a human being; he has no absolute size, but only relative. That seems to me only that he is so high. He is so high in relation to — well, if we are here —, in relation to the chairs or in relation to the trees, but one cannot speak of an absolute size. You see, that applies as long as you remain a mathematician, as long as you are only concerned with geometry. The moment you stop being concerned with geometry, when you enter life, that's when the pleasure stops, that's when it's different! You see, if someone has no feeling, then he can carve a head out of wood that is a hundred times as big as your head. Then he has it. Yes, the one who has a feeling for it will never do that because he knows that the size of a human head is not relative, but is conditioned in the whole of space. It can be a little larger or a little smaller, but if someone is a dwarf, it is an illness; if someone becomes a giant, it is also an illness. It is not just relative, but the absolute is already visible. Within certain limits, of course, human height fluctuates. But in the universe, a person is definitely intended for a certain height. So again, one cannot speak of relativity. One can only say that man gives himself his own size through his relationship to the universe. There was only one of the college of professors with whom I had the debate who admitted that. The others were so twisted in their heads by the relativity theory that they said that human size is also only relative because we look at it that way.

You know, if you have a picture, it can be large; if you go further, it gets smaller and smaller according to the perspective. The size of this picture that you see is relative. The relativists believe that human size is only as it is because it is always seen against a background. But that is nonsense. Human size has something absolute about it, and a person cannot be much taller or much shorter than he is predetermined to be.

Now, people think all this up because they generally do not form any opinion about what is involved in a process or in a thing that happens on earth in our environment. From what I have already told you, you will be able to deduce the following: there is the earth; on the earth is some human being. Now you know, however, that the human being is not only dependent on the forces of the earth, but he is dependent on the forces that come from the universe. Our head, for example, reflects the whole universe. We have discussed this. If it did not matter how tall a person is, what would have to be there? Suppose Mr. Burles' head, Mr. Erbsmehl's head, Mr. Müller's head is formed from the universe. Yes, gentlemen, if the heads are three or four times different from each other, there should be an extra universe for each one. But since there is only one universe, which does not grow or shrink because of the individual human being, but is always there, remaining the same, the heads of people can only be approximately the same. It is only because people do not know that we live in a common world that also has a spiritual effect that people can believe that it is irrelevant how big a person's head is, that it is merely relative. It is not relative, but it is dependent on the absolute size of the universe.

So we come back to having to remind ourselves: it is precisely when you think correctly in relation to the theory of relativity that you enter into spiritual science, not into materialistic science.

And if you then look more closely at people, you see that people who think like Einstein run out of ideas when they come to life or to the spiritual. You see, when I was a boy, I was able to take part in the lively debates that took place about gravity. Gravity - when a body falls to the earth, it is said to be heavy. It falls down because it has weight, because it is heavy. But this force of gravity is everywhere in the universe. The bodies attract each other. If there is the earth and there is the moon (see drawing), then the earth attracts the moon, and the moon does not fly away, but moves in a circle around the earth, because the earth, when it wants to fly away, always pulls it back towards itself. Now, in the past, when I was a boy, there was a lot of debate about what this force of gravity is actually based on.

The English physicist Newton, whom I have told you about before, simply said: bodies attract each other, one body the other. That is not a very materialistic view, because if you imagine that a person should just touch something and draw it towards them, all sorts of things besides matter are needed to do so. If now the Earth is to attract the Moon, then this cannot be reconciled with a materialistic view. But materialism flourished precisely in my youth. One could also say that it dried up people, it withered, but one could also say that it flourished. So people said: That's not true, the Earth cannot attract the Moon, because it has no hands to attract it. That's not possible. So they said: the world ether is everywhere (see drawing). So what I am drawing in red here is the world ether; it also consists of nothing but tiny little grains. And these tiny little grains, they bump into each other here, bump into each other there, but bump more strongly there than they do in the middle. Now, when there are two bodies, the Earth and the Moon, and the impact from the outside is stronger than from the inside, it is as if they were attracted to each other. So the force of attraction, the force of gravity, was explained by the impact from the outside.

I cannot begin to tell you how much cognitive pain this caused me at the time. From the age of twelve to eighteen, I really agonized over whether the Earth attracts the Moon or the Moon is pushed to the Earth. Because, you see, the reasons given are usually not exactly stupid, but clever. But there is already a certain relativity theory in that. One wonders: is there anything absolute in it, or is everything relative? Is it perhaps really immaterial whether one says that the Earth attracts the Moon or that the Moon is pushed towards the Earth? Perhaps one cannot decide anything at all. Well, you see, people have thought about this a lot. And what I actually want to say is: At least they came up with the idea that there is an ether in addition to the visible substance. They needed the ether, because what is supposed to push if not the grains of ether! When Einstein first established his theory of relativity, everyone still believed that the ether had to exist. And Einstein then thought of everything he had described as relative motion as taking place in space, which is filled by the ether. But then he realized: Gosh! If motion is only relative, it is not at all necessary for the ether to be there. Nothing needs to push, nothing to pull. We cannot decide anything about this. So space can also be empty.

And so, over time, there are actually two Einstein theories. Of course, they are united in one person. The earlier Einstein described everything in his books as if the whole space of the world were filled with ether. Then his theory of relativity led him to say: space is empty. Only, the theory of relativity is not about saying anything about ether, because we don't even know if it is so. The examples he gives sometimes become quite grotesque. For example, Einstein says: If there is the earth, and there is some tree, I climb up; here I slip, fall down – this is an occurrence that you have probably also experienced; at least as a boy I very often experienced it when I climbed up a tree, that I slipped and fell down – then you say: Well, the earth is pulling me. I have a weight. This comes from gravity, otherwise I would have remained in the air, otherwise I would be wriggling if the earth were not pulling me. — But Einstein says you can't say any of that, because think of the following: There is the earth again, and now I am up there on a tower, standing; but I am not standing in a vacuum, surrounded by free space. Rather, I am standing in a box that is suspended at the top. If I were to fall out of the box from the tower, my relationship to the walls would always remain the same. I don't notice any movement, the walls go with me. Yes, by golly, now I can't tell whether the rope from up there, on which my box is hanging, will be lowered and I will arrive at the bottom of the box because someone is lowering me from above, or whether I can arrive, whether the box will slip because the earth is attracting me. I can't decide that. I don't know whether I'm being lowered or whether the earth is drawing me towards it.

But with this example, which Einstein chooses, it is just the same as with the other comparison that is always used in schools. There the children are already told how a planetary system is formed, that there is a nebula at first, out of this nebula the planets separate. In the middle, the sun remains. They say: That can easily be proven. You take a small oil droplet that floats on water, in the middle a sheet of card through which a pin is stuck, you put that in the water, start to turn it. Then small droplets split off from the large one, and a tiny planetary system is there. That's how it must be out there. Once there was a nebula; the planets split off, the sun remained in the middle. Who could possibly disagree with this, if you still see it in the fat droplet today! Yes, but one little thing has been forgotten, gentlemen: that I have to stand there and turn when I am the teacher in front of the children and show that! If I don't turn: nothing forms from a small fat planet system! So — the teacher would have to tell the children — there must be a great teacher, a giant teacher out there who once turned the whole story. Then the example is complete. And so Einstein, if he were to think in complete accordance with reality – if he even gets around to formulating such a thought – would have to assume that someone is directing the rope up there. That is necessary right away. Otherwise you cannot say: It makes no difference to me how I come down, whether someone lets me down or whether I tumble; there must be someone up there. So if Einstein were to elaborate on this example, he would immediately have to consider: who is there to hold the rope? He does not do this because contemporary materialism forbids it. Therefore, he devises examples that have no reality, that cannot be imagined, that are impossible to think.

And there is something else connected with this. Imagine, gentlemen, there is a mountain. There is Freiburg im Breisgau. On the mountain I set up a cannon so that you can still hear the shot in Offenburg on my account. But you hear the shot later. If someone notes on a clock when they heard the shot in Freiburg and when someone heard it in Offenburg, they will see that the times on the two clocks differ. The sound took some time to travel from Freiburg to Offenburg.

Now, you see, this story has also been used for the so-called theory of relativity. Because it is said: Let us now assume that I am not standing in Offenburg listening to when the sound arrives, but that I am initially standing in Freiburg. There I hear the sound simultaneously as it arises. Now I am traveling by train in the direction from Freiburg to Offenburg. Because I am traveling ahead, a little way from Freiburg, I hear the sound a little later than it occurs. Even further towards Offenburg, a little later again; even further towards Offenburg, a little later again.

But this only lasts as long as you drive slower than the speed of sound. If you drive just as fast as the speed of sound from Freiburg to Offenburg, what happens then? If you drive just as fast, at the same speed as the speed of sound: you arrive in Offenburg, and there it runs away from you, you still don't hear it. If you travel at the same speed, you will never hear it, because by the time you are supposed to hear it, it will have gone. You are supposed to hear it, but by then it is no longer there. Now people say: Gosh, that's right, you can't hear sound if you're moving as fast as sound itself! And if you move even faster than sound, what happens then? If you go slower, you hear it later; if you go just as fast, you don't hear it at all. If you move faster, you hear it earlier than it sounds! People say that this is quite natural, that this is quite correct. So if you hear the sound in Offenburg two seconds later when you move slower than the sound, you don't hear the sound at all when you move at the same speed as the sound. But if you move faster than the speed of sound, then you will hear it two seconds earlier than when it is released in Freiburg! I would just like to invite you to listen, really listen to the sound before it is released in Freiburg! You can see for yourself whether you hear it earlier, no matter how fast you are moving.

The other objection is that I would then like to ask you what you look like when you move so fast or even faster than sound.

What follows from this? It follows that you can think anything if you don't stick to reality. With this theory of relativity, you end up with the idea that you hear the sound earlier than the shot is released! (Laughter.) You can think of it quite well, but it can't happen. And that, you see, is the difference! People who do science today mainly want to think logically; and Einstein thinks wonderfully logically. But the logical is not yet real. You have to have two qualities in your thinking: first, the things have to be logical, but second, they have to be real. You have to be able to live in reality. Then you don't think up this box that is pulled up and down on a rope. Then you don't think of the clock that flies out into space at the speed of light and back again. Then you don't think of the guy there who moves faster than the sound and therefore hears the sound earlier than the shot takes place. Much of what you read in books today, gentlemen, as such considerations, is very nicely thought out, but none of it is in reality.

And so we can say: Einstein's theory of relativity is clever and it also applies to a certain part of the world, but you can't do anything with it when you look at reality. For from the theory of relativity one never comes to understand why a person tires so terribly when he goes to Basel, since he cannot say whether he is going into Basel or whether Basel is coming to meet him. The fatigue could not be explained if Basel were to come to him, and why I fiddle with my feet when I walk; I could stand still, wait for Basel to come to me! You see, all these things show nothing other than that it is not enough to think correctly and intelligently, but that something else is needed: one must be immersed in life and must judge things according to life.

That is what I can tell you about the theory of relativity. It has caused a great stir, but, as I said, people understand it only a little, otherwise they would already be thinking about these things.

So, see you next Saturday.

On a night when the stars are clear and we gaze at the expanse of the heavens, it is a feeling of sublimity that first flows through our souls as we let the innumerable wonders of the stars work upon us. This feeling of sublimity will be stronger in one person, less strong in another, according to his particular individual character. When faced with the appearance of the starry heavens, however, a person will soon be aware of his longing to understand something of these wonders of cosmic space. Least of all in regard to the starry heavens will he be deterred by the thought that this direct feeling of sublimity and grandeur might disappear if he wishes to penetrate the mystery of the starry world with his comprehension. We are justified in feeling that understanding and comprehension in this sphere cannot injure the direct feeling that arises in us. Just as in other spheres it soon becomes evident to a greater or lesser degree that spiritual scientific knowledge enhances and strengthens our feelings and experiences if only we have a healthy understanding (Sinn), so will a person become more and more convinced that, regarding these sublime cosmic facts, his life of feeling will not wither in the least when he learns to grasp what is really passing through space or remaining, in appearance, at rest.

In any presentation it is, of course, possible to deal only with a tiny corner of the world, and we must take time to learn to grasp, step by step, the facts of the world. Today we will concern ourselves with a part, a small, trifling part, of the world of space in connection with the life of man. Although a person may dimly divine it, he will learn with greater and greater precision through spiritual science that he is born out of the totality of the universe and that the mysteries of the universe are connected with his own special mysteries. This becomes particularly evident when we enter with exactitude into certain mysteries of existence.

A contrast is manifest in human life as it evolves on this earth—a contrast to be found everywhere and at all times. It is the contrast between the masculine and the feminine. We know that this contrast in the human race has existed since the time of ancient Lemuria; we know, too, that it will last for a certain period in our earthly existence and ultimately resolve itself again into a higher unity.

If we recollect that all human life is born out of cosmic life, we may then ask, if it is indeed true that what has shown itself in human life since the old Lemurian time as the contrast between man and woman has to a certain extent accompanied evolution on the earth, can we find something in the universe that in a higher sense represents this contrast? Can we find in the cosmos that which comes to birth in the masculine and feminine on earth? This question can be answered.

If we stand on the ground of spiritual science, we cannot proceed according to the maxims of a present-day materialist. A materialist can visualize nothing apart from what lives in his immediate environment and is therefore prone to seek for this contrast of masculine and feminine in everything, whereas it now applies only to human and animal life on earth. This is an offense of our time. We must bear clearly in mind that the designations “masculine” and “feminine” in the human kingdom hold good in the strict sense only since the Lemurian epoch and up to a certain moment in earthly evolution and, in so far as animals and plants are concerned, only during the ancient Moon evolution and the earth evolution.

The question remains, however: are masculine and feminine as they exist on earth born out of a higher, cosmic contrast? If we were able to find this contrast, a wonderful and at first mysterious connection would emerge between this phenomenon and a phenomenon in the cosmos. There are, of course, contrasts everywhere in the cosmos, but one must understand how to discover them in the right way. The first contrast in the cosmos whose significance for human life we can mention is that between sun and earth. In our various studies of earthly evolution we have seen how the sun separated from our earth, how both became independent bodies in space, but we may also ask: how does the contrast between sun and earth in the macrocosm, in the great world, repeat itself in man, the microcosm? Is there in the human being himself a contrast that corresponds to the contrast between sun and earth in our planetary system? Yes, there is. In the human organism—the whole organism, bodily and spiritual—it occurs between all that expresses itself externally in the organ of the head and all that expresses itself externally in the organs of movement, the hands and feet. All that is expressed in the human being in this contrast between the head and the organs of movement corresponds to the contrast or polarity that arises in the cosmos between sun and earth. We shall soon see how this is consistent with the correspondence between the sun and the heart. The point here, however, is that in the human being there is on the one hand the head and on the other what we call the organs of movement.

You can readily understand that, in so far as his limbs were concerned, man was a totally different being during the ancient Moon evolution. It was the earth that made him into an upright being, one who uses hands and feet as he does today; again, it was only on the earth that his head was enabled to gaze freely out into cosmic space, because the forces of the sun raised him upright, whereas during the ancient Moon evolution his spine was parallel with the surface of the moon. We may say that the earth is responsible for man being able to use his legs and feet as he does today. The sun, working upon the earth from outside and forming the contrast with the earth, is responsible for the fact that the human head, with its countenance, has in a sense torn itself free from bondage to the earth and is able to gaze freely out into space. That which in the planetary system is the contrast between sun and earth appears within the human being as the contrast between head and limbs. We find this contrast of head and limbs in every human being, whether man or woman, and we also find that here, in all essentials, men and women are alike, so that we can say that the contrast corresponding to that between sun and earth expresses itself in the same way in men and in women. The earth works to the same extent upon woman as upon man; woman is bound to the earth in the same way as man, and the sun frees the head of woman and of man alike from bondage to the earth.

We shall be able to gauge the profundity of this contrast if we remember that those beings, for example, who fell into dense matter too early, as it were—the mammals—were not able to attain free sight into cosmic space; their countenance is bound to earthly existence. For the mammals, the contrast between sun and earth did not become, in the same sense, a contrast in their own being. For this reason we may not speak of a mammal as a microcosm, but we can call the human being a microcosm, and in the contrast between head and limbs we have evidence of the microcosmic nature of man.

Here we have an example that at the same time shows how infinitely important it is not to become one-sided in our studies. One can count the bones of man and the bones of the higher mammals and also the muscles of man and of the mammals, and the connection that one can draw from this has led in modern times to a world view that places man in closest proximity to the higher mammals. That this can happen proceeds simply from the fact that people have yet to learn through spiritual science how important it is not merely to have truths but to add something to them. Be conscious, my dear friends, that in this moment something of great importance is being said, something that the anthroposophist should inscribe in his memory and in his heart: many things are true, but merely to know that a thing is true is not enough! For example, what modern natural science says about the kinship of man with the apes is undoubtedly true. With a truth, however, the point is not merely to possess it as a truth but to know the importance of it in the explanation of existence as a whole. A seemingly quite ordinary, everyday truth may fail to be regarded as decisive only because its importance is not recognized.

A certain familiar truth, known to everyone, becomes deeply significant for our whole doctrine of earthly evolution if its real importance is only understood: the truth that man is the only being on earth who can direct his countenance with real freedom out into cosmic space. If we compare the human being in this respect with the apes who stand near to him, we must say that, although the ape has tried to raise himself into the upright posture, he has somehow made a hash of it ... and that is the point. One must have insight into the relative weight of a truth! We must feel the importance of the fact that man has this advantage, and then we shall also be able to relate it to the other cosmic fact just characterized: it is not the earth alone but the sun in contrast to the earth—something beyond the earth—that above all makes man a citizen of heavenly space and tears him away from earthly existence. In a sense we may say that this whole cosmic adjustment that we know today as the contrast between sun and earth had to be made in order that man might be given this place of precedence in our universe. This constellation of sun and earth had to be brought about for the sake of man, that he might be raised from the posture of the animals. In the human being we thus have the same contrast that we see when we look out into heavenly space and behold the sun with its counterpart, the earth.

Now the question arises: can we discover in the cosmos the other contrast that is found on earth, that between masculine and feminine? Is there perhaps something in our solar system that brings about, as a kind of mirror-image on earth, the contrast between man and woman? Yes, this higher polarity can be designated as the contrast between the cometary and lunar natures, between comets and the moon. Just as the contrast of sun-earth is reflected in our head and limbs, so in feminine and masculine is reflected the contrast of comet-moon.

This leads us into certain deep cosmic mysteries. Strange as it may sound to you, it is true that the different members of human nature that can confront us in the physical body are in different degrees an expression of the spiritual that lies behind them. In the physical body of man, it is the head, and in a certain other sense the limbs, that correspond most closely in outer form to their underlying, inner, spiritual forces. Let us be clear about this: everything that confronts us externally in the physical world is an image of the spiritual; the spiritual has formed it. If the spiritual is forming something physical, it can form it in such a way that at a certain stage of evolution this physical form is either more similar or less similar to it, or is more or less dissimilar from it. Only head and limbs resemble as external structures their spiritual counterparts. The rest of the human body does not at all resemble the spiritual picture. The outer structure of man, with the exception of head and limbs, is in the deepest sense a mirage, and those whose clairvoyant sight is developed always see the human being in such a way that a true impression is made only by the head and limbs. Head and limbs give a clairvoyant the feeling that they are true; they do not deceive. With regard to the rest of the human body, however, clairvoyant consciousness has the feeling that it is untrue form, that it is something that has deteriorated, that it does not at all resemble the spiritual behind it. Moreover, everything that is feminine appears to clairvoyant consciousness as if it had not advanced beyond a certain stage of evolution but had remained behind.

Diagram 1 Click image for large view

We can also say that evolution has advanced forward from point A to B. If C were a kind of normal development, then we would be at point C as far as the human head and limbs are concerned. What appears in the form of the female body has remained as if it were at D, not advancing to a further point of development. If it will not be misunderstood, we can say that the female body, as it is today, has remained behind at a more spiritual stage; in its form it has not descended so deeply into matter as to be in accord with the average stage of evolution. The male body, however, has advanced beyond the average stage—apart from head and limbs. He has overshot this average stage, arriving at point E. A male body, therefore, has deteriorated, because it is more material than its spiritual archetype, because it has descended more deeply into the material than is called for today by the average stage of evolution. In the female body we thus have something that has remained behind normal evolution and in the male body something that has descended more deeply into the material than have the head and limbs.

This same contrast is also to be found in our solar cosmos.

If we take our earth and the sun as representing normal evolutionary stages, the comet has not advanced to this normal stage. It corresponds in our cosmos to the feminine in the human being. Hence, we must see cometary existence as the cosmic archetype of the feminine organism. Lunar existence is the counterpart of masculine existence. This will be clear to you from what has been said before. We know from before that the moon is a piece of the earth that had to be separated off. If it had remained in the earth, the earth could not have gone forward in its evolution. The moon had to be separated off on account of its density. The contrast between comet and moon out in the cosmos is therefore the archetype of feminine and masculine in the human being.

This matter is exceedingly interesting, because it shows us that whether we are considering an earthly being, such as man, or the whole universe, we must not simply think of one member side by side with others as they appear to us in space; if we do this we give ourselves up to a dreadful illusion. The various members of a human organism are, of course, beside one another, and the ordinary materialistic anatomist will regard them as being at equal stages of development. For one who studies the truth of things, however, there are differences, inasmuch as one thing has reached a certain point of evolution, another has not—although it has made some progress—and another has passed beyond this point. A time will come when the whole human organism will be studied along these lines; only then will an occult anatomy exist in the real sense. As I have told you, things that lie side by side can be at different stages of evolution, and the organs in the human body are only to be understood when one knows that each of them has reached a quite different stage of evolution.

If you recall that the ancient Moon evolution preceded that of our earth, you will realize from what has just been said that although the present moon is certainly part of the ancient Moon evolution, it is not now at that stage of evolution and does not represent it. The moon has not only advanced to the earth stage but has even gone beyond this; it was not able to wait until the earth becomes a Jupiter, and it has therefore fallen into torpor in so far as its material side is concerned—not, of course, in its spiritual relationships.

The comets represent the relationship of the ancient Moon to the sun that prevailed at a certain time in the ancient Moon evolution. The comet has remained at this stage, but now it must express this somewhat differently. The comet has not advanced to the point of normal earthly existence. Just as in the present moon we have a portion of a later Jupiter that was born much too early and is therefore torpid, incapable of life, so in our comets we have a portion of the ancient Moon existence projecting into our present earthly evolution.

I would like to mention here parenthetically a noteworthy point, through which our spiritual scientific ways of studying have won a little triumph. Those who were present at the eighteen lectures on cosmogony that I gave in Paris in 1906 (see Note 2) will remember that I spoke then of certain things that were not touched upon in my book, An Outline Of Occult Science (see Note 3) (one cannot always present everything; one must not write one book but endless books if one wishes to develop everything). In Paris I developed a point bearing more upon the material, chemical aspect of the subject, as it were. I said that the ancient Moon evolution—which projects itself in present cometary existence, because the comet has remained at this stage and, as far as present conditions allow, expresses those old relationships in its laws—I said that this ancient Moon evolution differs from that of the earth in that nitrogen and certain nitrogenous compounds—cyanide, prussic acid compounds—were as necessary to the beings on the ancient Moon as oxygen is necessary to the beings of our present earth. Cyanide and similar substances are compounds that are deadly to the life of higher beings, leading to their destruction. Yet compounds of carbon and nitrogen, compounds of prussic acid and the like, played an entirely similar role to that of oxygen on the earth.

These matters were developed at that time in Paris out of the whole scope of spiritual science, and those who inscribed them in their memories will have had to say to themselves that, if this is true, there must be proof of something like compounds of carbon and nitrogen in today's comets. You may recall (the information was brought to me during the lecture course on St. John and the other three Gospels in Stockholm) that the newspapers have now been saying that the existence of cyanide compounds has actually been proved in the spectrum of the comet. This is a brilliant confirmation of what spiritual research was able to say earlier, and it has at last been confirmed by physical science. As proofs of this kind are always being demanded of us, it is quoted here. When such a striking case is available, it is important for anthroposophists to point it out and—without pride—to remind ourselves of this little triumph of spiritual science.

So you see, we can truly say that the contrast between masculine and feminine has its cosmic archetype in the contrast between comet and moon. If we could proceed from this (it is not, of course, possible to go into all the ramifications) and could demonstrate the full effect of the body of the moon and of the comets, you would realize how great and powerful it is for the soul—how it surpasses all general feelings of sublimity—to experience that here on earth we see something reflected and that this, in its functioning, is an exact expression of the contrast between comet and moon in the universe. It is possible to indicate only a few of these matters. A few are very important, and to these we will allude.

Above all, we must become conscious of how the contrast expressed in comet and moon works upon the human being. We must not think that this contrast expresses itself only in what constitutes man and woman in humanity, because we must be clear that masculine characteristics exist in every woman and feminine characteristics in every man. We also know that the etheric body of man is female and that of the woman, male, and this at once makes the matter extremely complicated. We must realize that the masculine-feminine contrast is thus reversed for the etheric bodies of man and woman, and so are the cometary and lunar effects. These effects are also there in relation to the astral body and the I. Hence the contrast between comet and moon is of deep, incisive significance for the evolution of humanity on earth. The fact that the Moon evolution has a mysterious connection with the relationship of the sexes, a connection that eludes exoteric ways of thinking, you can recognize in something that might seem entirely accidental, namely, that the product of the union of male and female, the child, needs ten lunar months for its development from conception to birth. Even modern science reckons not with solar but with lunar months, because there the relation between the moon, representing the masculine in the universe and the earth, and the cometary nature, representing the feminine in the universe, is decisive, reflecting itself in the product of the sexes.

If we now regard this from the other side, from the comets, we have another important consequence for the evolution of humanity. The cometary nature is as though feminine, and in the movements of the comets, in the whole style of their appearance from time to time, we have a kind of projection of the archetype of the feminine nature in the cosmos. It is something that really gives the impression of having come to a halt before reaching the normal, average stage of evolution. This cosmic feminine—the expression is not quite apt, but we lack suitable terms—shoots in from time to time like something that stirs up our existence from the depths of a nature existing before the dawn of history. In the mode of its appearance, a comet resembles the feminine. We can also express it this way: as what is done by a woman more out of passion, out of feeling, is related to the dry, reasonable, masculine judgment, so is the regular, reasonable course of the moon related to the cometary phenomenon that projects apparently irregularly into our existence. This is the peculiarity of feminine spiritual life. Mark well—I do not mean the spiritual life of woman but the feminine spiritual life. There is a difference. The spiritual life of a woman naturally includes masculine characteristics.

Feminine spiritual life, whether in a man or a woman, projects into our existence something of the primitive, something elemental, and this is also what a comet does. Wherever this contrast between man and woman confronts us, we can see it, because it expresses itself with uncommon clarity.

People who judge everything by externals criticize spiritual science because many women are drawn to it at the present time. They do not comprehend that this is quite understandable simply because the average brain of a man has overstepped a certain average point of evolution; it has become drier, more wooden, and therefore clings more rigidly to traditional concepts; it cannot free itself of the prejudices in which it is stuck. Someone who is studying spiritual science may at times feel it difficult that in this incarnation he must use this masculine brain! The masculine brain is stiff, resistant, and more difficult to manipulate than the feminine brain, which can easily overcome obstacles that the masculine brain, with its density, erects. Hence the feminine brain can more readily follow what is new in our way of looking at the world. To the extent to which the masculine and feminine principles come to expression in the structure of the human brain, it can even be said that for our present time it is most uncomfortable and unpleasant to be obliged to use a masculine brain. The masculine brain must be trained much more carefully, much more radically, than a feminine brain. You can thus see that it is not really so extraordinary that women today find their bearings more easily in something as eminently new as spiritual science.

These matters are of the greatest importance in the history of culture, but one can hardly discuss them anywhere today except in anthroposophical circles. Except in our circles, who will take seriously the fact that to have a masculine brain is not so comfortable as to have a feminine brain? This, naturally, does not imply by any means that many a brain in a woman's body has not thoroughly masculine traits. These things are not as simple as we suppose with our modern notions.

The cometary nature is something elemental; it stirs things up and in a certain sense is necessary in order that the advancing course of evolution may be supported in the right way from the cosmos. People have always had a premonition that this cometary nature is connected in some way with earthly existence. It is only in our day that they reject any such idea. Only think what a face the average scholar of today would make if the same thing happened to him as happened between Professor Bode and Hegel. Hegel once stated bluntly to an orthodox German professor that good wine years followed comets, and he tried to prove this by pointing to the years 1811 and 1819, good wine years that were preceded by comets. This made a fine commotion! But Hegel said that his statement was as well founded as many calculations concerning the courses of stars, that it was an empirical matter that was verified in these two cases. Even apart from such comical episodes, however, we can say that people have always conjectured something in this connection. It is not possible to enter into details now, since that would be an endless task, but we wish to shed some light on one main influence related to human evolution.

The comets appear at great intervals of time. Let us ask: when they appear, is their relation to human evolution as a whole such that they stimulate, as it were, the feminine principle in human nature? There is, for example, Halley's Comet, which now again has a certain actuality. (see Note 4) The same could be said of many other comets. Halley's Comet has a quite definite task, and everything else that it brings with it stands in a particular connection to this task. Halley's Comet—we are speaking here of its spiritual aspect—has the task of impressing on human nature its own special being in such a way that this human nature and essence take a further step in the development of the I when the comet comes near the earth. It is that step which leads the I out to concepts on the physical plane. To begin with, the comet has its special influence on the two lower members of human nature, on what is masculine and feminine; there it joins company with the workings of the moon. When the comet is not there, the workings of the moon are one-sided; the workings change when the comet is present.

This is how the working of the comet now expresses itself: when the human I takes a step forward, then, in order that the whole man can advance, the physical and etheric or life bodies must be correspondingly transformed. If the I is to think differently in the nineteenth century from the way it thought in the eighteenth, there must also be something that changes the outer expression of the I in the physical and etheric bodies—and this something is the comet! The comet works upon the physical and etheric or life bodies of man in such a way that they actually create organs, delicate organs that are suitable for the further development of the I—the I-consciousness as it has developed especially since the imbedding of the Christ impulse in the earth. Since that time the significance of the comet's appearance is that the I, as it develops from stage to stage, receives physical and etheric organs it can use. Just think of it—strange as it may sound and crazy as our contemporaries will find it—it is nonetheless true that if the I of a Büchner, of a Moleschott, (see Note 5) and of other materialists had not possessed, around the years 1850–60, suitable physical and etheric brains, their thinking could not have been as materialistic as it was. Then, perhaps, the worthy Büchner would have made a good, average clergyman. For him to be able to arrive at the thoughts expressed in his Kraft und Stoff, it was necessary not only for his I to evolve in this way but for the corresponding organization to be present in the physical and etheric bodies. If we are searching for the evolution of the I itself, we need only look around at the spiritual-cultural life of the period. If we wish, however, to know how it was that these people of the nineteenth century had a physical brain and an etheric body suitable for materialistic thinking, we must say that in 1835 Halley's Comet appeared. In the eighteenth century there was the so-called Enlightenment, which was also a certain stage in the development of the I. In the second half of the eighteenth century the average human being had in his brain this spiritual configuration that is called “Enlightenment.” What made Goethe so angry was that a few ideas were thrown out and people declared themselves satisfied. What was it that created the brain for this “Age of Enlightenment?” Halley's Comet of the year 1759 created this brain. That was one of its central effects.

Every cometary body thus has a definite task. Human spiritual life takes its course with a certain cosmic regularity, as it were—a bourgeois regularity one could say. Just as a man undertakes with an earthly bourgeois regularity certain activities day by day, like lunch and dinner, so does human spiritual life take its course with cosmic regularity. Into this regularity there come other events, events that in ordinary, bourgeois life are also unlike those of every day and through which a certain noticeable advance occurs. So it is, for example, when a child is born into a family. The cosmic regularity manifesting in the whole of human evolution takes its course under the influence of the moon, of the lunar body. In contrast to these events, there are things that always bring about a step forward, that are naturally distributed over wider spans of time; these events occur under the influence of the comets. The various comets have here their different tasks, and when a comet has served its purpose it splinters. Thus we find that from a certain point of time onward, some comets appear as two and then splinter. They dissolve when they have completed their tasks. Regularity, all that belongs to the common round, is connected with the lunar influence; the entry of an elemental impulse, always incorporating something new, is connected with the influence of the comets. So we see that these apparently erratic wanderers in the heavens have their rightful place and significance in the whole structure of our universe.

You can well imagine that when something new, like a product of the cosmic feminine, breaks into the evolution of humanity, it can cause tumults that are obvious enough but that people prefer not to notice! It is possible, however, to make people conscious that certain events of earthly existence are connected with the existence of comets. Just as something new, a gift from the woman, may enter into the everyday bustle of the family, so it is with the comets. As when a new little child is born, so it is when, through the return of a comet, something quite new is produced. We must remember, however, that with certain comets the I is always driven out more and more into the physical world, and this is something we must resist. If the influence of Halley's Comet were to continue, a new appearance of it might bring about a great enhancement of Büchnerian thought, and that would be a terrible misfortune. A reappearance of Halley's Comet should therefore give us warning that it might prove to be an evil guest if we were simply to give ourselves up to it, if we were not to resist its influence. It is a matter of holding fast to higher, more significant workings and influences of the cosmos than those of Halley's Comet. It is necessary, however, that human beings should regard this comet as an omen; they should realize that things are no longer as they were in earlier times, when in a sense it was fruitful for humanity that it should come under these influences. This influence is no longer fruitful. Human beings must now unite themselves with different powers in order to balance this dangerous influence from Halley's Comet. When it is said that Halley's Comet can be a warning; that its influence, working alone, might make people superficial and lead the I more and more onto the physical plane; and that precisely in our days this must be resisted—this truly is said not for the sake of reviving an old superstition. The resistance can occur only through a spiritual view of the world, such as that of anthroposophy, replacing the evolutionary trend caused by Halley's Comet.

It could be said that once again the Lord is displaying His rod out there in the heavens in order to say to human beings through this omen: now is the time to kindle the spiritual life! On the other hand, is it not wonderful that cometary existence takes hold of the depths of life, including the animal and plant life that is bound up with human life? Those who pay close enough attention to such things would observe how there is actually something altogether different in the blossoming of flowers from what is usually the case. These things are there, but they are easily overlooked, just as people so often overlook the spirit, do not wish to see the spirit.

We may now ask: is there something in the cosmos that corresponds to the ascent to a spiritual life that has just been indicated? We have seen that head and limbs and masculine and feminine have polar contrasts in the cosmos. Is there something in the cosmos that corresponds to this welling up of the spiritual, to this advance of man beyond himself, from the lower to the higher I?

We will ask ourselves this question tomorrow in connection with the greatest tasks of spiritual life in—our time. Today I wished to give the preliminaries, in order that tomorrow we may understand through greater relationships an important question of the present time. Much that has been said today is admittedly remote, but we are living in a cometary year. It is therefore good to say something about the mysterious relationship of cometary existence to our earthly existence. Beginning with this, we will speak tomorrow about the great spiritual meaning of our time.

Reference was made in the last lecture to our proposed study of the Gospels and we explained why we had decided to begin with certain aspects of St. Matthew's Gospel. In the first place it is in this Gospel that the most human side of Christ-Jesus is presented. Secondly, there is given in it a complete survey of events which show how the coming of Christ-Jesus is related to human history. This is a direct indication that this greatest of all phenomena on earth represents the culmination of actual historical events, and it is therefore natural to assume that this particular Gospel brings us face to face with the deeper secrets of the evolution of humanity.

Once again I must emphasise that the things of which we shall now be speaking call for accurate treatment, and that great harm can easily be done to the cause of Spiritual Science by giving to the general public any incomplete or one-sided picture of matters connected with these secrets. All communications should be made with great caution; nor is it too much to expect everyone to have the patience to refrain from attempting to present to himself a complete picture of Christ-Jesus until he has become acquainted with the four aspects revealed by the four Gospels.

In the Gospel of St. Luke we are shown how the two great pre-Christian streams of spiritual life—Zoroastrianism and the stream which reached its pre-Christian culmination in Buddhism—united, in order to pour themselves into the great Christian stream of spiritual life on the earth. The Gospel of St. Matthew is concerned primarily, with a quite different theme, namely, to show how and in what respects the physical entity in which the Zarathustra-Individuality incarnated springs from the ancient Hebrew people. It attempts to set out the part played by the ancient Hebrew people in the whole evolutionary process of mankind. It might easily be imagined that if the Zarathustra-Individuality incarnated in Jesus of Bethlehem, it was simply a matter of the body being born from the Hebrew people, and that this implies nothing more than that Zarathustra was reborn in a body of Hebrew stock. Such a conception would give rise to an entirely misleading picture of the truth.

We must realise more and more clearly the fact that an Individuality as great as Zarathustra uses the body as an instrument. Even if a Being were to come down to the earth out of the highest, even the very highest, divine worlds, and were to incarnate in an unsuitable physical organism, such a Being could make use of that body only to the extent to which it was actually capable of being an instrument. It is for this reason that the mistaken line of thought just referred to would readily lead to misconceptions. That man's bodily organism is the temple of the soul has long ceased to be properly understood. We must always remember what has so often been emphasised among us, namely, that the human Ego dwells within three sheaths, each one of which is more ancient than the Ego itself. The Ego is a being of Earth, the youngest of the members of man's nature. The astral body had its beginning on the Old Moon, the etheric or life-body on the Old Sun, the physical body on Old Saturn.³ This means that the physical body is the most highly perfected, having four stages of planetary evolution behind it. The physical body has been developed through aeon after aeon until it has become what it is to-day—this perfect instrument in which the human Ego can so unfold that man can be enabled gradually to rise again to the heights of the spirit. If the physical body were as undeveloped as the astral body and the Ego, no evolution on the earth would be possible for man

If you realise the full significance of this, the thought of Zarathustra being born from the Hebrew people can no longer be clouded by any mistaken feeling. The constitution of the ancient Hebrew people had to be just what it was, if it was to provide the body for a being as great as Zarathustra. If we bear in mind that ever since the time when he had been the Teacher of the ancient Persian people, this great being had been developing to ever higher stages, we shall understand that for him a bodily instrument had to be provided from a racial stock whose greatness was commensurate with that of his own being.

An instrument had to be created, fit for Zarathustra. Through all the evolutionary periods of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, have the gods worked at the development of the human physical body. From this we may rightly infer that the more intimate preparation of one particular human body must necessarily have entailed great divine-spiritual labour, in order to produce a human body in the specially constituted form which was to be used at that time by Zarathustra.

To make this possible, the whole history of the ancient Hebrew people had to take the course it did. The Akasha Chronicle reveals that what is set down in the Old Testament conforms entirely with the historical facts. Everything that happened to the ancient Hebrew people had to be directed in such a way that it culminated in the single personality of Jesus of Bethlehem. But to achieve this, very special measures were essential.—It was necessary that from the whole of Post-Atlantean civilisation, faculties of the highest quality should be extracted, which would enable mankind to develop powers in place of the old clairvoyant gifts. It was the Hebrew people which was chosen for this task, to the end that it might provide a bodily constitution which, right into the most delicate vessels of the brain, was so organised that what we call knowledge of the world might evolve, free from the influences of the old clairvoyance.—This was to be the mission of the ancient Hebrew people. And in Abraham, the progenitor of this people, such an Individuality was chosen, that out of his bodily constitution, a suitable instrument might be fashioned for the development of reasoned thinking.⁴ All previous thinking of any significance was still subject to the influences of the old clairvoyance. But now a personality was chosen because he possessed the brain most capable of withstanding the inrush and coercion of clairvoyant Imaginations and Intuitions, and was destined to acquire knowledge of the things of the world purely by the process of reason. This required a specially constituted brain, and the personality chosen because he possessed such a brain, was Abram, or Abraham.

That the path of Abraham's journeyings led westwards from beyond the river Euphrates right up to Canaan, also tallies with what the Akasha Chronicle reveals. Abraham went forth, as the Bible tells us, from Ur in Chaldea. Whereas the aftermath of the ancient, shadowy clairvoyance was still in active operation in Egyptian, as well as in Chaldean-Babylonian civilisation, there was chosen from among the Chaldeans an individual who no longer worked by means of these faculties, but by observing the phenomena of the external world. This was to be the introduction of that form of culture whose fruits are to this very day implicit in the whole of the cultural life and civilisation of the West. Constructive reasoning and mathematical logic were both introduced through Abraham. Even until far into the Middle Ages he was regarded in a certain sense as the founder of arithmetic. The fundamental trend and character of his thinking led to observation of the world according to the relationships of measure and number. (See Appendix I, p. 72)

A personality so constituted was able, by his very nature, to enter into living relationship with that Divinity who was to reveal himself through the medium of external phenomena. All other Divinities, with the exception of Jahve or Jehovah, proclaimed themselves in the inmost depths of the human soul, and to acquire any knowledge of them man had to awaken in his soul the faculties of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. The men of ancient India gazed at the rising sun, at the different kingdoms of the earth, at the processes manifesting in air and ocean, but regarded all this as a great Illusion, as “Maya”, in which they would have found nothing of a divine nature, had they not first acquired knowledge of the divine through inner Imagination, and then, afterwards, had proceeded to relate this knowledge to the phenomena of the external world. It must be realised that even Zarathustra could not have taught as he did of the mighty Sun-Being had not Ahura Mazdao in his glory been inwardly revealed to him. This is especially apparent in the case of the Egyptian divinities, who were first experienced in the inmost depths of the soul and only afterwards related to the things of the external world. All that applies to the Divinities of pre-Hebraic times must be understood in this way.

Jahve, however, is the Divine Being who gazes down upon men from outside, who comes to men from outside, manifesting Himself in wind and weather. When man penetrates to the relationships of number, measure and weight inhering in the things of the visible world, he draws near to the God Jahve.—In earlier times the process was reversed. Brahma was recognised, first, in the inmost depths of the soul and only from that experience did man find his way into the outer world. Jahve is recognised first in the outer world and only afterwards can his reality also be confirmed in man's inmost being. This is the spiritual aspect of what is called in the Bible: Jahve's covenant with Abraham. Abraham was a man who possessed the faculty to grasp and comprehend the nature of Jahve. Abraham's bodily constitution was such that he could recognise Jahve or Jehovah as the God who lives and moves in the outer phenomena of the universe.

It was now a matter of deriving from the particular faculties possessed by the individual man Abraham, the mission of a whole people. Abraham's spiritual constitution had to be transmitted to others. But this spiritual constitution is bound up with the physical instrument; whatever is to be brought to outward expression depends upon the physical body being organised in a definite and specific way. In the ancient religions, built up as they were on the foundation of shadowy clairvoyance, the particular formation of the various parts of the brain was not of such essential importance. Understanding of Jehovah, however, was fundamentally bound up with the constitution of the physical brain. Only by way of physical heredity, within a people linked by blood-relationship, could such faculties and qualities be transmitted.

Very special measures were necessary for the achievement of this end. Abraham must have descendants who would carry to further stages of development that unique physical organism which until then had been the work of the gods and which had come to its most perfect expression in Abraham. The elaboration of the physical, bodily constitution was now to be taken in hand by man independently and that which for long ages had been the work of the gods be led by man to further stages. That this process must extend over many generations is self-evident. A brain capable of understanding Jahve had to be preserved through physical heredity. Jahve's covenant with Abraham had also to pass on to his descendants. This, however, called for the uttermost devotion to Jahve on the part of Abraham; for it is possible to develop a particular organism to further stages only if it is used in conformity with the purpose for which it was originally created. If, with a certain aim in view, it is desirable that the hands, for example, shall be made particularly skilful, this can only be achieved by developing them in accordance with their own inherent character. If the physical qualities of the brain had to be developed to the point where comprehension of Jahve was possible, then devotion to and understanding of Jahve must have reached in Abraham the highest conceivable degree of intensity.

That was exactly what happened, as the Bible relates. Self-sacrifice is supreme when a man offers up all that the future holds in store for his own self. Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his son Isaac to Jahve. Therewith he would have sacrificed the whole Hebrew people, all that he himself was, and all that had to be brought, through him, into the world. Abraham was the very first human being who truly understood Jahve, in that he knew that if he desired to give proof of the fulness of his devotion, he must surrender himself utterly to Jahve. Through offering his only son, however, Abraham renounced the propagation of his line in the world. But so complete was his devotion that with full resolve, he offered up Isaac.

Then Isaac was restored to him. What does this signify? It signifies something of supreme importance. Abraham receives Isaac back at the hand of Jahve. This brings to Abraham the realisation that the mission that is his by virtue of his own Individuality he will not pass on to posterity through his own deed, but he is to receive it in the person of his son as a gift of Jahve.⁵ Anyone who ponders this deeply will realise that here we have a fact of cosmic significance, whereby immeasurable light is shed upon the secrets of the historical evolution of humanity.

Now let us consider how events proceed.—Through Abraham's devotion to Jahve was made possible the right development of that which had hitherto been the work of the gods, namely the physical nature of humanity which had come into being out of the universe. As we know, the physical bodily constitution of man on the earth is connected, according to number, measure and weight, with all the laws governing the world of the stars. Out of the world of the stars man is born; in his very being he embodies the laws of that world. These laws had, as it were, to be inscribed into the blood flowing down from Abraham through the generations of the ancient Hebrew people. In this people everything must be so regulated as to ensure the continuance of the stream of ordered law which, flowing from the universe, has organised the human physical body according to the principles of number, measure and weight prevailing in the constellations. Again this is indicated in an utterance in the Bible, which is completely mistranslated. “I will make thy seed as the stars of heaven.”⁶ The meaning of the words is in no wise that God will make the Israelites as numerous as the stars of heaven, but that the way in which this people multiply and spread on the earth shall be governed by the laws and number-relationships prevailing in the ordering of the stars in heaven. The propagation of the Hebrew people was to be regulated in accordance with the number-harmonies of the stars.

We can see how this comes to pass. Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau. We see how all that was carried by the blood through the generations develops,—the blood of the line of Esau having been cut out and the main stream separated from it. Again, Jacob has twelve sons, corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac through which the sun passes in the heavens, thus fulfilling the inner principle of the starry laws. Thus the number and measure prevailing in the heavens are factually portrayed to us in the life and descent, through their generations, of the Hebrew people.

Again, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac, and thereby he received back his whole mission at the hand of Jahve. A ram or lamb is sacrificed in place of Isaac. This signifies something of the greatest profundity. The human corporality which was to propagate itself through the generations and which possessed the faculties necessary for comprehending the world according to number and measure, by mathematical logic—this human corporality was to be preserved intact and received back as the gift of Jahve. But in order that the intrinsic nature of this bodily constitution should remain pure and unalloyed, it was necessary that all old, shadowy clairvoyance, all Imaginations and Intuitions, all inflowing revelations such as had poured into the other ancient religions, including those of Chaldea and Egypt, should be renounced. Every gift from the spiritual world must be renounced. The last gift from the spiritual world, the one gift remaining after all the others have dimmed, is denoted in mystical symbolism by the Ram. The two horns of the ram symbolise the sacrifice of the two-petalled lotus-flower.⁷ The last clairvoyant gift is sacrificed, the others having already been laid aside in earlier times In order that this bodily constitution might be preserved in Isaac, the last clairvoyant gift, the gift of the ram, the two-petalled lotus-flower is sacrificed.

As the mission of the Hebrew people progresses, these Abrahamitic faculties are transmitted from generation to generation. Whenever the old clairvoyance reappears as an atavistic element, whenever any individual sees once more into the spiritual world, the immediate reaction is that he is cast out from his people, he is not tolerated within the community. Antipathy against this gift of the ram expresses itself in direct hostility. This is exemplified in the enmity meted out to Joseph. Prophetic illuminations from the spiritual world come to Joseph in his dreams. Quite naturally he is thrust out from his people, because the gift he possesses is not in keeping with their mission, because a heritage of ancient clairvoyance appears again in him. Such is the profound meaning of the story here narrated.

On the other hand we see that something essential for the development of the Hebrew people and the fulfilment of their mission is in turn provided through Joseph, that is, through the very personality in whom was preserved a heritage which the Hebrew people could only regard as belonging to the age before Abraham. In a certain sense the gate to the world, from which, through the old shadowy clairvoyance, the ancient Indian and Persian civilisations had received their religions, was closed against the Hebrew people. That gate being closed, they now looked out into the world, classified it according to measure and number, and in its all-embracing unity they beheld Jahve or Jehovah. One thing more they knew, and that was that the visible world they beheld around them and which found its unity as being entirely the creation of Jehovah, was of the same nature as the Egohood of mankind.

But within this race-community, no Imaginations, no inner, personal experiences arose regarding these things. At that time this people themselves had no such inner experiences. Therefore it was necessary that they should be taught from outside, that they should learn from a people who still had these experiences. And so Joseph forms the link between the ancient Hebrew people and the Egyptians, the people from whom could be learnt those things of which the ancient Hebrews themselves had no longer actual experience. The whole picture which a man to-day is able to form out of his own inner experiences, the knowledge and experience derived from the outer world and from inner imagination—this had to be acquired at that time by contacting a people in whom such experiences still abounded—the Egyptian people. Harmony had to be established between inner faculties of this nature and what was acquired by the ancient Hebrews through mathematical logic and reasoning. But contact with the Egyptian people could be initiated only by a personality who himself possessed in some measure this faculty of Imagination. Joseph was the appropriate link because he still possessed this faculty.

There were two reasons why he could be of help to the Egyptians.—Firstly, he was gifted with the old clairvoyance belonging to the age before Abraham, and this enabled him to understand and interpret what the ancient Egyptians obtained through their clairvoyance. But what the Egyptian people did not possess was the faculty of mathematical logic—that is to say, they were not able to apply their powers of Imagination to physical life. Hence Pharaoh was incapable of effective action when unprecedented events befell. Imaginations were accessible, but when unprecedented factors occurred, to weigh up and assess intelligently what steps were necessary and to take appropriate measures, required a different faculty, which the Egyptians did not possess. Because Joseph possessed this faculty he was able to give the right counsels at the Egyptian court and so became the appropriate personality to form the link between the Hebrew people and the Egyptians. In this way, through him the Jahve-doctrine—which until then might be described as a synthesis of outer reality in the form of a mathematical world-picture—received colour and substance from the inner faculty of Imagination possessed by the Egyptians.

The actual harmonising and unification of the ancient Egyptian clairvoyant experiences with the Hebrew experience of the outer world-order was effected by Moses.⁸ Once this had been achieved, the Hebrew people could be led back again and proceed to work out, in their own way and in accordance with their own nature, what had been acquired in Egypt—though not in the form of actual experiences. For it was essential, as we have seen, that their particular gift should not be mingled with that of any other people, that the quality inherent in their own blood should remain pure and unadulterated. At the same time, the fruits of the spiritual experience of the ancient world had also to be preserved; and so the ancient heritage which still survived in the wisdom of the Egyptians was inculcated, through Moses, into the Hebrew people with their faculties of mathematical logic. Then this people had again to be extricated from that relationship, for they were destined to inherit that new faculty which could operate only through the descendants of Abraham.

It was because in the course of their history the blood of this people was regulated in strict accordance with its initial principles, because they developed, as they did, in this direction, through their successive generations, that it became possible at a certain definite point of time that there should issue from their stock the body of the Jesus-child, (See Appendix II, p. 75) into which the personality of Zarathustra could incarnate. But in order to achieve this goal the ancient Hebrew people had to grow strong and powerful.

If in the light of St. Matthew's Gospel we study the times of the Judges and Kings and follow the destinies of the ancient Hebrews, we shall see that even the circumstances which seem to indicate that this people is going astray, were for a definite purpose. Above all was it necessary that the misfortune of being led into captivity in Babylon should befall them. We shall see that their racial qualities had developed to the point when it was necessary that they should be brought into contact with the other side of the ancient tradition, as it existed in Babylon. The Hebrew people had reached sufficient maturity to be united once again with faculties that had been abandoned.—That is one side of the picture.

The other side is that at the very time when the Hebrew people were brought into contact with the Babylonians a great Teacher from the East was working there, with the result that it was possible for some of the best among the Hebrews to receive the illumination of his teaching This was the time when Zarathustra—in the person of Nazarathos or Zaratas—was teaching in the regions whither the Hebrews were led. Some of the greatest of the Prophets came under his influence. In this way it became possible to inculcate into the Hebrew people what was needed when their blood had already reached a certain stage of development, and influences from outside were required.

We shall not go very far wrong if we compare this whole racial evolution with the gradual growth of the individual human being. When a child is born, it remains until its seventh year in the bodily care of the parents. During this period, the influences that affect it are mainly at the physical level. Then begins the phase inaugurated by the birth—in a real sense—of the etheric body. Development is based on the elaboration of the memory, on which depends the healthy growth of all the possibilities of the etheric body. The beginning of the third period may be described by saying that the human being now enters into relation with the external world through his astral body, at which stage he must acquire the faculty of individual judgment.—The ancient Hebrew people passed through these phases of development in a special way. The first period—from Abraham to the time of the early Kings—may be compared with the first period of the life of the individual human being up to the seventh year. Everything that then happened was for the purpose of establishing in them the particular qualities of their blood. Abraham's journeyings, the development of the twelve tribes, the introduction of the Mosaic laws, the perils in the desert—all these happenings can be compared with what flows into the human being on the physical plane during the first seven years of life. Then comes the second period: the inner consolidation of the race, the rulership of the Kings up to the time of the captivity in Babylon.—Then follows the third stage, when the influence of Chaldean wisdom is brought to bear upon the Hebrews. And the Leader, through whom at that time-600 to 550 B.C.—was released the inflow of this oriental influence into the Hebrew people, was none other than the Individuality who in ancient Persia had been Zarathustra. Thus already at the time of the Babylonian captivity Zarathustra was preparing the way that would lead to the finding of a suitable bodily organism. So down the generations from Abraham onwards there developed more and more the requisite conditions for the birth of the bodily organism in which Zarathustra could reincarnate.

The threefold grouping indicated in the genealogy at the beginning of St. Matthew's Gospel gives a wonderfully faithful picture of this evolutionary process. There are three times 14 generations. “From Abraham to David, 14 generations; from David to the time of the Babylonian captivity, 14 generations; from the Babylonian capitivity to Christ-Jesus, 14 generations.” (St. Matthew I. 17) There are three times 14, that is, 42 generations. This is an indication that the bodily constitution of Jesus is an embodiment of the purest extract of all that had been in preparation from Abraham downwards, through all the vicissitudes and destinies undergone by the ancient Hebrew people. Finally a human being must appear, who in his soul and in his deeds will express all the qualities matured in the race, in his individual personality. The whole development of the Hebrew people from the time of Abraham was to reach its culmination in a single man—in the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.

Such a culmination can be reached only if the whole course of preceding development is recapitulated in a spiritual way. Zarathustra goes forthin a spiritual sense from the Mysteries—from Ur of the Chaldees, the same region whence Abraham had been called. It is there that the “Golden Star” first appears, and then goes forth, followed by the Magi of the land. What had come to pass physically through Abraham is now re-enacted spiritually. The star which the Magi follow moves in spiritual fashion along the path once travelled by Abraham. The star taking this path and coming to rest upon the birthplace is the incarnating Zarathustra himself. This is the moment when the Zarathustra-Individuality incarnates in the child Jesus of Bethlehem. The Magi knew that, in following the star, they were following their great Teacher, Zarathustra, on his way to reincarnation.

It is now a matter of perceiving how this path continues and of realising how the purest extract of the whole evolution of the Hebrew people is actually present in the personality of the Jesus described in St. Matthew's Gospel. Firstly, we see that spiritually the sacrificial offering of Isaac is repeated in the offering of gold, frankincense and myrrh brought by the three Magi from the East. We are reminded, too, of other happenings among the ancient Hebrew people. The circumstances associated with the birth of this Jesus-Child are like a reflection of the destinies of the ancient Hebrews. Among them was a Joseph who in his dreams possessed an inherited gift and was able to form the link between the Hebrew and the Egyptian peoples; now again there is a Joseph who has dreams and to whom it is shown in a dream, not only that Jesus will be born, but that he must go with Jesus to Egypt.

The path of Zarathustra—now living in the body of the Jesus-child—continues. Just as he had followed the path taken by Abraham on the physical plane from Ur in Chaldea to Canaan, so he follows it further still, to Egypt. Like the Hebrew people, the Jesus-child is brought back again from Egypt. Thus, in the appearance of the Bethlehem Jesus—only later called the Nazarene—there is a recapitulation of the whole destiny of the ancient Hebrew people up to the return from Egypt to Palestine, the Promised Land. Events in the outer history of the Hebrew people, extending over long, long centuries, are now recapitulated in the destiny of that human being who was Zarathustra incarnated in the body of the Bethlehem Jesus. This—conceived on the vast scale in which it is presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew—is the secret of human history in general. Human history cannot be understood unless it is recognised that in the destiny of every great Individuality charged with a special mission the whole process of development through centuries is recapitulated; that such Individualities represent the essence and extract of what has been achieved in history through long ages. Far, far more than this was, of course, to be embodied in Christ-Jesus, but the bodily constitution had first to be prepared, and this was possible only through the special measures that have been described.

What kind of conditions prevailed at the point of time when the whole history of the Hebrew people was to be recapitulated in the personality of Jesus?—In what way was it a turning-point of history? Let us here review the following facts of the evolutionary process of which for some years now I have been trying to give you a picture.

Humanity proceeded from a primeval stage of evolution when everything that brought human beings together in love was bound up with the blood-tie. Love was determined by this factor, and marriage took place only between human beings very closely related by blood. In those ancient times there was no other kind of love than that which was bound up with blood-relationship. From this ‘close marriage' humanity had its beginnings. But intermingling of the particular blood-ties gradually became more general in widely separated territories of the earth. Among all the peoples, however, there is evidence to show that they were taken aback when men and women belonging to one racial stock marry into a different stock, when the transition to ‘distant marriage' begins. In all the myths and sagas, in the legend of Gudrun, for example, this is described as an unwonted happening, one that causes astonishment.

Two streams were in operation during this phase of human evolution. In the process where human beings are brought together through ties of blood there was working the Divine-Spiritual principle which strives to unite humanity, to unify all mankind. Working in opposition to this was the Luciferic principle which strives to make every human being independent, to endow the single individual with the greatest possible power. Both these principles must be present in human nature, both forces must take effect in the evolution of humanity.

These two sets of powers, then, were at work in the progressive evolution of humanity: the Divine- Spiritual powers on the one hand, and on the other, the Luciferic powers, spirit-beings who had not completed their evolution on the Old Moon and who wished to prevent men from losing their identity as separate beings, and to make them entirely independent and self-sufficient. These opposing powers were always at work, and as a result, the Ego of man, a product of the earth, was perpetually being torn to this side or to that—towards human love on the one side and towards inner self-sufficiency on the other.

Now at a particular point of time the interworking of these two powers reached a kind of crisis. This crisis, this crucial condition in human affairs set in when, as the result of the deeds of the Roman Empire, widespread intermingling took place among the peoples in many territories of the earth. This was a most crucial moment in the evolution of humanity, the moment when the still undecided question of close or distant marriage came to its issue. Men were facing the danger either of not developing the Ego by remaining within the separate racial stocks, or of losing all connection with humanity as such and becoming independent, self-sufficient, egoistic individuals.

This decisive point had been reached. What must now happen? Something quite specific. The human Ego must become sufficiently mature to develop within itself what may for the first time properly be called freedom, and to unfold from within itself, in freedom, the love which, because it now belongs to the life of soul, is no longer bound up with the blood-tie. The Ego was facing this decisive issue: to meet it, it must be completely liberated, must acquire full consciousness of itself. Thus, with the exception of the oriental peoples, the whole of mankind belonging to the old world was confronting a birth of the Ego through which this Ego could know the love that springs from its own inmost being. Out of freedom the Ego was to unfold love, and out of love, freedom. Only a being who develops an Ego of this nature is in the real sense man. For a being whose love is determined solely by ties of blood is coerced into love, and merely gives expression to what, at a lower level, happens in the animal kingdom. It was at this point of history of which we have just been speaking that full manhood became, for the first time, a possibility. At this point the influence which made man truly man was to stream over the earth.

And now let us recall what I have said many times: that man is a being ensheathed in three members: the physical body which he has in common with the minerals, the etheric body which he has in common with the plants, and the astral body which up to this point of time had been the seat of the kind of love he has in common with the animals. With his fully developed Ego man is the crown of earthly creation. All other beings of the earth have names that can be given them from outside; they are objective realities. The “Ego” has a name that can be given only by itself. In the Ego, the ‘I', the Godhead speaks; earthly conditions have no longer a voice. In the ‘I' the kingdom of the Spirit speaks; the Spirit from the heavens speaks when the ‘I' has become fully self-conscious.—It might be said that until that time there were three kingdoms—mineral, plant, animal—and a kingdom which had indeed risen to a higher level than these, but had not yet reached completion, had not yet been imbued with its full super-earthly reality of being. This kingdom exists by virtue of the fact that into an Egohood there enters that which is otherwise nowhere to be found on earth, namely, the spiritual world, the kingdom of heaven.—This kingdom is called in the Bible “the kingdom—or the kingdoms—of heaven”, or, more usually “the kingdom of God.”

“The kingdom of heaven” is simply an alternative expression for “the kingdom of man.” When we speak of mineral, plant and animal kingdoms we can add in the words of the Bible a fourth, “the kingdom of man.” Men who at that time, with the insight acquired in the Mysteries, could look back into the whole course of human evolution, could speak as follows: “Look back to ancient times: humanity was then only in process of being led to the level of manhood, for the kingdom of heaven is to come to the earth.”—So spoke the forerunner of Christ-Jesus, and Christ-Jesus Himself: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”. In these words they indicated the essential quality of that time. It was the age when the birth of Christ-Jesus had to take place. He was to bring to mankind the forces through which the Ego would be able to unfold, and develop its own inherent nature.

The whole evolution of humanity thus divides itself into two main phases: the phase when the kingdom of heaven is not yet on the earth, and the phase when the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of man in its highest sense, is actually on the earth. The ancient Hebrew people was chosen to provide the bodily constitution, the bodily sheaths, which would so develop as to become fit to receive the bearer of this kingdom of heaven.

These are the secrets revealed when the historical aspect of events is studied in the light of the deepest meaning of the Gospel of St. Matthew. To the two streams which we have seen⁹ were contributory to Christianity—the streams of Zarathustrianism and Buddhism—we must add a third, namely, the stream contributed by the ancient Hebrew people. We see how these great Leaders, Buddha and Zarathustra, desired to bring to mankind the offering of the streams of spiritual life inaugurated by them. But a temple had to be provided and this could be done only through the ancient Hebrew people, who produced the temple which was the physical body of Jesus. Into the temple the two streams of Zarathustra and Buddha could bring their offerings. The first offering was made by Zarathustra, in that he incarnated in this body; the later offering was made by the Buddha, in that he rayed forth his Nirmanakaya,¹⁰ into the other Jesus. (See Appendix II, p. 75)—In this way the two streams flow into a unity.

I have only been able to-day to give you a slight sketch of these deeper secrets and I have had to express it in a somewhat dogmatic way. We must continue our study on some other occasion, in order that we may acquire a clearer picture of the mission of the ancient Hebrew people and of the emergence of Christ-Jesus from this people. Then will become manifest to us this unique event, that out of history itself, out of the historical flow of evolution, there evolved a Being of everlasting value, imperishable and eternal. So shall we gradually come to understand how, out of a transient world, that was able to spring which will endure for eternity.

• 3. These are the recognised names in spiritual science for the p.26 earlier planetary conditions of the Earth. See An Outline of Occult Science.
• 4. “Discursive thinking” would be an alternative translation p.27 of das urteilende Denken, the expression used by Rudolf Steiner here. “Discursive as opposed to intuitive cognition, is attained by a series of inferences rather than by direct insight.” (Runes: Dictionary of Philosophy, 4th ed. New York, 1942).
• 5. This point, that the Hebrew heritage was not a matter merely p.32 of natural descent, but of divine choice and gift, is developed by St. Paul from a somewhat different view-point in >Romans IX, 8. “It is not the children of the flesh (Ishmael) that are children of God, but the children of the promise (Isaac) are reckoned for a seed.” Cp. also Romans IV, 13-21.
• 6. Genesis XXII, 17.
• 7. In his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, p. 131 ff, Rudolf Steiner speaks of the “lotus-flowers” as organs in the astral body connected with the development of supersensible perception. He points out that the name “lotus-flower” is only a traditional metaphorical designation. These organs are also known in technical esoteric language as “wheels ” or “chakrams.”
• 8. This role of Moses is indicated in his traditional representation as having two ram's horns springing from his forehead.
• 9. See Rudolf Steiner's lecture-course: The Gospel of St. Luke.
• 10. The spiritual reality resulting from his earthly existence.

The meaning of the two columns was always explained through the Golden Legend or the Legend of the Wood of the Cross (first mentioned in the lecture Berlin, 29 May 1905). For this reason, the Golden Legend and the explanations given about it are included here.

The Golden Legend

Text from Rudolf Steiner's original manuscript
Note sheet Archive number 6954

Adam had two sons

Cain = the self-seeking human

Abel = the revelation-seeking human

Abel fell because of Cain's actions. Abel's inheritance went to Seth. Seth reached the entrance to Paradise. There he was not held back by the cherub with the flaming sword.

This is the symbol that Seth was the progenitor of the initiated priesthood. The cherub now gave him three seeds (the higher man = atma - budhi - manas). After Adam had died, Seth placed the three seeds in Adam's mouth as instructed by the cherub.

The bush that grew from it had within itself the writing in fire.

Ehjeh - ascher - Ehjeh (I-am-I)

Moses took from it the three-part branch from which he formed his staff.

David planted this rod in the ground on Mount Zion. Solomon took the wood from it to make the entrance gate of the temple

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Only the pure could pass through there.

The Levites, in their folly, immersed these three pieces in the pool of Bethesda.

At the time of Christ, the Jews laid the wood as beams across the Kidron Valley.

Christ walked across this after his nocturnal arrest on the Mount of Olives.

And the cross was also made from this wood.

Text from Marie Steiner's original manuscript

Adam had two sons:

Cain, the representative of humanity that works in self-awareness, and Abel, the representative of that humanity that receives all its gifts as a higher gift and revelation.

Self-awareness must pass through guilt. Cain kills Abel. Abel's gifts pass to Seth.

When Seth had re-entered paradise after the double fall of man (Eve and Cain), he saw how the

tree of knowledge and the tree of life

had united.

The tree of knowledge means human knowledge.

The tree of life means God-revealed wisdom.

The cherub with the flaming sword now gave Seth three seeds; in them were all the seeds of the united trees.

After Adam's death, Seth placed the three seeds in his mouth; a bush grew from them and in the middle of it was the “name of God”:

Ehjeh ascher ehjeh = I am I.

Moses formed his staff from the bush. This rod was eternally greening and was later kept in the Ark of the Covenant.

David planted the rod in the ground near Zion;

Solomon made

three columns

from its wood.

These are: Jakin, Boaz and M.

The Levites took the columns and threw them into the pool of Bethesda.

At the time of Christ, the columns were removed from the pool and laid in the form of a bridge over the Kedron stream.

Jesus crossed this bridge to the Mount of Olives.

Then his cross was made out of it.

Notes on the Golden Legend

Since only a few notes from instruction hours have been handed down, those given during the Munich Congress at Pentecost 1907 on the two columns set up there will be reproduced first.

From a lecture in Munich, May 21, 1907.

What do the two columns mean to the Rosicrucians? If one wants to explain these two columns, which are standing here before us, one must start from the so-called Golden Legend. This says:

When Seth, the son of Adam - who had taken the place of Abel - was ready, he was allowed to gain an insight into Paradise, he was allowed to pass the angel with the sword whirling in the fire, into the place from which man had been expelled. Then Seth saw something very special. He saw how the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, entwined each other. From these two entwined trees, Seth got three seeds, took them with him and put them in the mouth of his father Adam when he had died. From the grave of Adam then grew a mighty tree. This tree appeared to some who had psychic senses, as if it were aglow with fire, and this fire coiled itself for him who could see into the letters B, the first letters of two words that I am not authorized to pronounce here, but the meaning of which is: “I am who was there; I am who is there; I am who will be there.” This tree divided into three parts. Seth took wood from it, and it was used in many ways in the evolution of the world. A staff was made from it; the magic wand of Moses, legend says. It was the same wood that was used to form the beams of Solomon's Temple. There they remained as long as men comprehended the ancient secrets. Then the wood was thrown into a pool wherein, at certain seasons, the lame were made whole, and the blind received their sight. After it was taken out again, it formed the bridge over which the Redeemer passed as he made his way to the cross. And at last, so the legend goes, the cross itself, on which the Savior hung, was fashioned out of the wood of this tree, which had grown out of Adam's mouth after the seeds of the entwined trees of life and knowledge had been placed in his mouth.

This legend has a deep symbolic meaning. Remember the process, the transformation that the disciple must think of when he goes through the fourth stage of the Rosicrucian training: the production of the Philosopher's Stone. We remember that it has to do with a certain treatment of our red blood. Let us think of the significance of this red blood, not only because Goethe's saying “Blood is a very special juice” points this out to us, but because occultism has taught it at all times. The way this red blood appears is a result of breathing oxygen. We can only briefly point this out. When we are now referred to such an important moment in the legend and in the Bible, to the re-entry of Seth into Paradise, we must remember how man was brought out of Paradise. Man was driven out of Paradise, his ancient state in the bosom of the higher spiritual world, by the following event, which is already hinted at in the Bible as the physical process that goes hand in hand with the descent. Those who want to understand the Bible must learn to take it literally. It says: “God breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” This breathing of the breath was a process that is expressed here in pictorial terms and that extended over millions of years. What does it mean?

In the development of mankind, in the formation of the physical body, there were times when there were no lungs in the human body, so that oxygen could not yet be inhaled. There were times when man more or less floated in liquid elements, when he had an organ, a kind of swim bladder, from which the lungs later developed. This swim bladder from the past has been transformed into the lungs, and we can follow the process of transformation. When we do this, it shows itself to be the process that the Bible expresses with the image: “And God breathed into the man the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” It was only with this breathing in of the breath that the production of red blood became possible. Thus, the descent of man is connected with the production of the red blood tree in his interior.

Imagine a man standing before you, and you could only follow the trickling of the red blood: you would have before you a living red tree. Of this the Christian esoteric says: It is the Tree of Knowledge. Man has usurped it, he has enjoyed the red blood tree. The establishment of the red blood tree, which is the true tree of knowledge: that is sin. And God drove man out of the Garden of Eden, lest he should enjoy also of the Tree of Life. We have another tree in us, which you can just as easily imagine as the former. But it has red-blue blood. This blood is a substance of death. The red-blue tree was implanted in man at the same time as the other. When man rested in the bosom of the Godhead, the Deity in him was capable of intertwining what his life and knowledge mean. And in the future lies the point in time when man, through his expanded consciousness, will be able to transform the blue blood into the red; then within himself will be the source for the blue blood tree to be a tree of life. Today it is a tree of death. Thus in this picture there is a looking back and a looking forward!

You see that in man a red blood tree and a red-blue blood tree are entwined. The red blood expresses the I, it is the lower part of the knowledge of the I. The blue blood expresses death. As a punishment, the blue blood tree, the tree of death, was added to the red tree of knowledge. In the distant future, this Tree of Death will be transformed into the Tree of Life, just as it was originally a Tree of Life. If you form a mental image of the human being standing before you, you will see that their entire life is based on the interaction of these two trees. ¹

The fact that Seth was allowed to enter Paradise again means that he was an initiate and was allowed to look back to the divine-spiritual state where the two trees were entwined. And he put three seeds of the entwined trees into Adam's mouth, from which a tree divided into three arose. This means that the tree that grows out of man, Manas, Budhi, Atma, these three parts that make up the upper part of man, are found in him by nature. The legend thus indicates how the trinity of the divine is already in Adam in his human nature, how it grows out of him and how it is initially seen only by the initiate. Man must go his path of development. All the things that have taken place in the development of mankind and that lead to initiation are further expressed to us in the legend.

From the realization that the threefold tree rests within us, the tree of the eternal, which expresses itself in the words: “I am that was – I am that is – I am that will be!” we gain the power that moves us forward and gives us the magic wand. Hence Moses' magic wand; hence the wood of the tree growing out of the seed is taken to the temple of wisdom; hence the cross is hewn out of it, that sign of initiation which signifies the overcoming of the lower limbs in man by the three higher ones.

Thus this legend shows how the initiate looks forward to a future state in which the tree of knowledge - the red blood tree - and the tree of life - the blue-red blood tree - will be entwined, where they will intertwine in man himself. Now, he who wishes to develop inscribes in his heart what the two columns - the red column on the one hand, suggesting the red blood column; the blue-red, suggesting the blue blood column - want to tell us. Today, both are separate. Therefore, in the hall, the red column stands on the left and the blue-red column on the right. They want to challenge us to overcome the present state of humanity, to direct our path to the point where, through our expanded consciousness, they will intertwine in a way that is called: J-B. The red column is designated J, the blue-red column B.

The sayings on the columns will help you to visualize the connection between the individual columns. The words on the red column are:

In pure thoughts you will find
the self that can sustain itself.

When you shape your thoughts,
you experience the creative wisdom.

Those who meditate on this instill into their red pillar of blood, through the power of their thought, the power that leads to the goal: the pillar of wisdom.

The power needed for the pillar of life is implanted by surrendering to the thought that stands on the other, the blue column:

If you condense feeling into light,
you reveal the creative power.

If you reify will into being,
So you create in the world being.

Some words lead to knowledge, others to life. The formative power first “reveals” itself in the sense of the first saying; it only becomes “magical” in the sense of the second saying. The transition from mere power of knowledge to magical working lies in the transition from the power of the saying on the first column to that of the saying on the second.

Thus you see how what these symbols, the two columns, mean, is directly related to the ideals and goals of the Rosicrucian student. In some esoteric societies, these two columns are also erected. The esotericist will always associate the meaning that has been attached to them. ²

From a teaching session in Munich, December 12, 1906

The Second Master Legend ³tells us of Seth, the son of Adam, who is initiated into the priestly wisdom, is allowed to enter Paradise again, takes three seeds from there, places them in the mouth of his father Adam when he died, and from which the fresh bush then grows. The rod with which Moses performs his miracles is made from its wood; it is the burning bush in which the Lord appears to Moses. The gate of Solomon's Temple is made from its wood: two columns with the beam above, which was thrown into the pool of Bethesda, generating its healing power. This wood was laid across the Kidron Valley, which Christ crossed after the betrayal on the Mount of Olives. And from this beam, Christ's cross was then made.

The red blood and the blue blood mean the Pillar of Wisdom and the Pillar of Strength. Man must be able to stand on these two pillars. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge were entwined in paradise to form one tree. And the tree of life and the tree of knowledge will become one tree again for the wise, for the initiate; it had to be separated into two trees for man.

The writing that appeared to Moses in the burning bush: “Ejeh asher ejeh!” is translated as: “I am that I am; I was that I will be!”

With birth and death, man has paid for his knowledge. The angel Gabriel is the one who guards the threshold of paradise with a fiery sword as the guardian of paradise.

Instruction session for the 2nd Berlin, December 1911 without date

Thus the angel appeared to Adam in Paradise under the fig tree. Adam saw this sign as the angel's image and Adam vowed that he would never stray from the power that is documented in J-B.

And Adam always found strength and fulfillment when he sought out the place where the apparition was possible.

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But in the Lemurian time he had done just that and strayed from the power of J.B. through Lucifer, who brought temptation. And when Adam sought out the place of the angel's appearance again, he now felt terror over his own being there. The pentagram was fallen, open on one side (and thus) turned upside down. It was in this sign that the angel now appeared to Adam, threatening him with the fiery sword, and Adam fled.

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Participant records without location or date

Adam had two sons, Abel and Cain.
Abel means wisdom
Cain means strength. Cain killed Abel.
Another son was born to Adam: Seth.
Seth means piety, which connects wisdom
with strength.

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Adam died, and Seth put three seeds in his mouth. From these seeds three branches sprouted from one trunk. This grew. The thorn bush in which Jehovah appeared to Moses had grown from this trunk. The two columns of the temple of Solomon were made from this wood. But it turned out that there was no place for the third trunk to join the two columns, it did not fit anywhere. So they threw it into the pool of Bethesda. When the Lord came, he gave a power to the pond, and the trunk came up again. It was lifted up and laid as a bridge over the Kidron brook. Now over this bridge the Lord went on the way to Golgotha. The cross, which he carried, was also carved out of wood and he broke down under the load.

The crossbeam, which is to connect wisdom and strength, is the principle of piety, love, beauty. In pre-Christian times there was no place for it in the world. When Christ Jesus came, as the bearer of Budhi, his power could lift this beam out of the water - the astral plane - in which it rested. A river was bridged with it (the way to the higher worlds). He crossed it on his way of suffering when He offered Himself as a sacrifice for humanity. This could only be done through love, purified, refined love; hence the way over this beam.

The cross was also cut from this wood. He had to bear and suffer under His love for humanity. But in Him love and knowledge were united. Therefore his sacrifice was a perfect and eternal one, and the three tribes of wisdom, beauty, and strength were united, for beauty had found its place. In the future, the three tribes, which had flowed apart like three streams, would grow together like three streams that then flow together again, and come to full effect in unity.

Seth connects the hostile brothers Abel and Cain.

The connection between wisdom and strength is piety or love or beauty.

For the meaning of the name of the column, see “Signs, Handles and Words” on pages 272f.

An historical aspect of the significance of the two columns was developed in the lecture Berlin, June 20, 1916 (third lecture of the cycle “Weltwesen und Ichheit”, CW 169) as follows:

It is truly the case that we move through the whole of life as the sun moves through the twelve constellations. We enter our life with our consciousness for the senses, as it were, rising at one column of the world and setting at the other. We pass between these columns when we enter the starry sky, as it were, from the night side into the day side. These occult or symbolic societies also always sought to point this out by calling the column of birth, which a person passes through when they enter the life of the day side, Jakim. They have to look for this column in the sky in the end. And what is outside during the time between death and a new birth is the perception of the sense of touch spread over the whole world, where we do not touch but are touched, where we feel how spiritual beings touch us everywhere, while we touch the other. During the life between death and a new birth, we live in motion within it, so that we feel this motion as if a blood corpuscle or a muscle here within us were feeling its own motion. In the macrocosm, we feel ourselves moving between death and a new birth, we feel the balance, and in the life of the whole we feel ourselves within it. Here our life is closed in our skin, but there we feel ourselves inside the total, the All-life and in every situation we give ourselves our balance. Here the gravity of the earth and our particular body constitution give us balance, and we actually know nothing about it. At all times we feel the balance in the life between death and a new birth. This is an immediate sensation, the other side of the soul life. Man enters into earthly life through Jakim, and he affirms through Jakim: That which is outside in the macrocosm now lives in you; you are now a microcosm, because the word 'Jakim' means: In you the divine poured out over the world.

Boaz, the other column: entering the spiritual world through death. What is summarized in the word Boaz means something like: What I have been seeking in myself so far, the strength, I will find poured out over the whole world, in it I will live. But one can only understand such things by penetrating into them through spiritual knowledge. In the symbolic brotherhoods they are symbolically hinted at. They are hinted at more in our fifth post-Atlantic period for the reason that they may not be lost to humanity altogether, so that later on there may be people who will understand what has been preserved in the Word.

But you see, everything that takes place outwardly in our world is also a reflection of what exists outside in the macrocosm. Just as our soul life is a microcosm, in the sense that I have indicated to you, so too is the soul life of humanity, in a sense, formed from the macrocosm. And for our time, it is very significant to have the two images of the two columns that I have spoken of delivered in our history. These columns represent life one-sidedly, because life is only in a state of equilibrium between the two. Neither is Jakim the life, because it is the transition from the spiritual to the body, nor is Boas the life, because it is the transition from the body to the spirit. It is the balance that is important. And that is what people find so difficult to understand. People always look for one side, always the extreme, they do not look for the balance. That is why, in a sense, two pillars really do stand for our time, but if we understand our time correctly, we must go right through the middle of them, not fantasize either the one pillar or the other into being the fundamental force of humanity, but go right through the middle of them! We must really grasp what is present in reality, not brood over it in the thoughtless life in which today's materialism broods. If you look for the Jakim column today, you will find it in our present time. The Jakim column exists in a very important man who is no longer alive, who has already died, but it exists: it is present in Tolstoyism.

Consider that in Tolstoy a man appeared who basically wanted to distract all people from the outer life, wanted to refer entirely to the inner life - I spoke about Tolstoy in the early days of our anthroposophical movement - who wanted to refer entirely to what is going on inside the human being. Tolstoy did not see the spirit in outer activity, a one-sidedness that struck me as particularly characteristic when I spoke about Tolstoy back then – it was one of the very first lectures of the very first years that were held here. At the time, Tolstoy could still be shown through a friend of ours. Tolstoy understood the first two-thirds, but not the last third, because it was about reincarnation and karma; he did not understand that. He described the one-sidedness, the complete suppression of the outer life. And how endlessly painful it is to realize that he is describing such one-sidedness! Just imagine the tremendous contrast between the Tolstoyan views, which dominate a large part of Russia's intellectuals, and what is now once again rolling over from there in these days. Oh, it is one of the most terrible contrasts imaginable! That is one-sidedness.

The other, the Boaz column, also finds expression in our time in historical terms. It likewise represents a one-sidedness. It is the search for spirituality in the outer world alone. A few decades ago, it appeared in America, where I would say the antipode of Tolstoy emerged in Keely, before whose soul stood the ideal of constructing an engine that is not driven by steam or electricity, but by those waves that a person themselves excites in their tone and in their speech. Imagine an engine that is designed to be set in motion by the vibrations that you create when you speak, or that you can create as a human being with your soul. It was still an ideal, thank God, that it was an ideal back then, because what would this war have become if Keely's ideal had actually been realized back then! If it is ever realized, only then will we see what the attunement of vibrations in external motor power means. That is the other one-sidedness. That is the Boaz column. We must pass between the two. The symbols that have been preserved contain much, much. Our time is called upon to understand these things, to penetrate into them. The contrast that will one day be felt between all that is truly spiritual and that which will arise from the West when the Keely engine becomes a reality will be quite different from the contrast that exists between Tolstoy's views and that which is emerging from the East. Oh, there is no need to talk about that!

But it is necessary that we gradually delve a little into the secrets of the development of humanity, that we recognize how, in the wisdom of man, what once becomes reality in different stages is expressed throughout the millennia, either symbolically or in some other way.

The Golden Legend

This legend was also told and explained in various ways in the lectures given by members during the preparation of the working group on the cult of knowledge. See the lectures Berlin, May 29, 1905; Leipzig, December 15, 1906; Berlin, December 17, 1906; Munich, May 21, 1907; Kassel, June 29, 1907; Basel, November 25, 1907; Dornach, December 19, 1915. When it was first presented in the lecture in Berlin on May 29, 1905, it was called the Legend of the Cross of the Middle Ages, but from then on it was always referred to as the “Golden Legend”. This naming was certainly not done after the name of the collection of legends “Legenda aurea” by Jacobus de Voragine from the 13th century, but is likely to be more esoterically based. Because according to the explanations, the images of the legend are an expression of the fourth stage of the Rosicrucian initiation, which is referred to as the finding of the Philosopher's Stone, which is also called the “golden” one.

In the collection “Legenda aurea”, the legend can be found under the title “Of the Finding of the Holy Cross”. The corresponding part reads as follows: “When Adam was sick, his son Seth went to the gate of earthly paradise and desired oil from the tree of compassion to anoint his father Adam's body and make him healthy. Then the archangel Michael appeared to him and said: “Do not seek to obtain the oil of the Tree of Compassion and do not weep for it, for this shall not be yours until five thousand and five hundred years have passed.” Yet it is believed that no more than five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine years have passed between Adam and Christ's suffering. We also read that the angel gave Seth a little twig and told him to plant it on Mount Lebanon. In a Greek story, which is apocryphal, we find that the angel gave Seth of the wood where Adam had sinned, saying, “When this twig bears fruit, your father will be healed.” When Seth returned home, his father had already died; so he planted the branch on his grave, and the branch grew and became a great tree, lasting until the time of Solomon. Whether this is true or not, we leave to the reader's judgment, for we find it written in no proven history or chronicle. When Solomon saw how beautiful the tree was, he had it cut down and gave it to build the forest house. But the wood did not fit into any place of the house, as Johannes Beleth writes to us, for it was always too long or too short; because if you had shortened it according to the right measure for a place, it was so short that it never fit into it. The builders were angry and rejected the wood; and they laid it over a lake so that it could be used as a footbridge for those who wanted to cross. But when the Queen of Sheba had heard of Solomon's wisdom and was on her way to him across the lake, she saw in a vision that the Savior of the world would one day be suspended from this wood; so she did not want to walk across the wood, but knelt down and worshiped it. But in the Historia Scholastica it is said that the Queen of Sheba saw the wood in the forest house, and when she returned home to her country, she commanded Solomon that a man would be hanged on that wood, through whose death the kingdom of the Jews would be destroyed. So Solomon took the wood and had it buried deep in the bosom of the earth. After a long time, the Sheep Pond was built over the same place, where the Nathinäer washed the sacrificial animals; and so the movement of the water and the healing of the sick happened not only through the coming of the angel, but also through the power of the wood. Danun approached the suffering of Christ, when the wood floated up; when the Jews saw it, they took it and prepared the cross of the Lord from it.” The oldest literary-historical basis is considered to be the tradition, cited by the Alexandrian church teacher Origines in the 2nd century, of Adam's burial at Golgotha, to which the tradition of Nicodemus's gospel of Seth's mission to paradise is added in the 3rd century; originally with the version that Seth fetched the oil of mercy from the tree of life for his sick father Adam. It was only in later centuries that the genealogical connection between the wood of the tree of paradise and the cross of Christ appeared in various versions. The legend of the three grains of wheat forms a separate group within the “extremely complicated tangle of legends”, which emerged from the 12th century onwards. (See the religious historical studies by Otto Zöckler “The Cross of Christ”, chapter “The Legends of the Cross of Wood in the Middle Ages.” Gütersloh 1875).

Rudolf Steiner, who freely uses these and other elements in his various renditions, but above all has Seth retrieve the three seeds from the two paradise trees entwined into one, traces the origin of the legend back much further, to the pre-Christian mysteries. When he was asked about the legend for the first time in the lecture Berlin, May 29, 1905, he was asked whether it was very old. He replied that although it only appears in the literature of the Middle Ages, it was already part of the mysteries and had simply not been written down. It ties in with the Antiochian Adonis Mysteries, in which the crucifixion, entombment and resurrection were celebrated as an outward reflection of the inner initiation. The mourning women at the cross, who appear in Christianity in Mary and Mary Magdalene, also appeared in the Adonis Mysteries. Similar things happened in the Apis, Mithras and Osiris Mysteries. What was then still apocalyptic was fulfilled in Christianity. Just as John presents the future in his Apocalypse, so similarly the old apocalypses were transformed into new legends. The Queen of Sheba is the one who looked deeper and recognized the actual wisdom. In the lecture Kassel, June 29, 1907, the legend is also characterized as the teaching content of occultism since “ancient times.” It says there about Seth that “his mission” was always understood to be that he sees what “is at the end of time: the balancing of the two principles in man himself.” The two principles here refer to the red and red-blue blood trees, symbolized by the two columns.

These not only figured in the cult of knowledge, but also formed an essential element in the design of the Munich Congress at Pentecost 1907. They were set up in front of the stage and also depicted pictorially in the fourth mural of the seven apocalyptic seals, connected by a seven-colored rainbow. Since the premiere of the third mystery drama, “The Guardian of the Threshold” (1912), they have been part of the scenery of the last scene (temple) due to Rudolf Steiner's stage direction.

In the lecture on the design of the congress hall in Munich, May 21, 1907, it says that the red column (to the left of the spectator) is designated by J, and the blue one (to the right of the spectator) by B, and that these letters are the initials of two words which he is not authorized to pronounce here, he certainly did not mean the names Jakin and Boas, known from the Bible (1 Kings 7:21), which were taken over by Freemasonry. This is evident from the report on the congress for the magazine “Lucifer-Gnosis”, according to which these letters on the columns point to the secret of development associated with them, which Rudolf Steiner presented in a modern, spiritual-scientific way, in a way “known only to the initiated”. All the interpretations given in public writings or in certain societies remain only a superficial exoteric interpretation.

Nevertheless, such an interpretation will be used here because it sheds light on the significance of the columns in cultural history. In the “Comparative Handbook of the Symbolism of Freemasonry with Special Consideration of the Mythologies and Mysteries of Antiquity” by Joseph Schauberg, Schaffhausen 1861 (in Rudolf Steiner's library), it says in volume I, pages 205f., that in the masonic lodge, the ascending sun and the descending moon are not without significance, standing opposite the two columns. Their significance as the eternal change of “day and night, light and darkness, becoming and passing away, life and death, good and evil, pure and impure, true and false” belonged to the most ancient times of the Egyptians and Semites and “presumably the two towers of the cathedrals and churches of the Christian Germanic peoples of the Middle Ages also emerged from this... In Egypt, two tall obelisks were often erected in front of the entrance to the temple, and in Egyptian these obelisks are called the sun's rays... Among the Semitic peoples, especially among the Syrian tribes and the Phoenicians, two columns of wood, bronze or stone appear in the sanctuaries of the gods as divine symbols. Thus in the ancient temple of Melkarth at Tyre, which shone with gold as the symbol of the splendor of sunlight, i.e. the city king, there stood two famous columns, one of pure gold, which King Hiram, the contemporary and friend of King Solomon, had erected; the other of emerald stone, which shone gloriously at night. In the temple of Melkarth at Gades there were also two columns of brass, eight cubits high, on which the costs of the temple's construction were recorded. But the greatest columns were said to have been erected by the god himself at the end of the earth, the rock mountains Calpe and Abylyx on the Strait of Gibraltar. According to coins found, two trees, especially two cypresses, also appear to have stood at the entrance of some temples in Syria as symbols of the sun and moon. In front of the eastern side of Solomon's Temple stood the two columns Jakin and Boaz, whose names were transferred to the two columns of the masons' lodges. Movers explains Jakin from the Phoenician as the fixed, the upright, Boaz as the moving or progressing...

The columns are also called Sets or Seth's columns of the sun god, since Set - according to Bunsen, Egypt's place in world history V, $. 291 - is the oldest documented name of the sun god... Incidentally, in Hebrew, as in Egyptian, Set also means the column itself, in fact, anything upright, raised, or tall...»

In volume II, page 203, the following passage is quoted from the Masonic Constitutional Charter of York from the year 926: «Cain's son, Enoch, was especially a great builder and astrologer. He foresaw in the stars that the world would one day be destroyed by water and another time by fire, and therefore set up two great pillars, one of stone and the other of clay, on which he wrote the basic principles of the arts, so that the sciences of Adam and his descendants might not be lost.

"These are therefore the Pillars of Seth or Enoch, as the two columns Jakin and Boaz are also called, without, however, this Jewish-Masonic myth being given much use in today's Freemasonry... ”

An explanation of the columns as “world columns”, as columns of birth and death and the names Jakin and Boas, is given by Rudolf Steiner in the lecture Berlin, June 20, 1916: “Man enters into earthly life through Jakin, affirming through Jakin: that which is outside in the macrocosm, that now lives in you, you are now a microcosm, because that is what the word “Yakin” means: in you the divine poured out over the world.” ”Boaz, the other column: the entry through death into the spiritual world. What is summarized in the word Boaz means something like this: What I have been seeking in myself, the strength, I will find poured out over the whole world, and I will live in it.

This characterization is followed by the essential indication that the columns, however, represent life only one-sidedly, because life is only in the state of equilibrium between the two: “Neither is Jakin the life, because it is the transition from the spiritual to the body, nor is Boas the life, because it is the transition from the body to the spiritual. Equilibrium is what matters.” This balance was pictorially represented by Rudolf Steiner on the fourth apocalyptic seal - as a new element compared to the traditional tradition - by the rainbow connecting the two columns."

• 1. A description of the connection between the two columns and birth and death can be found in the lecture Kassel, 7 July 1909; the pictorial representation in the great dome of the first Goetheanum (in the triple motif “I-A-O” above the stage arch) also points to this aspect. See “Twelve Sketches for the Painting of the Great Dome of the First Goetheanum”, an art portfolio, Dornach 1930, and Hilde Raske “Das Farbenwort”, Stuttgart 1983.
• 2. In the lecture in Dornach on December 29, 1918, it is pointed out that the columns in today's secret societies can no longer be set up in the right way, nor should they be set up, because the right way to set them up only becomes apparent in a truly inwardly experienced initiation. Furthermore, they cannot be set up in the way they actually appear when man leaves his body in death or in initiation.
• 3. The first master legend is the legend of the temple.