The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If you were in the Cathedral last night you could have seen written there in illuminated lettering: C. M. B. As you will all know, these letters represent the names of the so-called Three Holy Kings, according to the tradition of the Christian Church: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar. These names awaken quite special memories for Cologne. An old legend tells us that some time after they had become bishops and died their bones had been brought here. Another legend relates that a Danish king had once come to Cologne, bringing with him three crowns for the Three Holy Kings. After he had returned home he had a dream; in his dream the three kings appeared to him and offered him three chalices: the first chalice contained gold, the second frankincense, and the third one myrrh. When the Danish king awoke the three kings had vanished, but the chalices remained; they stood before him; the three gifts which he had retained from his dream.

In this legend there is profound meaning. We are to understand that the king in his dream attained a certain insight into the spiritual world by which he learnt the symbolic meaning of these three kings, these three wise men of the East who brought offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Christ Jesus. And from this realisation he retained a lasting possession: those three human virtues which are symbolised in the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh: self-knowledge in the gold; self-piety, that is the piety of the innermost self—which we can call self-surrender—in the frankincense; and in the myrrh self-consummation and self-development, or the preservation of the eternal in the self.

It was possible for the king to receive these three virtues as gifts from another world because he had endeavoured to penetrate with his whole soul into the profound symbol lying concealed in the three kings who brought their offerings to Christ Jesus.

There are many features in this legend which lead us a long way towards understanding the Christ-principle, and what it is to bring about in the world. Among its profound features are the Adoration and the Presentation by the three Magi, the three Oriental Kings, and only with the deepest understanding may we approach this fundamental symbolism of the Christian tradition. Later the idea was formed that the first king was the representative of the Asiatic races; the second, the representative of the European peoples; and the third, the representative of the African races. Wherever people wanted to understand Christianity as the religion of earthly harmony they saw in the three kings and their homage a union of the different lines of thought and religious movements in the world into the One principle, the Christian principle. When this legend received this form those who had penetrated into the principles of esoteric Christianity saw in Christianity not only a force which had affected the course of human development, but they saw in the Being embodied in Jesus of Nazareth a cosmic world-force—a force far transcending the merely human that prevails in this present age. They saw in the Christ-principle a force that indeed represents for mankind a human ideal lying in a far distant future, an ideal which can only be approached by our understanding the whole world more and more in the spirit. They saw in man, in the first place, a miniature being, a miniature world, a microcosm, an image of the macrocosm, the great, all-embracing world. This macrocosm comprises all that man can perceive with his external senses, see with his eyes, hear with his ears, but comprises, besides, all that the spirit could perceive from the perceptions of the least developed human spirit up to perceptions in the spiritual world. This was how the esoteric Christian of the earliest times regarded the world. All he saw in the firmament or on our earth, all he saw as thunder and lightning, as storm and rain, as sunshine, as the course of the stars, as sunrise and sunset, as moonrise and the setting of the moon—all this was for him a gesture, something like a mimicry, an external expression of inner spiritual processes. The esoteric Christian looks on the universe as he looks on the human body. When he looks on the human body he sees it as consisting of different limbs: the head, arms, hands, and so on. When he looks on the human body and sees the movements of hand, eye, etc., these are for him the expression of the inner spiritual and psychic experiences. In the same way as he looked through the human limbs, and their movements, into that which is eternal, spiritual in man, the esoteric Christian regarded the movements of the stars, the light that streams down from the stars to humanity, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and setting of the moon, as the external expression of divine-spiritual Beings pervading all space. All these natural phenomena were to him deeds of the gods, gestures of the gods, expressions in mime of those divine-spiritual Beings, as also was everything that occurs among mankind, when people establish social communities, when they submit to moral commandments and regulate their dealings through laws, when from the forces of nature they create instruments for themselves. These implements, indeed, they make with the help of the forces of nature, but in a form in which they are not to be found directly. All that was done in humanity, more or less unconsciously, was for the esoteric Christian the external expression of inner divine-spiritual sway. But the esoteric Christian did not confine himself to such general forms, he pointed to quite definite single gestures, single parts of the physiognomy of the universe, of the mimes of the universe, in order to see in these single parts quite definite expressions of the spiritual. When he pointed to the sun he said: The sun is not merely an external, physical body; this external, physical solar body is the body of a spiritual-psychic Being; one of those psychic-spiritual Beings who are the rulers, the leaders of all earthly fate, the leaders of all natural occurrences on the earth, but also of all that happens in human, social life, in the relationship of men among each other as determined by laws. When the esoteric Christian looked up to the sun he revered in the sun the external revelation of his Christ. In the first place the Christ was for him the sun's soul, and the esoteric Christian said: “From the beginning the sun was the body of the Christ, but men on earth and the earth itself were not yet matured for receiving the spiritual light, the Christ-light, which streams from the sun. Men had, therefore, to be prepared for the Christ-light.”

Then the esoteric Christian looked up at the moon and saw that the moon reflects the light of the sun, but more feebly than the sun's light itself; and he said to himself: “If I look with my physical eyes into the sun I am dazzled by its shining light; if I look into the moon I am not dazzled; it reflects in a feebler degree the shining light of the sun.” In this subdued sunlight, in this moonlight, pouring down on the earth, the esoteric Christian saw the physiognomical expression of the old Jehovah-principle, the expression of the religion of the old law. And he said: “Before the Christ-principle, the Sun of Righteousness, could appear on earth, the Jahve-principle had to send down on earth this light of righteousness, toned down in the Law, to prepare the way.” And so what lay in the old Jehovah-principle, in the old Law—the spiritual light of the moon—was for the esoteric Christian the reflected spiritual light of the higher Christ-principle. And with the pupils of the ancient Mysteries the esoteric Christian—until far into the Middle Ages—saw in the sun the expression of the spiritual light ruling the earth, the Christ-light, and in the moon the expression of the reflected Christ-light, which would blind man in its full strength. And in the earth itself the esoteric Christian saw with the pupils of the ancient mysteries that which at times disguised, and veiled for him, the blinding sunlight of the spirit. And for him the earth was just as much the physical expression of a spirit as was every other bodily form an expression of something spiritual. He imagined that when the sun looked visibly down on the earth, when it sent down its rays, beginning in the Spring and continuing through the summer, and called forth from the earth all the budding and sprouting life, and when it had culminated in the long summer days—then the esoteric Christian imagined that the sun cherished and maintained the external, up-shooting life, the physical life. In the plants, springing from the soil, in the animals unfolding their fertility in these seasons, the esoteric Christian saw the same principle, in an external, physical form, that he saw in the Beings whose external expression the sun was. But when the days became shorter, when autumn and winter approached, the esoteric Christian said: the sun withdraws its physical power more and more from the earth. But in the same degree as the sun's physical power is withdrawn from the earth, its spiritual power increases and flows to the earth most intensively when the shortest days come, with the long nights, in the season afterwards fixed by the Christmas festival. Man cannot see this spiritual power of the sun. He would see it, said the esoteric

Christian, if he possessed the inner power of spiritual vision. And the esoteric Christian had still a consciousness of what was a fundamental conviction and experience of the Mystery-pupils from the earliest times into the newer age.

In those nights, now fixed by the festival of Christmas, the Mystery-pupils were prepared for the experience of inner spiritual vision, so that they could see inwardly, spiritually, that which at this time withdrew its physical power from the earth most completely. In the long Christmas winter night the novice was far enough advanced to have a vision at midnight. The earth was then no longer a veil for the sun, which stood behind the earth. It became transparent for him. Through the transparent earth he saw the spiritual light of the sun, the Christ-light. This fact, which marks a profound experience for the mystery-novice, was recorded in the expression: To see the sun at midnight.

There are places where the churches, otherwise open all day, are closed at noon. This is a fact which connects Christianity with the traditions of ancient religious faiths. In ancient religious faiths the Mystery-pupils said, on the strength of their experience: “At noon, when the sun stands highest, when it unfolds the strongest physical power, the gods are asleep, and they sleep the deepest sleep in summer, when the sun develops its strongest physical power. But they are widest awake on Christmas night, when the external physical power of the sun is weakest.”

We see that all forms of life which desire to unfold their external physical power look up to the sun when the sun rises in the sky in Spring and strive to receive the external physical power of the sun. But when, on a summer noon, the sun's physical power pours most lavishly on to the earth, its spiritual power is weakest. In the winter midnight, however, when the sun rays the least physical power down to the earth, man can see the sun's spirit through the earth, which has become transparent for him. The esoteric Christian felt that through absorption in Christian Esotericism he approached more and more that power of inward vision through which he could imbue his feeling, thinking and his will-impulses in gazing into this spiritual sun. Then the Mystery-novice was led to a vision of the greatest importance: As long as the earth is opaque the separate parts appear inhabited by people of different confessions, but the unifying bond is not there. Human races are as scattered as the climates. Human opinions are scattered all over the earth and there is no connecting link. But in the degree in which men begin to look through the earth into the sun by their inner power of vision, in the degree in which the “star” appears to them through the earth, their confessions will flow together to one great united Brotherhood. And those who guided the great separated human masses in the truth of the higher planes, towards their initiation into the higher worlds, were known as “Magi.” They were three in number, as in the various parts of the earth various powers express themselves. Humanity had, therefore, to be led in different ways. But as a unifying power there appears the star, rising beyond the earth. It leads the scattered individuals together, and then they bring offerings to the physical embodiment of the solar star, appearing as the star of peace. Thus was the religion of peace, of harmony, of universal peace, of human brotherhood, connected cosmically and humanly with the ancient Magi, who laid the best gifts that they had in store for humanity before the cradle of the Son of Man incarnate.

The legend has retained this beautifully, for it says: The Danish king attained an understanding of the Wise Men, of the three Kings, and because he had attained it they bestowed on him their three gifts: first the gift of wisdom, in self-knowledge; secondly, the gift of pious devotion, in self-surrender; and, thirdly, the gift of the victory of life over death, in the power and development of the eternal in the self.

All those who have understood Christianity in this way have seen in it the profound idea in spiritual science of the unification of religions. For they had the firm conviction that whoever understands Christianity thus can rise to the highest grade of human development.

One of the last of the Germans to understand Christianity in this way is Goethe, and Goethe has laid down for us this kind of Christianity, this kind of religious reconciliation, this kind of theosophy, in the profound poem, The Mysteries, which has, indeed, remained a fragment but which shows us in a deeply significant way the inner spiritual development of one who is penetrated and convinced by the feelings and ideas that I have just described. Goethe first invites us to follow the pilgrim-path of such a man, but indicates that this pilgrim-path may lead us far astray, that it is not easy to find it, and that one must have patience and devotion to reach the goal. Whoever possesses these will find the light that he seeks. Let us hear the beginning of the poem:—

A wondrous song is here prepared for many.
Hear it with joy! Tell all from far and near!
The way will lead you out o'er mount and valley;
Now is the view obscured, now wide and clear,
And if the path should glide into the bushes,
That you have gone astray, you need not fear,
For by a persevering, patient climb
We shall draw near our goal, when it is time.

But no one will, despite profound reflection,
Unravel all the wonders hidden here:
Our mother earth brings forth so many flowers,
And many shall find something to revere;
Maybe that one will gloomily forsake us,
Another stays with gestures full of cheer:
For many wand'ring pilgrims flows the spring,
To each a different pleasure it will bring.

This is the situation to which we are introduced. We are shown; a pilgrim who, if we were to ask him, would not be able to say in formal words what we have just seen to be the esoteric Christian idea—but a pilgrim in whose heart and soul these ideas live, transformed into feeling. It is not easy to discover everything that has been secreted into this poem called The Mysteries. Goethe has clearly indicated a process occurring in human life, in which the highest ideas, thoughts and conceptions are transformed into feelings and perceptions. How does this transformation take place?

We live through many embodiments, from incarnation to incarnation. In each one we learn things of many kinds; each one is full of opportunities for gathering new experiences. It is impossible for us to carry over from one incarnation to the other everything in every detail. When we are born again it is not necessary for everything that we have once learnt to come to life in every detail. But if we have learnt a great deal in one incarnation, and die and are born anew, although there is no need for all our ideas to live again, we come to life with the fruits of our former life, with the fruits of what we have learnt. The powers of perception and feeling are in accord with our earlier incarnations.

In this poem of Goethe's we have a wonderful phenomenon: a man who, in the simplest words—as a child might speak, not in definite intellectual or abstract terms—shows us the highest wisdom, which is a fruit of former knowledge. He has transformed this knowledge into feeling and experience and is thereby qualified to lead others who have perhaps learnt more in the form of concepts. Such a pilgrim, with a ripe soul, which has transformed into direct feeling and experience much of the knowledge which it has gathered in earlier incarnations—such a pilgrim we have before us in Brother Mark. As a member of a secret Brotherhood he is sent out on an important mission to another secret Brotherhood. He wanders through many different districts, and when he is getting tired he comes to a mountain. He journeys up the path at last—(every feature in this poem has a deep significance)—and when he has climbed the mountain he finds himself before a monastery. This monastery here indicates the other Brotherhood to which he has been sent. Over the gate of the jnonastery he sees something unusual. He sees the Cross, but in unusual guise; the cross is garlanded with roses! And at this point he utters a significant word that only he can understand who knows how again and again that motto has been spoken in secret Brotherhoods: “Who added to the Cross the wreath of Roses?” And round the Cross he sees the Triangle shine, radiating beams like the sun. There is no need for him to understand in ideas the meaning of this profound symbol. The experience and understanding of it live already in his soul, in his ripe soul. His ripe soul knows its inner meaning. What is the meaning of the Cross? He knows that the Cross is a symbol for many things; among many others, for the threefold lower nature of man; the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. In him the “I,” the Self is-born. In the Rose-Cross we have the fourfold man: in the Cross the physical man, the etheric man and the astral man, and in the roses the Self. Why roses for the Self?—the esoteric Christian added roses to the Cross because by the Christ principle he felt called upon to develop the Self more and more from the state in which it is born in the three bodies, to an ever higher Self. In the Christ-principle he saw the power to develop this Self higher and higher. The Cross is the symbol of death in a quite particular sense. This, too, Goethe expresses in another beautiful passage when he says:

And until thou truly hast
This “dying and becoming,”
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

“Die and be re-born”—overcome what you have first been given in the three lower bodies: deaden it, not out of a desire for death, but purify what is in these three bodies so as to attain in your Self the power to receive an ever greater perfection. If you overcome what is given you in the three lower bodies, the power of consummation will live in the Self. In the Self must the Christian absorb in the Christ-principle this power of consummation down to the very blood. Right into the blood this power must work.

Blood is the expression of the Self, the “I.” In the red roses the esoteric Christian saw the power of the Christ-principle purifying and cleansing the blood, thus purifying the Self, and so guiding man upwards to his higher being—he saw the power that transforms the astral body into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life-Spirit, the physical body into Spirit Man. Thus the Rose-Cross in its connection with the triangle shows us the Christ-principle in profound symbolism. The pilgrim, Brother Mark, who arrives here, knows that he is at a place where the profoundest meaning of Christianity is understood.

Full weary by a long and tiring journey,
With a sublimest motive underta'en,
A pilgrim, brother Mark, came through the thicket,
With staff in hand, his footsteps to sustain,
And longing for a little food and drinking,
One beauteous eve he reached a quiet plain.
Its wooded gorges soothing hope bestowed
Beneath a friendly roof to find abode.

But lo! a path he scarcely can distinguish,
High up a mountain steep before him wending.
He follows it, as more and more it rises,
In curvings in and out the boulders bending,
Until again by sunlight warm enveloped,
He turns and sees how fast he is ascending.
At last the summit comes within his sight,
Inspiring him with heart-felt, deep delight.

Next it the sun, majestic in its setting,
Enthroned 'mong clouds within the dark'ning sky.
Now for the peak! For all his weary toiling
He hopes to be rewarded there on high.
O'erlooking all the country 'fore him spreading,
A human home he will perchance espy.
And while he climbs, oh sound how full of cheer!
The chime of bells is wafted to his ear.

And as at length he has attained the summit,
Below a softly sloping valley lies.
His quiet look with inward pleasure brightens;
Before the forest full of joy he spies
A stately building in a greening field,
Which the departing sun with lustre dyes.
E'er long he nears through meadows dewy damp
A monastery lit with gleaming lamp.

He soon arrives outside the quiet homestead,
With hope and peacefulness his soul enfolding,
And on the arch above the closed portal
A symbol full of mystery beholding.
He stands and ponders, whispers words of prayer,
The deep devotion of his heart unfolding;
He ponders long: What does this sign convey?
The sun has set, the chiming dies away.

The sign he sees erected here on high
That brings consoling hope to all mankind,
Which many thousands pledged their lives to shield,
To which in fervour prayed the human mind,
That has destroyed the bitter powers of death,
On victors' banners fluttered in the wind:
A stream of comfort permeates his being,
He sees the cross and bows his head in seeing.

He feels anew the faith of all on earth,
The power of salvation streaming thence;
But as he looks, he feels his very soul
Pervaded by a new and unknown sense:
Who added to the cross the wreath of roses?
It is entwined by blooming, clusters dense,
Profusely spreading just as though they could
Endow with softness e'en the rigid wood.

While light and silv'ry clouds, around it soaring,
Seem heavenward with cross and roses flowing,
And from the midst like living waters streaming
A threefold ray from out one core is glowing;
But not a word surrounds the holy token,
The meaning of the symbol clearly showing.
And while the dusk is gath'ring grey and greyer,
He stands and ponders and is lost in prayer.

The spirit of deepest Christianity which pervades this dwelling is expressed in the cross entwined by roses, and as the pilgrim enters he is actually received in this spirit. When he enters he becomes aware that in this house not this or that religion holds sway—but that there rules here the higher Oneness of the religions of the world. Within this house he tells an old member of the Brotherhood that lives there at whose behest and on what mission he has come. He is made welcome and hears that in this house there lives in perfect seclusion a Brotherhood of twelve Brothers. These twelve Brothers are representatives of different human races from all over the earth; every one of the Brothers is the representative of a religious faith. None is accepted here in the un-ripeness of youth, but only when he has explored the world, when he has struggled with the joys and sorrows of the world, when he has “worked and been active in the world and won his way to a free survey beyond his narrowly confined domain. Only then is he placed and accepted in the circle of the Twelve. And these Twelve, of whom each one represents one of the world religions, live here in peace and harmony together. For they are led by a thirteenth who surpasses them all in the perfection of his human Self, who surpasses them all in his wide survey of human circumstances. And how does Goethe indicate that he is the representative of true Esotericism? Goethe indicates, by the words the Brother speaks, that he is the bearer of the religion of the Rosy Cross. He said: “He was among us; now we are in deepest sorrow because he is about to leave us; he wishes to part from us. But he finds it right to part from us even now; he desires to rise to higher regions, where he no longer needs to reveal himself in an earthly body.”

He is worthy to rise. For he has risen to the point that Goethe describes with the words: “In every religion there is the possibility of attaining the highest purity.” When each of the twelve religions is ripe to form a basis of harmony, the Thirteenth, who has before brought about this harmony externally, can pass away. And we are beautifully told how we can achieve this consummation of the Self. First, the life-story of the Thirteenth is related; but the Brother who has received Mark knows many details, which the great Leader of the Twelve cannot tell himself. Several features of profound esoteric significance are now recounted by one of the Twelve to Brother Mark. He learns that when the Thirteenth was born a star appeared to herald his life on earth. Here there is a direct connection with the star which guided the three holy kings, and with its inner meaning. This star has an enduring significance: it shows the way to self-knowledge, self-surrender and self-consummation. It is the star which opens the mind for the gifts which the Danish king received from the vision in his dream, the star which appears at the birth of anyone ripe enough to absorb the Christ-principle. And there were other signs. There were signs showing that he had developed to that height of religious harmony which brings the peace and harmony of the soul. Profoundly symbolical in this sense is the vulture which swoops down at the birth of the Thirteenth, but instead of destroying it spreads peace around it among the doves. We are told still more. While his little sister is lying in the cradle a viper winds itself round her. The Thirteenth, still a child, kills the viper. Hereby is wonderfully indicated how a ripe soul—for only a ripe soul can achieve such a thing after many incarnations—kills the viper in early childhood: that is to say he overcomes the lower astral nature. The viper is the symbol for the lower astral nature; the sister is his own etheric body, round which the astral body winds itself. He kills the viper to save his sister. Then we are told how he submitted obediently to every demand of his parents. He obeyed his stern father. The soul transforms its knowledge into ideas and thoughts; then healing-powers develop in the soul and can bring healing into the world. Miraculous powers develop: they are represented by the sword with which he strikes a spring out of the rock. We are here definitely shown how his soul follows the path of the Scriptures. Thus gradually there develops the higher man, the representative of humanity, the Chosen one, who works as the Thirteenth here, in the society of the Twelve, the great secret Brotherhood which, under the sign of the Rose-Cross has taken upon itself for all mankind the mission of harmonising the religions scattered in the world. This is how we are made acquainted, in a profound, manner, with the soul-nature of that one who has until now guided the Brotherhood of the Twelve.

At last he knocks. The myriad stars above him
Look down with shining eyes as they appear.
The portal opes, and he is bidden welcome
By brethren wont to comfort and to cheer.
So he relates how far by hill and valley
The will of higher Beings led him here.
They stand amazed, for well they see their guest
Was sent to them by heavenly behest.

They crowd around him, and their inmost being
They feel by a mysterious power stirred,
Their breath they hold to listen, for he rouses
An echo in their hearts with ev'ry word.
Like deepest lore, yet uttered by a child,
The wisdom flowing from his lips is heard:
He seems so innocent, like crystal clear,
As though descended from another sphere.

At last an aged brother cries: Oh welcome,
If with consoling hope thy path is blessed!
Thou seest us, our souls are moved within us
By thee, and yet we can but stand oppressed:
Our greatest bliss from us is being taken,
Anxiety and dread disturb our rest.
Thou comest as a stranger, yet to share
Portentous hours of mourning and of care:

For he, alas! who all of us united,
To whom as father and as friend we bow,
Who light and fortitude within us kindled—
Our leader—is prepared to leave us now.
Yea, he himself his passing has predicted,
Refusing though to tell us when and how:
The mystery of what must needs befall
Brings bitter tribulation to us all.

Thou seest us grey and aged ev'ry one,
By nature destined for repose and rest:
Not one was here admitted who, a youth,
Desired to fly from wordly joy and zest.
Each one has met with life's vicissitudes,
Its burdens, pleasures and its anxious quest,
Until, matured, too old to longer roam,
Within these walls we found a shelt'ring home.

The noble man who led us to this haven,
Within his heart the peace of God does dwell;
Along the path of life we walked together,
His ev'ry action I remember well;
But now his fervent praying, his seclusion,
The hour of his departing must foretell.
How small is man! Oh would that he could give
His life, so that a greater one might live!

This is my heart's profound and only wish!
Fulfilment is denied to my desire.
How many have preceded me in death!
How bitter is the thought he must expire.
Had he been here, with hearty welcome's warmth
He would have given all thou didst require;
But now in spirit-regions dwells his mind,
Already far from those he leaves behind.

Each day one hour he lingers in our midst
And speaks to us, by strange emotion stirred:
The wondrous paths that Providence has led
Within his life he lauds with ev'ry word;
We hark and heed, for after-ages hoarding
With care the merest trifle that occurred,
While one writes down his words to make us sure
His memory shall live both true and pure.

I hear him speak, but oh, how much there is
That I would rather far myself relate,
For all is still alive within my mind,
The least of circumstances I would state;
Impatiently I list, can scarce conceal
How sore it is thus silently to wait:
One day I shall no more restrain my zeal,
The splendours of this beauteous life reveal.

I should disclose how first an angel's voice
His coming to his mother prophesied,
And how, when he was christened, in the sky
A star with brilliant lustre was descried,
How down a vulture swooped with mighty wings
To settle by the gentle pigeons' side,
But not to pounce on them in greedy wildness,
A harbinger he seemed of peace and mildness.

How as a child a viper he destroyed,
This is a miracle he ne'er has told.
He found his sister peacefully asleep,
The clinging reptile round her arm was rolled.
The nurse had fled and left the babe alone,
He killed the pois'nous snake, resolved and bold;
His mother came and saw the daring deed
And thrilled with joy she found her daughter freed.

He ne'er related that a spring arose
From out the barren rock before his sword,
And as a brook, with rippling waves alive,
Its plenteous waters down the hill-side poured;
E'en now, as quick as forth it gushed at first,
It bickers silver sparkling o'er the sward.
But those who saw the wondrous stream appear,
Dared not to drink, o'ercome by solemn fear.

For when a man excels by gifts of nature,
It is no wonder if his life is blessed;
In him we worship the Creator's power,
Through feeble human clay made manifest;
But he who overcomes himself has gained
The greatest triumph, stood the hardest test,
And well may he to all the world be shown:
Yea, this is he, this deed is his alone!

With all our strength we strive to live and labour,
Where'er by fate our twisting paths be wended;
Whereas the world oppresses, e'er impeding,
And seeks to tear us from the way intended;
Within this inner storm and outer struggle
Our spirit hears a word scarce comprehended:
The power that holds constrained all humankind
The victor o'er himself no more can bind.

This man who had overcome himself, that is, who had overcome that ego which is man's portion at first, has become the Head of the chosen Brotherhood. And thus he leads the Twelve. He has led them to a point at which they are matured enough for him to leave them. Our Brother Mark is then conducted further to the rooms where the Twelve work. How do they work? Their activity is of an unusual kind, and we are told that it is an activity in the spiritual world. A man whose eyes observe only physically, whose senses experience only the physical plane, and only what is done by people in the physical world, cannot easily imagine that there is still another task which may even be far more vital and important than what is done externally on the physical plane. Work from the higher planes is far more important for mankind. Naturally, whoever wishes to work on the higher planes can only do so on condition that he has first completed the tasks of the physical plane. These Twelve had done so. For this reason their combined activity is of great importance as a service to mankind.

Our Brother Mark is led into the hall where the Twelve were accustomed to assemble, and there he sees in deep symbolic guise the nature of their combined activity. The individual contribution of each of the Brothers to this combined activity is expressed by an individual symbol above the seat of each one of the Twelve. Symbols of many kinds are to be seen there, expressing profoundly and in very different ways the contribution of each to the common task, which consists in spiritual activity, so that these streams flow together into a current of spiritual life which flows through the world and invigorates the rest of mankind. There are such brotherhoods, such centres from which such streams emanate and have their effect on the rest of mankind.

Above the seat of the Thirteenth, Brother Mark again sees the sign: the cross entwined with roses; this sign, which is at the same time a symbol for the four-fold nature of man, and in the red roses the symbol of the purified Blood or ego-principle, the principle of the higher man. And then we see what is to be overcome by this sign of the Rose-Cross, portrayed in a symbol of its own, to the right and left of the seat of the Thirteenth. On the right Mark sees the fiery-coloured dragon, representing the astral nature of man. It was well known in Christian Esotericism that man's soul can surrender to the three lower bodies. If it succumbs to them it is dominated by the lower life of the threefold bodily nature. This is expressed in astral experience by the dragon. It is no mere symbol but a very real sign. The dragon represents what has first to be overcome. In the passions, in those forces of astral fire, which are part of man's physical nature, in this dragon, Christian Esotericism, which has inspired this poem and which has spread through Europe, saw what mankind has received from the torrid zone, from the South. It is the South that has bestowed on mankind the fierce passion, tending chiefly towards the lower senses. The first impulse to fight and overcome it was divined in the influences streaming from the cooler North. The influence of the cooler North, the descent of the Ego into the threefold physical nature of man, is expressed according to the old symbol taken from the Constellation of the Bear and shows a hand thrust into the jaws of a bear. The lower physical nature expressed by the fiery dragon is overcome; and what has been preserved, represented by the higher rank of animal life, was expressed in the bear; and the Ego, which has developed beyond the dragon nature, was represented with profound appropriateness by the thrusting of a human hand into the bear's jaws. On both sides of the Rose-Cross there appears what must be overcome by the Rose-Cross, and it is the Rose-Cross which calls upon man to purify and raise himself more and more.

Thus the poem really describes the principle of Christianity in the profoundest manner and, above all, shows us what we ought to have before our mind's eye, particularly at a festival such as we are keeping to-day.

The eldest of the Brothers living here, and belonging to the Brotherhood, tells the Pilgrim Mark expressly that their combined activity is of the spirit, that it is spiritual life. This work for mankind on the spiritual plane has a particular meaning. The Brothers have experienced life's joys and sorrows; they have passed through conflicts outside these walls; they have accomplished tasks in the world; now they are here, but that does not mean that their work is at an end; the further development of mankind is their unending task. He is told: “You have seen as much now as can be shown to a novice to whom the first portal is opened. You have been shown in profound symbols what man's ascent should be. But the second portal hides greater mysteries: those of the influence of higher worlds on mankind. You can only learn these greater mysteries after lengthy preparation, only then can you enter through the other gate.” Profound secrets are expressed in this poem.

In him I scarce as virtue may denote
The power of good which e'en his youth inspired
And taught him to respect his father's word,
When harshly he his services required,
With duties burdening his leisure hours;
The son obeyed with ardour, never tired,
Like some poor boy who, friendless and astray,
Is glad to work for but a trifling pay.

On foot he joined the warriors in the field,
In lowering tempest and in dazzling light,
The horses he did tend, the meals prepare,
And armed the soldiers ready for the fight.
Oft as a messenger, both keen and fleet,
He hastened through the woods by day and night;
To live for others both in thought and action
Seemed but to give him joy and satisfaction.

And brave and cheerful always, in the strife
He sought the arrows scattered on the ground;
Then hastily he gathered curing herbs,
With which the burning wounds he cooled and bound;
And just as if his very touch were healing,
Ere long the sufferers were strong and sound;
How all regarded him with joy and pride!
Alone his father seemed not satisfied.

E'en as a ship, despite its heavy load
From port to port with speedy lightness sailing,
He bore the burden of his parents' word
That in obedience ne'er he should be failing;
As pleasure is for boys, for youths distinction,
For him his father's will was all-prevailing,
So that he might demand whate'er he would,
Each task was soon fulfilled, each test was stood.

At last the father yielded and acknowledged
The merit of his son in word and deed;
While of a sudden all his sternness vanished,
He gave the youth a swift and precious steed;
Henceforth a sword replaced the shorter #8224,
And from his lesser duties he was freed:
Thus, destined by his birth and well acquitted,
Into an Order he was now admitted.

Ah, well could I report for many days
Amazing things to every one who hears;
And higher than the most delightful tales
His life will be esteemed in coming years;
For what in poetry and fiction charms,
Yet to our mind incredible appears,
Will here with greater pleasure still be heard,
Because it has in real event occurred.

The name of him whom Providence has chosen
That wondrous things on earth he should achieve,
Whom I may often praise, though ne'er sufficing
Whose destiny we scarcely can believe,
His name—it is Humanus, Saint and wise one,
The best of men whom I did e'er perceive:
By origin another name he bears,
Which with illustrious ancestors he shares.

The aged brother would have spoken on.
Filled with the miracles that he did know,
And he shall gladden us for many weeks
With all the stirring facts he still can show;
But he was interrupted, just as now
His heart was pouring forth in fervent flow.
The others softly in and out had passed
And deemed it time to intervene at last.

When Mark had bowed before his hosts and prayed
In gratitude for the sustaining meal,
A bowl of crystal water he requested.
They brought what he had craved with friendly zeal.
Hereafter led him to their festive hall,
Therein a sight unwonted to reveal.
Of what he saw you soon will be aware,
For everything shall be described with care.

No ornament was here, the eye deluding,
A cross-arched vault rose sternly from the ground,
And thirteen chairs against the walls, he noticed.
Were like a pious chorus ranged around,
By clever hands full delicately carven;
In front of each a little desk he found.
Devotion seemed to fill the very air,
Fraternity and restfulness and prayer.

Above each chair was hung a special shield,
Thirteen in all the number he espied.
They seemed to be important, purposeful,
No boast of ancestors in shallow pride.
And brother Mark, with longing all aglow,
Desired to learn what secret they did hide:
Lo, in the middle one the mystic sign,
The cross which clustring roses do entwine.

Each object will arouse to life and action
The soul which to its inspiration yields;
Some places are adorned by swords and lances,
While helmets hang above these other shields;
Here battered weapons are to be discovered,
Such as one may collect on battle-fields:
There spears and banners, come from distant lands,
And even fetters here and iron bands!

Each brother sinking down before his chair,
In silent prayer profoundly wrapt they rested;
Then softly chanted fervent hymns of thanks,
By cheerfulness and piety suggested;
With mutual blessing they retired to sleep,
A short repose, by fancies unmolested:
But Mark remains, surrounded by a few,
Still wishing more attentively to view.

Though tired in body, full awake his mind,
Preoccupied by many hidden things:
For here, his thirst in raging flames appeasing,
A dragon is enthroned with fiery wings;
And here between his jaws a bear is holding
An arm from which the blood it loses springs,
Both shields, in distance corresponding quite,
Hung next the Rosy-Cross to left and right.

The paths were wonderful that led thee here,
The aged brother speaks unto his guest:
Oh let these symbols bid thee stay until
The many heroes' deeds we manifest;
Our mysteries we will confide to thee,
For what is here concealed, can ne'er be guessed;
Although thou wilt divine what here was done,
Endured and lost, and last what triumph won.

Do not believe that but of times gone by
The brother spake. Here wonders never fail;
And more and ever more thou shalt behold,
Until withdrawn is the enshrouding veil.
One portal only 'tis that thou hast passed:
And if thou feelst the call, O friend, prevail!
The foremost court as yet thou didst attain,
But worthy art the very core to gain.

After a short sleep our Brother Mark next learns to divine something at least of the inner mysteries; in the powerful symbols he has let the ascent of the human Self work upon his soul, and when he is awakened by a sign from his short rest he comes to a window, a kind of lattice, and hears a strange threefold harmony sounding thrice, and the whole as if intermingled with the playing of a flute. He cannot look in, cannot see what is happening there in the room. We do not need to be told more than these few words as an indication of what awaits the man who approaches the spiritual worlds, when he is so far purified and perfected by his endeavours to develop his Self, that he has passed through the astral world and approaches the higher worlds—those worlds in which are to be found the spiritual archetypes of the things here on earth. When he approaches what is called in esoteric Christianity the world of heaven, he approaches it through a world of flowing colour; he enters into a world of sound, into the harmony of the universe, the music of the spheres. The spiritual world is a world of sound. He who has developed his higher Self to the level of the higher worlds must become at home in this spiritual world. It is indeed Goethe who clearly expressed the higher experience of a world of spiritual sound in his Faust when he lets him be carried up to heaven and the world of heaven is revealed to him through sound.

The sun-orb sings, in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:

The physical sun does not sing, but the spiritual sun sings. Goethe retains this image when, after long wanderings, Faust is exalted into the spiritual worlds (Faust, Second Part): “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, see the new-born day appearing.” “Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes—eye is blinded, ear amazes: The Unheard can no one hear!”

Through the symbolic world of the astral, man, if he evolves higher, approaches the world of the harmony of the spheres, the Devachanic domain, the spiritual music. Only softly, softly, does Brother Mark, after passing through the first portal, the astral portal, hear floating out to him the sound of the inner world behind our external world, of that world which transforms the lower astral world into that higher world which is pervaded by the triple harmony. And in reaching the higher world man's lower nature is transformed into the higher triad: our astral body is changed into the spirit-self, the etheric body into the life-spirit, the physical body into the spirit-man. In the music of the spheres he first senses the triple harmony of the higher nature, and in becoming one with this music of the spheres he has the first glimpse of the rejuvenation of man when he enters into union with the spiritual world. He sees, as in a dream, rejuvenated mankind float through the garden in the form of the three youths bearing three torches. This is the moment when Mark's soul has awakened in the morning from darkness, and when some darkness still remains; his soul has not yet penetrated it. But precisely at such a time the soul can gradually look into the spiritual world. It can look into the spiritual worlds as it can look when the summer noon is past, when the sun is losing in power and winter has come, and then at midnight the Christ-principle shines through the earth in the night of Christmas. Through the Christ-principle man is exalted to the higher trinity, represented for Brother Mark by the three youths who are the rejuvenated soul of man. This is the meaning of Goethe's lines:

And until thou truly hast
This “dying and becoming,”
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

Every year anew Christmas will indicate to the one who understands esoteric Christianity that what happens in the external world is the mimicry, the gestures, of inner spiritual processes. The external power of the sun lives in the spring and summer sunshine. In the Scriptures this external power of the sun, which is only the forerunner of the inner spiritual power of the sun, is represented by John the Baptist, but the inner, spiritual power by Christ. And while the physical power of the sun slowly abates, the spiritual power rises and grows in strength until it reaches its zenith at Christmas time. This is the meaning underlying the words in the gospel of S. John: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” And he increases until he appears where the sunforce has again attained the outer physical power. So that man may henceforth revere and worship in this external physical power the spiritual power of the sun, he must learn the meaning of the Christmas festival. For those who do not know this meaning the new power of the sun is nothing but the old physical power returning. But whoever has become familiar with the impulses which esoteric Christianity, and especially the Christmas festival, should give him will see in the growing power of the solar body the external body of the inner Christ which shines through the earth, which gives it life and fruitfulness, so that the earth itself becomes the bearer of the Christ-power, of the Earth-Spirit. Thus what is born in every Christmas night will be born for us each time anew. Through Christ we shall experience inwardly the microcosm in the macrocosm, and this realisation will lead us higher and higher.

The festivals, which have long ago become something external to men, will again appear in their deep significance for mankind if they are led by this profound Esotericism to the knowledge that the occurrences of external nature, such as thunder and lightning, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and the setting of the moon, are the gestures and physiognomy of spiritual existence. And at the turning-points which are marked by our festivals we should realise that these are also times of important happenings in the spiritual world. Then we shall be led on to the rejuvenating spiritual power represented by the three youths, which the ego can only win by devoting itself to the outer world and not egotistically shutting itself away from it. But there is no devotion to the outer world if this external world is not permeated by the Spirit. That this Spirit shall appear every year anew for all men, even for the feeblest, as Light in the darkness, must be written every year afresh in the heart and soul of man.

This is what Goethe wished to express in this poem, The Mysteries. It is at once a Christmas poem and an Easter poem. It would indicate profound secrets of esoteric Christianity. If what he wished to indicate of the deep mysteries of Rosicrucian Christianity is allowed to work upon our souls, if we absorb its power even in part, then for some few at least in our environment we shall become missionaries; we shall succeed in fashioning this Festival once more into something filled with spirit and with life.

When after short repose within his cell
A deep resounding bell awakes our guest,
His soul is filled with longing for devotion,
He rises quickly with unwearied zest
And hastens to the church, with all his heart
Responding to the gladly heard behest,
Obedient, peaceful and by prayer bestirred;
Alas! The door is locked, he stands deterred.

But hark! a blow on dull resounding ore
Three times in equal intervals renewed,
No chime it seems to be of clock or bells,
From time to time with tones of flute imbued;
The floating music fills the heart with joy,
Mysterious 'tis and scarce to be construed,
It sounds like singing, solemn and entrancing,
To which the couples interlace in dancing.

Bewildered and by strange emotion moved,
He hastens to the window there to gaze;
The day is dawning in the distant east,
The sky o'erflown by lucent streaks of haze.
And may he trust his eyes? A mystic light
Is fleeting through the garden's winding ways;
Three youths with torches in their hands he sees
Who haste along the paths between the trees.

He clearly sees their wonderful apparel,
The white resplendent garments which they wear,
Their girdles made of intertwining roses,
The wreaths of flowers in their curly hair;
They seem to come from some nocturnal dances,
With joy of movement thrilled, enlived and fair.
But as the stars will fade, when day is near,
Extinguishing their torch, they disappear.

Dear attendees! The theme of this evening's lecture was not chosen with the intention of linking the observations of spiritual science to a well-known historical phenomenon – as it is done in many other fields – and thus to have the opportunity to speak about spiritual science with regard to a well-known phenomenon. Rather, this theme has arisen from the fact that, in the light of spiritual observation of our time, certain aspects of the artistic phenomenon of Raphael can indeed present themselves to the modern spiritual researcher, and these aspects virtually demand a spiritual-scientific way of looking at things, especially in the case of this subject. This can happen to you, as it has to me, when you observe a phenomenon such as that which can be observed in the literary and artistic activity of Herman Grimm. Herman Grimm, the brilliant art historian, is known to have written a “Life of Michelangelo,” which, however much it may be outdated in details today, makes a great impression on every receptive soul through the breadth of its points of view and the coherence of its approach.

Herman Grimm then also made an attempt – he himself characterizes it only as an attempt – to write a 'Life of Raphael'. With this 'Life of Raphael', Herman Grimm has now experienced something quite peculiar, and what happened to him, so to speak, will be able to make a great impression on those who, through an ever-deepening immersion in Herman Grimm's way of presenting and looking at things, recognizes that, despite some justified criticism that can be made of him, he has precisely what one can call a sense of shared experience with his observed subject in all its particulars, a struggle to gain the insights and opinions to which he advances. Well, he made the attempt – in the 1860s – to write about the life of Raphael; and at the end of his life, he admits that the attempt was not enough for him and that he repeatedly started to approach this task in a different way. We have an interesting fragment from Grimm's estate, “Raphael as a World Power,” in which he once again approached this task shortly before his death and in which he confesses that nothing he has written before can satisfy him. He died while working on the final version of his views on Raphael. But it is still interesting to observe how such an important mind repeatedly approaches this task, how he undertakes the matter again in the twilight of his life and how he struggles to understand Raphael. You can see that from the fragment.

His struggle to understand Raphael is particularly interesting, because he describes the world-famous painting 'The Marriage of the Virgin', which is in Milan, in an attempt to understand it. He needs a significant, longer introduction, and this longer introduction is actually a piece of world history. It is a reflection on the nature and essence of Roman culture, a reflection on the impact of the Christ impulse on this Roman culture, a reflection on the further development of this Christ impulse within European spiritual culture, and then follows a further reflection on the renewed impact of Greek culture on the Roman spiritual culture of Raphael's time. And in this, Herman Grimm maintains that it is necessary to consider all this in order to understand this painting by Raphael, 'The Marriage of the Virgin', because what is expressed in this painting appears to him so comprehensive, so arising out of the entire development of the human spirit, so that everything that has been felt, thought and seen within the European spiritual life since the impact of the Christ impulse until the creation of this picture appears to him as mysteriously embedded in Raphael's creation. The title of this Raphael fragment, as given by Herman Grimm, was also derived from feelings that arise from such an opinion. It means – one might be tempted to find it strange – “Raphael as world power”, because Herman Grimm actually feels inclined to place Raphael in all the causes, effects, and connections of all modern spiritual life in order to understand him. Anyone who has an intuitive sense of how certain all-embracing ideas arise in a human soul when contemplating any object or any entity will be able to understand what took place in Herman Grimm's soul when he wrote the words in this, his last Raphael fragment:

Raphael is a citizen of world history. Like one of the four rivers, he is, who, according to the beliefs of the ancient world, came from paradise.

There may be many scholarly discussions about the significance of Raphael, but one would like to say: Compared to all of them, it seems to be something tremendously significant that a contemplative human soul has been moved to make such statements about this spirit.

If you let something like this sink in, so to speak purely from the intellectual life of our time, which in Herman Grimm is not yet strongly influenced by what we today call [in our circles] spiritual science, you have to recognize the urge to a deeper contemplation of Raphael – the urge to look at him in such a way that what he has created for the intellectual eye grows out of the continuous stream of human development. And indeed, to anyone who delves into Raphael's soul with an open mind, it appears – especially in view of a certain kind of isolation from everything around him – as a kind of revelation, because, try as one might, one cannot succeed in immediately in the environment in which Raphael lived, as reasons for explaining how it comes about that this extraordinary phenomenon enters into the spiritual path of humanity and presents to humanity precisely that which has had such a profound and powerful effect on the individual devoted spirits. I would like to note from the outset that, naturally, it is not possible to go into details in the course of this lecture, because individual pictures can only be fruitfully discussed if one is able to show reproductions. [Rather, the aim is to use such presuppositions, as they have just been given and which arise from our present spiritual life, to lead in a very natural way to a consideration of Raphael from the point of view of spiritual science.]

In a sense, Raphael seems comprehensible to us only if we take him as a very young child, somehow out of his environment. He was born, as is well known, in Urbino in 1483. The first impressions of his soul come from the palace building of Urbino, which was an extraordinary event for that time and through which the soul of the very young Raphael was able to absorb what was expressed not only in architectural forms, but also in all artistic decoration and the work associated with this palace building. These were impressions that can be said to be capable of shaping the soul through themselves. But then we see Raphael transferred to Perugia, and when we look at life in Perugia at the time when Raphael was an apprentice painter there, the peculiar, isolated nature of Raphael's soul immediately becomes apparent to us. We see, when we follow life in Perugia, how it is filled with events that are in part repulsive to our modern consciousness. Strife between the individual classes rages among the passionate people of Perugia, and there is no doubt that Raphael was able to see there what was taking place in the way of stirring hatred and antagonism in human nature.

If we start from there and take a look at what Raphael's art gave in its serenity, which already meets us in the “Marriage of the Virgin”, created in the twenty-first year of his life, then we find that it is justified to say: this Raphael appears to us as a personality as if he were only externally present in this whole life of touched it with the hem of his garment, and actually only looked at it in reference to something which I would not describe in the abstract, but rather in the concrete, by directing the thoughts to a historian of the time, who quite vividly describes a scene that took place in Perugia in the nineties of the fifteenth century. There we really become witnesses, through the vividness of the description, of how the leader of an exiled family from the neighborhood invades Perugia; we are told how this leader of an exiled family, Astorre Baglione, enters the city on horseback and acts like a Saint George, but at the same time slaughters everything that comes his way. We feel from the description of the chronicler Matarazzo how something grand, powerful, but uncomfortably cruel lay in the scene. When we let Raphael's painting, “Saint George,” take effect on us in its entire composition, it seems as if Raphael had known this scene from reality, but as if all of the cruel background of reality had not existed for his eyes, as if he had lifted the flower from this cruel background and elevated it to a creation of pure spiritual beauty and greatness. It is precisely in the way in which it enters into the whole way of creating Raphael, the way in which it flows into his soul, that one sees how peculiarly isolated this soul is from its surroundings, and how these surroundings only touch it, but how he can only produce what he takes from them from his own soul. Thus this soul appears [to the observer] as a revelation, as something that is placed in this environment and cannot be explained from within it. When we take a look at the pictures of Raphael's teacher in Perugia, the Perugino, we see how, despite the greatness of the Perugino, these pictures show us that something is being presented to us in the individual holy persons of the Christian view that is a reproduction of what a person can absorb when Christianity lives all around him. We see the individual figures of Christian legend juxtaposed as only someone who, though a great painter, only knows things from the outside can do. As these paintings appear to us, we feel the path from Christian tradition, from what was alive in the Christianity of the time, to Perugino's canvas everywhere. Then we follow the creations of his student Raphael. There the matter appears different to us: we look at a soul that brings everything that the other, Perugino, presents to life from within. Everywhere we see Raphael's soul itself, a spirit that has not absorbed Christianity as it lived in its environment at the time, but we see a spirit to which all the origins of Christian impulses are linked. It is perhaps no exaggeration to use the following expression: it is as if Christianity itself conjured up its soul on a canvas painted by Raphael.

And then we follow him further as he arrives in Florence in 1504 and in Rome in 1508. In Florence, he arrives at a time when the momentous wave of spiritual renewal, I might say, had just passed over Florence, which is linked to the name of Savonarola. We encounter an atmosphere that is tired of [these struggles] - the drama of Savonarola has taken place, and many of its repercussions are still present. It is interesting to juxtapose these two figures: Savonarola and Raphael. Both present the impulses of Christianity to their contemporaries [in their own way]; they present them in such a way that we perceive the fire of an inner enthusiasm everywhere, but [in Savonarola's case] also an enormous fanaticism that leads to the impossibility of living out the impulses in the face of one's contemporaries. When we look at Savonarola, it is as if a person were standing before us who, in all phases of his soul, in the best that his soul can feel and sense, was seized by the greatness and power of Christianity, a person who now radiates what has had a very elementary and direct effect on his soul, and who then stands up for what has become so great in his soul itself. And now to Raphael: He presents himself in very strange contrast to a figure like Savonarola. We see, when we look at Raphael's paintings, that Christian impulses are expressed in a, one might say, superhuman greatness. We see these Christian impulses brought to soulful life in many details. We really see Christianity shining through in these paintings. But at the same time, we feel and sense that a soul that had only just been directly touched by the Christianity in the world around it could not have attained the same calmness, naturalness, and serenity as Raphael's soul.

While with Savonarola one has the feeling everywhere that his soul is only appropriating the greatness of Christianity during his lifetime, with Raphael one has the feeling that his soul is already born as if it were entering the world with the — with such impulses that, by passing from early childhood into the whole human being, take hold of the whole human being and, through this development, can reach heights that these ideas and forms never reach in a human being when they first appear in an elementary, direct way. And if we are not pedantic, if we have a certain feeling for the real life of a human soul, we will no longer be able to doubt that a soul like Raphael's soul, as a soul, as a spiritual being, brings with it from the supersensible worlds from the outset everything that could never live itself out if it had to first flow through the whole of personal education and development. Of course, such things cannot be proven in one evening; the supersensible truths cannot be proven - as I discussed the day before yesterday - in the same way as the external truths of natural science; but they can be proven nonetheless, because they show themselves in their effects. One must first find the way to recognize from the effects what is present as the cause behind them. Then we follow Raphael back to Rome, where he encounters an atmosphere that is strangely related to Christianity. Pope Julius II becomes his patron. Raphael paints the greatest pictures on his behalf, which many people believe are among the greatest pictures in human painting; they capture the human soul and spirit in the very depths. And he paints them in such a way that the entire spirit of Christianity lives in them, and lives in them in a completely natural way. He paints – it could not be any different – to the satisfaction of the Pope. But what kind of Pope was this Julius? He was a Pope who, according to today's somewhat different concepts, perhaps cannot really be called a Christian at all. Machiavelli, who was not particularly moral, said that he was a devilish character, a man who was primarily concerned with power and external position – with fame, perhaps not for himself personally, but for the greatness and power of the church. He was a personality who was not choosy about the means he used to achieve his ends, who was not at all Christian when it came to acquiring power, fame and greatness. That is Raphael's patron. And in other respects, too, if we consider the Rome of Raphael's time, it stands in quite a remarkable contrast to him. But it is precisely from this contrast that something as powerful as what is presented to our eyes even today in the two pictures “The School of Athens” and “Disputa” arises, even though these pictures have often been painted over. In them, a magnificent pictorial representation of the course of human development presents itself to us, a pictorial representation that is steeped in the spirit of Christian impulses.

If we look at the one painting, the so-called “School of Athens” – it is not my view that this designation is justified, but it is the easiest way to communicate – and let it take effect on us, we see, perhaps without being fully lived in Raphael's consciousness, that it represents what the human soul can recognize when it turns its gaze to the external, sensual reality and makes use of the intellect that is tied to the human brain, to the human personality. This is presented to us in a wonderful way in all its details. If we turn our gaze to the right group in the picture, we see how all kinds of things are determined and calculated astronomically, and then we feel: not only the usual calculations are being done, but great events in world history are being deduced from the movement of the stars – science is being unfolded in a cosmic sense. And if we then turn our gaze to the left, we see in the expressions of [the figures] connecting the right with the left, how what is read on the right from the star constellations is written down on the left, and if we could really get the books in front of our eyes, we could see how the secrets of the world are written on the left, which are then determined by sensory observation [on the right]. We see this, but Raphael need not have been aware of it; the tradition of the time lay in this, as in the deep mystery that constitutes the essence of [the rise of Christianity over Greece]. And whether we take the view of those who see Plato and Aristotle in the central figures, or whether we see an evangelist on the left-hand side, in both cases what is being discussed is perfectly understandable.

Then we turn to the other side of the “Camera della Segnatura” and find that magic has been poured over the whole picture, illustrating how the development has progressed from the contemplation of the sensual world by the human spirit to a deepening into the supernatural, the invisible. This immersion of the human soul in the supernatural reigns and weaves in the picture of the so-called “Disputa”. The symbolic arrangement of the stars, in connection with the scenes below, must show that something significant has happened in the course of human development, in that man has become inwardly focused through the impact of the Christian impulse on the spiritual development of humanity, which on the one hand signifies a deepening of the human soul, and on the other hand, through this inward deepening, leads to the realization, to the intuition of supersensible worlds. These can only be reached when the human soul educates itself and thereby acquires those powers through which it can sense or see the worlds that lie behind the [sensory] worlds.

It is not my intention to explain such images pedantically, for example by means of theories, but one must use words that are not just comments on images, but that are intended to suggest what one feels naturally. Otherwise, it could be as unappealing as the comments in travel guides, and one would not be interested at all in what the individual figures mean, but what is interesting is ] the artistic, the sensation that moves through the soul, and we are not placed directly on the horizon of human spiritual development by abstract reflection, not by abstract reason, but by sensation. We feel the impulse that lives and moves through the history of human development. And again, If we now disregard these images and look into Raphael's soul, we have to say that she lived in the midst of an environment that showed nothing of the intimacy and soulfulness that lies in these images, and [despite this] Raphael managed to conjure up the innermost impulses and the innermost forces of Christianity in the course of world history into these images.

This is the case with many of the other works we see, and if we then go on to what can still make the deepest impression on the viewer today, when we go on to that which is the culmination of Raphael's to the “Sistine Madonna”, if one lets this remarkable picture in Dresden take effect on oneself, then one comes to a very special understanding of this so self-evident Raphael soul, then one comes to the active spiritual Christ impulse. If, on the other hand, one stands purely intuitively before this “Sistine Madonna”, then one has the impression that something lifts one above the ordinary human. That is the first impression, but it is one that becomes ever stronger and more powerful; it lifts one up above ordinary human feeling. One becomes a participant in another world through one's soul, and if one then asks oneself, “Why is that so?” perhaps it is best to let the feelings of spiritual science enlighten one. How can these feelings of spiritual science arise?

Let us turn our gaze away from the point of view of spiritual science and look at the whole development of humanity. This puts us on the ground of a serious, comprehensive theory of development, but one that is very different from the materialistic one, which is today considered by so many to be an absolute gospel. This theory does follow phenomena back to a certain origin - tracing them back to these origins is justified for sensory perception. One arrives at material origins that show very simple forms and that, through slow perfection and development, have resulted in today's point of view. This theory of evolution is particularly proud of the fact that it understands man as a being that gradually rises from other beginnings of primitive living beings, to his present size, as he appears to us today as a physical human being. Some materialists see this as the very essence of the human being. Spiritual science also takes us back into the past, but when we turn our spiritual gaze back using methods described the day before yesterday, we do not arrive at other material life forms from which humans are thought to have developed, but we ultimately arrive at a spiritual beginning of development. We arrive at origins that are purely spiritual. And on the one hand we see matter itself emerging from the spirit, and on the other hand we see the spiritual developing into later spiritual forms in accordance with its original spiritual purpose.

If we look at the human being himself, at the whole human being, at the spiritual and soul aspects within the human being, and trace the development back, we come to an ancient and distant past in which the human being already appears; he is already present before the other beings that surround him today in the three kingdoms of nature have come into being. These prove to be a kind of descending side currents, so to speak, flowing away from the great line of development: man is the original, he is there first, but as a spiritual being, and as he develops further, he repels the other kingdoms of nature from his undercurrent, as it were. We can choose an image for this development. Let us assume that we have a liquid in a glass, mixed with something that can maintain itself purely. The finer part of the liquid remains at the top, the coarser part settles at the bottom. So we have the fine part at the top and the solid part at the bottom.

In spiritual science, we return to the origin in which man exists as a spiritual-soul being; he develops in his spiritual life into purer forms, which lie precisely in his later mission and which [compared to] the original form signify a finer development of his soul nature. In order for this abstract soul to emerge purely, he must separate the other natural kingdoms: These are there, as it were, to provide the basis for man's higher development. If we allow this thought to take effect in us, not in its conceptual form but as a feeling, if we transform it into feeling, then, when we turn our gaze to all that surrounds us in the physical realm of nature, we have the present us; but if we turn our gaze to what emerges from the human soul, we perceive something that we cannot understand - if we merely let our gaze wander over the external earthly nature and do not direct it upwards to something supermundane. We feel that the present humanity could only come into being within its earthly mission because it is the result of something that comes to us from other spheres, which is a higher humanity that has, as it were, descended to fill the earth with the present nature kingdoms. We feel that human nature tells us of its origin in spiritual heights. We feel how humanity is elevated when we, in our feelings, rise to what spiritual science can speak of.

If you disregard all theory and now stir within yourself the feeling that can arise when we sense the human being in his supersensible approach to his sensual mission, then we have - one must compare the feelings - the same feeling as when we visualize Raphael's “Madonna Sixtina”, in which we also encounter the image of Isis with Horus. And anyone who can really get into the unearthly origin of man can have similar feelings when he sees the “Sistine Madonna” floating in from the etheric spheres with the child Jesus, the exalted humanity, and when he can see the clouds as the foundation, the etheric foundation from which comes that which is the true, spiritual, supermaterial origin of man. It must be said, however, that such considerations need not have been present in Raphael's soul, but we have repeatedly emphasized that this human soul had a twofold nature, that something was going on in the upper regions of consciousness that the [lower] human did not need to know about, but which was no less real; and the impulses, the impulses of feeling and emotion, which worked as just described, alone make it possible to understand how precisely this image could have arisen from Raphael's soul.

I have tried to make all these observations for the reason that I would like to make understandable what appears to me to be in harmony with spiritual science in Raphael: we have before us in his soul, isolated from its surroundings, something that is predetermined from the outset, that is called to realize the spiritual impulses in their Christian nuances in a pictorial way. In the “Sistine Madonna,” Raphael rises in a certain way to a super-Christian point of view, to the point of view that goes beyond the historical, beyond the traditional Christian, in that he feels and artistically represents the spiritual-cosmic origin of the human being. Seen in this light, the soul of Raphael does not allow itself to be equated with that of another soul, such as that of Savonarola.

With Savonarola, we can show, so to speak, at every point in his development, how he connects with Christian ideas, how everything becomes and gushes forth; with Raphael, it seems self-evident that the Christian view is already given to him at his birth. We feel that the Christian impulses are connected with Raphael, but we do not feel anything else: we do not feel that which is connected with the soul of Raphael and which it particularly needed from its surroundings, and that was Greek culture. This Greek element is embedded in the spiritual development of humanity in a very special way. I have often pointed out that we spiritual scientists have to look at human development in such a way that, as we go further and further back into ancient times, we find human souls with different states of consciousness than they have today; everything is in development – the human soul especially! and when spiritual science is recognized in its true value, people will see how one-sided it is to look at evolution in a purely materialistic way, going back to human forms in which the soul would develop its consciousness in a more animal state. If you go back in spiritual science, you will find a completely different state of development, and today you may already be able to find truth in what spiritual research has to say about older states of the human soul from older spiritual products, myths and legends.

We are coming to understand that in primeval times, human souls were endowed with an original clairvoyance, a dream-like clairvoyance. What we today call our clear sensory perception, our sharply defined intellectual concepts, our self-awareness, was not present in the human soul in primeval times. For this to come about, the original clairvoyance had to fade away, to be subdued. This state cannot be compared to ordinary dreaming today, but rather to a dream-like life, which is organized in images in the manner of dream images, but which are nevertheless images of spiritual realities. In primeval times, the human soul was endowed with such a dream-like clairvoyance. This clairvoyance diminished, and now we stand in development where the old clairvoyance had to fade away in order to develop self-awareness and sharply contoured concepts of the mind.

When something is to develop to perfection, other things must recede. This law of balance governs all of nature, so that when we ascend to full self-awareness – in the distant future, humanity will once again associate a certain clairvoyance with it – we have, as it were, a descending line of human development from the original clairvoyance and now an ascent of sorts through [the development of] self-awareness, intellectual concepts and external scientific observation to clairvoyance. And what do we feel in the middle? We feel the Greek element – this Greek element, which is so remarkable precisely because on the one hand it signifies the conclusion of the ancient dream-like consciousness of clairvoyance and on the other hand the beginning of the consciousness of external objects. Therefore, we see this Greekness with its very special characteristics, which consist in the fact that the Greek experienced the spiritual much more directly, but not in the way that man in prehistoric times experienced it, seeing it, so to speak, externally, but in the way that the Greek felt his own personality interwoven with all external existence. He still felt himself in the cosmos, standing inside the outer world, and felt the laws that weave and live through the outer world in his own being.

It may seem hypothetical, but anyone who engages in spiritual science will find what I am saying to be true: when the Greeks created their sculptures, which have only come down to us in an imperfect form, they did not need models in our sense. When they depicted anything, especially the human form, they did not depict it in imitation of the external model, but from inner consciousness. He knew what forces are at work in space, and his consciousness of these forces was formed in such a way that he had an awareness of the inner forces from the form of space. And so he imprinted what he saw inwardly in the external material as a form from the inside out. Just as prehistoric man felt that images of space arose and was so connected in his soul to the entire cosmos that these images reflected reality, so the Greek was connected to the laws of the world, which he felt permeated the body. He created what he experienced, and in turn he created this in a sculptural work. If he wanted to depict Zeus, then he knew how Zeus's physiognomy was connected to those experiences that express themselves in external forms. He created what he experienced inwardly in the external material. We can look at Greek culture in this way; it is still a worldview in which a feeling is bound to an immediate human consciousness.

It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the genuine Greek and his relationship to nature and to the whole of existence, and a personality who, in essence, is separated from the impact of the Christ Impulse on humanity by only three or four hundred years, a personality such as, say, St. Augustine. Read any work by this Father of the Christian Church, who was also a great philosopher, and try to compare what Augustine gives through his innermost experience of the soul, through his inner feeling for the nature of the human soul, with everything that was given in Greece, be it philosophically or poetically. In the Greek spirit, we feel how it cannot detach itself from the external, how it is one with the external world, perceiving the course of the external world flowing into itself and experiencing itself as belonging to the external world. In Augustine, we see the gaze directed inward to the inner, soul world. This makes this inner creation appear in a form that is unthinkable for any creation of ancient Greece. It could not internalize itself because its greatness was still connected with the consciousness of the outside world. It was an enormous impact on the whole spiritual development of mankind, and one does not need to be on the ground of positive Christianity to see this enormous impact. One could even go so far as to say, paradoxically, that even someone who had never heard of Christ, when considering the Greeks and Augustine in their peculiarity, would have to say to themselves: something has happened in the ongoing development that has turned the external into the internal; and this internalization is the fundamental impulse of Christianity, growing out of the external and growing into the internal.

If we look at it this way and then look back at Raphael, we can say: What appears to be the basic nerve of Christianity lives in Raphael's soul as this soul passes into existence through birth. We see this in its development, if you approach the work without prejudice and do not want to read everything into this Raphael soul with a materialistic-historical sense. If we look at it impartially, it appears as if it has already brought with it, through birth, the Christian impulses that we have to describe as its very own. But now Raphael is born at that turning point of the whole spiritual development of mankind, placed in that time when that which was memory was to be reborn, reborn in a certain outer sense. And here we see a great law of development that can only be penetrated with the help of spiritual science. Usually, we imagine development as a simple succession of cause and effect. But things do not happen that way, because a close examination shows us that such a linear development is a fantasy. The real development proceeds in such a way that a certain current progresses from one point to another, and when it has arrived at a certain point, an old one is taken up again. The later connects with the earlier, which has not passed through a developmental current, but has been preserved in its original form. We have a falling back upon and a taking up of something that has remained at an original stage and that connects with something later.

Thus, in Raphael's work, we see that what, in his time, seemed to be a character of mere inwardness has once again become an external revelation. Just imagine how St. Francis of Assisi is depicted in the works of Giotto. We see how, even in painting, everything remains inward; it does not transition into form and color. We must go back to the inner event everywhere, and when we transition to the inner event in Giotto's work, the outer representation is the less interesting part. This is not the case with Raphael. Here, we never feel the need to look beyond what he reveals to us directly, beyond what is there, what stands before us in color and form; rather, in Raphael's work, everything interior has flowed into the exterior. For this, Raphael's soul, though born with the internalized impulse of Christianity, needed the assimilation of Greek culture. In Raphael, we now see how this earlier state of development is being revisited, even though it was fundamentally new to him. It is remarkable how, on the one hand, this Greek style rested in the bosom of the earth until Raphael's time, so that Raphael's contemporaries were the first to see again what came to the surface at that time [through the excavations], and how, on the other hand, Greek style was awakened again in Raphael, only now transformed into the inward, which had created Greek style in the external sculptural form. What the Greeks had achieved in the form of sculpture was not immediately suitable for Raphael; but what was incumbent on him was to bring the inner life to external expression. To do this, painting, which, unlike sculpture, can make the inner into the outer, had to adopt Greek forms again. It adopted them in particular from Raphael. It is well known to me that one could list many other names, but nowhere else does this phenomenon occur as characteristically as in Raphael. Thus, in Raphael, we see how he acquires Greek influence through the Christian impulse. If we consider his soul from this broader point of view, it appears to us as if it had brought with it all Christian impulses at birth, but not the Greek ones – these play in from the environment. From picture to picture, one can follow how Raphael, translated into painting, appropriates more and more Greek art.

Now, anyone who delves deeper into spiritual science – let it be a mere hypothesis for my sake – will see how such a hypothesis gradually offers certainty, though not in a convenient way. When we look at Raphael's soul from this perspective, we see that it already contains the Christian impulses at birth. It therefore appears as if Raphael's soul had already made a pact with these before birth. While we can see the direct impact of the Christian impulses in Savonarola [through his environment], it seems to us that Raphael's soul already contains these Christian impulses. Just as Savonarola appropriated the Christian impulses directly through the effect of his environment in his Savonarola existence, so Raphael's soul developed them in an earlier earthly existence in such a way that it could not appropriate the Greek impulses at the same time in this earlier existence. It comes from an existence in which it has appropriated the Christian impulses so that, after the soul has gone through a life between death and a new birth, these have become a matter of course for it, as we then encounter in Raphael's paintings. And what Greek culture has achieved is only acquired by this soul, which in its previous life on earth may have been “Greek-like”, in this later Raphael life. In the soul of a Raphael, we see how what we can intuitively place in an earlier life on earth and what in later lives on earth merges with what we already bring with us at birth. Whenever I have studied this, just as Herman Grimm repeatedly made a fresh start [to write about Raphael's life], the spiritual-scientific view was really drawn to this fact by itself. It is to be assumed that Herman Grimm would not have agreed with his last presentation either, even if he had completed it, because, you see, certain things that are connected with the spiritual life of humanity only begin to become clear when one takes into account the fact of repeated lives on earth. Such a merging of the Christian impulses with the Greek ones, as was the case with Raphael, can only be understood if one is able to call the explanation from repeated earthly lives to help. It may still be foreign to our contemporaries today, but I have often used the comparison [with what] Francesco Redi said. He said that it is wrong that animals can arise from river mud; living things can only come from living things. — And in the same way, spiritual and psychological things can only come from spiritual and psychological things. ]

[Today, you would be branded a heretic if you tried to point out that a human life cannot be explained only in terms of its immediate environment. If one examines these things more closely, one will realize that when something flashes up in a human soul that cannot be explained by its environment, this leads back to a previous earthly existence, to something that this soul acquired in a previous earthly existence and that, when the soul has passed through death and a new birth, takes on the form of the self-evident in its new earthly existence, as something connected with the being, as something belonging to it. Thus, the Christian impulses are naturally connected with Raphael's being, so connected that Raphael cannot be thought of without them.

[If one presupposes the spiritual-scientific realization that the human soul goes through repeated earthly lives, then it becomes understandable that what a person has acquired in an earlier earthly life becomes forces in a later earthly life. One experiences and observes how they enter the soul and go through the stages that a person goes through between death and rebirth, and there they become one with the soul. And when the person then enters a new existence, he works with these forces on his entire inner physical form and makes his body in such a way that what he creates in the next life on earth seems to emerge naturally from his being. It seems to me that there will certainly come a time in the development of humanity when people will realize, precisely through unbiased observation of the facts, that only the great phenomena can be understood from the law of repeated lives on earth. Then it will also be clear that it is not only necessary to look at the greatest phenomena, but that every single human life can be understood if one takes the view of repeated lives on earth.

But when one directs one's human gaze to these great phenomena, which are so intimately connected with human development, with all that is the innermost impulses of the progressing human spirit, then something emerges from this contemplation that strengthens the human soul, giving it inner support, inner confidence, inner strength for work, as has often been discussed here. It leads the human soul not only to know but also to feel the germ of a following earthly existence, just as we feel how the plant has gathered its strength and summarized it in the germ and thus becomes aware that a new plant will emerge from this germ in summer. The soul can have this awareness, this feeling of having incorporated everything, as a guarantee for a future earthly life. What is already in the germ in this earthly life is transformed by the mere knowledge of immortality into a feeling of the immortal human germ, into a feeling for what builds up the future life.

Once again, it was very strange to me that it was precisely Herman Grimm's approach to such things, which were just being discussed, that compelled me to read a certain passage at the beginning of his book about Raphael. He who regards Raphael from the standpoint of spiritual science will naturally come to regard repeated earthly lives as necessary if he wants to understand Raphael quite concretely. And from the realization of repeated earthly lives we draw that strength which gives us the insight for what we will encounter in the future. Truly, it is surprising when one feels this as the effect of science: When someone approaches a phenomenon like Raphael and never comes to terms with it, but nevertheless, in the face of Raphael's greatness, receives a feeling, not yet of the reality of coming earth lives, but that in the face of this fulfilled human life, he feels a kind of desire for a coming earth life. The certainty of repeated earthly lives can only arise through spiritual science, but when contemplating Raphael's life, Herman Grimm felt a sense of security in the face of eternity, which he expresses with the strange word:

I see developments in humanity that I will be denied the opportunity to partake in, but which appear to me to be so brilliantly beautiful that it would be well worth starting human existence all over again for their sake.

It is now highly remarkable that we can translate the desire that arises in Herman Grimm through the contemplation of Raphael's life into the contemplation of a reality.

And so we can summarize what was the subject of today's contemplation in an overview of our feelings: It seems natural that in the face of a personality like Raphael's, where one feels so certain that a single life on earth is not enough to understand it, that for someone who allows this personality to have a complete effect on them, the desire that spiritual science describes as reality arises – the vision of repeated lives on earth. And so, an unbiased spiritual-scientific consideration of such great human beings as Raphael may lead to people being led more and more to develop such habits of thought through the contemplation of these great human beings. These habits of thought may still be very much opposed to today's opinions, but they will most certainly become part of people's spiritual life. As surely as the contemplation has become established – living things can only come from living things – so surely will the contemplation become established: spiritual and soul things can only come from spiritual and soul things. And it is precisely the contemplation of human greatness that can sink into our soul that which leads to such [new] habits of thinking. Wanting to try to understand human greatness also brings forth in us the opinion, indeed the certainty, that the truths of which we convince ourselves through an ever-deepening immersion in things and in the spirit of things, even if they initially meet resistance after resistance, will ultimately find their way into human hearts. No matter how narrow the chinks through which the truth must squeeze to reach the hearts of men, truth will find the way even through the narrowest chink. Those who can only see the germ of spiritual science today can be inspired by this sentence, which has been so deeply confirmed by the spiritual development of mankind, for it is only a germ. But he can also, by looking at this germ, develop confidence in his soul so that this germ will surely rise, blossom and bear fruit for the human soul. Answering

No question: I request that this lecture be printed.

Rudolf Steiner: In view of the number of lectures that have already been printed, I would prefer if nothing more were printed. What has been printed has not yet penetrated everywhere as far [into people's consciousness] as it could have.

Question: What do you do with the [standstill in development]? Is there [any] progress at all, [so that] the direction changes?

Rudolf Steiner: Anyone who has really listened will not easily be able to ask such a question. It is like this: [first there is] change, then [a] standstill. We see this in every house, [which was first built and then remains as a result for years].

Question: Is it possible for a person who can consciously leave their body to consciously remain in other spheres and no longer return to their body? And is the body then asleep or dead?

Rudolf Steiner: It is dead, of course. It is not about the real impossibility of returning, but about the moral one. Morally, one is obliged not to thwart one's karma. Natural laws and moral order are becoming more and more aligned. The natural law is increasingly becoming a moral natural necessity, and then such questions are no longer asked. [These are just as nonsensical as the question:] Could someone who has just made a watch pick up a hammer and smash the watch right away? Of course he could, but it wouldn't be reasonable.

Question: Is color blindness a hindrance to occult self-development?

Rudolf Steiner: Read my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds” - it is, however, out of print: Gazing [into the spiritual world] does not depend on our sense organs, we are, after all, becoming free of them. It is in no way disturbing if any sense organ is imperfectly developed, not even blindness [is an obstacle]. It is a mistake to confuse what appears in spiritual science with ordinary clairvoyance. Ordinary clairvoyance is not clairvoyance that really takes place in supersensible worlds. Ordinary clairvoyance is based on a certain mood in the sense organs or at least comes about with their active participation. Two clairvoyants, one blind and the other not, have the same experience when they encounter the same thing. When one says of such an experience, “It is the same as what one experiences with the color blue (or red),” one means that the same thing is experienced as one experiences with the color blue (or red). That is why it is called that, but it is not the same as the external experience of color. Because most people have a normal development [of the senses], one can proceed from this point of view; but it may be necessary to choose different starting points for those born blind; but one arrives at the same [spiritual experience].

Question: Can one get an impression of spiritual science by reading Tolstoy's books?

Rudolf Steiner: From reading Tolstoy, one cannot come to the idea that there is a spiritual science.

Question: Is it permissible to anesthetize a dying person with opium, [or] if not, [then] as with operations?

Rudolf Steiner: In the ideal case, one should act according to the appropriate knowledge that applies [also to] one, which appears to be humanly possible. One should not resist [applying that which] can provide relief to a person; [otherwise] it would lead to impossibilities.

Question: Can devout prayer grant wishes?

Rudolf Steiner: Prayer should actually be a bowing of the soul to the divine spirituality that lives and permeates the world, so that prayer actually loses its meaning when it is selfish. And only that prayer is justified which ends in the words of the original prayer: “But not my will, but yours be done.” This postscript gives prayer the right mood. Then it is a right prayer, when it is not selfish, otherwise practical contradictions arise immediately. For what should the granter of wishes do when one farmer wants something to sprout and asks for rain, but the other in the same area asks for dryness, or when of two armies, each of which certainly wishes to win, one asks for victory, but the other also asks for victory? So one should not be selfish in prayer. Therefore, the question of whether wishes are granted or not has no real meaning, because a proper prayer cannot expect wishes to be granted. I know that this is offensive to many souls, but one should only look at the nature of things and one will find that things really are like that.

Question: What about vegetarianism [in the light of the Bible? There are] the words of Christ: “My oxen are slaughtered,” or the paschal lamb, or even the banquets. And what about alcohol at the wedding at Cana or at the Last Supper, [when] the bread is dipped in wine?

Rudolf Steiner: It would be going too far if the corresponding words of the Gospels were explained [now]. But it would be shown that many of the things one reads in the Gospels today are only translation errors. Apart from that, it can be said that the development of spiritual views can be facilitated by a vegetarian lifestyle. But it is nothing more than stating the fact that he [the vegetarian] can make his path easier, just as one makes many other things easier by abstaining from meat. But it is not the task of spiritual science to promote vegetarianism in a one-sided way. Spiritual science does not subscribe to one-sided propaganda. For spiritual science, precise thinking is necessary, not only for comprehension and understanding, but also for [better] engagement with the finer webs of thought. Many a person believes they have to object to this or that, but these objections only stem from thinking that has stopped halfway. These things are not based on the consistency of scientific thinking, but on habits of thinking, on a lack of logic. Spiritual science is based on the fact that only what is known is believed: this is the view of every science. But to penetrate [into spiritual science] in such a way that one can really participate, it is necessary to relieve one's thinking of its burdens, to make it finer, so that one is able to follow paths along which one would otherwise not be able to follow – and the vegetarian way of life contributes to this.

One should also consider the relationship to the other kingdoms of nature. Today, humanity cannot even think of making vegetarianism a general diet, because it is very personal whether a person wants to do that or not. One can thoroughly spoil oneself if one wants to live in an abstract vegetarian way. This applies not only to today, but to all periods of time. Of course, today we can claim things that made no sense 2000 years ago; what is true today does not have to be true for all time. This only applies to materialistic truths. When we talk about modern man and man at the time of Christ, we are not talking about the same thing; we are only obliged to use the same word. Many things change over time. The Easter lamb does not have to mean a slaughtered lamb. Even if what is written on the note is correct, it was a different time. It cannot be deduced from this that [vegetarianism] cannot apply to today, when the finer structures of human nature have become quite different from what they were then, and that it is not a means of helping spiritual science if one becomes accustomed to vegetarianism. Now, one should not believe that one can “eat one's way up” into the higher worlds, [because it is] irrelevant whether one eats or refrains from eating. [Vegetarianism is] only a means of facilitating, not a means of comfort.

The fact that I am speaking today is a consequence of the question posed in the preceding history seminar. This question concerns the question of guilt for the last war catastrophe, and it is certainly such an important question, and one can already say today that it is also a thoroughly historically important question, that the answer to this question, as far as it is possible to answer it in such a narrow framework in a short time, must not be withheld from you.

I would just like to make a few preliminary remarks so that you are aware of the context in which I wish to speak about this question. I have never held back the views I have formed on the subject of today's discussions in lectures I have given at the Goetheanum in Dornach, and I have never made a secret of the fact that these views appear to me to be the ones that should be expressed to the whole world above all others. I do not believe that the situation today is such that we should keep saying that we must first leave the objective judgment to history, that we will only be able to form an objective judgment on this matter in the future. In the course of time, especially as a result of prejudices that continue to have an effect, just as much will be lost in terms of the possibility of forming a sound judgment on this question as might perhaps be gained from one or the other. I say “might” expressly, because I myself do not believe that in the future one will be able to form a better judgment on this question than one can already in the present.

That is the first thing I would like to say. I must say it for the following reason: As you well know, those attacks – I do not want to label them with any epithet now – that relate precisely to the cultural-political side of my work within the borders of Germany, come mainly from the side that one could call the “Pan-German” side, and I must of course be aware that on this side, everything I present in any way will be interpreted in the wildest way. On the other hand, I do not think I need to say any special words of defense in this direction, for the silly accusations that something is being done against Germanness are refuted by the fact that that the Goetheanum was already built during the war in the northwestern corner of Switzerland, a symbol of what is to be achieved not only within Germany, but also before the whole world through German spiritual life. If one has borne witness in this way to what it means to be German, then I think there is no need to say many more words to refute malicious accusations in any way.

What I have to say further is this: I have always endeavored not to influence in any way the judgments of those who hear what I say in this regard, and I would like to continue to do so today as far as possible – of course it is only possible to a limited extent if one has to be brief. In everything I have said, I have endeavored to provide everyone with the basis for forming their own judgment by listing these or those facts, these or those moments. And just as I never anticipate a judgment in the full scope of spiritual science, but only try to provide the material for forming a judgment, so I would also like to do so in these matters related to the historical external world.

Now, I would like to comment on the matter itself: it seems to me that the discussions taking place today on the question of guilt are, more or less everywhere in the world, based on impossible premises. I, for my part, believe that with these same premises, if only applied in one way or another, one can easily prove that the entire blame for the war lies with the somewhat strange Nikita, the King of Montenegro. I believe that with these arguments one can ultimately even prove that Helfferich is an extraordinarily wise man, or that the formerly fat Mr. Erzberger did not slither through all possible undergrounds and basements of European will in a remarkably lively manner during the war. In short, I believe that one can do very little with these arguments. On the other hand, I believe that the present German Foreign Minister Simons was quite right when he said in his recent speech in Stuttgart that it is necessary to seriously address the question of guilt. I just have the additional view that this should really be done. Because emphasizing that it is necessary to do this does not mean that we have done everything that needs to be done. It is necessary to address the question of guilt, and this is clear from the fact that the most cunning statesman of the present day, Lloyd George, put it at the forefront of those last ill-fated London negotiations. only call it, one is at a loss to find the right words for what is currently being said - the sentence: 'Everything we negotiate is based on the assumption that the Entente Allies have decided the question of guilt.

Now, if everything we can negotiate is done under the aspect that the question of guilt has been decided, then, if it has not been decided, it is all the more important to begin the negotiations by seriously raising the question of guilt and treating it in a serious manner. It must be emphasized that, so far, nothing has been done in relation to this question of guilt except for a very strange decision by the victorious powers. This decision is based, entirely in accordance with the rules of world affairs today, not on an objective assessment of the facts, but simply on a dictate from the victors. The victors need to exploit their victory in an appropriate way by dictating to the world that the other side was to blame for the war. You cannot exploit victory, as the Entente would like, as you even – it can be admitted – must exploit it from that point of view, if you do not blame the other side entirely. You will easily see that one could not act in this way if one were to say: Yes, people cannot actually be judged at all as they were, say, during the war catastrophe.

So it is a matter of the fact – because everything else has remained only literature or has not even become literature – that for the time being nothing more has been done for the question of guilt than for the dictation of a victor to flow. And the fact that this has happened in an incomprehensible way, which basically should never have happened, that this victor's dictation has been signed, has created a fact that cannot be regretted enough. For one cannot say: this signature had to be given in order not to make the disaster even greater. Those who look into the real events know that one can only get through the present world situation with the truth and with the will to the full truth. Even if what flows through the need may lead to tragic situations, today one cannot get by with anything else. The times are too serious, they call for great decisions, they cannot be resolved otherwise than with the full will to truth.

I would like to emphasize: Since I am unable, in the short time available to me, to present the matter in such a way that the content of my sentences fully substantiates what I am saying, I will at least try to give you a basis for forming an opinion in this area by the way I present the facts, the way I try to find the nuances in the way things are presented. Now, through many years of experience and careful observation of what is taking place in world-historical development, I have found out how, especially among the Anglo-Saxon people and in particular among certain groups of people within this Anglo-Saxon people, a political view exists that is, in a certain sense, quite historically generous. Certain backers, if I may call them that, of Anglo-Saxon politics have a political view that I would summarize in two main points: firstly, there is the view – and there are a large number of personalities behind the actual external politicians, who are sometimes straw men, are imbued with this view — that the Anglo-Saxon race, through certain world-developing forces, must fall to the mission of exercising a world domination, a real world domination, for the present and the future of many centuries. This conviction is deeply rooted in these personalities, even though it is rooted, I might say, in a materialistic way and in materialistic conceptions of the workings of the world. But it is so deeply rooted in those who are the true leaders of the Anglo-Saxon race that it can be compared with the inner impulses which the ancient Jewish people once had of their world mission. The ancient Jews, of course, conceived of it more in moral and theological terms, but the intensity of the conception is the same in the actual leaders of the Anglo-Saxon race as it was in the ancient Jews. So we are dealing primarily with this principle, which you can also observe externally, and with the particular way of looking at life that is present among the Anglo-Saxon people, among their representative men in particular. The prevailing view is that when something like this is at hand, everything must be done that lies in the spirit of such a world impulse, that one must not shrink from anything that lies in the spirit of such a world impulse. This impulse is brought into the minds of those who then lead political life in the more inferior positions — but this still includes those of the state secretaries — in an, it must be said, intellectually extraordinarily magnificent way. I believe that anyone who is not aware of the fact just mentioned cannot possibly understand the course of world development in modern times.

The second point on which this world policy, which has been so sad and so disastrous for Central Europe, is based, is the following. People are far-sighted. From the point of view of Anglo-Saxonism, this policy is generous, it is imbued with the belief that world impulses rule the world and not the small practical impulses by which this or that politician often allows himself to be guided with arrogance. This policy of Anglo-Saxonism is generous in this sense; it also counts on the world-historical impulse in individual practical measures. The second thing is this: It is well known that the social question is a world-historical impulse that must necessarily be realized. There is not one of the leading figures among the Anglo-Saxon personalities who does not look at it with an, I might say, extraordinarily cold and sober gaze and say to himself: The social question must be realized. But he also says to himself: It must not be realized in such a way that the Western, the Anglo-Saxon mission might suffer as a result. He says, almost literally, and these words have been spoken often: the Western world is not suited to being ruined by socialist experiments. The Eastern world is suited to this. And he is then inspired by the intention of making this Eastern world, namely the Russian world, the field of socialist experiments.

What I am about to tell you is a view that I was able to establish – perhaps it goes back even further, I don't know for the time being – to the 1880s. The Anglo-Saxon people were well aware that the social question would have to be resolved, that they would not let it ruin their Anglo-Saxon way of life, and that Russia would therefore have to become the experimental country for socialist attempts. And in this direction politics was tending, it was clearly tending towards this policy. And in particular all Balkan questions, including the one by which in the Berlin Treaty Bosnia and Herzegovina were snatched away from the unsuspecting Central Europeans, all these questions were already being treated from this point of view. The whole treatment of the Turkish problem by the Anglo-Saxon world is from this point of view, and it was hoped that the socialist experiments, by taking the course they must take when the erring proletarian world world follows Marxist or similar principles, that these socialist experiments will also be a clear lesson for the working world in their outcome, in their futility, in their destruction, that it cannot be done this way either. Thus the Western world will be protected by showing the East what socialism can achieve when it is allowed to spread as it would not be allowed to in the Western world.

You see, these things, which it will be possible to explain in full historical terms, are what has been lying at the bottom of the European situation, and the world situation in general, for decades. And from these things, I would say, emerges what shows a level of world-historical events that is now already too close to the physical world. We need only read very carefully what the fantasist Woodrow Wilson, who is, however, a good historian in the present sense, lets shine through his words in his various speeches. But we only need that to have a symptom of what I want to say. Throughout modern history, it has become apparent that the Orient, although this is usually not noticed, is a kind of discussion problem for all of European civilization. The objective observer has no choice but to say to himself: through the world-historical events of modern times, England has been favored in a certain inauguration of the mission characterized by you. This goes back a long way, back to the discovery of the possibility of reaching India by sea. From this privilege, basically, the whole configuration of modern English politics goes out, and there you have – if I may briefly indicate this schematically; what I am saying now would of course have to be discussed in many hours, but can only hint at the matter in this answer to a question. It goes from England through the ocean, around Africa to India. There is an enormous amount to be learned from this line. This line is the one for which the Anglo-Saxon world mission is really fighting and will fight to the finish, even if it is necessary to fight to the finish against America. The other line, which is just as important, is the one that represents the overland route, which played a major role in the Middle Ages but has become impossible for more recent economic developments due to the discovery of America and the incursions of the Turks into Europe. But between these two lines lies the Balkans, and Anglo-Saxon policy is directed towards dealing with the Balkan problem in such a way as to eliminate this line completely in relation to economic development, so that only the sea line can develop. Anyone who wants to see it can see what I have just indicated in everything that has happened from 1900 and even earlier, up to the Balkan Wars, which immediately preceded the so-called World War, and up to 1914.

Another thing is the relationship between England and Russia. This line is of course of no interest to Russia; but Russia is interested in its own behavior in relation to this line. As you have already seen, England has something special in mind with Russia, the socialist experiment, and therefore it must base its entire policy on the one hand on the realization of this economic line, and on the other hand on Russia being so restricted and contained that it can provide the ground for the socialist experiments. Nevertheless, that was basically the world situation. Everything that had been done in the field of world politics up to 1914 was influenced by this world tendency. As I said, it would take many hours to go into this in detail; but I wanted to at least touch on it here.

What I had to face and what I tried to throw light on when I wrote my appeal 'To the German People and the Cultural World' in 1919 is the other fact that unfortunately people in Central Europe have always refused to believe that they had to gain a political perspective from the point of view of such generous historical impulses. Unfortunately, it was not possible to get anyone within Europe, within the continent, to look at the measures that were taken from the point of view of dealing with such generous tendencies. You see, then people come and say: You have to do practical politics! A politician must be a practitioner! Now let me give you an example to make clear what such people actually mean by practice. There are numerous people who say: It is all nonsense, what the Stuttgart people are doing with their threefold social order, with their “Coming Day” and so on. It is all impractical, they are impractical idealists! Well, put these people in front of you now and think how it will hopefully be when the years come when we have been lucky, if I may put it this way, when we have achieved something, have accomplished something that stands in the world. Then you will see that the same people who now say: All this is impractical stuff – will then come and want to be hired to use their practical knowledge to spread what they previously shouted down as impractical stuff, using all their powers of speech and action. Then all at once the thing is regarded as practical. That is the only point of view these people have for their practice. Whatever the matter may be, this is what it is always about: one must realize that things must be considered at their origin and that what the “practical” impractitioners call “impractical” is something that is often sought precisely as the basis of their practice. They just don't want to put themselves in the other person's shoes, and that makes them unsuitable for dealing with real-life situations.

The practice followed by the politicians of Europe was more or less the same. There is no other way of putting it. And it is absolutely essential to realize that the nullity, the arrival at zero in relation to this policy, was a tragic relationship for Central Europe, when things were coming to a head. What is at issue here, then, is that we must also recognize that it is absolutely necessary for us in Central Europe to rise to the level of a generous, spirit-filled political point of view. Without that, we will not be able to escape from the turmoil of the present. If we do not resolve to do so, then only what we are now seeing will come about. I am of the opinion that the political problems which are still being treated today under the influence of the old maxims are so tangled and so confused that they cannot be solved at all, at least not from these old impulses. And let us assume that the Entente statesmen had sat down together – I am telling you this as something that I have formed as an honest opinion – and had, under the leadership of Lloyd George, if you like, concocted the peace demands that they put out into the world before the London Conference; but let us assume that they then lost the elaboration of these peace demands through some event and they had even forgotten what these peace demands were – of course this is an impossible hypothesis, but I want to make a point here – and now let us assume that Simons had received this document and had made these same demands, quite literally, I am convinced that they would have been rejected with the same indignation with which Simons' offers were rejected at the London Conference. For it is not a matter of solvable problems, but of beating about the bush with regard to problems that are initially insoluble from this point of view. That is what must be said for those who seek the truth in this field.

Now, I would like to go down another layer, to the purely physical events. You know that the external beginning was the catastrophe of the war with the Serbian ultimatum. I have spoken so often about the causes of this ultimatum, about everything that preceded it, and it will be possible for you to inform yourselves about these things, so that today I may speak more cursorily. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia set in motion the whole series of complications. Now, anyone who is familiar with Austrian politics, especially the historical development of Austrian politics in the second half of the 19th century, knows that this Austro-Serbian ultimatum was indeed a warlike gamble, but that, having made the policy that was pursued, it was then an historical necessity. One cannot say anything other than this: Austrian politics took place in a territory in which it was simply impossible from the 1870s onwards to muddle along with the old principles of government. That they did muddle along is not a term I have invented; it was said by Count Taaffe, whose name was often misspelled as “Ta-affe” in Austria, in parliament itself. He said: We can do nothing else but muddle along.

Now, the necessity arose, precisely because of the complicated Austrian circumstances, to move on to a clear insight into the question: how does any association of nationalities study what are intellectual matters, and in an association state, such as the Austrian one was, did national issues really amount to something like the outpourings of intellectual life? Austrian politics has not even begun to look at this question properly, let alone study it in reality. And if I survey the situation with a certain will to weigh things, not to group them according to passions or to take them from external history, then other things appear to me in the prehistory of the Serbian ultimatum as more decisive than the murder of the Austrian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand, around which the events then gathered. I see, for example, that from the fall of 1911 into 1912, economic debates took place in the Austrian parliament that had significant repercussions on the streets and that were always linked to the conditions existing in Austria at the time. On the one hand, a large number of companies were closed down at the time because Austrian politics as a whole was so cornered that it didn't know what to do and tried in vain to find new markets, but couldn't find them. This led to the closure of numerous businesses in 1912 and to a huge increase in prices. At that time, inflationary unrest, which reached revolutionary proportions, arose in Vienna and in other areas of Austria, and the debates on inflation, in which the late Member of Parliament Adler took such a great interest in the Austrian Parliament, led to the Minister of Justice being shot five times from the gallery. This was the signal; economic life cannot be maintained in this way in Austria, economic life cannot be sustained. What did Minister Gautsch find to be the main content of his speech back then? He said that all energy, that is, the old administrative measures of Austria, must be used to ensure that the agitation against the inflation disappears. That is how you see the mood on the other side.

Intellectual life was played out in the national struggles. Economic life was driven into a cul-de-sac – you can study this in detail – but no one had the heart or mind to study the necessity of the further development of intellectual and economic life separately from the old state views, which were shown to be null and void in Austria. In Austria, the necessity arose to approach the study of world-historical affairs in such a way that the matter worked towards a threefold structure of the social organism. This follows simply from the facts I have just described. Nobody wanted to think about it, and because nobody wanted to think about it, that is how things turned out. You see, what happened in Austria under the influence of the effects of the Congress of Berlin in the early 1880s, you just need to shed a little light on it and you will see what forces were at play. In Austria, conditions had already deteriorated to such an extent by the beginning of the 1880s, and even earlier, that the Polish member of parliament Otto Hausner publicly spoke the words in parliament: If things continue in Austrian politics at this rate, in three years' time we will no longer have a parliament at all, but something completely different. — He meant state chaos. Now, of course, people exaggerate in such arguments, they make hyperboles. What he had prophesied for the future of the next three years did not come in three years, but it did come in a few decades.

I could cite countless examples from the parliamentary debates in Austria at the turn of the seventies and eighties, from which it would be clear to you how people in Austria saw that the agricultural problem was also looming in a terrible way. I remember very well, for example, how it was said at the time, following the justification of the construction of the Arlberg railway, by individual politicians of the most diverse shades, that the construction of this railway had to be tackled because it was shown that it was simply no longer possible to continue working in the right agrarian way if the enormous influence of agricultural products from the West continued in the same way as before. Of course the problem had not been tackled in the right way, but a correct prophecy had been spoken. And all these things – one could cite hundreds – would show how Austria, in the end, in 1914, had reached the point where it had to say: either we can no longer go on, we must abdicate as a state, we must say we are helpless! or we must get out of this somehow by a desperate gamble, by doing something that will create prestige for the ruling class. Anyone who still held the view that Austria should continue to exist – and I would like to know how an Austrian statesman could have remained a statesman if he did not hold this view – even if he was as foolish as Count Berchtold, could say to himself no other words than: Something like this had to happen – there was no other way to play a game of chance. No matter how strange it may appear from certain points of view, one must understand this in its historical impulses.

Now, so to speak, we have the starting point in one place. Consider this starting point in another place, namely in Berlin. Now, I would like to begin by telling you some purely factual details in order to give you an idea of what was at work there: Please do not take it amiss if I also characterize it quite objectively: In 1905, the man who, in 1914 in Berlin, nevertheless had the decision on war and peace on his shoulders, the then General and later General-in-Chief before Moltke, was appointed Chief of Staff. At the time of his appointment, the following scene took place – I will describe it as briefly as possible: General von Moltke could not, in accordance with his convictions, take on the responsible office of Chief of Staff without first discussing with the supreme warlord, the Kaiser, the conditions of accepting this office. And this argument had approximately the following course. The point was that until then, due to the position of the generals in relation to the supreme commander, the matter was such that the latter – you may have already read about this here or there – often led the supreme command on one side or the other during maneuvers, and you know that this supreme commander also regularly won. Now the man who was to be appointed in 1905 said to himself, the responsible office of the Chief of General Staff: Of course, under such conditions, one cannot take it on; because it can also be serious, and then you should see how you can wage war under the conditions under which you have to put together maneuvers when you have the supreme commander in command, who must win. — Now General von Moltke decided to present this to the Kaiser in a very open and honest way. The Kaiser was extremely astonished when the person he had chosen to be his Chief of Staff told him that it would not do, because the Kaiser did not really understand how to lead a war in a real situation. Therefore, things had to be prepared in such a way that they could be used in a real situation, and he could only take on the role of Chief of Staff if the Kaiser renounced the leadership of any side. The Kaiser said, “Yes, but what is the situation? Have I not really won? Has it been done like that? He knew nothing about what his entourage had done, and only when his eyes were opened to it did he realize that this would not do, and it must even be said that he then accepted the conditions with considerable willingness; that should certainly not be kept secret.

So, ladies and gentlemen, having presented these facts to you for your own judgment, I ask you – and perhaps I may add in parenthesis that there is ample reason today not to color anything in such matters, because I can be checked at any moment by a personality present here – having presented these facts to you, I also ask you now to consider whether there have been any aberrations, whether it was not also a very peculiar thing that personalities were found around the supreme commander – who have also found their succession – who at least did not speak as the later General-in-Chief von Moltke did in 1905, but who also acted differently after taking office. Today there is no need to keep telling the world that one must wait until one can establish the objective facts; it is only a matter of having the sincere will to point out these objective facts.

And now there is really no need to speculate about a Kronrat of 1914, when it is certain that Generaloberst von Moltke had no idea that it had taken place, because he was absent in July 1914 until shortly before the outbreak of the war for a cure in Karlovy Vary. This is important to emphasize because when the talk comes to Germany's warmongers, one must then say the following: Of course there were such warmongers, and if one were to tackle the specific problem of warmongering, there would be a lack of such personalities, whom I have also mentioned earlier, if one wanted to whitewash them completely. And finally, what I said, that one can also ascribe a heavy burden of war guilt to Nikita of Montenegro – I don't know if he is white or black – may be inferred from the fact that as early as July 22, 1914, the two daughters, these – forgive the expression—demonic women in St. Petersburg, in the presence of Poincare, at a particularly magnificent court celebration, told the French ambassador, who did the strange thing of telling the story himself in his memoirs in old age, “We live in a historic time; a letter from our father just arrived, and it indicates that we will have war in the next few days. It will be magnificent. Germany and Austria will disappear, we will join hands in Berlin. Now, the daughters of King Nikita, Anastasia and Militza, said this to the French ambassador in St. Petersburg on July 22 – please note the date. This is also a fact that can be pointed out.

Well then, I would like to say that there is no need to worry about all the less important details. On the other hand, the fact that things in Berlin came to such a head by July 31, 1914, that all decisions about war and peace were actually placed on the shoulders of General von Moltke, and he naturally could not form an opinion about the situation based on anything other than purely military grounds. That is what must be taken into account; for in order to judge the situation in Berlin at that time, it is actually necessary to know exactly, I might almost say hour by hour, what took place in Berlin from about four o'clock in the afternoon until eleven o'clock at night on Saturday. Those were the decisive hours in Berlin, when an enormous tragedy in world history took place. This world-historical tragedy took place in such a way that the then Chief of Staff, from what had happened, or at least from all that could be known in Berlin about what had happened, could do nothing else but to have the General Staff plan carried out, which had been prepared for years in case something like this happened, which in the end could only be foreseen as the thing to happen.

The various alliances were such that one could not think about the European situation in any other way than this: if the Balkan turmoil extends to Austria, Russia will definitely take part. Russia has France and England as allies. They will have to take part in some way. But then things automatically go like this – there is no need to ask any further – that Germany and Austria must go together, and from Italy they had the most definite assurance, even stipulated in detail by an agreement reached shortly before, except for the number of divisions, how it would participate in a possible war. These were the facts known in Berlin, these were the facts available to a man who, in view of the world situation, really only had two points of departure. These were the two maxims of General von Moltke: firstly, if it comes to war, then this war will be terrible, something dreadful will happen. And anyone who knew the very fine soul of General von Moltke knew that such a soul would truly not be able to plunge into what it considered the most terrible thing with a light heart. But the other thing was an unbounded devotion to duty and responsibility, and that in turn could not help but work as it did.

If what happened should have been prevented, then it should have been prevented by German politics; what you yourself may judge should be prevented, if I draw your attention to the following facts: It was On Saturday afternoon, the event that was to lead to a decision approached, and after four o'clock the Chief of Staff, von Moltke, met the Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg and a number of other gentlemen in a state that actually seemed to be quite rosy. A report had just come from England – though I think it is hard to believe that it was properly read, otherwise it could not have been understood as it was – according to which German politicians believed that England could still be persuaded to change its mind. No one had any idea of the unshakable belief in the mission of Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, one had always driven ostrich policy, that was tragic. Now one believed to be able to read with a light heart from such a telegram that the things could also play differently, and it happened that the emperor did not sign the mobilization document. So, I would like to explicitly note that on the evening of July 31st, the mobilization document was not signed by the Kaiser, although the Chief of Staff, based on his military judgment, was of the opinion that nothing should be given on such a telegram, but that the war plan must be carried out without fail. Instead of this, the officer was ordered on that day, in the presence of Moltke, to telephone that the troops in the west were to hold back from the enemy border, and the Kaiser said: Now we certainly do not need to invade Belgium.

Now what I am about to tell you is contained in notes that General von Moltke himself wrote down after his very strange dismissal. These notes were to be published with the consent of Mrs. von Moltke in May 1919, at that crucial moment when Germany was about to tell the world the truth, just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. And anyone who reads what was to be published at the time and what flowed from the pen of Herr von Moltke himself will not for a moment be able to gainsay the judgment, since these things so much bear the expression of inner honesty and sincerity that they would not have made a significant impression on the world before the Versailles Dictate. Well, the thing was printed, printed on a Tuesday afternoon, and was to appear on Wednesday. I will not go into further details. A German general appeared at my house who wanted to make it clear to me from a thick bundle of files that three points in these notes were incorrect. I had to tell the general: I have been doing philological work for a long time. I cannot be impressed by bundles of files until they have been assessed in a philological sense, because one must not only know what is contained in them, but also what is not contained in them, and anyone who undertakes a historical investigation does not only investigate what is contained in them, but also what is missing. — But I had to say the following: You have cooperated, the world naturally assumes that you know exactly what the facts are. If I publish the memoirs of Moltke, will you swear that these three points are incorrect? — and he said: Yes! — I am completely convinced that the three points are correct, because they can also be proven to be correct from a psychological point of view. But of course it would have been of no use at the time if the brochure had been published – all the other harassments were added to that – the brochure would simply have been confiscated, that was perfectly clear. I could not have a brochure published that had been sworn to before the whole world, that the three points in it were not correct. For we live in a world in which it is not a matter of right and wrong, but in which power decides.

I know that what I wrote in this brochure on page V was particularly resented, but I thought it necessary to shed the right kind of light on the situation. I wrote: The disastrous incursion into Belgium, which was a military necessity and a political impossibility, shows how everything in Germany was geared towards the peak of military judgment in the period leading up to the outbreak of war. In November 1914, the writer of these lines asked Mr. von Moltke, with whom he had been friends for many years: What did the Kaiser think about this incursion? and the answer was: He knew nothing about it before the days preceding the outbreak of war, because, given his character, one would have had to fear that he would have blabbed the matter to the whole world. That could not be allowed to happen, because the invasion could only have been successful if the opponents were unprepared. — And I asked: Did the Reich Chancellor know about it? — The answer was: Yes, he knew about it. So politics in Central Europe had to be conducted in such a way that one had to take account of garrulity, and I ask you: Is it not a terrible tragedy that politics must be conducted in this way? Therefore, the full proof can be provided from these underground sources that what the otherwise unpleasant Tirpitz says about Bethmann-Hollweg is correct, that the latter would have sunk to his knees and that the nullity of his policy would already have been expressed in his physiognomy. This nullity was also later expressed by the fact that he emphasized to the English ambassador that if England did strike after all, his entire policy would prove to be a house of cards. And it was a house of cards, and it collapsed, and the Chief of Staff had to write in his memoirs about the situation he was in at the time, on Saturday evening: “The mood became increasingly agitated, and I was left standing all alone.

Thus the military judgment was left standing all alone, while politics had lapsed into nullity. This was brought upon the Germans by their own refusal to rise to the great challenges to which they were particularly called, challenges that emerged in the great, significant epochs of German cultural development, challenges that they refused to face at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The fact that only disaster could follow from such a situation now weighed heavily on the mind of the Chief of Staff. When an officer came to him to sign the order to withdraw the troops from the Franco-Belgian border, which had been ordered by telephone border, the Chief of Staff slammed his pen down on the table, breaking it, and said that he would never sign such an order, and that the troops would become uncertain if such an order came from the Chief of Staff as well. And the Chief of Staff was then brought out of his most painful and despairing mood. It was now well past ten o'clock. Another telegram had arrived from England, and - I'd rather not go into the details - the words of the supreme commander were: Now you can do whatever you want!

You see, you have to go into the details, and I have only given a few main features of what was happening on the continent, so to speak. I would also like to mention the counter-move that occurred on the other side. It will become authentic one day – again, I can say that I am not telling you this carelessly – it will become authentic one day that the two people Asquith and Grey said at the same time as what I have just told you happened in Berlin: Yes, what is this actually? Have we been pursuing English policy with our eyes closed until now? They said that this English policy had been made by a completely different side; they had been blindfolded. And they said: Now the bandage has been removed from us – that was Saturday evening – now that we are seeing, we are standing at the abyss; now we can only go into the war. This is the reflection on the other side of the Channel, and I ask you to take all this as something that could be greatly amplified, because in the time allotted to me I can do nothing but give a kind of mood, present to you something that at least sheds some light on the things that have happened.

And then, if you take all this into consideration, I ask you to read what I have written in my “Thoughts During the Time of War”, which I deliberately titled “For Germans and Those Who Do Not Believe They Must Hate”. Every single thing in it has been carefully considered. I ask you to consider what I wrote there from these points of view, that it is not a matter of what is usually called moral guilt or moral innocence, but that things must be raised to the level of historical development , in which something extraordinarily tragic took place, something that can be called a historical necessity, and about which one should not pry with judgments such as those I have mentioned at the beginning. Matters are much more serious than the world on both sides still believes; nevertheless, they are such that they should absolutely be made known to the world, that they should actually be the starting point for the order of the confusion. But truly, at the present time, there is no possibility that what is undertaken in this direction will be presented to the world in any other way than by being distorted and slandered.

What I have told you today about General von Moltke gives us an opportunity to judge this man in this decisive hour; but, as you know, there are people who, as they themselves worked on the general staff, say the most defamatory things about General Moltke, including the absurd lie that anthroposophical events were held in Luxembourg before the Battle of the Marne and that the General Chief of Staff therefore failed to do his duty. If such things can be said from such a position, then it can be seen from this what moral condition we have entered into today, and it is difficult to pave a right path for the truth within this moral condition. For this we would actually need many, very many personalities, and only after I have given you the conditions I have spoken of, only now I would like to read from Moltke's memoirs a sentence that will show you what lived in this man's soul, firstly in relation to his opinion of the necessity of war and secondly in relation to his sense of responsibility. For it is absolutely essential that we do not construct a brutal concept of guilt, but that we delve into what lived in the souls of those times. It is a very simple sentence that Moltke wrote, a sentence that has often been spoken, but there is a difference between it being spoken by the next best person and by the one on whose soul the decision about the war lay at the time. He wrote: “Germany did not bring about the war, nor did she enter into it out of a desire for conquest or aggressive intentions against her neighbors. The war was forced upon her by her enemies, and we are fighting for our national existence, for the survival of our nation, our national life.”

When examining facts, you don't start somewhere; you have to start where the realities and facts play out, and if you can prove that an essential part of the facts plays out in a man's mind, then it is one of the facts that created the situation when such an awareness prevailed in that mind. In order to assess the situation, it is also essential to take a close look at what happened among the forty to fifty personalities who were actually involved in the outbreak of this horrific catastrophe. Anyone who does not form an opinion out of prejudice but from expertise about these things, knows that basically everyone was actually quite unsuspecting except for the forty to fifty personalities who brought about the outbreak of war, who were actually active under the constellation of European conditions.

During the war, I truly had the opportunity to talk about the situation with many people who were able to judge it, and I never minced my words. For example, I said to a personage who was close to the government of a neutral state: It can be regarded as notorious that in our time, which calls itself democratic, about forty to fifty personalities, among whom — and it is not only within the Anthroposophical Society that there are women — there were quite a few women, about forty to fifty personalities, were directly involved in this catastrophe in the international world. It would be necessary to first elevate oneself to a point of view from which one could fundamentally assess this situation. Instead, there is an enormous amount of talk about these serious, world-shaking events from the superficialities of the White Papers and the like, and it is extraordinarily difficult for someone who would not talk if he did not know things differently from many others, always to bring the necessary here or there to bear where the situation has been judged since 1914. For me, this began in Switzerland, when the “J'accuse” books were being thrown at me everywhere, and I could not tell people – you know how dangerous the situations sometimes were – anything other than the truth, even though it was often the least understood: “Don't read the legal technicalities in such a book,” I said, ”read the style, read the whole structure, the whole presentation of the book, and if you have taste, you must say: political underground literature! I have had to say it repeatedly to people who belonged to neutral and non-neutral fields. Of course, I am not saying that this “J'accuse” book does not contain some correct things; but it is least of all based on such a point of view, which is suitable for judging the world-historically tragic situation in which, one can already say, the world found itself in 1914. And one must point out the underlying causes, even if only in order to be able to discuss the question of guilt.

Yes, but this question of guilt should also teach us something. You see, immediately after Germany's ill-fated declaration of peace in the fall or winter of 1916 and the whole fantastic sequence of events that followed with Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points, I immediately – I was not intrusive, people came a long way to meet me, more than halfway – - approached those who were in positions of responsibility with the request, which admittedly seemed paradoxical to some, that the idea of the threefold social order could be put forward to the world in the face of these quixotic fourteen points of Wilson's, which, however, despite their quixotic nature, were able to bring ships, cannons and men into play. And I had to experience that yes, many people realized that something like this had to happen, but that no one actually had the courage to do anything in this direction, no one, absolutely no one. For the conversation I had with Kühlmann, I think the witness who was present is here again today. So I can't make up any stories about these things. But I still have to explain that, and here too I would certainly not tell you something that is not true, because it is well known how the matter was carried out.

Here too, I must say the following, for example: You see, as early as January 1918, I considered the spring offensive of 1918 to be an absolute impossibility, and I happened to be on a trip from Dornach to Berlin with a certain personage - it was known that when the decisive moments approached, this personality would be called upon to lead the business. I came to Berlin when I had actually found a certain understanding for the threefold social order. There I had the opportunity to talk to a personage. Those who were able to inform themselves at the time about the way things were going already knew about the offensive in January 1918; one could only not speak of it. And I had the opportunity to talk to a military personage who was extremely close to General Ludendorff. The conversation took a turn such that I said: I do not want to expose myself to the danger of being accused of wanting to interfere in military-strategic matters, but I want to speak from a certain starting point from which this military dilettantism, which I might have, would not come into consideration. I said that in a spring offensive Ludendorff might possibly achieve everything he could ever have dreamed of; but I still consider this offensive to be absurd – and I gave the three reasons I had for it. The man I was talking to got quite excited and said: What do you want? Kühlmann has your paper in his pocket. That's what he went to Brest-Litovsk with. That is how we are served by politics. Politics is nothing for us. We military can do nothing but fight, fight, fight. — In 1914, the Chief of Staff was in a situation that he had to write about in the evening hours: “The mood became more and more agitated and I was all alone.” For the mood between ten and eleven o'clock he had to write: The Kaiser said: “Now you can do whatever you want!” — And in 1918 one could be told: Politics is out of the question, it is null and void; we can do nothing but fight, fight. — My dear audience, it was no different then and it is no different today, and I would like to provide you with negative, albeit subjective, proof that it is no different.

Once again, the same unworldly, abstract language has been used, with which Woodrow Wilson spoke, as evidenced by the way Woodrow Wilson stood in Versailles. Then Harding spoke from the same place, and I see in his speech, which is as confused as possible and delivered with no sense of reality, which only repeats the old phrases, now that we are facing economic decisions just as much as political ones, I see in this speech nothing that suggests that people are somehow concerned about what is looming again. It is almost impossible to get people to make a judgment. Whether we have the first Wilson showing his confusion at Versailles, or whether we were speaking from the same area a little later, it does not matter. What would matter is that one would have a keen sense of reality.

Then one would also look at such things as the fact, which is almost unheard of for someone who has a sense of judgment in political situations, that this very statesman, Lloyd George, who is characteristic in today's sense, recently said: You cannot blame Germany for the war in the old sense; people have slipped into it in their stupidity. He spoke in this way a few weeks ago, and you know how he spoke in London to Simons. From this you can judge the truth in the speeches people make, and if people still have no impetus to look at these things – they must get it, they must get it by developing a sense for the big picture. These great aspects were present in this catastrophe, and our misfortune is that no one had any idea of these great aspects. It must be made possible for the great aspects, on which things depend, to be thrown into the decision-making process in Central Europe today.

But as long as those who believe that they have a peculiar monopoly on Germanness slander what is true, as long as such people call us traitors to Germanness , and they call us traitors to our Germanism, although if these people would only understand what we have to say, it would do nothing but help the true Germanic people to achieve the position they deserve. Until these people change, until people who are willing to recognize the truth come together.

Of course, there were warmongers in Germany as well; but everything that came from them was of no importance at the decisive moment. What was important, however, was what I explained in the last chapter of my “Key Points”: that by losing sight of the big picture, we had arrived at the zero point of political effectiveness. We shall only rise again as Germans when we rise to great heights; for anyone who stands in the German tradition with a warm heart, not just with words – forgive the somewhat crude expression – knows that true Germanness means being rooted in great principles. But we must find our way back to the great principles of the German people. And it is basically also from experience that I am speaking these things to you today. Despite the way the question was phrased, I might not have answered; but I wanted to answer this question, and something that leads to the answer of such questions will become clear to you when I present the final passage that the questioner gave me in a supplement. He writes: I consider it very valuable to publish the correct, clear view on the whole question of war guilt in a memorandum, for example, and to distribute it widely. Well, that should have happened in May 1919. The memorandum was also printed. The world within Germany prevented this memorandum from being published. Let us not just sit here forming our opinion; something like this should be done: support those who do not want to be satisfied with their opinion but have long since tried to do what is being proposed here at the decisive moment. Then we will make progress.

Dear attendees, because I do believe that there are personalities among the German youth who will find their way back to true Germanness, who have minds and hearts and open minds to receive the truth, therefore, because I might have been able to speak here with some prospect of reaching younger people in particular, the best part of our youth perhaps, I have decided to make these suggestions to you today.

If you were in the Cologne Cathedral last night you could have seen there in illuminated lettering: C.M.B. As is well known, these letters represent the names of the so-called Three Holy Kings, according to the tradition of the Christian Church called: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar. For Cologne these names awaken quite special memories. An old legend tells us that the Three Holy Kings had become bishops and sometime after they had died their bones had been brought to Cologne. Related to this is another legend which tells that a Danish king had once come to Cologne, bringing with him three crowns for the Three Holy Kings. After he had returned home he had a dream. In his dream the three kings appeared to him and offered him three chalices—the first chalice contained gold, the second frankincense, and the third one myrrh. When the Danish king awoke the three kings had vanished, but the chalices had remained. There before him stood the three gifts which he had retained from his dream.

In this legend there is profound meaning. It is hinted to us that the king in his dream attained a certain insight into the spiritual world by which he learnt the symbolic meaning of the three kings. These three Magi of the Orient brought offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Jesus Christ. From his realisation he retained a lasting possession: those three human virtues, which are symbolised in the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh—self-knowledge in the gold; self-devoutness, that is the devoutness of the innermost self, or self-surrender, in the frankincense; and self-perfection and self-development, or the preservation of the eternal in the self, in the myrrh.

How was it possible for the king to receive these three virtues as gifts from another world? He received this possibility because he had endeavoured to penetrate with his whole soul into the profound symbolism lying concealed in the three kings who brought their offerings to Jesus Christ.

There are many features in this Christ legend which lead us deeply into the most diverse meanings of the Christ Principle, and what it is to bring about in the world. Among the profoundest features of the Christ-legend are the adoration and the sacrifice by the three Magi, the three Oriental Kings, and we must not approach this fundamental symbolism of Christian tradition without a deeper understanding. Later the view developed that the first king was the representative of the Asiatic peoples; the second, the representative of the European peoples; and the third king, the representative of the African peoples. Wherever Christianity was to be understood as the religion of earthly harmony, the three kings and their homage were more often seen as a union of the various streams and religious movements in the world into the one principle, the Christ principle.

When this legend took shape, those who had penetrated into the mystery principles of esoteric Christianity saw in the Christ principle not only a force which had intervened in the course of human development, but they saw in the being that Jesus of Nazareth embodied a cosmic world-force—a force far transcending the humaneness that prevails merely in our present time. They saw in the Christ Principle a force that indeed represents for mankind a human ideal, part of a far distant future development, an ideal which can only be approached by man when he increasingly grasps the whole world in the spirit. They saw in man, in the first place, a small being, a small world, a microcosm, an image of the macrocosm, the great all-embracing world. This macrocosm comprises all that man can perceive with his external senses, see with his eyes, hear with his ears, but comprises, besides, all that the spirit could perceive including the perceptions of the least developed to those of the most clairvoyant spirit. This was how the world appeared to the esoteric Christian of the earliest times. All he saw in the firmament and on our Earth, all he saw as thunder and lightning, as storm and rain, as sunshine, as the course of the stars, as sunrise and sunset, as moonrise and the setting of the Moon—all this was for him a gesture, something like a facial expression, an external expression of inner spiritual processes.

The esoteric Christian views the world structure as he views the human body. When he looks at the human body, he sees it as consisting of different limbs: the head, arms, hands, and so on. When he looks at the human body he sees hand movements, eye movements, movements of the facial muscles, but the separate limbs and their movements are for him the expression of inner spiritual and psychic experiences. In the same way as he looked at the human limbs and their movements and perceived that which is the eternal spiritual in man—the esoteric Christian regarded the movements of the celestial bodies, the light that streams down from the celestial bodies to humanity, the rising and setting of the Sun, the rising and setting of the Moon, as the external expression of divine-spiritual Beings pervading all space. All these natural phenomena were to him deeds of the Gods, gestures of the Gods, mimic expressions of those divine-spiritual Beings. As was also everything that occurs among mankind, when people establish social communities, when they submit to moral rules and regulate their dealings through laws, when from the forces of nature they create tools for themselves—indeed they make these tools with the help of the forces of nature, but in a form in which they have not been directly provided by nature. All that was done by man more or less unconsciously, was for the esoteric Christian the external expression of inner divine-spiritual sway.

But the esoteric Christian did not confine himself to such general forms. He pointed to quite definite single gestures, single parts of the physiognomy of the universe, of the mimic of the universe, to see in these single parts quite definite expressions of the spiritual. When he pointed to the Sun he said, “The Sun is not merely an external, physical body. This external, physical solar body is the body of a psychic-spiritual Being who rules over those psychic-spiritual Beings who are the governors, the leaders of all earthly fate, the leaders of all external natural occurrences on Earth, but also of all that happens in human social life, in the lawful conduct of men among each other.” When the esoteric Christian looked up to the Sun, he revered in the Sun the external revelation of his Christ. In the first place the Christ was for him the Sun's soul, and the esoteric Christian said: “From the beginning the Sun was the body of the Christ, but human beings on Earth and the Earth itself were not yet matured for receiving the spiritual light, the Christ-light, which streams from the Sun. Mankind, therefore, had to be prepared for the Christ-light.”

Then the esoteric Christian looked up at the Moon and saw that the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, but more feeble than the Sun's light itself; and he said to himself: “When I look at the sun with my physical eyes, I am blinded by its radiant light; if I look into the Moon I am not blinded; it reflects to a lesser degree the radiant light of the Sun.” In this weakened sunlight, in this moonlight pouring down upon the Earth, the esoteric Christian saw the physiognomic expression of the old Jehovah-principle, the expression of the religion of the old law. And he said: “Before the Christ Principle, the Sun of Righteousness, could appear on Earth, the Jahve Principle had to prepare the way by sending this light of Righteousness, toned down in the Law to the Earth .”

What lay in the old Jehovah-principle, in the old law, the spiritual light of the Moon, was for the esoteric Christian the reflected spiritual light of the higher Christ Principle. And like the confessors of the ancient Mysteries, the esoteric Christian—until far into the Middle Ages—saw in the Sun the expression of the spiritual light ruling the Earth, the Christ-light. In the Moon they saw the expression of the reflected Christ-light, which would blind man in its full strength. In the Earth itself the esoteric Christian saw, like the confessors of the ancient Mysteries, that which at times disguised, and veiled for him the blinding sunlight of the spirit. The Earth was for him just as much the physical expression of a spirit, as was every other bodily form an expression of something spiritual. He imagined that when the Sun could be seen shining down on the Earth, when it sent down its rays, beginning in the spring and continuing through the summer, and called forth from the Earth all the budding and sprouting life, and when it had culminated in the long summer days—then the esoteric Christian imagined that the Sun maintained the external up-shooting life, the physical life. In the plants, springing from the soil, in the animals unfolding their fertility in these seasons, the esoteric Christian saw the same principle in an external physical form, that he saw in the beings whose external expression the Sun was. But when the days became shorter, when autumn and winter approached, the esoteric Christian said, the Sun withdraws its physical power more and more from the Earth. But to the same degree as the Sun's physical power is withdrawn from the Earth, its spiritual power increases and flows to the Earth most intensively when the shortest days come, with the long nights, that later were fixed by the Christmas festival.

Man cannot see this spiritual power of the Sun. He would see it, said the esoteric Christian, if he possessed the inner power of spiritual vision. The esoteric Christian was still conscious of the fundamental conviction and fundamental knowledge of the Mystery-pupils from the earliest times into the newer age.

During those nights, now fixed by the Christmas festival, the Mystery-pupils were prepared for the experience of inner spiritual vision, so that they could see inwardly, spiritually, that which at this time most withdraws its physical power from the Earth. In the long Christmas winter night, the Mystery-pupil was far enough advanced to have a vision at midnight. Then the Earth was no longer covering up the Sun,¹ which stood behind the Earth. It became transparent for him. Through the transparent Earth he saw the spiritual light of the Sun, the Christ-light. This fact, which marks a profound experience for the Mystery-student, was captured in the expression, “To see the Sun at midnight”.

There are regions where the churches, otherwise open all day, are closed at noon. This is a fact which connects Christianity with the traditions of ancient religious faiths. In ancient religious confessions the Mystery-students, on the strength of their experience, said, “At noon, when the Sun stands highest, when it unfolds the strongest physical power, the Gods are asleep, and they sleep most deeply in summer, when the Sun develops its strongest physical power. But they are widest awake on Christmas night, when the external physical power of the Sun is weakest.”

We see that all forms of life which desire to unfold their external physical strength look up to the Sun when the Sun rises in spring, and strive to receive the external physical power of the Sun. But when, on a summer noon, the Sun's physical power pours most lavishly on to the Earth, the Sun’s spiritual power is weakest. In the winter midnight, however, when the Sun rays the least physical power down to the Earth, man can see the Sun's spirit through the Earth, which has become transparent for him. The esoteric Christian felt that by immersing himself in Christian esotericism he approached more and more that power of inward vision through which he could completely fulfil his feeling, thinking and his will-impulses by gazing into this spiritual sun. Then the Mystery-student was led to a vision of highly real significance: As long as the Earth is opaque, the separate parts appear to be inhabited by people of different confessions, but the unifying bond is not there. Human races are as scattered as the climates. Human opinions are scattered all over the Earth and there is no connecting link. But to the degree in which human beings begin to look through the Earth into the Sun by their inner power of vision, to the degree in which the “star” appears to them through the Earth, their confessions will reconcile to form one great united human brotherhood. And those who guided the great separated human masses in the truth of the higher planes, towards their initiation into the higher worlds, were known as “Magi.” Whilst in the various parts of the Earth most diverse powers come to be expressed, there were three Magi. Humanity had, therefore, to be led in different ways. But as a unifying power there appears the star, rising beyond the Earth. It leads the scattered individuals together, and then they bring offerings to the physical embodiment of the solar star, appearing as the star of peace. Thus was the religion of peace, of harmony, of universal peace, of human brotherhood, placed in context cosmically and humanely with the ancient Magi, who laid the best gifts they had for humanity before the cradle of the Son of Man incarnate.

The legend has retained this beautifully, by saying that the Danish king attained an understanding of the Wise Men, of the three Kings, and because he had attained it they bestowed on him their three gifts: first the gift of wisdom, in self-knowledge; secondly, the gift of pious devotion, in self-surrender; and, thirdly, the gift of the victory of life over death, in the power and fostering of the eternal in the self.

All those who have understood Christianity in this way, have seen in it the profound idea of spiritual science of the unification of religions. For they had the firm conviction that whoever understands Christianity thus, can rise to the highest grade of human development.

One of the last of the Germans to understand Christianity esoterically in this way is Goethe. Goethe has laid down for us this kind of Christianity, this kind of religious reconciliation, this kind of Theosophy, in the profound poem, The Mysteries. Although it has remained a fragment² the inner spiritual development of one who is penetrated and convinced by the feelings and ideas that were just described.

We learn first, how Goethe invites us to follow the pilgrim-path of such a man, but indicates that this pilgrim-path may lead us far astray. It is not easy for man to find it, and one must have patience and devotion to reach the goal. Whoever possesses these will find the light that he seeks. Let us hear the beginning of the poem:

A wondrous song is here prepared for many.
Hear it with joy! Tell all from far and near!
The way will lead you out o'er mount and valley;
Now is the view obscured, now wide and clear,
And if the path should glide into the bushes,
That you have gone astray, you need not fear,
For by a persevering, patient climb
We shall draw near our goal, when it is time.

But no one will, despite profound reflection,
Unravel all the wonders hidden here:
Our mother earth brings forth so many flowers,
And many shall find something to revere;
Maybe that one will gloomily forsake us,
Another stays with gestures full of cheer:
For many wand'ring pilgrims flows the spring,
To each a different pleasure it will bring.

This is the situation into which we are put. We are shown a pilgrim who, if we were to ask him, would not be able to say, based on his understanding, what we have just explained to be the esoteric Christian idea—but a pilgrim, in whose heart and soul these ideas live transformed into feelings. It is not easy to discover everything that has been secreted into this poem called The Mysteries. Goethe has clearly indicated a process occurring within a person in whom the highest ideas, thoughts and conceptions are transformed into feelings and emotions. What causes this transformation to take place?

We live through many embodiments, from incarnation to incarnation. In each one we learn things of many kinds; each one is full of opportunities for gathering new experiences. It is impossible to carry over everything in every detail from incarnation to incarnation. When man is born again, it is not necessary for everything that he has once learnt to come to life in every detail. But if someone has learnt a lot in one incarnation, dies and is born again, although there is no need for all his ideas to revive, but he will return to life with the fruits of his former life, with the fruits of what he has learned. His emotions and feelings correspond to the realisations of his earlier incarnations.

In this poem of Goethe's we have a wonderful phenomenon: we encounter a man who, in the simplest words—as a child might speak, not in particularly intellectual or abstract terms—shows us the highest wisdom as a fruit of former knowledge. He has transformed this knowledge into feeling and experience and is thereby qualified to lead others who have perhaps learnt more in the form of concepts. Such a pilgrim with a mature soul that has transformed much of the knowledge it has gathered in earlier incarnations into direct feelings and emotions, such a pilgrim we have before us in Brother Mark. As a member of a secret Brotherhood he is sent out on an important mission to another secret Brotherhood.

He wanders through many different districts, and when he is getting tired, he comes to a mountain. At last, he journeys up the path to the summit. Every feature in this poem has a deep significance. When he has climbed the mountain, he sees in a nearby valley a monastery. This monastery is the abode of the brotherhood to which he has been sent. Over the gate of the monastery, he sees something special. He sees the Cross, but in unusual guise; the cross is entwined with roses! And at this point he utters a significant word that only he can understand who knows how very often that passcode has been spoken in secret brotherhoods, “Who added to the Cross the wreath of Roses?” And from the middle of the cross, he sees three rays radiating out as if from the Sun. There is no need for him to place before his soul conceptually the meaning of this profound symbol. The feeling and emotion of it already live in his soul, in his mature soul, that knows its inner meaning.

What is the meaning of the Cross? He knows that the Cross is a symbol for many things; among many others, for the threefold lower nature of man—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. In him the “I”—the Self—is born. In the Rose-Cross we have the fourfold man: in the Cross the physical man, the etheric man, and the astral man, and in the roses the Self. Why roses for the Self?—The esoteric Christianity added roses to the Cross because it saw in the Christ principle a summons to raise the Self from the state in which it is born in the three bodies, to an ever higher and higher self. In the Christ Principle he saw the power to carry this Self up higher and higher.

The Cross is the symbol of death in a quite particular sense. This, too, Goethe expresses in another beautiful passage³ when he says,

And until thou truly hast
This dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

“Dying and becoming”—overcome what you have first been given in the three lower bodies—deaden it, but not out of a desire for death, but to purify what is in these three bodies so as to attain in your Self the power to receive an ever-greater perfection. By deadening, what is given to you in the three lower bodies, the power of perfection will enter into the Self. In the Christ Principle, the Christian is to take the power of perfection into his Self, right into the blood. This power must work right into the blood.

Blood is the expression of the Self. In the red roses the esoteric Christian saw the power of the Christ Principle purifying and cleansing the blood, thus purifying the Self and so guiding man upwards to his higher being—he saw the power that transforms the astral body into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life Spirit, the physical body into the Spirit Man. Thus, we encounter in the Rose-Cross connected with the triple beam a profound symbol of the Christ Principle. The pilgrim, Brother Mark, who arrives here, knows that he is at a place where the profoundest meaning of Christianity is understood.

Full weary by a long and tiring journey,
With a sublimest motive underta'en,
A pilgrim, brother Mark, came through the thicket,
With staff in hand, his footsteps to sustain,
And longing for a little food and drinking,
One beauteous eve he reached a quiet plain.
Its wooded gorges soothing hope bestowed
Beneath a friendly roof to find abode.

But lo! a path he scarcely can distinguish,
High up a mountain steep before him wending.
He follows it, as more and more it rises,
In curvings in and out the boulders bending,
Until again by sunlight warm enveloped,
He turns and sees how fast he is ascending.
At last the summit comes within his sight,
Inspiring him with heart-felt, deep delight.

Next it the sun, majestic in its setting,
Enthroned 'mong clouds within the dark'ning sky.
Now for the peak! For all his weary toiling
He hopes to be rewarded there on high.
O'erlooking all the country 'fore him spreading,
A human home he will perchance espy.
And while he climbs, oh sound how full of cheer!
The chime of bells is wafted to his ear.

And as at length he has attained the summit,
Below a softly sloping valley lies.
His quiet look with inward pleasure brightens;
Before the forest full of joy he spies
A stately building in a greening field,
Which the departing sun with lustre dyes.
E'er long he nears through meadows dewy damp
A monastery lit with gleaming lamp.

He soon arrives outside the quiet homestead,
With hope and peacefulness his soul enfolding,
And on the arch above the closed portal
A symbol full of mystery beholding.
He stands and ponders, whispers words of prayer,
The deep devotion of his heart unfolding;
He ponders long: What does this sign convey?
The sun has set, the chiming dies away.

The sign he sees erected here on high
That brings consoling hope to all mankind,
Which many thousands pledged their lives to shield,
To which in fervour prayed the human mind,
That has destroyed the bitter powers of death,
On victors' banners fluttered in the wind:
A stream of comfort permeates his being,
He sees the cross and bows his head in seeing.

He feels anew the faith of all on earth,
The power of salvation streaming thence;
But as he looks, he feels his very soul
Pervaded by a new and unknown sense:
Who added to the cross the wreath of roses?
It is entwined by blooming, clusters dense,
Profusely spreading just as though they could
Endow with softness e'en the rigid wood.

While light and silv'ry clouds, around it soaring,
Seem heavenward with cross and roses flowing,
And from the midst like living waters streaming
A threefold ray from out one core is glowing;
But not a word surrounds the holy token,
The meaning of the symbol clearly showing.
And while the dusk is gath'ring grey and greyer,
He stands and ponders and is lost in prayer.

The spirit of deepest Christianity which pervades this dwelling is expressed in the Cross entwined by roses. As the pilgrim enters, he is actually received in this spirit. As he enters, he becomes aware that in this house not this or that religion holds sway—but that here rules the higher Oneness of the religions of the world. Within the house he tells an older member of the Brotherhood who lives there, at whose behest and on what mission he has come. He is made welcome and hears that in this house lives in perfect seclusion a Brotherhood of twelve Brothers. These twelve Brothers are representatives of diverse human groups from all over the Earth; every one of the Brothers is the representative of a religious faith. None is to be found here, who is accepted while still young in years and immature. One will only be accepted when one has explored the world, when one has struggled with the joys and sorrows of the world, when one has worked and been active in the world and has wrestled with oneself upwards to gain a free survey beyond one’s narrowly confined domain. Only then is one placed and accepted into the circle of the Twelve. And these Twelve, of whom each one represents one of the world religions, live here in peace and harmony together. For they are led by a thirteenth who surpasses them all in the perfection of his human Self, who surpasses them all in his wide survey of human circumstances.

And how does Goethe indicate that this thirteenth is the representative of true Esotericism, the carrier of the Rosicrucian confession? Goethe indicates this by one of the brothers saying, “He was among us. Now we are in deepest sorrow because he is about to leave us, he wishes to part from us. But he finds it is right to part from us now. He desires to rise to higher regions, where he no longer needs to reveal himself in an earthly body.”

He may now ascend, for he has risen to the point that Goethe describes as follows: In every confession there is the possibility to come closer to the highest unity. When each of the twelve religions is matured to establish harmony, the Thirteenth, who has before brought about this harmony externally, can rise up. And we are beautifully told how we can achieve this perfection of the Self. First, the life-story of the Thirteenth is related. But the Brother who has admitted Mark knows many more details, which the great Leader of the twelve could not share. Several features of profound esoteric significance are now told by this brother to the pilgrim Mark. He learns, that when the Thirteenth was born a star appeared to herald his life on earth. Here there is a direct link to the star that guided the Three Holy Kings, and its meaning. This star has an enduring significance: it shows the way to self-knowledge, self-surrender, and self-perfection. It is the star which opens the understanding for the gifts which the Danish king received from the vision in his dream. The star which appears at the birth of anyone mature enough to absorb the Christ Principle into oneself.

And other things became apparent. It became clear that he had developed to that height of religious harmony which brings peace and harmony of the soul. Profoundly symbolical in this sense is the vulture which swoops down at the birth of the Thirteenth, but instead of working destruction it spreads peace around it among the doves.

We are told still more. While his little sister is lying in the cradle a viper winds itself around her. The Thirteenth, still a child, kills the viper. Hereby is wonderfully indicated how a mature soul—for only a mature soul can achieve such a thing after many incarnations—kills the viper already in early childhood: that means he overcame the lower astral nature. The viper is the symbol for the lower astral nature. The sister is his own etheric body, around which the astral body winds itself. He kills the viper for his sister.

Then we are told how he submitted obediently to what at first the family demanded of him. He obeyed his harsh father. The soul transforms its realisations, ideas, and thoughts. Then healing-powers develop in the soul that can bring healing into the world. Miraculous powers develop; they find expression by him using his sword to strike a spring out of the rock. Intentionally, we are here shown how his soul follows the path of the Scripture.

Thus gradually there matures the superior, the representative of humanity, the Chosen one, who works as the Thirteenth here in the society of the Twelve, the great secret Brotherhood which, under the sign of the Rose-Cross, has taken upon itself the mission for all mankind to harmonise the religions scattered throughout the world. This is how we are made acquainted, in a profound manner, with the soul-nature of the one who has so far led the Brotherhood of the Twelve.

At last he knocks. The myriad stars above him
Look down with shining eyes as they appear.
The portal opens, and he is bidden welcome
By brethren wont to comfort and to cheer.
So he relates how far by hill and valley
The will of higher Beings led him here.
They stand amazed, for well they see their guest
Was sent to them by heavenly behest.

They crowd around him, and their inmost being
They feel by a mysterious power stirred,
Their breath they hold to listen, for he rouses
An echo in their hearts with ev'ry word.
Like deepest lore, yet uttered by a child,
The wisdom flowing from his lips is heard:
He seems so innocent, like crystal clear,
As though descended from another sphere.

At last an aged brother cries: Oh welcome,
If with consoling hope thy path is blessed!
Thou seest us, our souls are moved within us
By thee, and yet we can but stand oppressed:
Our greatest bliss from us is being taken,
Anxiety and dread disturb our rest.
Thou comest as a stranger, yet to share
Portentous hours of mourning and of care:

For he, alas! who all of us united,
to whom as father and as friend we bow,
who light and fortitude within us kindled—
Our leader—is prepared to leave us now.
Yea, he himself his passing has predicted,
refusing though to tell us when and how:
The mystery of what must needs befall
Brings bitter tribulation to us all.

Thou seest us grey and aged ev’ry one,
By nature destined for repose and rest:
Not one was here admitted who, a youth,
Desired to fly from wordly joy and zest.
Each one has met with life's vicissitudes,
Its burdens, pleasures and its anxious quest,
Until, matured, too old to longer roam,
Within these walls we found a shelt'ring home.

The noble man who led us to this haven,
Within his heart the peace of God does dwell;
Along the path of life we walked together,
His ev'ry action I remember well;
But now his fervent praying, his seclusion,
The hour of his departing must foretell.
How small is man! Oh would that he could give
His life, so that a greater one might live!

This is my heart's profound and only wish!
Fulfilment is denied to my desire.
How many have preceded me in death!
How bitter is the thought he must expire.
Had he been here, with hearty welcome's warmth
He would have given all thou didst require;
But now in spirit-regions dwells his mind,
Already far from those he leaves behind.

Each day one hour he lingers in our midst
And speaks to us, by strange emotion stirred:
The wondrous paths that Providence has led
Within his life he lauds with ev'ry word;
We hark and heed, for after-ages hoarding
With care the merest trifle that occurred,
While one writes down his words to make us sure
His memory shall live both true and pure.

I hear him speak, but oh, how much there is
That I would rather myself relate,
For all is still alive within my mind,
The least of circumstances I would state;
Impatiently I list, can scarce conceal
How sore it is thus silently to wait:
One day I shall no more restrain my zeal,
The splendours of this beauteous life reveal.

I should disclose how first an angel's voice
His coming to his mother prophesied,
And how, when he was christened, in the sky
A star with brilliant lustre was descried,
How down a vulture swooped with mighty wings
To settle by the gentle pigeons' side,
But not to pounce on them in greedy wildness,
A harbinger he seemed of peace and mildness.

How as a child a viper he destroyed,
This is a miracle he ne'er has told.
He found his sister peacefully asleep,
The clinging reptile round her arm was rolled.
The nurse had fled and left the babe alone,
He killed the pois'nous snake, resolved and bold;
His mother came and saw the daring deed
And thrilled with joy she found her daughter freed.

He ne'er related that a spring arose
From out the barren rock before his sword,
And as a brook, with rippling waves alive,
Its plenteous waters down the hill-side poured;
E'en now, as quick as forth it gushed at first,
It bickers silver sparkling o'er the sward.
But those who saw the wondrous stream appear,
Dared not to drink, o'ercome by solemn fear.

For when a man excels by gifts of nature,
It is no wonder if his life is blessed;
In him we worship the Creator's power,
Through feeble human clay made manifest;
But he who overcomes himself has gained
The greatest triumph, stood the hardest test,
And well may he to all the world be shown:
Yea, this is he, this deed is his alone!

With all our strength we strive to live and labour,
Where'er by fate our twisting paths be wended;
Whereas the world oppresses, e'er impeding,
And seeks to tear us from the way intended;
Within this inner storm and outer struggle
Our spirit hears a word scarce comprehended:
The power that holds constrained all humankind
The victor o'er himself it no more can bind.

This man who had overcome himself, that is, who had overcome that “I” which at first is allotted to man, has become the Superior of the chosen Brotherhood. And thus, he leads the Twelve. He has led them to a point at which they are mature enough for him to be allowed to leave them.

Our Brother Mark is then conducted further to the rooms where the Twelve work. How did they work? Their activity is of an unusual kind, and we are told that it is an activity in the spiritual world. A man whose eyes observe only the physical plane, whose senses only see the physical and only that what is done by people in the physical world, cannot easily imagine that there is still other work. Work which under circumstances may even be far more vital and important than what is done externally on the physical plane. Work from the higher planes is far more important for mankind. Naturally, whoever wishes to work on the higher planes can only do so on condition that he has first completed his tasks on the physical plane. These Twelve had done so. For this reason, their combined activity is of high importance as a service to mankind.

Our Brother Mark is led into the hall where the Twelve were accustomed to assemble. There he encounters in deep symbolic guise the nature of their combined activity. The individual contribution of each of the Brothers to this combined activity is expressed by a special symbol above the seat of each one of the Twelve. Symbols of many kinds are to be seen there, expressing meaningfully and in very different ways the contribution of each to the common task. This task consists in spiritual activity, so that these streams flow together here into a current of spiritual life that floods the world and invigorates the rest of mankind. There are such brotherhoods, such centres from where such streams emanate and impact on the rest of mankind.

Above the seat of the Thirteenth, Brother Mark again sees the sign: the Cross entwined with roses. This sign is at the same time a symbol for the four-fold nature of man, and in the red roses the symbol for the purified Blood- or Self-principle, the principle of the higher man. Then we see that which is to be overcome by this sign of the Rose-Cross installed as a special symbol to the right and left of the seat of the Thirteenth. On the right Mark sees the fiery-coloured dragon, representing the astral nature of man.

It was well known in Christian Esotericism that man's soul can surrender to the three lower bodies. If it succumbs to them, then it is dominated by the lower life of the threefold bodily nature. This is expressed in astral perception through the dragon. This is no mere symbol but a very real sign. The dragon expresses what first must be conquered. In the passions, in those forces of astral fire—which are part of man's physical nature—in this dragon, Christian Esotericism saw what mankind has received from the torrid zone, from the South. Christian Esotericism that has spread through Europe has inspired this poem. From the South stems what mankind acquired as fierce passions, tending chiefly towards the lower senses. The first impulse to fight and overcome was foreseen in the influences streaming from the cooler North. The influence of the cooler North, the descent of the I into the threefold physical nature of man, is expressed according to the old symbol taken from the Constellation of the Bear. It shows a hand thrust into the jaws of a bear. The lower physical nature expressed by the fiery dragon will be overcome. What has been preserved in the higher rank of animal life was represented by the bear. The I which has developed beyond the dragon nature was represented with profound appropriateness by the thrusting of a human hand into the bear's jaws. On both sides of the Rose-Cross there appears what must be overcome by it. It is the Rose-Cross which calls upon man to purify and raise himself up higher and higher.

Thus the poem describes to us in fact the principle of esoteric Christianity in the profoundest manner and, above all, illustrates us what we ought to keep before our soul, particularly at a festival such as we are celebrating today.

The eldest of the Brothers living here, belonging to the Brotherhood, tells the pilgrim Mark expressly that their combined activity is of the spirit, that it is spiritual life. This work for mankind on the spiritual plane means something special. The Brothers have experienced life's joys and sorrows, they have passed through conflicts outside; they have accomplished tasks in the world outside. Now they are here, but here also work is done continuously to further the development of mankind. The pilgrim Marcus is told, “You have seen as much now as can be shown to a novice to whom the first portal is opened. You have been shown in profound symbols what man's ascent should be. But the second portal hides greater mysteries—how from the higher worlds work is done on mankind. You can only learn these greater mysteries after lengthy preparation, only then can you enter through the other gate.” Profound secrets are expressed in this poem.

In him I scarce as virtue may denote
The power of good which e'en his youth inspired
And taught him to respect his father's word,
When harshly he his services required,
With duties burdening his leisure hours;
The son obeyed with ardour, never tired,
Like some poor boy who, friendless and astray,
Is glad to work for but a trifling pay.

On foot he joined the warriors in the field,
In lowering tempest and in dazzling light,
The horses he did tend, the meals prepare,
And armed the soldiers ready for the fight.
Oft as a messenger, both keen and fleet,
He hastened through the woods by day and night;
To live for others both in thought and action
Seemed but to give him joy and satisfaction.

And brave and cheerful always, in the strife
He sought the arrows scattered on the ground;
Then hastily he gathered curing herbs,
With which the burning wounds he cooled and bound;
And just as if his very touch were healing,
Ere long the sufferers were strong and sound;
How all regarded him with joy and pride!
Alone his father seemed not satisfied.

E'en as a ship, despite its heavy load
From port to port with speedy lightness sailing,
He bore the burden of his parents' word
That in obedience ne'er he should be failing;
As pleasure is for boys, for youths distinction,
For him his father's will was all-prevailing,
So that he might demand whate'er he would,
Each task was soon fulfilled, each test was stood.

At last the father yielded and acknowledged
The merit of his son in word and deed;
While of a sudden all his sternness vanished,
He gave the youth a swift and precious steed;
Henceforth a sword replaced the shorter dagger,
And from his lesser duties he was freed:
Thus, destined by his birth and well acquitted,
Into an Order he was now admitted.

Ah, well could I report for many days
Amazing things to every one who hears;
And higher than the most delightful tales
His life will be esteemed in coming years;
For what in poetry and fiction charms,
Yet to our mind incredible appears,
Will here with greater pleasure still be heard,
Because it has in real event occurred.

The name of him whom Providence has chosen
That wondrous things on earth he should achieve,
Whom I may often praise, though ne'er sufficing
Whose destiny we scarcely can believe,
His name—it is Humanus, Saint and wise one,
The best of men whom I did e'er perceive:
By origin another name he bears,
Which with illustrious ancestors he shares.

The aged brother would have spoken on.
Filled with the miracles that he did know,
And he shall gladden us for many weeks
With all the stirring facts he still can show;
But he was interrupted, just as now
His heart was pouring forth in fervent flow.
The others softly in and out had passed
And deemed it time to intervene at last.

When Mark had bowed before his hosts and prayed
In gratitude for the sustaining meal,
A bowl of crystal water he requested.
They brought what he had craved with friendly zeal.
Hereafter led him to their festive hall,
Therein a sight unwonted to reveal.
Of what he saw you soon will be aware,
For everything shall be described with care.

No ornament was here, the eye deluding,
A cross-arched vault rose sternly from the ground,
And thirteen chairs against the walls, he noticed.
Were like a pious chorus ranged around,
By clever hands full delicately carven;
In front of each a little desk he found.
Devotion seemed to fill the very air,
Fraternity and restfulness and prayer.

Above each chair was hung a special shield,
Thirteen in all the number he espied.
They seemed to be important, purposeful,
No boast of ancestors in shallow pride.
And brother Mark, with longing all aglow,
Desired to learn what secret they did hide:
Lo, in the middle one the mystic sign,
The cross which clustring roses do entwine.

Each object will arouse to life and action
The soul which to its inspiration yields;
Some places are adorned by swords and lances,
While helmets hang above these other shields;
Here battered weapons are to be discovered,
Such as one may collect on battle-fields:
There spears and banners, come from distant lands,
And even fetters here and iron bands!

Each brother sinking down before his chair,
In silent prayer profoundly wrapt they rested;
Then softly chanted fervent hymns of thanks,
By cheerfulness and piety suggested;
With mutual blessing they retired to sleep,
A short repose, by fancies unmolested:
But Mark remains, surrounded by a few,
Still wishing more attentively to view.

Though tired in body, full awake his mind,
Preoccupied by many hidden things:
For here, his thirst in raging flames appeasing,
A dragon is enthroned with fiery wings;
And here between his jaws a bear is holding
An arm from which the blood it loses springs,
Both shields, in distance corresponding quite,
Hung next the Rosy-Cross to left and right.

Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement,⁴
The more he marvels at the art and splendours
Abundant wealth seems wasted here on purpose
Has everything just made itself?—he wonders.
Should he have doubts about the work’s fulfilment?
Who so conceived the plan? ― he ponders.
It seems to him, with heavenly delight,
He’s only just beginning to live each moment right.

The paths were wonderful that led thee here,
The aged brother speaks unto his guest:
Oh let these symbols bid thee stay until
The many heroes' deeds we manifest;
Our mysteries we will confide to thee,
For what is here concealed, can ne'er be guessed;
Although thou wilt divine what here was done,
Endured and lost, and last what triumph won.

Do not believe that but of times gone by
The brother spake. Here wonders never fail;
And more and ever more thou shalt behold,
Until withdrawn is the enshrouding veil.
One portal only 'tis that thou hast passed:
And if thou feelst the call, O friend, prevail!
The foremost court as yet thou didst attain,
But worthy art the very core to gain.

After a short sleep our Brother Mark learns to divine something at least of the inner mysteries. In powerful symbols he has let the ascent of the human Self work upon his soul. When by a sign he is awakened from his short rest he comes to a portal that he finds locked. He hears a strange threefold harmony sounding thrice, and the whole as if intermingled with the playing of a flute. He cannot look in, cannot see what is happening there in the room.

We do not need to be told more than these few words to indicate in a profound way what awaits the man who approaches the spiritual worlds. When he is so far purified and perfected by his endeavours to develop his Self that he passed through the astral world and then approaches the higher worlds. In those worlds are to be found the spiritual archetypes of the things here on earth. When he approaches what is called in esoteric Christianity the world of heaven, he approaches it first through a world of flowing colour. Then he enters into a world of sound, into the harmony of the universe, the music of the spheres. The spiritual world is a world of sound. He who has developed his higher Self to the level of the higher worlds must become at home in this spiritual world. It is indeed Goethe who clearly expressed the higher experience of a world of spiritual sounds in his Faust, when he lets him be enraptured by heaven and the world of heaven reveals itself to him through sound.⁵

“The sun-orb sings, in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round...”

The physical Sun does not sing, but the spiritual Sun sings. Goethe retains this image when, after long wanderings, Faust is transported up into the spiritual worlds:

“Sounding loud to spirit-hearing,⁶
see the new-born day appearing.”
“Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes
—eye is blinded, ear amazes:
The Unheard can no one hear!”

Through the symbolic colour world of the astral, man evolving higher approaches the world of the harmony of the spheres, the Devachanic domain, the spiritual music. Only softly, softly, does Brother Mark hear ― after passing through the first portal, the astral portal, the chiming sound of the inner world behind our external world. That inner world which transforms the lower astral world into that higher world is traversed by the harmonious triad. And by reaching the higher world a human being’s lower nature is transformed into the higher Trinity: our astral body is changed into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life Spirit, the physical body into the Spirit Man.

Brother Marcus has a premonition at first when in the music of the spheres he senses the triad of the higher nature. In becoming one with this music of the spheres he has the first presentiment of the rejuvenation of man who enters into union with the spiritual world. He sees, as in a dream, rejuvenated mankind in the form of the three youths bearing three torches floating through the garden. This is the moment when Mark's soul woke up in the morning from darkness, and where some darkness still remains as the light has not yet penetrated it. But precisely at such a time the soul can look into the spiritual world. It can look into the spiritual worlds just as it can look into them when the summer noon has passed, when the Sun is gradually losing in power and winter has come, and then at midnight the Christ Principle shines through the Earth in the Holy Night.

Through the Christ Principle, man is exalted to the higher Trinity, illustrated for Brother Mark by the three youths who are representing the rejuvenated mankind. This is the meaning of Goethe's lines:

“And until thou truly hast
This dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.”

Every year anew, Christmas must remind those who understand esoteric Christianity that what happens in the external world is mimicry, are the gestures of inner spiritual processes. The external power of the Sun runs free in the spring and summer sunshine. In the Holy Scripture this external power of the Sun, which is only the proclamation of the inner spiritual power of the Sun, is represented by John the Baptist, but the inner, spiritual power by Christ. And while the physical power of the Sun continuously abates, the spiritual power rises and grows more and more in strength until it reaches its zenith at Christmas time. This is the meaning underlying the words in the gospel of St. John, “I must decrease, but He must increase”.⁷ And He increases and increases until He appears where the sun-force has again attained the outer physical power.

So that man may henceforth be able to revere and worship in this external physical power the spiritual power of the Sun, he must learn the meaning of the Christmas festival. For those who do not learn to know this meaning, the new power of the Sun is nothing but the old physical power returning. But one who has familiarised himself with the impulses which esoteric Christianity and especially the Christmas festival should give him, will see in the growing power of the solar body the external body of the inner Christ which shines through the Earth, which gives it life and fruitfulness, so that the Earth itself becomes the bearer of the Christ-power, of the Earth-Spirit. Thus, what is born in every Christmas night will be born anew for us each time. Through Christ we shall perceive inwardly the microcosm in the macrocosm, and this perception will lead us higher and higher.

The festivals, which have long ago become something external to man, will again appear in their deep significance for man, if he is led by this profound esotericism to the knowledge that the occurrences of external nature―such as thunder and lightning, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and the setting of the moon―are the gestures and physiognomy of spiritual existence. And at the significant points of the times marked by our festivals, man should realise that these are also times of important happenings in the spiritual world. Thus he shall be led to the rejuvenating spiritual power represented by the three youths, which the Self can only win by devoting itself to the outer world, and not by egotistically shutting itself away from it. But devotion to the outer world does not exist if that outer world is not permeated by the Spirit. That this Spirit should appear anew each year as a light in the darkness for all human beings, even for the weakest, must be written afresh each year into the hearts and souls of mankind.

This is what Goethe wished to express in this poem, The Mysteries. It is at once a Christmas poem and an Easter poem. It aims to hint at profound secrets of esoteric Christianity. If we let what he wished to indicate of the deep mysteries of Rosicrucian Christianity work upon us, if we absorb its power even in part then for some few at least in our environment we shall become missionaries. We shall succeed in fashioning these festivals once more into something filled with spirit and with life.

When after short repose within his cell
A deep resounding bell awakes our guest,
His soul is filled with longing for devotion,
He rises quickly with unwearied zest
And hastens to the church, with all his heart
Responding to the gladly heard behest,
Obedient, peaceful and by prayer bestirred;
Alas! The door is locked, he stands deterred.

But hark! a blow on dull resounding ore
Three times in equal intervals renewed,
No chime it seems to be of clock or bells,
From time to time with tones of flute imbued;
The floating music fills the heart with joy,
Mysterious 'tis and scarce to be construed,
It sounds like singing, solemn and entrancing,
To which the couples interlace in dancing.

Bewildered and by strange emotion moved,
He hastens to the window there to gaze;
The day is dawning in the distant east,
The sky o'erflown by lucent streaks of haze.
And may he trust his eyes? A mystic light
Is fleeting through the garden's winding ways;
Three youths with torches in their hands he sees
Who haste along the paths between the trees.

He clearly sees their wonderful apparel,
The white resplendent garments which they wear,
Their girdles made of intertwining roses,
The wreaths of flowers in their curly hair;
They seem to come from some nocturnal dances,
With joy of movement thrilled, enlived and fair.
But as the stars will fade, when day is near,
Extinguishing their torch, they disappear.

• 1. A correction after the transcript by Walter Vegelahn. In the first Edition this sentence was due to a different transcript recorded in error as “then the Earth was no longer the hull”.
• 2. Goethe himself wrote an essay about this fragment in the year 1816, “The Mysteries, a fragment by Goethe”, in Essays on Literature, Contributions to the Morning paper for the educated classes, 1807-1816. Sophien Edition, Volume 41/1.
• 3. “And until thou truly hast” is the final verse of the poem by Goethe “Blessed Longings”, of the collection West Eastern Divan.
• 4. The verse “Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement”, is missing from most Goethe Editions, but according to an original handwritten Goethe script it had been intended for The Mysteries. Refer Goethe’s works, Weimar Edition, Volume 16, Page 436.
• 5. “The Sun-orb sings, in emulation...”, Goethe, Faust Part I, Prologue in Heaven, Verse 243 et seq.
• 6. “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing..”, Faust Part II, Act 1, Ariel Scene, Verse 4666 et seq.
• 7. “I must decrease, but he must increase”. The literal translation would be “I must sink, but he has to rise”. John-3-30.

From our considerations of yesterday you will have seen how easily the whole course of human evolution can be misunderstood and how it is particularly misunderstood from many sides today to the detriment of present knowledge as well as of the present social striving of mankind. (see Z-7.) Today we will for once call up before our souls some results of Spiritual Science of such a nature that they can throw light, it may be said, from another side on what becomes so enigmatical if looked at from the points of view holding good at present. Now I have told you that man can come to terms with this present time only if he makes up his mind to find his real bearings by starting on the path to the spirit. He must decide to look for a new relation to external nature since the old means to this end no longer suffice, and also find his way to a new relation to his fellow men, the old relation no longer being suitable, so that he sees what impulses are necessary for the modern social structure of mankind. If we wish to be successful in this, we must earnestly keep before our souls the following—that as man is placed in the world today, in earthly existence between birth and death, he sees but the outer manifestation of his own essential being and enters into actual relationship with merely the outer manifestation of his fellowmen. Life takes on a different form for the different epochs of mankind's evolution, and we exert ourselves really to study these things just in their relation to men of the present time. For the present age is a very critical one for men on earth. Up to the fifteenth century, and, since things do not change in a flash, one might say on into the present time, man is still actually more or less dominated by inherited concepts and impulses of the past. This fifth post-Atlantean epoch is indeed in a certain sense rather out of the ordinary where the evolution of men is concerned. For you certainly know that taking earthly evolution as a whole it divides itself into seven great successive epochs, of which the fourth was the Atlantean epoch and the fifth, our present one, the post-Atlantean. The sixth and the seventh should then follow.

In the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis. For up to that time the whole of the earth's existence was a recapitulation of the earlier existence of Saturn, Sun and Moon. During the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis but it is true only the beginning of a crisis. There was merely a preparation of things that were actually to be developed in the following evolution of the earth. So that up to Atlantean times man was really only what he had been in his different forms as man on Saturn, Sun and Moon. In Atlantean times, however, he had only intimations of what he was supposed actually to become as man of the earth; then he continues on, and now we are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the post-Atlantean period, throughout the old Indian end old Persian development, and so on, ever more definite relations were arising. But the Greco-Latin time, the fourth post-Atlantean period, gives us again even though in another form merely a kind of repetition of what existed on another level of existence in Atlantis. It is only now in the fifth post-Atlantean period, in the time since the fifteenth century, that man stands within his whole evolution in such a way that new impulses arise—impulses which are perceptible in his very being. Previously they were not so noticeable; now they appear in his being noticeably, nevertheless there are still only intimations of their presence. The terrible, catastrophic events of our time, the consequences of which—one can already foresee—will be shattering to mankind, are the expression of how new relations are making their way into mankind's evolution. I have already indicated how from a certain aspect these new relations can be described by pointing to the way in which an on-rolling spiritual wave is clearly perceived, arising from, as it were, a surging up into evolution of the Spirits of Personality.

Now we notice it after the manner of Spiritual Science we keep in mind this particular state of soul in which modern man is found here on earth, it is markedly noticeable today, according to the outlook of Spiritual Science, how man when he perceives or is outwardly active in his willing is really surrounded only by manifestations of the being of nature, and the being of his fellow men. He is not surrounded by the real beings into whom he must, as it were, grow in the course of evolution, into whom he will have grown at a later stage of evolution. As you know, man's position in the world is such that—to describe it broadly—he perceives the surrounding world in the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom and in his own human kingdom. This is what is visible around man. And in the visible human kingdom there is played out what comes from the will and what should find a certain ordering for the social structure.

Now people have reflected a great deal about man's attitude to his environment, though insufficient thought has gone into their reflections. But the result of these reflections has been worked into various theories of knowledge. We get very little, however, from these theories of knowledge. And what in schoolmaster fashion is given in these theories today to the young people, who are then supposed to speak to the world as philosophers, is really perfectly inadequate nonsense. For a true insight into what is really revealed in man's surroundings, a real insight, can only be gained when the matter is observed according to the way of Spiritual Science. You see, on one side man can look upon the mineral kingdom and the plant kingdom; on the other side he can look on the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man himself. Both—mineral kingdom and plant kingdom as well as human kingdom and animal kingdom—unveil themselves to him in such a way that if now in a theoretical sense he is honest, in this unveiling, in this revealing, he notices contradictions. He is unable to make anything of the way in which on the one hand the mineral kingdom and plant kingdom, and on the other hand the animal kingdom and human kingdom reveal themselves to him. And when people believe they can succeed in doing so this comes from a certain dullness. Because they take life too easily they are unwilling to go into all the doubts which arise from observing the kingdoms of Nature. But now, when one presses on to knowledge, when one trains oneself in the direction given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, then to a certain extent a change takes place in our contemplation of the mineral and plant kingdoms, as well as in our view of the connection with the animal and human kingdoms. Unconsciously men already have, to a high degree today, a feeling for this change, even if it does not enter consciousness. It remains indeed in the unconscious—just as I told you that today in the natural course of evolution man passes by the Guardian of the Threshold unconsciously. It is actually a certain fear of the truth which always unconsciously holds men back from really pressing on so that they come to this change. I am speaking in Imaginations, my dear friends, in Imaginations translated into words. In reality these things cannot be appropriately described in any other way. For when man brings to life within him what can be made living, when he applies himself to what is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms with this transformed power of cognition, he will always experience something like fear. But you should not have to shudder nor get gooseflesh at the description of these conditions. People avoid them because they are afraid. From this you ought to understand that of course when picturing these conditions one can indeed get gooseflesh to a certain degree, and on that account people just get frightened. When such knowledge is acquired, on looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms, one always experiences something like the smell of a corpse; there is a corpse-like smell which characterises as if in a vivid feeling what is living in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On the contrary, When with transformed cognition we look at the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man, there is always a sensation that can be described by saying: actually (you will forgive me, I know, for putting this Imagination into words) actually so long as they are in a physical body men remain—even the most advanced of them—where what in reality is hidden within them is concerned, always children, thorough children. The simple truth is that far more lies hidden in a man between birth and death than he can develop outwardly, can bring to manifestation out of himself.

Therefore, because in supersensible knowledge there is always a gradual ascent from semblance to actual reality, you see that when looking at, observing the outer world as it now is, we actually have to do with semblance alone. For the corpse-like smell of which I have spoken and, forgive me, the childishness of men, are veiled. The corpse-like smell finds, if I may say so, too dull a nose in our physical men, the etheric nose not being sufficiently developed. And the childishness of men does not allow us to confess its presence because , as men, we are too conceited to do so. Yet this is how the matter stands. My explaining what I have just been describing one points at the same time to there being far more hidden in in man than can be given practical proof. The question may now be asked: If man does not perceive the reality in minerals nor plants, if he perceives no reality in animals either—not even in his own being as man, where then is his right setting on earth? Strange as it may seem we find him placed among beings who belong neither to the mineral and plant kingdoms, nor to the animal and human kingdoms, but lie between them. He bases his being upon a kind of plant-animal, or animal-plant. were there a being here on earth neither wholly plant nor wholly animal, but having mere plant nature where their inner organisation is concerned, and having the power to go around, to move about at will like the animals—now this is what I meant were there beings who on being examined anatomically would not be found to have muscles and blood within them but whose anatomy would resemble that of the plants, with only their cells and tissue, but if these beings were able to move at will like the animals, or were there wandering round our earth animals that on dying left plantlike corpses, then man in his whole attitude of soul would really belong among these beings. Here in his earthly existence man would really be able to comprehend such beings. But again the remarkable thing is that for their part these beings could not exist on earth, these beings are only to be found in other worlds. They could not flourish in earth existence. Thus, we may say that man really lacks the faculty for knowledge—and this particularly apparent today's—which enables him to penetrate directly into the being of minerals and plants. and also of animals and men. And the beings he would directly perceive in their whole constitution are just these which could not live on the earth. This is the remarkable position of man where his relation to nature around him is concerned.

But here on earth man stands also in a strange relation to himself. Man is on the one hand a being who has conceptions. When, however, he puts this faculty for conceiving, for having ideas, into action, in the conception he loses his own identity. And he actually has his identity, that is not able to make an appearance in the conception, only when something—his will—works up out of the unconscious. If the will were not to work up and we were to have no trace of it in us, could we have andy ideas about it. The whole world would seem to us ghostly. We should have a ghostly world before us, which about describes the world of scientific concepts; this would actually constitute our world. Imagine the world looking as it is described by natural scientists or zoologists; just think of it being nothing more than what is found in books on Botany and Mineralogy. Real Botany and Mineralogy contain far more than what we find in books. But imagine you were taken into a world described in books, where there was nothing more than what is described in books; it would indeed be a world of mere apparitions, a proper world of ghosts. The world not being one of ghosts is amply due to the will having something to say. Now look! Were you able to fly—I don't mean with a machine but were you able to fly yourself, if you had no need of earth under your feet and were you able to move freely without the earth—then you would come near to perceiving the world in this ghostly fashion. Even if you could only follow the world with your eyes when awake it would appear very ghostly, not so much so as when described by the natural scientist, but all the same it would appear very ghostly. You have a feeling of the solidity of world existence only because you stand with your feet on the ground. And this pressure of your feet against the ground gives you the feeling, akin to the will, but watered-down will, that you are not in a ghostly world but in one that is solid. Were you not to have this feeling, should you only see, the world would appear to you a very ghostly place. You do not tell yourself what is going on in the subconscious; in the subconscious something is going on that makes man say (in the subconscious he does say it): Yes, the world looks very like a ghost! Were it really what is presented by my eyes I should never be able to stand firm, I should have to sink down; and as I do not sink, the world is not as presented by my eyes. This conclusion is constantly being arrived at in the unconscious. The entirely ordinary, most everyday relation to the world is as complicated as this. It is always an unconscious conclusion that to a certain extent originates with the will. Thus in mere conception we actually lack—to use an erudite expression, a pedantic expression—we lack the subject, it drops out. That we have a subject and feel ourselves bound up with the world comes from the will.

Again, when we will, when we develop the will, the object is actually lacking. The object does not come into our consciousness at all as something properly solid. If I want simply to lift this little book from the left side over to the right, and actually do it—the real object of the will does not enter consciousness at all. You can see the passage of the book, the conception which takes its ghostly way into the will, but the actual object of the will does not enter consciousness. So that man when he makes conceptions and also when he wills (this again sounds grotesque because an Imagination is being clothed in words) man as a conceiver as well as a willer is—if you will forgive me—a cripple. He conceives in a ghostly way and wills incompletely. What man is in reality, is actually neither quite within his conception nor his will; once again it is in the centre between the conception and the will. But all this goes on in ordinary life without being able to enter consciousness. In the same way as the plant-animal is unable to enter external nature, what man actually is cannot enter his consciousness. For this reason I have often spoken to you of the fact from another point of view by saying: man perceives the real ego like a hole in life's events. You see we have to be clear that holes can also be perceived. Man knows nothing of sleep, he wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps. But reviewing the course of his life he is faced by empty space in his consciousness, the hole in consciousness, and he sees just as if there were a white surface before him with black holes where really nothing is to be seen. Thus he looks at the holes that, during sleep, are there in consciousness. But it is also the same with our ego in waking life. Our ego is not in reality brought into consciousness: in the consciousness there is only a hole for this ego, and perceiving this hole is the only thing that makes us aware that we really have an ego.

These things, that appear to the insensitive men of today as sophistry, must gradually become an elementary consciousness in man. For in the future man will not be able to found life on dogmatic conceptions, as has been possible for him in the past owing to the still existing remains and after effects of atavistic clairvoyance. In future we shall have to base life on grounds that are easy to detect. It will have to be part of our everyday conceptions that mineral and plant kingdoms are observed after the manner of Goethe. For Goethe only examined the phenomenon, and did not believe that in the phenomenon there was revealed anything but, at best, the basic phenomena, the archetypal phenomena and that phenomena do not reveal in laws of nature which can be put thoughts. Goethe never looked for laws of nature, for this would have seemed to him very fantastic; he wanted to pursue the phenomena because the external world shows us in the mineral and plant kingdoms nothing but perceptions, appearances. Thus man has to look at the external world to become conscious of himself. In the mineral kingdom, in the plant kingdom I really see only the outer side, and when confronted by the animal and human kingdoms I actually see only something like an embryo of the complete being. That also must be so. For you see, in the mineral and plant kingdoms in reality there exist beings who, when observed by man, reveal only a certain side of themselves because it may be said they cannot reveal themselves in any other way. For in the mineral and plant kingdoms lives something man can only fully recognise if—please understand me, thoroughly he looks back to the world from which he came on entering physical existence through birth. Could you after birth with your thought keep possession of the consciousness that stretches backward before birth, could you, that is, look upon being born as an event in your life like—shall we say—the passing from the fifteenth to the sixteenth year, and were the backward-running thread of consciousness to remain unbroken—the consciousness being quite different before birth, before conception—without more ado you would get a view of mineral and plant kingdoms quite different from the one you get on looking from the standpoint of life between birth and death. For you would then say to yourself the followings I have come from the spiritual world through birth. I have entered this physical realm. Why should I have done this? Why should I not have remained in the spiritual realm? Why have I been enticed down to earth at all? For one may speak here of enticement. Then, if you were able to remember, you might says I have been enticed to earth for the reason that suddenly in the course of my development between death and a new birth, it seemed—I came into a sphere where it seemed—as if certain beings had flown away, as if they really should be there, were missing—and were not there. To put it bluntly, in the time just before birth in the spiritual world one is dogged by the feeling that one misses certain beings which actually belong there and are not there. Everything goes to show that these beings are lacking. And if one comes down through birth, these beings are there in the minerals and in the plants, but as though banished, as if these beings were banished from the world just left, as if they could not really flourish, would half die and thus create the corpse-like smell, would become half dead in the world one has entered. Before birth we long to know certain exiles. We only know there are banished beings, but where are they? Then we go into the physical world and perceive them, but they might be said to be embalmed, mummified. For in the world we have entered it is only possible for them to be embalmed, mummified, dried up. It is perfectly right, on being confronted by the mineral world and the world of the plants, that we should have the feeling we are looking at beings exiled from the spiritual world, from the regions in which we were before having to enter physical life.

And when we look at animals and men end see their childishness, then, if we can develop the power to see more deeply into being, we remember that these animals and men, as they actually are here in the world in which we live between birth and death are never finished, never actually bring to completion the whole of their life which is conditioned by their inner being. Anyone looking at animals in the right way, anyone who can look at them with full inward and living force of knowledge, knows well that animals are not immortal, but knows too that animals experience in their group souls the whole tragedy of this not being immortal. The group souls outlast the individual life of the animal but what there is here on earth of the animals is—as I recently sale—in reality sick (see Lecture 1), and this is so on account of its deterioration through belonging to s world from which it is banished. And in his outer physical form man also is an exile in this world. He therefore remains crippled and a mere child. Man remains a child, the animal in his general being, in his physical form, is dried up. For what belongs to animal and man is found when we go through death and enter directly into the spiritual world, which then after death we observe. For actually a circle is described in the life between death and a new birth. What remains hidden here of animal kingdom and plant kingdom, what causes us to perceive that animals and men—as far as men's physical forms are concerned—are exiles from the spiritual world, banished out of the spiritual world, is first perceived by us when we pass into the spiritual world through the gate of death. There we go through an evolution and as we approach ever nearer the cosmic midnight, described in my mystery play, (see The Soul's Awakening, scene 6) we become clear that something is missing, that what is missing has run away from the spiritual world; we pursue it through birth and find it on the physical earth in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On entering this existence through birth we are never really surprised about the mineral and plant kingdoms because they are what we have been expecting. Finding animals on the physical earth, too, and men with an outer form that recalls that of the animal though it is more perfect, is astonishing to us in some measure after being born with our gift of consciousness. We begin ia understand this, however, when we know that a beginning has been made with this outer form of animal and man, which only develops in the world we enter through the gate of death.

Now it might be said: For the abstract and completely dried up religious conceptions that still persist (these conceptions were once much more full of life and really gave men something) for these abstract, dried up conceptions still remaining in our age of consciousness, all that men perceive here in the physical world, all that they should conceive as underlying the world experienced by man between death and a new birth, comes upon them too abruptly. What man experiences between death and a new birth remains on this account so problematical for men today, and can so easily be denied by the grossly material mind, because men in arriving at the age of the consciousness soul, which means the age of the intellect, lives as I have explained only in what is reflected into his consciousness. Therefore, he is also only able to live in reflected images when he goes out beyond the perceptions to where, if he stands firmly on his feet, the will plays into him in the way I have previously indicated. If no will plays in however—and in the immortal life after death no will does play in—when there is no interplay of the will and man is restricted to placing before his soul, the reflected images of his conceptions of what the world is between death and a new birth, then this world will have no certainty and will be not only ghostly but without certainty. Indeed we can go as far as to say that if men obstinately cling only to science, if they fix, their attention only upon the ghostly world given them by science, then they are quite right in denying any life at all after going through the gate of death. For what is given by science is only pictures, apparitions. And even this comes to an end when we pass the gate of death. Science is unable to contain anything of what we experience in the realm after death and before birth. For, you see, in books on mineralogy, in books on botany, in everything connected with Physiology, Geology end so forth, in any of the conceptions you can absorb about plants and minerals, you can absorb only about beings who are living in banishment here in this physical world. Again, you can also perceive in the bodies of animals and men only what has been banished here—even with all the help of your books on Zoology and Anthropology, and, if you widen the field of your thought you can really put all knowledge in the same category—you are only able to perceive what is living down here in banishment. But when you reflect that before birth you feel the lack because they really are not there of just these beings experienced here after birth, that in animals and men you then experience what does not exist down here, you will understand that into the conceptual life of science nothing at all of immortal life can enter, and that since it lives in images science in its own domain has a perfect right not to trouble itself about immortal life. It in for this reason that, since the fifteenth century, in the epoch when the conceptions of science are dominating the whole of mankind, man has on the one side the robust, crude nature actually representing for him the whole of reality, and on the other side a realm that he wishes to reach with only the weakened mirrored images of the age of the consciousness soul. This comes before him as though he were saying to himself: Now that I come to see (this happens in the subconscious, for it is there he comes to doubt immortality) when I come to see that what I think are only reflected images, then were I to believe these reflected images would still be there after my death, including the images of my self, I should be just as stupid as if I believed that there were coming towards me out of my mirror here on the wall the men who appear to approach me—that they were not simply reflected but were actually coming towards me.

It is simply characteristic of this epoch of the development of the consciousness soul that if man will not advance to a spiritual comprehension of the world, then connection with the world into which he will enter once he has passed through the gate of death will vanish from him more and more. It will also disappear from his thought life, from his conscious life, but he will not cease to long for it. And even the most hardened deniers of immortality have in the depths of their will, where longing is born, the longing to experience something of the world man enters through the gate of death, the world from which he comes on passing through the gate of birth. They have a longing. The present time is sick with this longing. And the many illnesses of the present time are the expression of this longing holding sway in man, and of man's inability to find conscious conceptions for his longing. If anything is living in the sphere of the will which we are unable to master by conception (again one has to develop very fundamental concepts to speaker these things) when man cannot overcome by his conception what is living in the sphere of his will, then he starts to rage. This is the essence of raging, or frenzy, that something is living in the realm of the will that man cannot comprehend with his capacity for conception. And if man refuses to give in and agree to recognise the existence of the spiritual world, so that through the recognition of the spiritual world he comprehends what has already taken shape in the sphere of the will, than this raging will become ever greater and greater in the world; the raging which indeed presents itself today as the next stage for men after the—not forthcoming but always hoped for—conclusion of peace. This is not anything which can be talked about in the way things ere discussed at a bowling club where, according to the usual philistine conceptions, people come to an understanding as to the possibility of getting some kind of relief or redress. No, it is something connected with the deepest reality of human evolution. Man cannot struggle against the development in him of what enters the sphere of his will. He has no power over it. He is able only to make up his mind consciously to penetrate to the sphere of the spirit so that he learns to understand what is permeating the region of his will. By this means an ordered co-operative life for men can be developed in future in place of this raging.

You see, men turning to the spiritual world which will be revealed in our time by a special wave of events, is not an affair only affecting mean subjectively; it is an objective necessity for man to turn to the spiritual world in this age of the consciousness soul. For changes have even now entered human evolution.

Up to the time in the Mystery of Golgotha took place in earthly life, up to that time, everything man needed for standing here in the world with some measure of security came just through sleep. Before the Mystery of Golgotha man slept in a different way from what he now sleeps, whatever the physiologists may say. Those prophetic natures like the Hebrew prophets to whom such sublime things were revealed in dreams, exist no longer, therefore, in the same form. For today these things are not given to men by God in sleep. This used to happen. This is just the great crossing point in evolution. And pictures of the future were not given only to the prophetic natures but in the time of the Greeks men still had their thoughts given them during sleep. On waking, man brought his thoughts back with him. The structure of the human organism was still such that man could bring back his thoughts. For quite a while this went on working, for the fact is that men actually became headless in the fifteenth century—you will forgive mel To become headless means that the head could no longer he used properly, the head could no longer bring back thoughts out of sleep.

One of the results arrived at through Spiritual Science is that we recognise our head as an instrument to have been really of much less use and much more dried up since the fifteenth century than it was before that time. But it is only now that this has become so noticeable; and it will become ever more noticeable if some means is not found to compensate, s0 that the evaporation of the head is made good again by the spiritual world. For up to the present, up to the nineteenth century, the other nature, man's breast nature has always been accustomed to what the head was still getting from sleep during the Greco-Latin period. The breast nature was inured to this, and in their headless condition men were still receiving impulses as an after effect; they were still in the habit—or I might say men still had the gesture of the thought, the shadow of the thought. But this shadow too will pass away and men will have no thoughts at all if they leave their thinking only to their head. And this is really how the matter stands; it is shown by men's reluctance to think. They have less and less will to think. On the one side they want to have thoughts dictated by nature, for what they like best is merely to make experiments and let the experiments say what they themselves should be thinking. But men prefer not to do the thinking themselves. They even have no proper faith in it, for it is their opinion that what they think out lacks true reality. It is true that there is no reality if you take the mere thoughts. We can come to see, however, that thinking, not the thoughts but the thinking, must become active. And when thinking is made active, this means the spiritual world is coming into play. Today when you really begin to think actively, you can do nothing further than let the spiritual world play a part in you. Otherwise you do not think; you think as little as the scientist thinks today who prefers to let his experiments or his investigations dictate everything to him. Or you think so little as the modern students of sociology who, because they have no will to be active, because they do not come to grips with real social impulses which can be grasped only by being active, actually work with what can be discovered in history, what is inherited from the past. Think for once how men, because they themselves no longer have impulses able to create the social structure, have come down to looking back to the time when thoughts were still formed. The matter is then seen from only a false point of view. It was Rousseau who held up to men the natural state, because he had the feeling that in his day nothing could be gained unless men became active in their pursuit of knowledge of the higher worlds. Well, and even modern socialism likes to indulge in a study of mankind's primitive state; it is something that particularly interests the socialists. They study the original conditions of mankind, their primitive conditions, they study the most savage original peoples, primitive peoples, so as to understand how men are meant to live in social co-operation. This is recognised by all who are familiar with these things. Everywhere there is a certain fear of what is making its presence so inevitably felt as the first dawning of connection with the spiritual world, a certain fear of active thinking. This is why there is difficulty in understanding my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for example, which makes such demands on active thinking. In it the thoughts are different from the usual thoughts of today. And people often stop short when reading this book for the simple reason that they would like to read it as any other book is read. But the other books particularly popular today—well, I think you will agree, they are read in a comfortable easy chair where one can just let thoughts go by with as little trouble as possible. Many people do any reading they go in for just like that. Don't delude yourselves into believing that these men often read newspapers in a different way (present company, of course, always excluded); it is true that emotions are mixed up with this reading, and worries too. But even the newspapers that are devoured so sensationally are also read by letting the pictures slip by. Ah, but all one has tried to put into The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity cannot be read just like that. There you have continually to give yourself a shake to prevent the thoughts sending you to sleep, my dear friends! For it was not written with the idea that you would simply sit in an easy chair; naturally you can sit, even rest your back, but then, just because you are physically at rest, you have to try with the whole of you to set the inner being of soul and spirit in motion so that the whole thinking begins to move. Otherwise you get nowhere but go to sleep. Many indeed do go to sleep and they are not always the least sincere; the insincere ones are those who read The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity just like any other book and then believe they have really followed the thoughts. They have not followed them, they have on the contrary just jumped over them as if they were the husks of words; they go on reading the words without taking in what actually follows from the words as the spark should be produced by flint and steel. But this is something that must be required of what has to take hold of the evolution of mankind in the present and the immediate future, for through it man will gradually raise himself to the spiritual world in the right way. By active thinking man's inner relations to the spiritual world will be kindled and then he will make ever greater progress. Today he can already get very far by carrying out such things as are described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But there too it is sufficiently indicated how pre-eminently necessary it is to develop coherent, connected thinking where there is no broken thread—when the thread of the thought is carefully followed.

In this longing, today more or less lacking in clarity and consciousness, to push oneself upward with unconscious thinking to the sphere of the spirit—and it is possible to do this—there is mingled a desire from the past, a weary desire, to go on thinking incoherently. Just recently I have drawn your attention to how contrary it is to men's sense of comfort to have to progress step by step in conscious thinking. They would much prefer to leave things more to the unconscious, and not in thought go on to the next point and then again to make a further step. Isn't it so? You see, Spiritual Science as we understand it here and as in a sane way it reckons with the unbroken sequence of the thoughts in the way you know—well, it is not that this Spiritual Science cannot be understood if thinking is made active, but men simply want to understand Spiritual Science in a different way from how they must understand it; instead of which they would like the thread to be continually broken. When you go deeply into what Spiritual Science gives you, when you plunge into it with real energy (have patience, in the present epoch only faint indications of this can as yet exist) then, already today, by developing the power of thought, by following in thought Saturn, Sun and Moon, as described in my Occult Science, you can follow this evolution up to where man stands there in the world, and you can press on to your own life, penetrate this life of yours with the thought which is thus made vigorous. Then you come to certain conceptions which, although not as you would like them to appear but entirely in the connection, in the coherence, of the thinking, enlighten you about their being, about their nature, about what they are and their character. By bringing to life what is said about Saturn, Sun, Moon and their corresponding details, and then about the evolution of the earth, applying all this to your individual selves, you would be able to progress to your own being; only you have to go on in your thought to the perception of yourself, not letting the thoughts be broken but keeping them coherent and connected. What in this way man begins rightly today enlightens him up to the stage where he should become clear about his own personal being. In this longing, still present more or less unconsciously in men, however, something else is mingled with the broken thread of thought, something calculated! Man would like to find out something of the kind about his being; what does he do? He takes old antiquated knowledge of which, it goes without saying, the venerable nature is certainly not to be disparaged, which, however, has need of explanation when applied in a new epoch—he calculates, reckons, breaks the thread of thought at any point, calculates constellation of the stars, and after that the thread of thought can break, and quite externally without any sequence in the thought this being of man as he appears on earth is supposed to develop without any thinking.

You see, even if the Church, the Roman Catholic Church as I described it to you yesterday, denies what today is most necessary of all, this can be made good just by taking anything like the description of the inner vision of John of the Cross and living today in the sense of the evolution that conforms with Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. What is contained in this book follows on today precisely from what a man such as St. John of the Cross wills; whereas the Catholic Church denies it and wishes even today to see the old way of John of the Cross applied to modern man, as indeed it is to so many people. Because they are too comfort-loving they do not want a life that is active in spirit, a life that has already reached a stage of energetic activity when conceptions are accepted such as those given by Spiritual Science. They would like these to be brought up to date in a more usual form of thought, preferring to remain with what is old and hoping that out of this lack of thought there might spring what should explain present-day mankind. Naturally this is no adverse judgment about what is venerable, but from every point of view it must be indicated that one should not venture to deny what is placed as spiritual necessity into the present evolution of mankind, the evolution beginning with the age of the consciousness soul. The important thing is for man really to understand what today is required of mankind in world-evolution. I believe that out of right feeling for the very things which men find irksome, and do not want, a better attitude towards Spiritual Science will be adopted more and more, and only when this better attitude to Spiritual Science has come about will the social life also be enriched. At this point man will be able to become clear about the life of mankind because he will then have the necessary strength of thought to enlighten himself concerning man's life. For where this enlightenment about man's life is concerned man of today suffers from a very precarious state of affairs. Whether you are a follower of Lenin or Trotsky, whether you are a Marxist or any other kind of thinker about the right form for the social structure of men, in each of these views there lives a state of affairs that is precarious and cannot be understood without the fruitful intervention of Spiritual Science. Doubtless you will admit that man has now entered the epoch of the consciousness soul. He has to develop consciously what arises as social structure. Otherwise nothing will go right. He has to take his place consciously in the world; it is really necessary that man should be conscious. But he should also consciously grasp the relation between men, life in society, the social life. An uncertain state of affairs hinders him in this. The fatal thing is that man can never have a conception of more than one man. And as neither two men (I mean physical men) nor two things (physical things) can be in the same place at the same time—which decides the law of impermeability—two men cannot be in human consciousness at the same time, the actual conception cannot be made of two men! simultaneously. It is very important to take note of this. We cannot live with another man without making a conception of him, neither can we develop any knowledge about the social life in common unless we make conceptions about other men. But today man, because he is able to conceive only of one man, generally prefers to conceive only of himself, to make a conception of himself as man. And social thinking is content to demand a co-operative life in which man's conception is always merely of himself. Man does not get away from the conception of his own self; he often talks of doing so, but in reality today he does not easily get rid of himself. It is only when he makes every effort to fulfil the requirements of Spiritual Science that he gradually finds it possible in some measure to get free of himself. For Spiritual Science sows in the world the seeds of thoughts having a very wide perspective, and this is how man grows into the habit of getting free from himself. As today, if he becomes a spiritualist, man grows more egoistic than he was before, if he would penetrate into the spiritual world on that other path, the path of Spiritual Science, he becomes more selfless. Spiritual Science, therefore, is not simply the handing over of knowledge, but spirit-knowledge is actually something unconditionally necessary for educating modern man in social life. It is for this reason that no cure will be forthcoming if a start is not made in this matter, it men do not really give heed to the necessity for first making a conception. There can be no social reform without schooling to begin with, without men first being instructed. And when this is neglected men miss the possibility of receiving concepts that embrace their longing. And, if I am to get at the root of the matter, men will became more frenzied than ever.

This is the inner connection, my dear friends. But it is desirable that this same inner connection should be perceived. One would wish above all things that this inner connection should be felt by everyone entering upon Spiritual Science and wishing to live in it up to some point or other. This is something that everyone will want to ponder who has the wish to take Spiritual Science and the Movement of Spiritual Science in earnest. It cannot well be overlooked, it cannot well remain unnoticed, that when we enter into relation with Spiritual Science this Spiritual Science makes certain demands on the human heart and mind to widen the interests beyond narrow, personal interests. It is really true that in talking of Spiritual Science one simply speaks of things which, if a right relation is to be established with them, makes it necessary for man to free himself from his most narrow interests! He need have no fear of becoming unpractical on that account: he becomes much more practical. It is just this belief that he is practical which has gradually been arrived at through being unspiritual. In reality the practical man of today is terribly unpractical. And these 'practical' men have actually landed us in the present catastrophe. Herein lies something of tremendous importance which man really must always take for granted if he wishes rightly to understand what has to do with Spiritual Science, namely that he must get free from his narrowest interests. He must rid himself of the immediately personal; for it does not help matters when people carry their narrow personal interests into the Anthroposophical Movement. That is always just the cause of any kind of mischief in the relation taken up towards Spiritual Science. It is also naturally the reason for what is still such a difficulty in our Movement, that people although often abstractly in theory, having the good will to come to Spiritual Science with their own thinking, feeling and willing, nevertheless do not bring all the necessary strength really to enter upon selflessness, which indeed must be called upon for understanding rightly what is said from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. Thus a kind of spirit-condition not easily found today in the world, but the opposite of which is prevalent in the modern world, must be demanded for the health of the Anthroposophical Movement, my dear friends! For the difference between the sincere presentation of the knowledge of Spiritual Science and all other knowledge arising at present, lies in this presentation of Spiritual Science being no personal affair, no personal opinion. Were I obliged to hold the view that I should lecture only about merely personal opinions and not concerning what is revealed today and just what is necessary for mankind, I should prefer to remain silent. For to uphold personal opinions and personal aspirations in a Movement that is anthroposophical is something impermissible. That should not be. A Movement such as is striven for here is justified only when there is the will to present merely what one is allowed to observe out of the spiritual world.

When you describe the appearance of any town you may, according to circumstance, make the description either interesting or tedious, but what the town looks like does not depend upon you. You describe something objective. What you yourself want, what is your own opinion, should come just as little to expression in Spiritual Science. What must take effect in Spiritual Science according to modern demands is all that is spiritually observed. Those who are able actually to will merely what is personal can for that reason only imperfectly understand what should hold good in a movement for Spiritual Science. They continually confuse what should hold good in a Movement such as is meant here with something else drawn, more than ever from the personal. How many there are who coming to Anthroposophy would like their own opinion to be justified by Spiritual Science. They are not always equipped with the open mind necessary for the acceptance of Spiritual Science. Very often they come to it with something quite different to this open mind. They would like this or that to be true, then in some way, while admitting that the investigator of Spiritual science may know something about the truth, persuade themselves that what one thinks oneself one says. Then they would be happy. But this fine distinction must be noticed; it is a fine distinction although a tremendously far-reaching one; there is a far reaching and important distinction between the one who wants to accept what is imparted by the spiritual world and the one who actually wishes only to have confirmation of what it pleases him to think. Only by the most punctilious self-examination, by conscientious self-examination, will the distinction be discovered. The distinction is often unnoticed by those who come to Spiritual Science; it must, however, be noticed. If it is noticed it will become apparent that through a Movement for Spiritual Science something of a new stream of life must flow which was not there before. It is really not possible for an Anthroposophical Movement to be like a mere soft current of air blowing towards anyone who brings to Spiritual Science the Philistine tendencies of his earlier life and then believes he will find what he is only too willing to acknowledge in Philistinism corroborated by Spiritual Science.

When we proceed in this matter earnestly, conscientiously, we shall not want merely to find corroboration of our actual individual opinion; and we shall also come to understand many things which might be said to be obliged to arise as new things in a Movement for Spiritual Science of this kind, things that must do harm if left unnoticed. In a movement in the act of arising like this Movement for Spiritual Science much can work harmfully that cannot cause so much harm in old, dried up Movements, no longer of use or of very little use. We have really to go into these fins points, my dear friends! You see, connected with the endeavour merely to see our own opinions, our own aspirations, justified by what is revealed through Spiritual Science, a remarkable technique of 'touching-up' is developed concerning what comes forth and comes forth perfectly naturally, within a movement such as ours. In this movement for Spiritual Science we must be alive to the fact that phenomena with men cannot be taken as if in a bowling club or something of the kind where men can reveal how verbose they have become in the ordinary world where nothing new is required of them. We must recognise in all earnestness that the aims of investigation into what is spiritual cannot find expression through our own conceptions; we must really prepare ourselves to receive the things. We should picture that something is wishing to flow into the world, something that should more and more widen itself out, so that everything should really be received in full consciousness. Many connections not yet perceived will be perceived later. This willingness to receive everything as in some sense a preparation, will certainly not be present in those who carry their personal aspirations into the impulse of Spiritual Science, for at the first possible moment they will get done with things, giving them the bent of their ordinary opinions. They do not mould their opinions in accordance with Spiritual Science, they mould the knowledge gained through Spiritual Science in accordance with their opinions. And so we often have given out the kind of thing I would like to describe in the following way.

Now you know that the Anthroposophist has to judge the world in a certain way, the world of nature as well as the world of human beings. Education in Spiritual Science consists indeed in our learning to judge afresh the surrounding world and our relation to it and in our learning to look more deeply, into the world. People very often remark when, let us say, the relation of three men is in question: The Anthroposophist B. has been criticizing the man A. And, my dear friends, as soon as we overstep the usual Philistine sphere, so largely around us today, two standpoints can be put forward where the formation of judgment between man and man is concerned: one of these standpoints is that of reason, the second being the standpoint of sympathy. Thus B's judgment of A may be in accordance with what arises from an inner necessity at same time to do something or other purely out of his—B's—sympathy for A. Should it now suit C to be antipathetic because he does not reflect sufficiently and does not assume that it may be possible for pure sympathy to come into the matter here, out of necessity, then, basing his judgment simply on reason he will say: whatever can he be doing that for? Or this inner necessity may speak in such a way that it is not sympathy that becomes dominant but, because of certain factors, reason. Yes, and when it suits the other better he lets sympathy have its say and gives as his verdict: what an unsympathetic person! How utterly without feeling the man is and what a prosy rationalist! He judges purely from the standpoint of reason. In this way the crudest misunderstandings arise in the case of just those who bestir themselves to grasp the inner nerve of existence, where they have at one time to do something based on reason, another time something just out of sympathy. And when it suits this other man (C) in accordance with the sympathetic view he condemns what is done from reason, and what is done out of sympathy he condemns from the point of view of reason, and he can always condemn or praise as he likes. By this path we never arrive at what is right, we only arrive at what is right if we begin by saying: I must consider the case, I must look into the causes why sympathy or reason have held sway here. It is things like this out of which the little misunderstandings in life arise which often grow to very destructive proportions in men's life in common. It is just this that our education in Spiritual Science should help us to overcome. For life is such that it expresses itself in a twofold way. And because it expresses itself in a twofold way one can always condemn at pleasure one of the two cases. This is very little taken into account, however, above all not taken into account where the teachings of Spiritual Science itself is concerned. This, too, must be placed in the world with definite intention. In an individual case either one or other of the two standpoints can be chosen according to convenience, if greater attention is not paid to the deeper grounds out of which the spiritual seeker is obliged to act. He may often be misunderstood. And if there is no agreement in what must be done out of inner duty in accordance with the facts, then it is possible to misunderstand everything, since the world has this dual form of expression.

You see we can fall into the following error for example. When anyone is eager to have what suits him substantiated, he may just fall into the worst form of belief in authority. Belief in authority can naturally make its influence felt, and this influence is actually frequent and of wide range in the very sphere where Spiritual Science also would be active, which wishes to make man into a perfectly free, self-reliant being. The other pole of the belief in authority, however, is hatred of authority. And fundamentally the man who does not feel himself drawn to Spiritual Science through entering into the facts revealed from the spiritual world, but wishes to have these truths conveyed to him by authority, wanting to believe in authority because it is easier than going into things—this man is terribly apt to spring over from his belief in authority, that always has in it a certain kind of love of authority, to hatred of authority. And all manifestations that have arisen in our particular movement of this leap from blind worship of authority, which sometimes has even appeared with a certain shamelessness in the moment of passing over to hatred, this passing from blind worship of authority to hate—all this is something inwardly present as a danger. It is very important to keep these connections in mind, for these connections make it terribly difficult today to create an Anthroposophical Movement so that it will prosper. It must be created in a successful way for the sake of mankind's welfare.

Now, my dear friends, in my life I have found quite a number of people who were spiritual people and were seeking in all sincerity away into Spiritual Science, into some kind of Spiritual Science, who were also in a way advanced in their development. A certain type among them was disillusioned, people who had been disillusioned by one or other of the modern spiritual movements and who then in some place or another came across us—how many are disillusioned today by the Blavatsky Movement, the Besant Movement or some other Movement. There we do not see the characteristic phenomenon that takes such curious forms in the Anthroposophical Movement; but there we have people, for example, who are to a certain extent spiritually advanced; then after some time one again comes across them but now they say: You are completely wrong! And these meetings are not infrequent. Spirituality today is not at all common but there are men indeed who say to one after a time: You are actually wrong, for, you see, the things you give out in Spiritual Science—there's no possible sense in publishing them! But men are not in inclined to accept them; they are certainly not sufficiently mature. All this can only serve one purpose to be developed in oneself and then kept to oneself. I have found many such people who say: It is a definite characteristic of the man who is really advanced spiritually that it no longer enters his head to speak about it to his fellowmen; he keeps the matter to himself. There is indeed no lack of such people in the world. I have never been able to come to an understanding with these people about what out of a certain inner ground I learn from the spiritual world. These men do quite useful work in a spiritual community but they have a hermit tendency, even when at the same time they remain in association with others. For it is possible to become a hermit in spite of wearing elegant shoes and leading an Hotel life. This one sees this double life being led by a number of people; they are indeed the modern Hotel dwellers; for all I care they may be well dressed but they lead this life as an outward mask to hide what is within them; they have their inner life of the spirit with no wish to share it with their fellow men. This seems to one to be doing what is not right, to be sinning against mankind. For one is right in saying that such men have en effect on the spiritual life, what they experience goes into the spiritual stream. Man is not a self-contained being, therefore what he experiences has value and its own significance in the spiritual world, but the question of time always plays its part there. Men like this who live in such a way nowadays, as many do whom I have known, bring about something indeed in the spiritual world which however only comes to maturity after a long time, in the later epochs of mankind. Then, however, can, and quite certainly would, were there always only those who as hermits develop their spiritual being, having no wish to teach what knowledge they have gained from the spiritual world, what they have developed in themselves—then by the time the fruits of these men are ripe, people outside would have so deteriorated that they would no longer be able to receive the knowledge! Earth evolution would be endangered: connection would be missed. We live indeed today at a time when certain spiritual truths such as those of which we have been speaking must unconditionally be imparted to mankind. Things will not be helped by the attitude expressed, for example, by one of my acquaintances who in a certain sense was spiritually advanced. He came to Berlin and I asked him whether he would come to hear a lecture of mine, just to see how the Movement was run (this is some time ago). He answered: No, holding lectures and talking to people serves no possible purpose! To sit together for half-an-hour and have a little talk I find very pleasant—but let us leave spiritual things alone when we can; everyone must settle those for himself! To pay a civil visit and pass the time of day is best for just those people who are seeking the spiritual. And this attitude is a prevalent one. It would be more comfortable, my dear friends, to live in accordance with such an attitude. And the word comfortable certainly does not describe what it is nowadays days to get up in front of people to impart what one feels impelled to impart as a duty. In an Anthroposophical Movement it should be borne in mind that work is done out of inner necessity, and what happens is not a matter of choice but the punctual observance of a duty.

I have used these words at the end of our studies today because I have wanted once again to take the opportunity of calling attention to what is necessary if a movement for Spiritual Science is to be taken nowadays as earnestly as it should be taken. For what can be made of an Anthroposophical Movement, if personal aspirations, personal ambition, is brought in, can cause much injury must cause much injury. Besides there is still the shadow side, namely, that whoever thinks to find only what is just personal corroborated through Spiritual Science cannot discern whether the other may not be acting also merely from personal ambition. And a terrible doom is then forthcoming. I wanted to give an indication of these things, my dear friends. We shall be speaking further next Friday.

This lecture is also known as The Creation of a Michael Festival and Cosmic Word and Individual Man. It is the 5th of 7 lectures in a lecture series that is entitled, The Human Soul in its Connection with Godly-Spiritual Individualities.

My dear Friends, what I should like to bring to you now will have to be said—as has everything that I have had to say recently about Anthroposophy—with a certain undertone called forth by the painful event which befell our work and our Society on last New Year's Eve: the Goetheanum in Dornach, for the time being, is no more; it was consumed by flames in the night before the New Year. And all who witnessed the destruction in this one night of the work of ten long years, accomplished by so many of our friends, and performed by them with complete devotion—all who have loved this Goetheanum very much, just because of this work, and because of what the Goetheanum was to us, will of necessity be weighed down by the thought that we no longer have this particular outer sign of Anthroposophical activity. For, even if some other building for our work shall arise on the same site—which should by all means occur—owing to the trying circumstances of the present time it can, of course, never be the old Goetheanum. Therefore, behind all that I have had to say since those days there actually stands in the background the fearful glow of the flames, which in such a heart-rending way interrupted the development of all our work. Since this outer sign has vanished, we must dedicate ourselves all the more to laying hold of the inner forces and inner realities of the Anthroposophical Movement and of what is connected with it for the entire evolution of humanity. Let me begin then with a sort of consideration of the nature of the human being. I have presented very much of this kind here in your midst, and I should like now to consider again one phase from a certain point of view.

I should like to start with a consideration of the human being entering the world, of the human being who has descended from the pre-earthly existence and is, as it were, taking his first steps here in the life on earth. We know, of course, that at the time of this entrance into the earth-life, a condition governs the soul which has a certain similarity to the ever-recurring condition of man's sleep-life. As the ordinary consciousness has no remembrance, upon awaking, of that which the soul-spiritual part of man has experienced between going to sleep and waking up (with the exception of the varicolored multiplicity of dreams, which actually float away, as we know, when we sink into sleep or when we wake, and which for the ordinary consciousness do not result from deep sleep)—as, then, the ordinary consciousness has no remembrance of this condition, so for the entire earth life this same consciousness remembers only back to a certain point of time in childhood. With one person this point of time is somewhat earlier, with another later. What occurs in the earthly life prior to this is really as much concealed from the ordinary consciousness as are the events of the sleep state. Of course, it is true that the child is not actually sleeping; it lives in a sort of dreamy, indefinite inner activity; but from the point of view of the whole later life, this condition is at least not very much removed from dream-filled sleep.

There are three activities, however, which set in at this time, three things. which the child is learning. There is what we ordinarily sum up in the expression learning to walk, then what is connected with learning to speak, and what for the child is connected with learning to think. Now, in the expression “learning to walk”, for the sake of our own convenience we actually characterize something which is extraordinarily complex in an exceedingly brief way. We need only to recall how the child is at first utterly unadapted to life, how it gradually gains the ability to accommodate its own position of balance to the space in which it is to move during the entire life. It is not merely “learning to walk” which we observe in the child, but a seeking for the state of equilibrium in the earthly life. Connected with learning to walk is all use of the limbs. And for anyone who is able to observe such a matter in the right way, the most remarkable and most important of life's riddles actually find expression in this activity of learning to walk; a whole universe comes to expression in the manner in which the child progresses from creeping to the upright position, to the placing of the little feet, but also in addition to holding the head upright and to the use of arms and legs. And then anyone who has a more intimate insight into how one child steps more on the heel, and another is more inclined to step on the toes, will perhaps have an inkling of what I shall now have to tell you with regard to the three activities mentioned and their relation to the spiritual world. Only, I should like first to characterize these three activities as to their outer aspects.

On the basis of this effort to attain equilibrium—or, if I may express myself now somewhat more learnedly, perhaps also somewhat more pompously, this search for a dynamic of life—on the basis of this effort, learning to speak is then developed. For, anyone who is able to observe knows quite well that the normal development of the child proceeds in such a way that learning to speak is developed on the basis of learning to walk and to grasp. With regard to learning to talk it will be noticed at the very first how the firm or gentle tread of the child is expressed in the act of talking, in the accenting of the syllables, in the force of the speech. And it will be noticed further how the modulation of the words, how the forming of the words, has a certain parallel with the way the child learns to bend the fingers or to keep them straight, whether it is skillful or unskillful. But anyone who can then observe the entire inner nature of the human organization will be able to know—what even the present-day teaching of evolution concedes—that “right-handed” people not only have the speech-center in the left third convolution of the forehead, in the so-called Broca convolution, which represents in a quite simple physiological way the characteristic relation between speech and the ability to grasp, the entire ability to handle the arm and the hand, if I may make use of the pleonasm; but we know also how closely the movement of the vocal cords, the whole adjustment of the speech organism, takes on exactly the same character which the movements of walking and grasping assume. But in the normal development of the child, speech which, as you know, is developed in imitation of the environment, cannot develop at all unless the foundation is first laid in the quest of the state of equilibrium in life.

With regard to thinking: Even the more delicate organs of the brain, upon which thinking depends, are developed in turn from the speech organization. No one should suppose that in the normal development of the child thinking could be evolved before speech. Anyone who is able to observe the process will find that with the child speech is not at first an expression of “thinking”—not at all! It would be ridiculous to believe that. But, with the child, speech is an expression of feeling, of sensation, of the soul-life. Hence you will see that at first it is interjections, everything connected with feelings, which the child expresses by means of speech. And when the child says “Mama” or “Papa”, it expresses feelings toward Mama or Papa, not any sort of concept or thought. Thinking is first developed from speech. It is true that among human beings many a thing is disarranged, so that someone says, “This child learned to speak before it walked.” But that is not the normal development, and in the rearing of a child one should by all means see to it that the normal course of development is actually observed: walking—speaking—thinking.

However, the real character of these activities of the child is truly perceived only when we observe the other side of human life: that is to say, if we observe how in later life these activities are related to each other in sleep; for they arise out of sleep, as I have indicated, or at least out of the dreamlike sleep of the child. But what do these activities signify during the later earth life?

In general, it is not possible for the scientific life of the present day to enter into these things. It actually knows only the exterior of the human being; it knows nothing of the inner relationships of the human being with the Cosmic Being, in so far as the Cosmic Being is spiritual. In every realm human civilization, if I may use the expression—or let us say human culture—has been developed to a certain materialism, or naturalism. Do not think that I wish here to upbraid materialism: if materialism had not come into human civilization, human beings would not have become free. Materialism is therefore a necessary epoch in the evolution of humanity. But today we must be very clear as to the way we have to go now—as well as in the future. And we must be clear about this in every realm. In order that what I now have to say may be better illustrated, I should like to make it clear to you by means of an example.

You all know and can learn from my books that earth humanity, before it passed through those cultural epochs which are only partly similar to the present one—the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin, and then our own—passed through the so-called Atlantean catastrophe. And during this Atlantean catastrophe the humanity which is now the European, Asiatic, and American civilized humanity lived chiefly on a continent where there is now sea—namely, the Atlantic Ocean. At that time this area was occupied mostly by land, and for a very long time, humanity had been developing upon this Atlantean continent. You can read in my books and cycles what humanity passed through during those epochs. I will not speak of other human experiences during the ancient Atlantean time, but only of musical experiences.

The entire musical experience of the ancient Atlantean would necessarily appear very curious, even grotesque, to a man of the present time, if he could hear it—which, of course, he cannot do. For what the ancient Atlanteans were in quest of in music was, for example, the chords of the seventh.

These chords of the seventh had the peculiarity of affecting the souls of these ancient people—in whose bodies we were all ensheathed, for in repeated earth lives we passed through that time also—in such a way that they were immediately transported out of their bodies when they lived in their music, this music which took into special consideration the chords of the seventh.

They knew no other frame of mind in music than a state of rapture, of enthusiasm, a state in which they were permeated by the God; and, when their extraordinarily simple instruments sounded—instruments intended only for accompaniment to singing—then such an Atlantean immediately felt himself to be actually weaving and living in the outer spiritual world.

Then came the Atlantean catastrophe. Among all post-Atlanteans there was next developed a preference for a sequence of fifths. You probably know that for a long time thereafter fifths played a most comprehensive role in musical development; for example, in ancient Greece, fifths played a quite extensive role. And this preference for a sequence of fifths had the peculiarity of affecting people in such a way that, when they experienced music, they now no longer felt drawn out of their bodies, to be sure, but they felt themselves to be soul and spirit within their bodies. During the musical experience they completely forgot physical experience; they felt that they were inside their skin, so to speak, but their skin was entirely filled with soul and spirit. That was the effect of the music, and very few people will believe that almost up to the tenth and eleventh Christian century the natural music was as I have described it. For not until then did the aptitude for thirds appear, the aptitude for the major and the minor third, and everything of the nature of major and minor. That came relatively late. But with this late development there was evolved at the same time the inner experience of music. Man now remained within himself in musical experience. Just as the rest of the culture at this time tended downward from the spiritual to the material, so in the musical sphere the tendency was downward, from the experience of the spiritual into which he passed in ancient times when he experienced music at all, to the experience of music within himself—no longer as far outward as to the skin, but entirely within himself. In this way there first appeared also at that time the major and minor moods, which are actually possible only when music is inwardly experienced.

Thus, it can be seen how in every domain man has descended from the spiritual into the material, but also into himself. Therefore, we should not always merely say, in a narrow-minded fashion, that the material is something of minor value, and we must escape from it. The human being would not have become truly human at all, if he had not descended and laid hold upon the material life. Precisely because he apprehended the spiritual in the material, did the human being become a self-conscious, independent Ego-Being. And today, with the help of Anthroposophical spiritual science, we must again find the way back into the spiritual world—in all realms we must find the way. This is the reason it is so painful that the artistic endeavor, made by means of the Goetheanum at Dornach, has been obliterated as is now the case. The way into the spiritual world must be sought in every realm.

Let us next consider one activity which the child learns—namely, speech—with regard to the entire evolution of the human being. It must really be said that what the child learns there is something magnificent. Jean Paul, the German poet, has said that in the first three years of life—that is, the years in which the essential things we learn are to walk, to speak and to think—the human being learns much more than in the three academic years. Meanwhile the “three” academic years have become many, but a man still learns no more in those three years than he learns as a child in the first three years of life.—Let us now consider speech. In speaking there is first the outer physical-physiological factor: that is, the larynx and the rest of our speech organs are set in motion. They move the air, which becomes the medium of tone. Here we have, in a way, the physical-physiological part. But in what we say there is soul also. And the soul permeates and gleams through all that we utter in the sounds. In as far as speech is something physical, man's physical body and his etheric body have a share in it. As a matter f course, these are silent from the time of going to sleep until the time of wakening. That is, the normal human being does not speak between going to sleep and waking; but in as much as the soul and the ego have a share in speech, they—the astral body and ego—take with them the soul power of speech, when they pass out of the physical and etheric bodies at the time of going to sleep—and they actually take with them everything of a soul nature which the person has put into his speech during the whole day. We are really different beings each evening, for we have been busy talking all day long—one more, another less, many all too much, many also too little—but, no matter, we have been occupied with talking throughout the day, and we have put our souls into what we have said. And what we have put into our speech, that we take with us into sleep, and it remains our being between sleeping and waking.

Now it may be that in our present materialistic age the human being no longer has any notion that idealism or spirituality may be expressed in the speech. People today usually have the idea that speech is intended to express only the external, the tangibly-objective. The feeling that ideals may be expressed in the speech has almost entirely disappeared. For this reason, it is also true that people today generally find so “unintelligible” what is said to them about “spirit”. For what do people say to themselves when spirit is mentioned? They admit that “words” are being used, but of these words people know only that they indicate what can be grasped or seen. The idea that words may also signify something else, something supersensible, invisible, people no longer like at all. That may be one way in which people regard speech; but the other may, of course, be that people shall find the way again to idealism even in words, even in language, knowing that a soul-spiritual experience may sound through each word, as it were.

What a person who lives entirely in the materialism of the language, so to speak, carries over in sleep into the spiritual world brings him, strangely enough, into a difficult relation with the world of the Archangels, the Archangeloi, into which he should enter each night between going to sleep and waking; while the one who preserves for himself the idealism of speech, and who knows how the genius of the language lives in it, comes into the necessary relation to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, especially to that Archangel to whom he himself belongs in the world between sleeping and waking. Indeed, this is expressed even in outer world phenomena. Why do people today seek so frantically for an outer relation to the national languages? Why did this frightful misfortune come upon Europe, which Woodrow Wilson has considered good fortune?—but he was a curious illusionist.—Why then did this great misfortune come upon Europe, that freedom is bound up with the convulsive desire to make use of the national languages, even of the smallest nations? Because in reality the people are frantically seeking externally a relationship which they no longer have in spirit: for in going to sleep they no longer have the natural relation to the language—and also, therefore, not to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi! And humanity will have to find the way back again to the permeation of all that pertains to language with idealism, if they do not wish to lose the way into the spiritual world.

How does humanity today regard what takes place for the individual human being between going to sleep and waking? People do not take account of this sleep condition at all. If we recollect our past life, we seem to have before us a complete life picture. That is not the case; the time spent in sleep has regularly dropped out; the whole picture is continuously interrupted. We always connect the morning with the previous evening, but between them is the night. And what has occurred during sleep in the night constitutes outwardly, in the first place, at least a third of the human life (at all events, among “respectable” people it is so); and, secondly, it is much more important for the inner man than the outer activity during the whole day. To be sure, the outer activity is more important for external civilization; but our inner development during life is brought about by our coming into relation with the spiritual world in the right way while we sleep during the night.

And the same is true regarding what forms the basis of the other activities; that is to say, if the human being in his actions—that is, what he does throughout the entire realm of the movements which he first learns upon entrance into the earth life—if he puts idealism into the whole realm of his actions, that is, if his life contains idealism in its realization, then the human being finds again the right relation with the Hierarchy of the Archai. And if the thoughts contain idealism, if they are not materialistic, the human being finds during sleep the relation with the Hierarchy of the Angels. This is what we discover if, with the help of Anthroposophical spiritual science, we inquire into the relation to the sleep state of these three activities acquired during childhood.

But this relation may be revealed in a much more comprehensive degree, if we observe the entire life of the human being in the cosmos. You are acquainted with the description in my book Theosophy. When the human being passes through the gate of death, he first experiences for some days the condition which consists in the dissipation of the thoughts, of the concepts. We may express it by saying that the etheric body expands into the distances of the cosmos, the human being “loses” his etheric body. But that is the same as if I say that man's concepts and thoughts are dissipated. But what does that actually mean: that the concepts and thoughts are dissipated? It really means very much. It means, namely, that our entire waking life departs from us. Our entire waking life departs from us in the course of two or three days, and nothing at all would be left of our life, if we did not then live through that of which we remain unconscious during the earth life; that is, if we did not then begin to live through in full consciousness what we have experienced during our sleep life. This sleep life is spiritually infinitely richer, more intense, than the waking life. Whether the sleep be short or long, the sleep-life is each time a reversed repetition of the day life, but with a spiritual impulse: What you have accomplished as actions during the day brings you at night into a relation to the Archai, to the Primal Powers; what you have said in the daytime brings you at night into a relation to the Archangeloi, the Archangels; and your thinking brings you in the same way into a relation to your Angel-being, to the Angeloi.

And what man experiences during sleep is independent of time. It is unnecessary to say: “Very well, but the following is possible: At night I go to sleep; something makes a noise; something awakens me; in this case I certainly cannot complete my going back over the day in retrospect.” Even so it is completed, because the time relations are entirely different; that can be experienced in a moment which otherwise might continue for hours if the sleep were undisturbed. During sleep the time relations are quite different from those of the day. Therefore, it can be stated positively, and must so be stated, that each time a person sleeps he once again experiences in retrospect what he has lived through here in the physical world since the last waking, but this time in spiritual manner and substance. And when the waking life of concepts is dissipated into the cosmos, a few days after death, then the human being lives through the very experiences which he had during the third of life spent in sleep. I have, therefore, always had to describe how man requires a third of his earth-life in order then to live through what he has experienced during the nights of his life. Naturally, it is essentially like the day life, but it is experienced in a different way. And at that time, as the second condition after death, he lives through this retrogression, when he actually experiences once again, in a third of the time, the entire life back to birth. Then when he has again arrived at his birth, he enters into that condition which I have already described to you here in another connection; that is, he enters into that condition in which every conception of the world is essentially altered for him.

You see, here on earth we are in a definite place; the world is around us. We know ourselves very little, indeed, with the ordinary consciousness. The world we observe with the outer senses; that we know. Perhaps, you will say that the anatomists know the inner part of the human being very well. Not at all; they know only the outer aspect of the inner being. The real inner part is something entirely different.—If you call to mind today something which you experienced ten years ago, then you have in the memory something which is in your soul, do you not? It is condensed, a brief remembrance of, perhaps, a very, very extended experience. But it is merely a soul picture of something which you have passed through in the earth life. But now enter into yourself—not now into your memories, but into your physical organism, that is, the apparently physical organism—and observe the wonderful construction of your brain, of your lungs, and so forth. Within you there, rolled up as it were, are—not the experiences of this earth life, but rolled together there is the whole cosmos, the entire universe. Man is really a small universe, a microcosmos. In his organs the whole universe is rolled together. But the human being does not know this with the ordinary consciousness. When he is on earth, he has the memory of his experiences. He does not know that he himself in his physical nature is, as it were, the embodied memory of the whole cosmos.—When, therefore, the backward journey through the life, which I have just indicated, has been completed, then, between death and a new birth, we enter into a cosmic life, where we are not, as now, surrounded by the world with its mountains, clouds, stars, seas, and so on, but where our environment consists of the riddles of the inner human being, where everything concerning the mysteries of the inner human being of which we are deprived in the earth life, now constitutes our environment. Here on the earth, as you know, we live within our skin, and we know about the stars, clouds, mountains, rocks, animals, and plants. Between death and a new birth we know about the human being. All the mysteries of the human being are our environment. And do not suppose that it is a less interesting environment than that of the earth! To be sure, the starry heavens are magnificent, the mountains and the seas are grand; but what the inner being of man contains in a single small vessel is grander and mightier than our earth environment, when between death and a new birth we are surrounded by it in its majestic greatness. The human being is the world between death and a new birth, and he must be the world, because we prepare the next earth life. Together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, we must help to prepare the future earth man. As we here are occupied with our outer culture and civilization, as here on earth we make boots or coats, use the telephone, do people's hair, give lectures, do something artistic, or whatever belongs to our present civilization, so, between death and a new birth, together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, we prepare what the human being is, and what we ourselves shall again be in the physical body in the next earth life.

That is the goal of spiritual culture, and it is grander, infinitely grander and more magnificent than the goal of earthly civilization. Not without reason have the ancients called the physical human body a “Temple of the Gods”, because together with the Gods, with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, this human physical body is formed between death and a new birth. That is what we do, that is where we are with our ego—among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, working on humanity, together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. We move about, as it were, among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; we are spirits among spirits.

What we do there we can, of course, do only according to what we have accomplished here in the earth life; and that also is revealed to us in a certain sense in the relation of sleep to waking. Just think how chaotic the dream is! I do not undervalue the wonderfully varied multiplicity and the grandeur of the dream; but we must nevertheless recognize that the dream, compared with the earth life, in whose images it is clothed, is chaotic. You need only to recall that dream which I have mentioned before as an illustration (Volkelt told this dream, according to a report from Württemberg, but we know of such, do we not?). A city lady visited her sister, who was the wife of a country parson, and she dreamed that she went with her sister to church to hear a sermon; but everything was quite peculiar; for, after the Gospel was read and the pastor went up to the pulpit, he did not begin to preach, but instead of raising his arms, he lifted wings, and finally began to .crow like a cock! Or recall another dream in which a lady said she had just dreamed of considering what good thing she should cook for her husband, and nothing at all occurred to her until finally the thought came to her that she still had an old pickled grandmother upstairs in the attic, but she would be very tough yet.—You see a dream can be as chaotic as that—strangely chaotic. But just what does it mean that the dream acts so chaotically? What does it really mean?

While we sleep, we are, with our ego and astral body, outside of our physical and etheric bodies. And during that time we experience again in reverse order—especially with regard to the moral significance—all that we have done, have said and have thought during the day. We live through that in reverse order. We are preparing for ourselves our karma for the next earth life, and this appears in pictures already in the time between going to sleep and waking. But these pictures are still very bungling; for when, upon waking, we are again about to enter into the physical body, the picture does not yet fit in properly: that is, we are not able to conceive things in conformity with the macrocosm; instead we conceive something entirely different, perhaps a “pickled grandmother”. That is because, with regard to what we have already formed in our sleep, we do not understand the adaptation to the human physical body. This adaptation to the human physical body is exceedingly difficult; and we acquire it in that working together, which I have described, with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies between death and a new birth. There the soul-spiritual self must first readjust what otherwise in the dream so often enters so awkwardly, when the sleep consciousness is again fully overcome, and the person without his own cooperation has plunged again into his old physical body. This soul-spiritual self, between death and a new birth, must penetrate all the mysteries of the physical body, in order that the body may be built up in the right way. For the body is really not formed by the parents and grandparents alone. To believe that is one of the perfect follies of science. (We are justified in making such a statement!) For how does science approximately set forth this human development? Well, it says that as the basis of material substance we have molecules, which are built up in a complicated way from atoms. The albumen molecule, which is contained in the embryo-cell, is the most complicated of all, and because it is so complicated (naturally no scientist can describe it, but he points to its exceeding complexity) because it is so complicated, a human being can originate from it. That is the simplest sort of explanation of the human being! It is simply asserted that the entire human being is already contained in the molecule; it is merely a very complicated molecule.—The truth is, however, that the albumen molecule must completely revert to chaos, must become dust of disorganized matter, if a human being is to originate from it. We have in the outer world organized matter in crystals, in plants, and so on: if anything is to originate, even a plant, or an animal, then the matter must first completely return to dust. And only when it no longer has a definite form does the entire cosmos work upon the tiny bit of stuff, making in it an image of itself. How is it, then, with the human being? Between death and a new birth, we form this human image, with all its mysteries, into which we weave our karma, and we send this image down before us into the body of the mother. So we have first formed the spirit germ—only, this is very large in comparison with the physical germ—and this descends into the matter which has become chaotic. That is the truth—not what the present-day physiology dreams.

In this time of which I have been speaking, the Ego lives as a soul-spiritual being among soul-spiritual Divine Beings, actively occupied with learning to know completely the inner human being as such for the next earth life. Of that which is then spiritually experienced in tremendous majesty and grandeur, an image marvelously appears in the child in the individual actions in attaining equilibrium. It is very interesting to see how the Primal Powers, or Archai, work over from the life between death and a new birth into the whole effort of the child to attain balance or, as we trivially say, to learn to walk. Anyone who can see in everything earthly an image of the spiritual can see in all the practice in walking, in the use of the hands, and so on, an image of those soul-spiritual deeds which we performed between death and a new birth in seeking spiritual equilibrium as an ego among higher egos.

And, when we have completed those conditions in which we are a spirit among spirits, in which we prepare what is to be manifested in our earth life in the body, in the members, through which we again become a human being of such and such a nature, and experience our karma—when we have passed through these conditions yonder in the world between death and a new birth, then a condition appears in the pre-earthly life in which we can no longer distinguish the individual spiritual Beings with whom we have worked for so long, but in which there is only a general perception of the spirit. We know then, to be sure, that we live in a spiritual world; but, because we are now already approaching the earth life, the impression which the spiritual world makes upon us becomes one of greater uniformity, and is no longer a perception of the particular, individual spiritual Beings.

I can express myself by means of a trivial comparison, in order that we may be able to understand one another, but please be very clear about this, namely, that in doing so I refer, nevertheless, to something very exalted. If a little cloud appears somewhere in the distance, you say that it is a little cloud; but when you approach it, you become aware that it is a swarm of gnats. Then you are distinguishing the separate individuals. Well, in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, it is reversed: there you distinguish at first the single individualities of the spiritual Beings; then the impression becomes a general one. What I mean is that the manifestation of the spiritual replaces experience of the spiritual.

Indeed, this condition, which separates us, as it were, from the spiritual world, because we are already seeking the way down to earth again—this condition is reflected now in the inner something within us which forms the basis of human speech. Suppose we speak. It begins with the larynx (that is not exact, but approximate), and the other organs of speech are set in motion. But behind this there lies that which is essential. What is essential lies in the heart, behind the larynx; it lies in the breathing process and everything connected with it. Just as learning to walk, seeking equilibrium, is an earthly image of our movements in the spiritual world, so that which underlies speech is likewise an earthly image of the condition of manifestation in which we perceive the divine-spiritual Beings only as a blurred mass. So the child experiences again when it learns to walk a condition which it has gone through between death and a new birth.

And when we have sent down the spiritual germ of our physical body, when through conception it has gradually become united with the body of the mother, then we are still above. At the end of the time before earthly embodiment, we draw together our etheric body out of all the regions of the universe. And that action, which takes place in the supersensible world in attracting the etheric body, finds expression in the child's learning to think.

Now you have the three successive conditions: experience in the spiritual world in learning to walk; manifestation of the spiritual world in learning to speak. (For this reason, that which as Cosmic Word underlies speech we call the Cosmic Logos, the inner Word. It is the manifestation of the universal Logos, in which the spiritual expresses itself, as do the gnats in the swarm of gnats; it underlies speech.) And then what we do in the forming of our etheric body, which actually thinks in us—we think the whole night through, only we are not present with our ego and astral body—that is the last part which we gather together for ourselves before we descend to earth, and that activity is what extends over into the thinking. Thus, in learning to walk, to speak, and to think, the baby organizes into the physical body what it brings down from the pre-earthly existence.

This is what leads to real spiritual knowledge and also at the same time to the artistic and the religious comprehension of the world; namely, that we are able to relate each single occurrence in the physical sense existence to the spiritual world. Those people who would always like to speak of the divine-spiritual only “in general” I have often likened to a man who should go out into a meadow, and to whom should be pointed out daisies, dandelions, wild chicory, whereupon he would say: “All that does not interest me; they are all just flowers!” That is easy, to say they are all just flowers. But something in the flower-being is differentiated there. And so it is also in the spiritual world. Naturally, it is easy to say that something spiritual underlies everything of a sense-physical nature. But the point is that we should know more and more what spiritual something lies at the foundation of the various sense-physical phenomena; for only in this way can we from the spirit actually lay hold again upon the sense-physical course of life.

By means of this principle, for example, our Waldorf School pedagogy becomes a unique pedagogy, which actually considers the human being. This will appear even more clearly when once this pedagogy shall be developed for the child's first years. As there it would be adapted to learning to walk, to speak, and to think, and the further evolution of these faculties, so we now naturally adapt the method to the years following the sixth and seventh, in such a way that we consider questions such as these: What embodies itself in the child at this moment? What comes to expression in the child's life, with each week, with each month, of that which existed before birth? Thus the pedagogy is really developed from the spirit.

That is one of the impulses of which we must rediscover many, if humanity does not wish to remain in the downward course, but intends to begin to ascend. We must find the way again into the spiritual world; but we shall be able to do this only when we learn quite consciously to find ways and means to act and to speak from the spirit.

In the time immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, human beings lived from the spirit—that is, each individual—because each could be told on the basis of the point of time at which he was born, what his karma was. At that time astrology did not signify that dilettantism which it often represents today, but it signified livingly experiencing the deeds of the stars with them. And as a result of this living experience, it was revealed from the Mystery Temple to each individual human being how he had to live. Astrology had a vital significance for the individual human experience. Then came the time, about the 6th, 5th and 4th pre-Christian centuries, in which people no longer experienced the mysteries of the starry heavens, but in which they experienced the course of the year. What do I mean by it when I say that human beings experienced the “course of the year”? It means that they knew from direct perception that the earth is not the coarse clod which present day geology contemplates. Upon such an earth as geology represents, plants could never grow, to say nothing of the appearance of animals and human beings. There could be none of these, because the earth of the geologists is a rock; and something will grow directly on a rock only if the entire cosmos works upon it, only if it is united with the whole universe. What man must learn again today was known even in ancient times, namely, that the earth is an organism and has a soul.

It is true that this earth-soul also has its special destiny. Suppose it is winter here with us, Christmas time, the time of the winter solstice—that is the time when the earth soul is fully united with the earth. For, when the cover of snow is over the earth, when, as it were, a mantle of cold surrounds the earth, then the earth-soul is united with the earth, rests within it. It is also true then that the earth-soul, resting within the earth, sustains the life of a multitude of elemental spirits. When today a naturalistic view believes that the seeds which I plant in the earth in the autumn merely lie there until the following spring, that is not true; the seeds must be protected throughout the winter by the elemental spirits of the earth. This is all connected with the fact that during the winter time the earth-soul is united with the earth-body.

Now let us take the opposite season, that is, midsummer, St. John's season. Exactly as the human being inhales the air and exhales it, so that at one time it is within him and at another time outside of him, so the earth breathes in her soul—that is during the winter; and at the height of summer, St. John's season, the earth-soul is entirely breathed out, sent out into the far reaches of the cosmos. At that time the earth-body is, as it were, “empty” of the earth-soul. The earth in her soul lives with the events of the cosmos, the course of the stars, and so on. Therefore, in ancient times there were the winter-mysteries, in which man experienced the union of the earth-soul with the earth; and then there were the summer-mysteries, in which man was able to perceive the mysteries of the universe, from the experience which the earth-soul shared with the stars, for it was granted to the human souls of initiates to follow the earth-soul out into the cosmic spaces.

That people had a consciousness of these things you can learn even from the fragments of ancient tradition which are still extant.—It is now a long while ago, but I often sat—right here in Berlin—with an astronomer, who was very famous here, and who started a fearful agitation about the Easter Festival, saying that it was very disturbing when the Easter Festival, let us say for example, did not fall each year at least on the first Sunday in April, and it was awful that it should be on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Naturally, it helped not at all to give reasons against his argument, for the fact which lay at the root of the matter was the fear that a dreadful confusion was caused in the debit and credit columns of the ledger, if Easter falls at a different time each year! This movement had already assumed rather large dimensions. (I once mentioned the fact here that on the first page of the ledger there usually stand the words, “With God”, but generally what is in these books is not exactly “with God”.) In those times when the Easter Festival was established according to the course of stars—when the first Sunday after the spring full moon was dedicated to the sun,—in those times a consciousness still existed that in the winter season the earth-soul is in the earth; that at St. John's season the earth-soul is wholly outside in cosmic spaces, and in the spring it is on the way to cosmic spaces. Therefore, the spring festival, the Easter Festival, cannot be established only with reference to the earth, on a definite day, but must be regulated according to the constellations of the stars. There is a deep wisdom in this, which comes from the times when, as a result of the ancient instinctive clairvoyance, human beings were still able to perceive the spiritual reality in the course of the year. We must attain to this again, and we can attain to it again in a certain sense if we lay hold upon the tasks of the present in connection with just such explanations as we have carried on together here.

I have already often said here that, of the spiritual Beings with whom man is united each night, in the way I have told you—for instance, through speech with the Archangels—certain Beings are the ruling spiritual powers throughout a certain period of time. In the last third of the 19th century the Michael-time began, that time in which the Spirit who in the records is usually designated Michael, became the determinative Spirit in the affairs of human civilization. These things are repeated in cycles. In ancient times men knew something of all these spiritual processes. The ancient Hebrew age spoke of Jahve, but it spoke always of the “countenance of Jahve”, and by the countenance was meant the Archangels who actually mediated between Jahve and the earth. And when the Jews expected the Messiah on earth, they knew that it was the time of Michael; that Michael was the agent of Christ's activity on earth. They misunderstood, however, the deeper significance of that fact. Now, since the '70's of the 19th century, the time has come again for the earth when the Michael Power is the ruling spiritual power in the world, and the time has come when we must understand how to bring spirituality into our actions, to arrange our life from the spirit. That means to “serve Michael”—not to order our life merely from the material point of view, but to be conscious that he who has the overcoming of the low Ahrimanic Powers as his mission—that is, Michael—must become our Genius, so to speak, for the evolution of civilization. How can he become that?

Well, he can become our guiding spirit if we call to mind how we can again make connections with the course of the year in the spiritual sense. There is actually great wisdom in the entire cosmic course in the fact that we may unite with the spring festival the festival of the resurrection of Christ Jesus. The historical connection—I have often explained it—is a completely right one: The only possibility is for the spring festival—that is, the Easter Festival—to occur on a different day each year, precisely because it is viewed from the other world. Only we upon the earth have the narrow-minded conception that “time” runs along evenly, that one hour is always as long as another. We determine time by means of our earthly expedient, mathematics; whereas, for the actual spiritual world, the cosmic hour is something living. There one cosmic hour is not equal to another but is longer or shorter. Therefore, it is always possible to err if we establish from the earthly point of view something which should be fixed according to the heavens. The Easter Festival has been established rightly in accordance with the heavens.

What kind of a festival is it? It is that festival which is intended to remind us, and which once reminded humanity with the greatest vividness, that a God descended to earth, took up his abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, in order that, at the time when human beings were approaching the development of the ego, they would be able in a suitable manner to find the way back through death into the spiritual life. I have often explained this here. The Easter Festival is, therefore, that festival in which man sees in the Mystery of Golgotha death and immortality following it. We look upon this spring festival in the right sense when we say to ourselves: Christ has affirmed the immortality of man in that He Himself has conquered death; but we human beings only rightly understand the immortality of Christ Jesus if we appropriate this understanding during the earth life; that is, if in our souls we vitalize our relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, and if we are able to free ourselves from that materialistic concept which would dissociate from the Mystery of Golgotha all spiritual significance. Today people no longer wish to acknowledge “Christ” at all, but merely “the humble man of Nazareth, Jesus.” A man would feel embarrassed, as it were, in the presence of his own scientific instincts, if he were to grant that the Mystery of Golgotha involves a spiritual mystery in the middle of earth existence—namely, the death and resurrection of the God.

When we experience that fact spiritually, we prepare ourselves to have spiritual experience of other things also. This is the reason it is so important for the human being of the present time to attain the possibility of experiencing, at the outset, the Mystery of Golgotha as something purely spiritual. Then he will experience other spiritual facts, and he will find the approach, the way, to the spiritual worlds through the Mystery of Golgotha. But then, beginning with the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being must understand the Resurrection while he still lives; and, if he feelingly understands the Resurrection while he lives, he will thereby be enabled to pass through death in the right way. In other words, Death and Resurrection in the Mystery of Golgotha should teach the human being to reverse the condition; that is, during life to experience Resurrection within the soul, in order that, after this inner soul resurrection, he may pass through death in the right way. That experience is the opposite of the Easter experience. At the Easter season we should be able to immerse ourselves in the Death and Resurrection of the Christ. As human beings, however, we need also to be able to immerse ourselves in what is for us resurrection of the soul, in order that the resurrected soul of man may pass rightly through death. As we in the spring acquire the true Easter mood when we see how the plants then germinate and sprout, how nature is resurrected, how nature overcomes the death of winter, so we shall be able, when we have experienced summer in the right way, to acquire a feeling of certainty that the soul has then ascended into cosmic spaces. We are then approaching the autumn, September is coming, the autumnal equinox; the leaves which in the spring became budding and green, now become brownish, yellowish, and drop off; the trees stand there already partly denuded, nature is dying. But we understand this slowly dying nature if we look deeply into the process of decay, into the approach of the snowy covering of the earth and say to ourselves: There the earth-soul is returning again to the earth, and it will be entirely within the earth when the winter solstice shall have come.

It is possible to feel this autumn-time with the same intensity as the spring-time. And if we feel in spring, at Easter-time, the Death and Resurrection of the God, then we shall be able to feel in the autumn the resurrection and death of the human soul; that is, the experience of resurrection during the earth-life in order to pass through death in the right way. Then, however, we must understand also what it signifies for us, for our present time, that the earth-soul is breathed out into the cosmic spaces during St. John's season, in the summer, is there united with the stars, and comes back again. He who has insight into the mystery of this succession of the seasons in the course of the year knows that the Michael-force, which in former centuries did not come down to earth, now comes down through the nature forces! So that we are able to meet the autumn with its falling leaves, when we perceive the Michael-force coming down from the clouds to the earth. Indeed, the name “Michael” is to be found in the calendars on this date, and Michaelmas is a festival day among the peasants; but we shall feel the present time spiritually, in such a way that earthly human events are for us closely connected with the events of nature, only when we again become capable of understanding the year's progression to such an extent that we shall be able to establish in the course of the year the annual festivals, as people of old established them from their ancient dream-like clairvoyance. The ancients understood the year, and on the basis of the mysteries which I have been able only to indicate today, they established Christmas, Easter and the St. John's Festival. At Christmas people give one another gifts, and do some other things also; but I have often explained, when I have given Christmas and Easter lectures here, how little remains with humanity today of these ancient institutions, how everything has become traditional and external. If we shall come to understand again the festivals, which today we merely celebrate but do not understand, then, from the spiritual knowledge of the course of the year, we shall also have the power to establish a festival which will have true significance only for the humanity of the present time: that will be the Michael Festival at the end of September, when autumn approaches, the leaves become withered, the trees become bare, nature moves toward decay—just as it moves toward the sprouting of the Easter season. We shall have the power to establish such a festival, if in decaying nature we perceive how then the earth-soul unites itself with the earth, and how the earth-soul brings Michael with it from the clouds! If we have the force to create from the spirit such a festival as shall again bring into our social life a community of interest, then we shall have done it from the spirit; for then we shall have originated something among us of which the spirit is the source. It would be more important than all the rest of social reflection and the like—which, in the present confused conditions, can only lead to something if the spirit is in them—if, to begin with, a number of intelligent persons were to unite in order to establish again upon earth something from the cosmos: that is, to originate something like a Festival of Michael, which would be worthy of the Easter Festival, but as an autumn festival would be the counterpart of the Easter Festival! If people were able to decide upon something the motive for which lies only in the spiritual world, but which in such a festival would again bring among men a feeling of common interest, something which would be created in the immediate present, out of the full, joyous human heart, that would result in something which would socially unite people again.

For in ancient times the festivals made strong bonds between human beings. Just consider what, has been done, and what has been said and thought on behalf of the festivals and at the festivals for the whole civilization!

That is what has been gradually interwoven into the physical world through the fixing of festivals directly out of the spirit. If people of today could decide in a worthy manner to establish a Michael Festival at the end of September, it would be a deed of the greatest significance. For this purpose, people would have to have courage, not merely to dispute about outer social organizations and the like, but to do something which will unite the earth with the heavens, which will again connect physical conditions with spiritual conditions. Then, because by this means the spirit would again be brought into earthly affairs, something would actually happen among men which would be a mighty impulse for the extension of our civilization and of our whole life. There is naturally no time to set forth in detail all that this would mean for scientific, religious and artistic experience, but such a new festival, created from the spirit, in grand style, would affect these realms just as did the ancient festivals. And how much more important would be such a creation from the spiritual world, than all that is developed today in social tirades. For what would be the significance of such a creation? Oh, it signifies much for the deep observation of the human soul, if I see what a man intends, or if I understand his words rightly. If we today are able to learn from observation how the whole cosmic course operates when autumn approaches, if we can unriddle, can decipher, the entire physiognomy of the universe, and out of our knowledge can act creatively, then we shall disclose not only the willing of human beings in the creation of such a festival, but we shall disclose the willing of Spiritual Beings, of Gods!

Dearly beloved! In many respects it is already extraordinarily difficult today to penetrate with a certain understanding into [the life and work of] figures of the past who are not too far behind us. But the difficulties become especially great when we are to penetrate into the depths of the soul and the workings of such human individuals who, in the very, very distant past – one might say in prehistoric times – placed themselves with their work in culture, in the development of humanity. And such a figure, such an individuality should arise before our spiritual gaze today in the often mentioned figure of the old Persian founder of religion and world view, Zarathustra, or, as it is also said, Zoroaster.

I said that it is relatively difficult for us today to really objectively understand thinking and feeling that is not so far behind us. Nowadays, one has the strong feeling that when one believes to have understood something and regards one's knowledge as the truth, it is in a sense the only true truth and that everything else is wrong, basically nonsense. The fact that truth and human knowledge itself are subject to development, that each epoch is forced to look at the riddles of the world in its own way and solve them to a certain degree, that each epoch must speak a different language, so to speak, about these riddles of the world – this is not well understood today. We can only hope that the descendants of today's human race will not behave towards it as we so easily behave towards our ancestors.

Who would not decree today from his strict, let us say scientific, throne that a mind like Paracelsus', who lived and worked so little time ago, was full of the prejudices of an era long past, with all kinds of judgments that are, of course, long outdated today. It does not occur to one, though it would be natural, that what we today consider to be seemingly irrevocable in relation to our science, will certainly be just as corrected and to a certain extent transformed when so much time has passed after us as between Paracelsus and us, as the Paracelsian views have been transformed by ours. We can only hope that future generations will be fairer than we are, that they will know that truth is in a state of development and that basically every way of expressing the truth is only a form of expression for what we would like to call original truth or original wisdom. In short, what we humans call truth is in a constant state of change, and therefore we must see the human pursuit of truth only as developing. If we imbibe this view and ask ourselves: How did our ancestors think? What about them can make a great impression on our souls today? — then we will also be able to look back without prejudice to minds as far back as the great, the shining Zarathustra.

There has never been any real agreement as to the age in which Zarathustra lived. There are even scholars today who claim that Zarathustra probably only lived six centuries before our era; other scholars point to a period of 1000 years before our era, and still others go back even further. What spiritual science has to say through its research will be mentioned here only briefly, because for us it is less a matter of establishing mere historical facts than of illuminating the soul of this great individuality. Therefore, it should only be briefly mentioned that spiritual science must go back at least five millennia before our era - even into the sixth millennium - if it wants to meet this luminous figure of Zarathustra with a backward glance.

Now, although one may argue about the age in which Zarathustra lived - one should not really argue about it, because the course of human cultural development speaks too clearly, because what is associated with the name Zarathustra and what has emerged from Zarathustra as a cultural movement has exerted the deepest, most significant, and even extraordinarily long-lasting influence on human progress. If we would fathom the soul of Zarathustra, if we would recognize the mission that this unique individuality has fulfilled in the progress of humanity, then we must attempt to understand Zarathustra's task on a larger scale. we must realize that we can only come close to what he was if we assign him a task of the very first order in the development of humanity since the great Atlantic catastrophe, as seen by spiritual science. Much is said about this catastrophe; the religious records, the religious traditions of all the peoples of the earth report about it - the Christian tradition speaks of it as the great flood.

We cannot now go into the details of the time when this catastrophe swept across our earth; but even the external, geological science is today increasingly being driven to recognize that such a great catastrophe once took place and that through this catastrophe the face of the earth was thoroughly changed. If spiritual science is forced by its research to recognize that where the Atlantic Ocean is today was once dry land, where people lived at a time when most of the present-day continents of Asia, Africa and Europe were still under water, it may be said that today, natural science is no longer far from admitting that the fauna and flora in the western regions of Europe and the eastern regions of America do indeed indicate that there was once land between the west of Europe and the east of America that became the bottom of the sea due to subsidence during that great catastrophe. And that our present continents have repeatedly risen and sunk has already become common truth even in geological circles.

For spiritual science, such great catastrophes, such changes in the face of the earth, are connected with significant processes within the development of mankind. Today I can only hint at what I have already explained in more detail to the listeners of my lectures on earlier occasions. I can only hint that the human race that lived on the Atlantic continent in that epoch had a very different state of soul from that of today's people, who are the descendants of those ancient Atlanteans. If we want to give a brief indication of what kind of culture was present in that primeval time of humanity, we can, if we do not misuse the word, call this culture a “clairvoyant culture”. However, the word “clairvoyant” must not be misused in the sense in which it is very, very often misused today. What does this tell us - “clairvoyant culture”?

Yes, if you want to speak from the point of view of spiritual science, then you have to honestly believe in human development, then you have to honestly be convinced of this human development, then you can't just be fascinated by the development that the popular Darwinists talk about today. We look back at an earlier humanity that had a very different kind of knowledge and soul capacity. We can briefly form an idea of this ancient state of mind by remembering what remains, as an inherited residue from that time, in the dream consciousness, where man sees echoes of the day's life in dream images. These dream images no longer have any reality for us today; they are echoes of what was experienced during the day – some pictorial representations of this or that that occurred. Dream consciousness, however, is like an old inheritance, a faded remnant of a prehistoric human consciousness, when people did not see and recognize their environment as directly as today's people, who only recognize everything with their senses and with the mind, which is tied to the brain. The people of that time saw what explained and solved the riddles for them in what, from today's point of view, were abnormal soul states. They saw with a kind of image consciousness, but these images were not phantasms like our dream images. Man did not speculate about the riddles of the world in terms of concepts and ideas, but experienced states – abnormal states by today's standards – in which images appeared that were not dream images, but which depicted the very foundations of existence.

And this humanity, which had such an awareness, also had guides and teachers who had led this awareness to a very special height and who - clairvoyantly - looked very deeply into the spiritual background of existence. I can only mention this today in the introduction. These teachers of old, who had clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world, related to humanity much as those who today, in their normal consciousness, come to ingenious insights, ideas and concepts. Just as these relate to humanity as a whole, so too did the great seers of old, because they had a concept of how to look into the spiritual world, because they had natural clairvoyance. The development of humanity begins with the fact that humanity really did come from spiritual origins. Today, we are no longer very aware of this; this awareness [of the spiritual origin of human beings] has actually been lost, although in the first centuries of the Christian era there was still a clear awareness of an ancient, inherited wisdom that had come from the forefathers of humanity and of which nothing else remained but traditions taken from that old clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world. Plato, for example, speaks of the people of the Kronos realm, saying that they could see into the spiritual world and that they were the keepers of the original world wisdom. Plato was aware that much of that wisdom had simply been handed down from generation to generation. And Plato, the philosopher who had come a long way in what he was able to explore himself, was nevertheless aware that this primal wisdom could penetrate deeper into the very foundations of the world than anything he himself could give his students through the normal powers of human beings. We also find the greatest respect for the primal wisdom of the world in other thinkers. We must seek this primeval wisdom in its original form before the Atlantean catastrophe, which has been characterized above.

The development of humanity consists in the fact that in this post-Atlantean epoch, in which we live today, man has gradually, so to speak, seen this primeval wisdom dwindle, that he has lost the old, elementary because he should develop the sense to judge things by external, sensual perceptions and to penetrate the riddles as far as possible with the mind bound to the brain. Today's short-sighted people will naturally believe that today's knowledge is the sum of all wisdom, that there cannot be any other wisdom. But anyone who takes a broad view of human development knows that even knowledge bound to the intellect, which humanity had to gain in its present era (the previous one was the era of childhood), is only a transitory epoch, only a point of passage in human development.

They know that people will rise again to a future clairvoyance and that they will take with them what they have gained through the knowledge of the physical world. A necessary transition point is this kind of knowledge. And so we can say: What we today, as normal human beings, call our knowledge, and even more so, what we have under the influence of this knowledge in terms of moral and aesthetic ideals, in terms of moral judgments about the world, all this has only just been acquired. Everything that we have recognized as the actual characteristics of today's human being is based on the old clairvoyance that human beings lost for a while. But this present-day realization is so characteristic of our present epoch that we must say: The post-Atlantean time, the time in which the earth has the present physiognomy, is called to develop just this thinking and feeling and to close the door, so to speak, to all clairvoyance for the normal human condition, so that man is forced to fix his gaze on the sensual reality in order to also go through this epoch in his development of knowledge.

There were now two cultural currents in this post-Atlantic epoch, which really had the mission to lead humanity out of the wisdom of the forefathers into the wisdom of understanding and reason, as I have just characterized it. There were two currents. And strangely enough, the originators of these two currents are quite close to each other geographically and in terms of world history. We have to look for the one main current of the post-Atlantic period in the settlements that formed after the Atlantic catastrophe in India, the venerable cultural land. We have to look for the other main current to the north of it, in the area that was fertilized by the great, luminous spirit of Zarathustra. And although these two currents of human spiritual development are so close, although to the outside eye they look so similar that sometimes the words for this or that in the older languages of the two cultural currents are the same, we must, when we look deeper into things, see in these two currents of post-Atlantic cultures quite opposite ways of founding our present culture.

You see, when the spiritual researcher looks back to that ancient culture of time-honored India, which can only be seen with the spiritual eyes – because what is contained in the great, wonderful Vedas is only a late echo of the primeval world wisdom of the Indians . We are then led back to something that preceded all Vedic culture and that is of such sublimity that the human being, who has a sense for the transformation and development of the human spiritual life, stands with the deepest reverence before this ancient-holy culture of India. And there is some truth in what is usually taken only as legend: that this ancient Indian culture goes back to a series of great sages, to the seven Rishis of ancient India. If we examine this ancient Indian culture from a spiritual scientific point of view, how does it appear to us?

We cannot describe it more precisely than to say that it appears to us as a kind of ancient heritage that could be passed down from that wisdom that existed as the common wisdom of humanity before the Atlantic catastrophe. We must only imagine the right way of inheriting an ancient store of world wisdom. Just as it was still present in Atlantean humanity as primeval world wisdom, so this wisdom, based on clairvoyance, could not, of course, be directly transmitted to a humanity whose soul capacities were quite differently constituted. The ancient wisdom was adopted into Indian culture in the same way as a tradition that has to be adapted to a new faculty of the soul. Basically, only a few people were still able to develop something in their souls that could point to the realm that had been seen in ancient times through living clairvoyance behind the world of the senses. Whoever wanted to rise in living inwardness to the vision that was once normal for humanity in a certain way had to become what is called an initiate or an initiate. He had to develop certain abilities of the soul that are not normally present; he had to undergo certain exercises, a certain training of the soul, in order to develop an ability that otherwise slumbers in his soul. Then he was able to learn through his own observation what the great teachers of the Indians, the seven Rishis, had to proclaim. What was he led to then? He was led back, as it were, to an earlier state of development; he was able to see something that humanity in the normal state could no longer see, but which it had been able to see earlier.

This is essentially how we understand this ancient, pre-Vedic Indian culture, which then resonates in the Vedas. This is also the source of the underlying mood in which something is spread out over this ancient and sacred Indian culture, like a wistful look back that says: There was a time when people could see into the spiritual world, when the origin of people was revealed. That time is gone. The senses now have only the ability to see the external, physical reality. And only by developing a special ability can one transport oneself back to those ancient times; then one can again see the spiritual, which is hidden by the human being's sensory capacity for knowledge, by the intellect, which is bound to the brain. Thus did he feel who, in the world-view of the ancient Indian, lived with the realization that man is cut off from the contemplation of his spiritual origin, and he has a longing for this origin. Thus the ancient Indian believed that truth was only to be found beyond what humanity could see at that time. He believed that above and beyond all that humanity could see at that time, the great illusion spread out, “maha aja”, the great deception, “maja”, the great non-being. And behind that lay true being, which people had once seen.

A worldview, such as that of the pre-Vedic Indian, cannot be understood by merely looking at what appears to be dogmas, but only by putting oneself in the shoes of people felt at that time, how they felt cast out of their spiritual home into a world of maya, of illusion, and how they longed to return from this external, sensual-physical reality to that ancient, original world. And it is wonderfully moving, in the highest sense, to place oneself in this ancient Indian soul with its pessimism, which is not as frivolous as it sometimes appears today, but which is a heroic pessimism that does not complain about this great deception, but says: the sense world is simply not reality; reality is found by turning away from this sense world and going back into earlier epochs in one's soul.

What do we actually find when we go back to what the people of old in India were able to see? I have already pointed out that all spiritual science leads us to the fact that the soul that now lives in us between birth and death has often lived on earth and will live many more times. Spiritual science therefore leads us to the realization of repeated lives on earth, so that when we look back into past times, we do not find other souls, so to speak, but our own souls, that is, ourselves in earlier embodiments. And the soul of such an old Indian man could say to himself: As I now live between birth and death, I am bound to the illusion. I am now more entangled in the body of the senses than I was in earlier lives, for example when the primeval wisdom was experienced by myself. Basically, such a member of the ancient Indian culture looked back into his own earlier soul states. His soul used to live in such a way that it could look into the spiritual world itself. It descended into the world of the senses and can no longer see into the spiritual world. If a member of the ancient Indian faith wanted to regain this earlier vision, he basically ascended to his own earlier embodiment; he penetrated completely into himself. This is roughly how we can characterize the mood of ancient India.

In a sense, the exact opposite was offered by the cultural impact that occurred in the north of ancient India, in Bactria, Media, Persia, through Zarathustra. If we can call the ancient Indian wisdom a kind of heritage from ancient times, which also awakened a yearning for that ancient time, we must say that what was given to people through Zarathustra, what was imprinted on human development through him, points just as strongly to the future as the ancient Indian teaching points to primeval wisdom. There is a remarkable contrast between the teachings of Zarathustra and the ancient Indian teachings. If we allow not dogmas, not teachings, on which it actually matters little in human development, but moods, feelings to come before our soul, then we can say: the mood of the ancient Indian world view that has just been characterized is a mood of redemption: out of this body, which can no longer see the truth, into the earlier seeing! That was the mood of the ancient Indian: to be redeemed from a body that is dependent on maya. Therefore, in the best sense of the word, everything that emerged from ancient Indian culture, right up to Buddhism, is a kind of religion of redemption.

In Zarathustra's view, what appears first is not a religion of redemption, a worldview of redemption, but rather a worldview of resurrection, a worldview of awakening. And in this respect, the teaching of the doctrine in the north is the exact opposite of the teaching that arose in the south. Zarathustra was to be the first great leader of humanity to radically point out that it is a necessary point of passage for them to develop the senses for what is spreading before them, and to develop the mind for what is logical thinking, what is reasonable understanding. Only, the great Zarathustra does not stop at the materialistic level of the external sense world. As an initiate, he says in his own way: Certainly, post-Atlantean humanity has the task of sharpening the senses for what presents itself to the eyes, to the ears, to the entire sense-perceiving human being. Post-Atlantean humanity has the task of grasping the phenomena of the sensual world in accordance with reason and intellect, but as we grow together with the sensual world, we must become capable, if we develop certain slumbering powers in our soul, not of stopping at what the senses offer us, but of penetrating through the sensual cover to what lies behind this sensual world.

This is the great contrast between the Indian world-view mood and the Zarathustra world-view mood. The ancient Indian says: If I look at the world that spreads out in color, form and all its sensual qualities, it is not a true world, but Maya. I can only enter the true world by turning away from this external sense world; so I turn away my eyes and ears and the other senses, and I let the mind stand still, insofar as it combines ideas and concepts. I pay no attention to this sensual world if I want to see the truth, but I delve into the human interior, I live myself into that self that was there in previous embodiments; I climb up the ladder of embodiments to acquire the ability to see the truth. In a sense, the basic mood of the ancient Indian was to flee from the world of the senses and to ascend to the truth through strict immersion in one's own inner self, in that which can live in the soul when it disregards its surroundings. It was a mystical immersion in the inner life of the soul, distracted from the outside world, which wants to know nothing of “maha aja”, the great illusion: this is the tendency of ancient India.

Joyful acceptance of the reorganization of our soul-faculties, which shows us the world with all that it can offer to the open eye, what it can offer to all outer human possibilities, and also to the mind bound to the sense world; joyful acceptance of all that spreads out as an outer carpet of the senses before the senses: that was the mood of Zarathustra! If an Indian looked at the plant cover, at animals and clouds and air and mountains and stars, he said to himself: All this is only outer illusion. Dare to look at the one who has exhaled this great Maja, at Brahma, but who can only be found within! And Zarathustra says: Turn your gaze to that which spreads out before your external senses, use the soul capacity that is right for the present age of humanity. But don't stop there; grow together with the sensory world, penetrate it, go through it, and when you go through this sensory world and don't let yourself be held back, then you will find a spiritual world beyond it out there – beyond the stars, beyond the mineral, plant and animal world. Not only when you go into yourselves, no, also when you go out into the world of the senses, then you grow together through your new abilities with a spiritual world.

What expresses the individuality of Zarathustra most beautifully – take it as a comparison for my sake – is when it is said of him: When he was born, the first thing that happened to him as a miracle was that he smiled at the first glance at the world – the Zarathustra smile! One must be able to put oneself in the place of what is said with such a truly magically deep formula for such an individuality. It is suggested that in Zarathustra an individuality is born that looks at the whole carpet of the sensory world, but penetrates it as if clairvoyant and sees the spiritual behind it, and that in the consciousness of man's superiority to that which spreads around him, lets that exultation flow out of itself, for which the smile of Zarathustra is a symbol.

And so we see that in Zarathustrianism there is a completely different mood than in Indianism. Therefore, this Zarathustrianism could point to what the human soul is now to take up, what it is now to unite with itself. The fact that people look out onto the world of sense and normally no longer see in pictures what is not in the world of sense means that they take in something that they will carry over into the future and that will be a new component of the human soul in the future. Through this new component it will experience a resurrection: In the future, the human soul will not only be as it was in the past, but it has taken on this new element that can only be acquired in the sensory world. That is why this deep idea of resurrection lives in the Zarathustra teaching. I cannot today go into this in detail, justifying my views from this or that passage; I will merely characterize them, and everyone can see from the usual communications that what is to be given today as a characteristic of Zarathustrianism is well founded.

Zarathustra said to himself: It is basically not compatible with the right progress of humanity that only old heritage in humanity is praised as the highest. Why should people go back to earlier embodiments and the way they looked at the world then? They should take in what is offered to them as new, they should enrich and expand their world view, give it a greater scope. Thus did Zarathustra say to men: Look into the future, take in the new, look up to that spiritual world which presents itself to you when you sense the world of sense as a transparent covering. That was what he had to say to the world, and in saying it he felt a deep reverence for the spiritual world behind the whole world of sense. He felt that it was like the beginning of a new ascent [into the spiritual world] when we strive to penetrate the sensual world in order to enter the spiritual world, just as the old Indian wanted to enter a spiritual world by descending into his own inner self. He felt that humanity had actually fallen from a higher, spiritual point of view to a lower, physical one, and that it had the added awareness of wanting to longingly return to the old one by holding on to an old, inherited wisdom.

Zarathustra was deeply imbued with the fact that something had been working on the human soul that had led it down and entangled it in the world of the senses. But he was equally clear that this human soul could now be seized by something that would lead it up the path to the spiritual world. That, so to speak, was before Zarathustra's spiritual eyes: the opposition of two powers, one leading humanity down into the world of the senses and the other lifting it up into the spiritual world. This contrast is evident where we read that Zarathustra speaks of the one power that leads man upwards, of Ahura Mazdao, Auramazda, which later became Ormuzd, and opposes this to another power that leads the human soul downwards: Ahriman, Angra Mainyu.

Thus one must first perceive these two powers and how they work: the one leading the human soul down into the sensual world, the other leading it up into the spiritual world. But Zarathustra is completely consistent in the deepest sense, in that he does not accept the external, sensual world in the abstract and say that something spiritual is behind it - as the pantheists say today - but he says: the individual formations of the sensual world differ; one appears in one way and the other in another. One appears as mighty, luminous and effective for the rest of the sensual world, the other as small and insignificant. And everything that appears to our world as a great and mighty power through its external form, Zarathustra sensed, in the sense of the world view also adopted by his people, as a component of the sun - that sun which, every year anew, conjures up the plant world necessary for man, that sun without which there can be no life on earth.

But even with regard to the sun, which he felt to be the most powerful, the most powerful influence on earth, Zarathustra was clear that it too belongs to the external world of the senses, that what external science can fathom about this sun is only the external expression of what lives behind this sun. And he felt it so that he said: Just as plants are magically produced on earth in spring through the power of the sun's rays, so that which lives as the spiritual power behind the sun is that which draws man out of the world of the senses, that which can create the powers for man with which he can penetrate through the world of the senses. Behind the sun, therefore, for Zarathustra lives that mighty spiritual essence which he has just named Ahura Mazdao, Ormuzd. But what is it?

We can only form an idea of the thoughts that lived in Zarathustra if we remember that in spiritual science we do not consider the physical body of the person as the only thing, just as the person stands before us, but that we say: this physical body is the outer expression of his spiritual being. And when the eye becomes clairvoyant, it sees this spiritual essence, and we call that which the clairvoyant eye sees as the content of the spirituality, the aura of the human being. We perceive the physical body as the expression of the human aura, the small aura. Now Zarathustra says: Just as man has his aura, as he has his spiritual behind the physical, so is the sun the outer body of a spiritual being, namely the great aura, the Great Ahura - the word always means the same - the solar aura. - There we have Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, in contrast to the small aura of man.

Thus, Zarathustra pointed people to what lives out there in the universe as a mighty spiritual being and has its body in the sun, just as a human being has a body that is permeated by a spiritual-soul being, the small aura. That is [also] Ormuzd, that is what can unleash all the powers of man that go towards the spiritual. For this spirit that lived in Zarathustra, this Ahura Mazdao, this great aura, was a truth, a reality, before the clairvoyant gaze. And he said to his disciples, to those he could initiate more intimately into his secrets, something like the following: Look here, if you seek that which urges and leads man to the good, then you must raise your gaze to that which stands spiritually behind the sun. Man is indeed called upon to ascend ever higher and higher in the course of his development on earth. Ahura Mazdao will help him to do so. But not always, says Zarathustra, will that which is the spirit of the sun be seen only up there behind the body of the sun, but it will become ever greater and greater, will embrace more and more of the earth and will finally expand to the earth. The spirit of the sun will one day become a spirit active on earth.

If we survey the time [of Zarathustra] and the development of humanity, we see that these are in harmony with each other. What Zarathustra saw behind the physical sun was, for his time, only to be found in the sun in outer space; today, however, it has expanded to such an extent that we find it within the earth aura itself. And the event in which Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, descended to earth, we see, if we stand on the ground of true spiritual science, in what took place through the Christ impulse, which played out on earth in the events of Palestine.

From the standpoint of spiritual science, we can understand what Zarathustra once said to his disciples: “I will speak; now come and listen to me, you who long for it from far and near - now I will speak and no longer shall he who leads men to error with evil will through his tongue be able to poison the development of mankind. I will speak of what in the world God has revealed to me, what He Himself reveals to me - He, the Great Ahura. And anyone who does not want to hear my words, as I mean them, will experience bad things when the circles of earth's development will approach their completion. - When Zarathustra spoke of the spirit of the sun, we, who stand on the ground of modern spiritual science, say: He spoke of the same spirit that in his time could only be found in the vastness of the heavens, and today we find it when we study the mystery of the origin of Christianity in its full truth, as it emerged from the Mosaic religion. Having evolved to the Christian era, Ahura Mazdao descended, as it were, from the sun, and the Christians call him Christ. And he who interferes with the development of the world in order to halt the progress of human evolution, which is brought about by the great power of Ahura Mazdao, is Ahriman.

Zarathustra did not see the development of the world and of humanity in such a one-sided way that he could have asked, as many modern people do: Yes, how can I actually believe in an all-wise, great God when there is so much evil in the world? This is generally said today; one does not want to believe in a wisdom that permeates and lives through the world when one has to notice so much evil. Zarathustra does not speak in this way, and he also guides his disciples not to speak in this way. Zarathustra was clear that what comes from Ahriman, what stands as an opponent in all life, and that it must be allowed by the wisdom of the world, so that people who are to undergo an upward development can strengthen themselves through the resistance and gradually also lead the bad to the good. In this way a higher development is attained than if man had been simply comfortably placed in all that is good and had nothing bad to overcome.

Thus, although Ahriman was felt by Zarathustra and by all those who professed him to be the enemy of Ahura Mazdao, he was felt to be a necessary part of the development of the world. If we wish to understand the inner structure of the Zarathustra teaching, we must draw attention to individual things that may indeed cause great offence among today's clever people, who believe that they are so firmly grounded in the most modern world view. But what good does it do to carefully want to conceal the truth over and over again? We must plunge into Zoroastrian clairvoyance and explain in detail the structure of the system of thought which I have just characterized in superficial terms. Here it must be clearly understood that Zarathustra was one of those thinkers who, although they turned their gaze joyfully to the sensual world, nevertheless sought the truth in the spiritual world and, in essence, saw the essence of all world content in the spiritual. Powers such as Ormuzd and Ahriman are spiritual forces; they confront us in the world as spiritual entities.

But how did such high spirits as Zarathustra think about the outer structure of the world in the face of these spiritual powers? Just as Zarathustra looks up at the sun and says, “This is the outer body of a spiritual power,” so he looked up at the starry sky and at everything that the outer, sensual gaze could grasp, and he and his disciples perceived what was spread out in space as writing, as symbols, as metaphors that expressed the weaving and essence of the spiritual powers. This is extraordinarily important. Not in the way that we are accustomed to today with our materialistic sense, did Zarathustra and his students look at the outer world of the stars and see only spheres moving through space, but they saw in this world of the stars the expression of spiritual entities and spiritual processes, and in the arrangement of the stars they saw the symbols for what the spiritual entities behind them were doing. The starry sky was a starry writing to them, expressing to them the deeds of the spiritual world that took place behind it. Neither in the direction of today's materialistic sense nor in that of today's materialistic astrology, which would like to see the cause of the fate of mankind in the stars themselves, while they are only signs - neither in one nor the other direction did Zarathustra's thinking go. For him, what he could see in the starry writing was something like the meaning of a sentence for us, which we put on paper with characters. For him, the stars were cosmic characters. And what mattered to him were the spiritual entities behind them.

Zarathustra saw the highest spiritual entities in Ormuzd and Ahriman. For him, they belonged together, even though one is the enemy of the other. They originated, so to speak, in a single, great spiritual entity. In the sense of the Persian language, this primal being can be called Zaruana Akarana or, as it is often expressed, “eternity shrouded in glory”. It is difficult for today's human sense to penetrate to the heights where the followers of Zarathustra stood and where they grasped what must be grasped if one wants to see Ormuzd and Ahriman in one. The best way to achieve this is to endeavor to gradually arrive at the idea that if I look back in time, further and further back, I come to that which existed in prehistoric times and where the causes of the present lie. I myself also come from that which has developed out of this past current. But in the opposite direction there is a future current, and if one can rise to the point of seeing that the future is something that comes towards us from the other side, that we go towards, then one gradually comes to a true understanding of what Zarathustra sees as the unity behind Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Imagine a curved line, running forward and backward in such a way that it forms a small circle. If you make the circle larger, the line is less curved; make the circle even larger, and the line approaches more and more a straight line. If you take the diameter of the circle to infinity, then the arc of the circle gradually becomes a straight line that extends to infinity. Thus, we can assume that every straight line, by tracing it backwards and forwards, is a circle of infinite size. And so we can also say: if we go back into the past, we come to a point where the past and the future join together in a circle. This is the eternal current that Zarathustra pointed out – Zaruana Akarana. Past and future have become intertwined in the eternal cycle of the world, and from this the god of the sun, of light, of all that is good - Ormuzd, Ahura Mazdao - and likewise the god, through whose resistance the good forces must develop - Ahriman - both emanate from the snake of eternity: Zaruana Akarana. One must only feel one's way into these conceptions of eternity, then one gets a sense of the mood that prevailed among those who were around Zarathustra, then one feels something of the full magnitude of the feelings that flow from the teaching of Zarathustra, who continues to work in humanity to this day.

And so, for example, Zarathustra said to his disciple: Now you have a mental picture of the closing circle of the world, of one part of the world circle as the higher power of light, Ahura Mazdao, and of the other part as the dark power, Ahriman. What we have just spoken is written in the Star-writing, and in the Star-writing you see this circle, which closes in upon itself as a symbol of Zarana Akarana: the zodiac that closes around the vault of heaven. This is the symbol of the outer circle of the world, and when you stand on the earth and turn your gaze to the zodiac, imagine the sun as the great Ormuzd, passing through this circle. And what the deeds of the circle of light are, that shows itself to you as the realm of creation of Ormuzd, and what lies in the night, what is immersed in darkness for man and stands on the other half of the earth, that is what Ahriman symbolizes. The seven signs of the zodiac in the daytime course of the sun on one side and on the other side the five signs in the nighttime course of the sun: these are the symbols of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Thus the stars were perceived as writing in the sky for what Ormuzd and Ahriman were. Such entities, which stand behind the sensory world, were imagined to have an effect on human nature, but it was realized that they were not a unified whole, but that there were partial spirits, sub-spirits. And in the individual signs of the zodiac, the symbols for seven or six serving spirits of Ormuzd were now felt. These were sub-spirits, called Amshaspands in the old Persian language. The best translation is the one that Goethe chose in his “Faust” when he said:

But you, the real sons of the gods,
Enjoy the living, rich beauties!

Sons of the gods! Six of them – on the light side of the Zodiac – were connected with Ormuzd, while the other five spirits, opposed by Ahriman, were called Devs. This sounds strange and shows the contrast to Hinduism, to what the Indians worshiped as their highest powers, the Devas. While for Zarathustra the highest spiritual powers are found in the penetration of the sense-covering - these are the Asurian powers that work in the outer world - so for the Indians the highest powers are those that are found by penetrating into the mystical interior of man. The simplest explanation for the fact that ancient India saw the highest in the devas, while the Persian religion, on the other hand, saw something dangerous in them, and that furthermore the Indians saw something in the asuras that they did not want to know anything about, while the Persians revered them, is this: In the Zarathustra sense, one should take leave of that world which relies on the inner alone, which can become seductive for man if he does not want to grasp the outer world of the senses. Therefore, delving into the inner, into the world of the Devas, became somewhat dangerous for the Persians, while for the Indians they were something of the highest.

Thus the five spirits of Ahriman are symbolized by the five dark winter constellations of the zodiac. And so there are twelve spiritual entities: Ormuzd with his servants and Ahriman with his servants. Basically, we have to think of the realms of Ormuzd and Ahriman in such a way that these twelve [spirits] work together in the spiritual world - Zaruana Akarana! How do they work? By communicating to the human being that which, for Zarathustra, is the expression of the goal of the world, by pouring into the human being that which they allow to flow through the universe. Zarathustra felt that man, as a small world, is a confluence of what is spread out as great cosmic forces throughout the universe. Thus he felt. Therefore, it would be only natural to find that Zarathustra did not see what is found today through anatomy, physiology and so on in the dissected human being. The Zarathustra wisdom did not dissect the human being, but there was a clear-sighted insight that showed how the spiritual forces worked into human nature and composed human nature. Zarathustra says: “Through the universe, twelve forces emanate from the twelve spirits of Ormuzd and Ahriman; they compose the human body. Like a seal imprint, the human body expresses in miniature what is spread out in the great world in the Amshaspands, the sons of the gods. In there, it continues to have an effect as currents from outside.

What does the disciple of Zarathustra actually mean by what continues to have an effect in there? What I am about to say is somewhat disturbing for modern science. In its own way, more recent science has rediscovered what flows in as the twelve currents, what makes human beings a being that can strive up into the spiritual world, that can have a brain, an intellect; it has rediscovered it in the twelve main nerves of the head. But that is a nuisance for modern science, almost the height of madness, when one says that these twelve nerves are the crystallized, condensed currents that the twelve Amshaspands, according to Zarathustra, channel into the human organism. And so, in materialistic research, we see a concentrated focus on the human being of what Zarathustra – the luminous, clairvoyant personality – revealed as a spiritual secret. At that time, one saw in spirit what was important. And it is our time's task to see in the material what is, as it were, the condensed spiritual.

Zarathustra continued: Yes, you see, just as today man, through his spirituality, which is bound to the brain, strives up into a higher world, to a higher development, so in earlier times he strove for something else. Just as man is connected with Ahura Mazdao today, he was once bound to lunar development. This is also something that annoys modern science. Nevertheless, it is a spiritual truth. This lunar development expresses itself in a further stage of condensation of spirituality. Lower spirits came into play here. Just as the twelve great Amshaspands worked into man, so before that other spiritual entities had brought about a lower spiritual activity. Today we would say: When a person reflects, it is a higher spiritual activity; when he reflexively chases a mosquito away from his face without thinking, it is a lower activity. We see these lower activities as connected to the nerves, which have their center in the spinal cord. What intruded into the human organization as a lower activity, Zarathustra attributed to an earlier spiritual influx.

He said that the twelve great spirits were opposed by 28 others, whom he called Izeds. These Izeds had an effect on the human body and constituted it. He further said that this implied a certain irregularity in that the lunar government had been replaced by the solar government. In addition to the 28 Izeds, which correspond to the 28 lunar days, there are three more, which are inserted by the [longer] solar cycle - up to three irregularly inserted days. So you can count 28 to 31 Izeds. This brings us close to what newer science has as these Izeds: They are the 28 to 31 nerves in man running to the spinal cord - these are the crystallized izeds. So you see the Zarathustra wisdom crystallized in the human anatomy, so to speak. It would never have occurred to anyone to direct human thinking in such a way that it could have researched and searched in the way it does today if Zarathustra had not provided the impetus for it.

He pointed to higher spiritual powers that radiated into man. And to the extent that these were Amshaspands, they became the twelve brain nerves in the physical organization of man; to the extent that they were Izeds, they became spinal nerves. This is something that seems even more twisted than what I said yesterday about reincarnation. But it is something that people will gradually come to recognize, namely, that humanity started out from a spiritual world view and only then descended into materialism. People will gradually come to see how useful it is to raise our eyes again to those great geniuses who, so to speak, saw it as their mission to give people a spiritual gift that can in turn lead them out of this world of the senses. From what it had previously seen in the spirit, humanity descended to sensual things.

Now, today people are not inclined to find such things anything other than annoying, but only because certain things are easily forgotten. For example, everyone will say: How should we actually imagine the structure of the world after Kepler's laws, other than as a sum of purely mechanical processes? Well, one should just remember that Kepler came to his laws precisely through a spiritual worldview and made the statement: “So I carried the sacred vessels of Egyptian secrets up to the north and translated them into the language of the present.” Those who were truly great cultural mediators knew how to tie in with the time when one could still see into the spiritual world. Thus, in essence, Zarathustra stands before us as the one who, in his spiritual worldview, feels the mission to point out to the human being who has the tool in the physical body for his work in the world, but who still points to it with spiritual means. That is why Zarathustra is so tremendously significant. He is always spoken of in connection with the entire outer life of the people in whom he was incarnated.

It is deeply significant that the legend, told so wonderfully, tells how this people, in whom Zarathustra lived, migrated down from the north. The legend, which is truer than history, tells us the following: This people once lived far to the northwest of the areas they later moved into. Before Zarathustra worked there, it was once able to live in these northwestern lands because the conditions there were favorable. But then strange changes occurred – so the legend goes: Winters came that lasted ten months; the people could no longer stay there, and King Dschemschid led them away [to more southern areas]. He received [from Ahura Mazdao] a golden dagger, which he plunged into the earth at various places. As a result, grain grew in those areas, and the people settled there.

If we translate what this legend tells us into the most sober truth, we have to say: This people, into which Zarathustra was introduced, was dependent as a people on cultivating the earth; it was dependent on tackling the real work of life with its hands. Zarathustra's mission for this people is, to begin with, the dissemination of spiritual wisdom, but at the same time it is a guidance to the immediate sensual reality. Hence their turning away from that world view, which wants to know nothing of work that has to be done in the sensual world and which perceives as Maja that towards which the work of the hands should be directed. No, for those who had Zarathustra as their teacher, the soil was not Maya. It was a reality as it was.

And it was a reality that was to be led higher and higher by extracting its fruits from the soil. By working, one connected with what Ormuzd wanted. Work was service to Ormuzd. And everyone felt the Zarathustra mood in their veins when they worked the soil: “I must not abandon myself to the mood that leads me to long for another world; no, here I will be a servant of Ormuzd. By thrusting the spade into the earth, I work as a servant of Ormuzd. And man has to live here on earth in truth. Therefore, in those who were the followers of Zarathustra, there was also the most sublime and beautiful belief in truth and truthfulness, in moral purity. And that is one of the most beautiful impacts associated with the mission of Zarathustra, that the sense of truth and truthfulness developed because of this connection with the outer world, in which one needs a sense of truth.

And so we also see that among all the things that were seen as something bad, as belonging to Ahriman - deception, lies, slander - the worst vices in the teaching of Zarathustra were seen.

Thus the gaze of Zarathustra and his people was directed towards external reality, but in such a way that the spiritual world was sought behind it. In this spiritual world, man hoped to find his resurrection, his future union with Ahura Mazdao, when he had worked his way through the world of sensuality. The religion of resurrection, the first religion of resurrection, is the teaching of Zarathustra. And so it became a world view that looked with kindness, love and goodwill at what further south was regarded only as Maja. Within the Zarathustra religion, that which instincts are for reality, for working on reality and for connection with reality developed. Therefore, in this religion there was not that tendency to chastise the body so that the spirit could emerge from it as easily as possible, but rather it had that instinct that wants to shape the body so that the senses can become as fine as possible and the thinking as sharp as possible. And that had to develop into instinct. And so one sees a wonderful sum of healthy rules of life developing, from such healthy rules to eating, that later Plato stood in admiration before the Zarathustra religion precisely in this respect.

Yes, how long one appreciated the mission of Zarathustra - until the materialistic time made this impossible - we can see from the fact that it was said that Pythagoras learned geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Chaldeans, other sciences from the Greeks, but that he learned the worship of the gods and the wisdom of nature from the magicians of the Zarathustra religion. So they revered those people in the followers of Zarathustra, who are called the Magi, who understood something about how to see through the world of the senses into the spiritual, who knew that one does not come to the spiritual through mere mystical immersion into one's own inner self, but how to make the outer carpet of the senses transparent. In short, those who said of Pythagoras that he had learned the worship of the gods from Zarathustra saw in the followers of the Zarathustra religion – if I may express it thus – “specialists” with the right view of the spiritual world, with the right worship of the gods. This is how people thought of what Zarathustra gave to humanity. But the time will come when people will look up to Zarathustra in veneration again, and that will be when, through spiritual science, they will gain the possibility of understanding such great spirituality as can be found in Zarathustra.

It is useful and significant to turn our gaze back to the starting points of human cultures. When we do that, then among the luminous figures to whom we look back to see how we actually have become and how our present culture has gradually emerged, there will always be the one who was there, the “Goldstar” - Zoroaster, Zarathustra, because one can with some justification translate this honorific name as “Goldstar”. Gold has always been regarded as a symbol of wisdom, and for the followers of Zarathustra, wisdom was something vividly effective, not an abstract, dead science. It is therefore a tremendous aberration for people to believe that the Amshaspands were abstract ideas for Zarathustra and his followers. Anyone who takes even a cursory glance at this cultural movement must realize that living spirits were meant.

Zarathustra's followers sensed that when he spoke of the spirits within himself, for example of “Vahumano”, of the attitude that draws man up to the spiritual world that lies behind the carpet of the world of the senses, the truth of the living spirituality that permeates space lived in him like a seal impression. They understood what Zarathustra had to give to humanity from the source of his soul when they heard him say: “Everything that weaves and lives through the world as a spirit of light, as the power of light and fire, can work in and ignite an inner fire in people. What is spread out in space can gather in a center, so that man feels placed in the macrocosm. And as the disciples of Zarathustra look up to the spirit of the macrocosm, they say: Something in us resounds like an echo of what flows to us as a secret [from the macrocosm]. We feel within us what the power of light - the being clothed in glory - can become in us if we allow to resound within us what flows towards us from all sides. - The students called what they experienced within “Ahuna Vairja”, which later became “the word”, “the logos”. And this was felt like a prayer detaching itself in the soul, humbly flowing back to the secrets of the world - like a living echo that man can send out as a prayer into the universe on all sides like an image of the primal light.

Only when one is able to understand that Zarathustra, the luminous spirit, was able to evoke such sublime feelings in his disciples and through them in a large part of posterity right up to our time, only then does one feel something of the mission of Zarathustra. It cannot be felt if one only points to dogmas and names, but only if one feels the living power of the feelings that ignite in the living interaction between Ahura Mazdao and the space-filling light and the Logos, the holy word that streams out as an echo from the primal light. If one feels this interaction and understands the world-historical mission of Zarathustra, then one looks back in the right way to that being who was embodied in a human body about 5000 years before Christ and who became essential for all humanity.

What Zarathustra was for humanity and what his mission was should be indicated today with a few words. It should be pointed out that Zarathustra is one of the great leaders of humanity, who from epoch to epoch proclaim the old, the present and the future truths that give comfort and security and strength to man in all situations of life. And we can summarize this in the words:

They speak to the human sense
The things in space
They change over time.
The human soul lives
Through space
Unlimited and unharmed through time.
It finds in the spiritual realm
The deepest reason of one's own being.

When we seek the answer to the question to which we referred in the last lecture as to how human beings may establish a relationship with the Christ today, the objection is made by many that a number of human beings already have a relationship with Him. I have spoken frequently about this objection, and we know that it is invalid. On more careful consideration, it turns out to be a thoroughly egoistic objection that can be made only by a person who has the following view: “I have a faith that makes me happy; anything else is no concern of mine.” But in general, humanity's relation to the Christ-Being is not satisfactory; that is easily recognizable from the events of our times and little needs to be added. The necessary answer to this objection can be given by everyone by saying that a basic element in the confession of Christ must be the truth that He died and rose for all men—for all men alike—and that, when man turns against man for the sake of external possessions, it can never be done in His name. It is possible for a person to turn away from this general human destiny to apply himself solely in egoistic fashion to his own creed. Certainly, but then no attenion is paid to the fact that the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha is something that primarily concerns human society. We will now have to mention something that may draw our attention to what is essential in the path that leads to Christ, since it is obvious that each soul must find the way to Him for himself with those means that are suitable for the present time.

When we seek to understand in a more profound sense what the Christ Being signifies for the earth, we must first acquaint ourselves with the truth of an essential element in the Mystery of Golgotha; that is, it actually occurred only once at a definite point in space and time. When we fix this in our minds, we shall discover a contradiction of a view that is generally held, even by us; we should not simply seek to remove it by argumentation since it is justifiable and must first be recognized if we desire to remove it for our own souls. You see, provided the Mystery of Golgotha is an inner and genuine truth, it cannot represent anything but the meaning of the evolution of the earth. But, as we know, everything that occurs in time and space belongs to the realm of maya, the great illusion; that is, it does not belong to the real and eternal, the essential nature of things. Thus we face the highly significant contradiction that the Mystery of Golgotha belongs to maya, the great illusion, and we must place this contradiction before our souls in its full validity.

Now, since this Mystery of Golgotha occurred during the time of the earthly evolution of humanity, let us first consider this evolution. We know, of course, that what we have to deal with is that the human being has come over from earlier worlds and that at a definite point of time, as we have set forth in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, he was subjected to what may be called a luciferic temptation, a seduction. We have often considered this luciferic seduction in the sense in which spiritual scientific investigation shows it, and we know it was expressed in a magnificent image at the beginning of the Old Testament. In the so-called “Fall of Man,” the image of Lucifer as a serpent in Paradise is one of the mightiest representations of religious documents.

When we survey the time through which humanity passed from the luciferic temptation to the Mystery of Golgotha, we find it to be a time in which human beings gradually descended from a primeval, atavistic clairvoyant, revelation that was brought over from earlier planetary stages in which the spiritual worlds had a real existence before their souls. During the centuries preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, they were no longer able to look up to the spiritual world as they had done before, but they now possessed only echoes of the ancient knowledge of the spiritual world.

Taking now a relatively short period of earthly time since we cannot go all the way back to the luciferic temptation, let us review the successive descending stages of human evolution down to the Mystery of Golgotha. If we go back far enough, we discover that what men possessed at an earlier time as an atavistic wisdom, as a real perception of the spiritual world, now echoed in the world conceptions of the religions as reverence for a more or less significant, but highly regarded, ancestor. That is to say, in various regions of the earth we find religious cults that we may call ancestral cults. Such cults in which men look up with reverence to an ancestor still survive among those who have remained at a more or less early stage of evolution. What is the reason for this adoration? What is the reality behind this looking up to an ancestor in ancient times? In those most ancient times to which history can still look back, in that hoary antiquity, we have a certain epoch in which ancestral cults are customary (cf. chart on p. 194).

Such ancestral cults were not based on fact, as is supposed by superficial contemporary science, that those belonging to them imagined they had to look up to a certain ancestor, but the nature of the most ancient ancestral cults was such that men had a direct vision of their ancestors at a certain time in their lives. At these times, in a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping such as was universal in the earlier stages of human evolution, a person who looked up to an ancestral god really attained a condition of union with what he reverenced as his ancestor. The ancestor appeared to him not merely in a dream, but in a dream-like image that signified something real to him, and those individuals to whom the same ancestor appeared belonged together in a single ancestral cult. What these individuals beheld in spirit was, to be sure, a human form elevated to a lofty level, but something entirely different was concealed behind it. If we wish to know what was really concealed behind this spirit form, we must realize that the ancestor had once died and had left the earth as a highly regarded personality who had wrought much good for a human community. He had passed through the portal of death and when these individuals looked up to him, he was on the way between death and a new birth. As these human beings looked up to him, what was it they saw of him?

We know, of course, that when a human being passes through the portal of death, he remains for a short time in his etheric body before it is cast off. But the casting off of this body signifies that it passes over into the spiritual worlds, into the etheric world. The human being continues to develop in his ego and his astral body; the etheric body passes over into the etheric world. Since this man had performed something lasting on earth, the memory of his etheric body continued for a long time. It is this etheric body of the ancestor that was beheld in the ancient atavistic, dream-like clairvoyance and people revered what was revealed to them through it. But during the period between death and a new birth, this etheric body comes into contact with the spirits of the higher hierarchies; most particularly with those belonging to the hierarchy of the archai, the spirits of time. Since this particular ancestor was a significant personality for human evolution, he thus established a union with the time spirit who was bringing human evolution one step forward.

What made itself known through this ghost, as we may call it, of the ancestor was, in reality, one of the time spirits; so worship within the most ancient religions was really directed to the time spirit. Wherever we go back into those times that we may look upon as the hoary antiquity of history, we find that human beings worshipped the etheric bodies of their forefathers to cause the time spirits to reveal themselves. That is to say, as we go back to the ancestral cults, what we find is the worship of the time spirits, the archai.

Men then descended further and began to worship those gods who are known to us from the various mythologies, and whom we call archangels; even Zeus in Greek mythology possessed archangelic manifestations. In the most ancient times people looked up to the time spirits; later, they looked up to those spirits who are not time spirits but are of equal value with the spirits who control the guidance of different peoples, the archangels. Thus we may say that polytheism, when human beings worshipped archangels, follows after ancestral worship.

Then human beings descend still further to the period in which the ego is gradually to be born in the individual. We now find that the most advanced nations pass over to monotheism at a relatively early period—the Egyptians, for example, even in the second millennium before Christ, the people of the Near East later. That is, they begin to worship angels, every person his or her own angel, rather than an archangel. They descend from the higher polytheism to the lower monotheism. After what has previously been presented to you, you will not consider what I am about to say as something strange. You will see that people must cure themselves of the pride that permeates the entire field of religious studies, which deems itself justified to consider monotheism as a religion superior to polytheism. By no means is it so, but the relationship of the two is just as has been described.

Why, then, could the ancient peoples still worship archai, archangels, and angels? They could do so because they still preserved a remnant or echo of the atavistic clairvoyant capacity. For this reason they were able to lift themselves up to what is superhuman; they could, in a certain sense, rise above the human and elevate themselves to the superhuman. In the ancient mysteries, this process of elevating oneself to the superhuman was especially cultivated. Human beings were developed so they could unfold within themselves what extended beyond the human, whereby the human soul lifted itself into the realm of spirituality. But then came the time when the human ego, as it lives here between birth and death, was born for human beings. This was the period coinciding with the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not occurred, people would have degenerated; they would have descended from worshipping angels to worshipping the next subordinate hierarchy, man himself. When we recall how the Roman Caesars had themselves worshipped as gods, how they really were “gods” to the people, we shall know that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha human beings had degenerated so far that they now no longer prayed to archai, archangels, or angels, but to man. In order to save men from praying to earthly human beings, it was necessary for the Divine Man to appear.

The entrance of the Divine Man into history signified an important new way to relate oneself to religious life. Where had the worship of angels, archangels, archai, and even that of man in the form of the Roman Caesars, been found? In man himself; no one worshipped the Caesars through the Caesars, but through the worshipper himself, obviously; this had arisen from man; it came from the human soul. It was necessary that the Christ should appear as historic fact in the evolution of humanity; it was necessary that He should be seen, like the phenomena of nature, from without. He had to come into touch with human beings in an entirely different way from that of the gods of the ancient religions—in an entirely different way. “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” This is an important principle in Christianity because it signifies that, whereas it is possible through mere individual mysticism to find angels, archangels, even archai, it is not possible by this individual mysticism to find the Christ. Those who wish to practice individual mysticism, as this is often described even among theosophists, generally reach only the individual angel. They simply internalize this angel more, even making him often somewhat more egoistic than other persons make their gods. The Christ is found in different ways, not through the mere development of one's inner being, but when we are most of all aware that the Christ belongs to the community of human beings, to the whole of human community.

We now come to a most important differentiation, which can be taken into the human mind, we must admit, only with great difficulty. It is imperative, however, that we force ourselves to its level. When we face another human being in life, it is in maya that we, as human beings, face each other. Just as we have before us only the maya of natural phenomena, so are we likewise confronted only with the maya of the other human being. It is within maya that this human being stands before our external senses and all that is connected with the external world of the senses; then he stands before us as belonging to his family, his nation, his time. If we should survey him completely, we should see behind him the angel, the archangel, the archai, but they all express themselves in what the person is. It is because the archangel and the archai stand behind the observer and the human being observed, the latter is in a sense a member of certain human groups. In other words, the observed person in this way stands within heredity and hereditary relationships. Only our shortness of vision—understandable because we are human—prevents us from consciously judging a human being before us according to these essential connections; unconsciously we always do this. Unconsciously we face one another within this differentiation, which must inevitably be brought into humanity by these three hierarchies. But the Christ demands something more, something different. He demands in reality that when you face someone, you shall feel that what such a human being appears to you to be in the external world is not the entire and complete human being. When you face a human being, you should perceive his or her real being as coming not only from archai, archangels and angels, but from higher spirits no longer belonging to the earthly or even planetary evolution because this begins with the archai, the higher heavenly spirits, as you know from An Outline of Occult Science. You must see that with the human being something enters into maya that is supramundane.

To understand fully what I have just expressed, you must not allow it to remain a mere concept but carry it over completely into your feelings. It is necessary to understand clearly that in every human being something supramundane in his nature comes to meet us, something not to be understood by earthly human means. Then everyone will experience that sensitive reverence in the presence of all that is human. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, man had gradually lost this superhuman element and had descended all the way to being human. The superhuman element had been lost because—listen carefully—when a human being such as a Roman Caesar comes to be worshipped as a god, he loses his humanity and sinks to the level of the subhuman. He ceases to be a human being if he permits himself to be worshipped as something superhuman in social life. Man was threatened, therefore, with the loss of his humanity and it was restored to him through the appearance of Christ on earth. Read the cycle of lectures, From Jesus to Christ,¹¹⁸ in which I spoke on this question, telling you that something is really imparted to every individual human being through the fact that Christ was on earth.

Thus, the coming of the Christ has brought it about that we recognize in every earthly human being, even if he is a sinner or a publican, the Christ who is behind him. The Christ sat down with sinners so that we shall recognize in every earthly human being the truth of the statement, “What thou dost to the least of My brethren, thou has done unto Me.”¹¹⁹ As I have said, this concept must be transferred entirely into our feeling nature; only then shall we attain to its full truth. Then one also sees all concepts and ideas that separate men from one another fall away, and something belonging to all men in common spreads as an aura over the entire earth when we vow that we shall carry our search, not merely to the archai, but upward to what stands above them whenever we are in the presence of a human being.

If we look back again to the ancient mysteries, we find that in them the human being endeavored to transcend his own being in order to have his soul coalesce with the spiritual world. But through the occurrence of the luciferic temptation this is only partially possible. In this ascent the possibility is lost to ascend still further. It is not possible to bear anything more up into the higher world. Why is this so? The answer to this question will come to us if we fix our attention on the profounder meaning of the luciferic temptation. What does Lucifer truly purpose for humanity? We have often emphasized this. Humanity lives in maya, something that is not the real world but only a mirror of it. What, then, is Lucifer's intention? In this mirror the human being can lift himself up a few stages as far as to the archai, but he must then be taken over by Lucifer if he desires to rise still higher into the spiritual. In a certain sense, he must then take Lucifer as his guide; Lucifer, who constitutes the light that guides him further. If the luciferic evolution had continued, if Christ had not entered into human evolution, the following would have come about after the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha ought to have taken place: human beings within the mysteries would have developed to such an extent that the archai would have been openly visible to them. Then they would have entered into the luciferic world. In that case, however, all that the higher gods such as the exusiai implanted into earthly evolution in the form of the human element would have remained on earth. Man would have spiritualized himself in an entirely ascetic way and would have entered into the spiritual luciferic world in this ascetic spiritualization, leaving behind the corporeal. Human souls would have found their salvation, but the earth would have remained purposeless. The bodies of human beings would never have been able to render the service to the souls that they really ought to render. To prevent this constitutes the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must now look back once more to the evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha if we wish to understand this matter completely. From the very beginning of the evolution of the earth, it was Lucifer's intention to lead men away from the earth into his spiritual kingdom. He had no interest in the rest of earthly evolution but wanted only to possess what the higher gods had initiated in connection with man. He wished to lead this away in the form of the soul from the earthly evolution after it had remained for a time in the earthly form that comes from the exusiai, the spirits of form. In other words, he wished to lead the souls away and leave the earth to its fate. Why is it, then, that human beings did not follow this endeavor of Lucifer, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to lead them into a luminous world? Why didn't they? You may understand the reasons from many suggestions I have given here, even in these very lectures. They did not follow Lucifer because something was introduced into the evolution of the earth by the higher gods that prevented them from becoming light enough to do so.

As I have shown you, what is called the eighth sphere was introduced into earthly evolution in ancient times. As one of its aspects, the eighth sphere consists of man's acquiring such a preference for and attachment to his lower nature that Lucifer is not able to remove the higher nature from it. Every time Lucifer endeavored to spiritualize human beings, they were too strongly habituated to the flesh to follow him. If they had not been possessed by this cleaving to the flesh, to the physical nature, they would have followed Lucifer. This is one of the great mysteries of cosmic existence, that a divine element was actually implanted in human nature so that it might have, as it were, a greater heaviness than it would have possessed if this divine and necessary element had not been implanted in it. If it had not been implanted, human souls would have obeyed Lucifer. When we go back into ancient times, we find everywhere that the religions lay emphasis on the necessity of human beings reverencing what is earthly, what is an earthly connection living in flesh and blood so that they may be heavy enough not to be led out into the universe. Since all things having a relationship to both the human and the cosmic require not only an earthly, but also a cosmic arrangement, what you find described in my Occult Science occurred. At a certain time, as you know, not only was the earth formed, revolving in its orbit around the sun, but it was provided with the moon as its satellite.

What does it mean that the earth has a moon as its satellite? It means nothing more than that it acquired a force through which it can attract and hold the moon nearby. Should the earth not possess this power to hold the moon, then the spiritual correlative of this force would not be able to chain man to his lower nature because this force, from the spiritual point of view, is the same as that with which the earth attracts the moon. It may be said, then, that the moon is placed in the universe as an opponent of Lucifer in order to hinder him. I have already alluded to this mystery¹²⁰ and pointed out that in the period of materialism of the nineteenth century, this truth has been exactly reversed in Sinnet's book, Esoteric Buddhism.¹²¹ There the moon is described as something actually hostile to man. The truth is that it is not hostile to him but prevents him from falling victim to the temptation of Lucifer; it acts as the cosmic correlative of what constitutes the attachment of the human being to his lower nature. Rather than tearing the souls out of the lower nature and thereby preventing its concomitant spiritualization, a subconscious process was required. Had the arrangement been conscious, man would have followed the urges of his lower nature in full consciousness and would have sunk to the animal level. There had to be something in the lower nature of which man was not conscious and which he did not follow except as a human being on earth would follow what flowed into his lower nature as a divine element. Especially the God of the Old Testament, the Jahve God, was concerned that the human being should remain on earth. Jahve is connected in this mysterious way with the moon, as you will find explained also in Occult Science. From this statement you can estimate how materialistic it was to designate the moon as the eighth sphere, whereas it really is the force itself, the sphere, that attracts the moon. In her misguided ways, Blavatsky developed special malice in her Secret Doctrine by maligning the Jahve God as a mere moon god. She wanted to replace him with Lucifer whom she undertook to represent as the friend of the spirit. To be sure, Lucifer is just that, but only in the particular sense I have explained. Blavatsky tried to represent the Jahve God as the god of the mere lower nature, whereas what really constituted an opposition to Lucifer was implanted in the lower nature.

You see how dangerous it is to set up truths that may be perverted to their opposite. Blavatsky was misled by certain beings who had an interest in guiding her into putting Lucifer in the place of Christ, and this was to be achieved by introducing precisely the opposite of the truth of the eighth sphere and by maligning the Jahve God, representing him merely as the god of the lower nature. Thus did those cosmic powers who desired to advance materialism work even through what was called “theosophy.” Materialism would obviously have sunk to its worst abyss if men had come to believe that the moon was really the eighth sphere in the sense indicated by Sinnet or Blavatsky, and that Christianity must be fought in every way.

Now, placing the opponent of Lucifer in the lower nature of man was only possible so long as the human being had not developed his ego in the manner in which this took place at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. The degree to which this ego was subdued in ancient times is greatly underestimated. It was subdued and appeared only during the centuries just prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. Then it no longer sufficed merely to place in the subconscious, or unconscious, nature what strove against Lucifer. Something had to come that the human being could take up into his consciousness; this is the Christ, who follows the Jahve God in evolution. It was necessary that the Christ should come so that through an avowal of Him the human being might consciously oppose mere spiritualization as this was striven for on the part of Lucifer. Christ descended for all human beings and only through our feeling related to everyone else do we belong to the earth. The deeper understanding of the Christ derives from our connection with all human beings and from our effort to attain a full and complete connection with them.

You see, as long as men lived without the fully developed ego before the Mystery of Golgotha, they passed through the portal of death into the spiritual world and entered into relationship with archai, archangels and angels. But since they had not yet developed the complete ego here on earth, even after they had passed through the portal of death they did not need to develop a connection with the higher spiritual beings consciously. This was regulated through the atavistic powers that lay within them. But since the Mystery of Golgotha—not by reason of it but since that time—everything has become quite different. Let us look at ourselves and see how things have changed.

A human being passes through the portal of death as do others or perhaps one person passes through the portal of death and others remain here on earth. By virtue of his or her passing through the portal of death, an individual continues to be a human being and if we desire to keep our connection with such an individual, our relationship to him or her cannot change. Let us now bear in mind, however, that at the present time, since we live after the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being in ascending into the spiritual worlds passes through the hierarchies of the angels, archangels, and archai. Since he is now within the period in which his ego has developed here on earth, he possesses a consciousness also for the other hierarchies that are above them. That is to say, he develops consciously the forces poured into him from beings that are even higher than the archai. What does this signify? Let us take a concrete case and assume that through death a person loses one who is dearly beloved. The one who has passed through the portal of death maintains for many years, of course, the connection with certain inclinations and tendencies that he had during his lifetime. However, since he developed his ego here in his lifetime as a human being, something in him begins consciously to work on the perspective of his next incarnation immediately after he has passed through the portal of death. This occurs in a decisive way in what I have called in the¹²² the midnight of existence; it appears to some extent in human consciousness immediately after death. When a person is in this state, however, there lives in him what already draws him away from what he was born into in his last life. Let us suppose that in his last life he belonged to a certain nation. The person who has remained behind continues to belong to this nation in his physical body, but a force belonging to an entirely different nation takes possession of the one who has died. How can the bond between the two continue beyond death undiminished in strength? Only when the one who remains here has an understanding for what extends above the angels, archangels and archai; that is, above what one may develop here through one's inclination toward relationships to human groups. If someone remains behind as a member of a certain nation and loses a friend through death who is already preparing to be a member of a different nation, the bond of love with the dead person cannot remain undisturbed. Only through the fact that both confess Christ, that they understand Christ in what extends above all differentiations of men can this bond be supramundane. What did John the Baptist say when Christ Jesus came to him to be baptized? “Behold, the Lamb of God, who beareth the sins of the world.” The full significance of these words might make us grow pale were we to take it in its full weight.

It may be asked why Christ has been victorious and not Mithras. During the time when Christianity was spreading from the East toward the West, the Mithraic cult expanded along the Danube all the way to France and Spain in Western Europe. The cult of Christ, however, has been victorious over the Mithraic cult. Why? Because the cult of Mithras had developed from extending above angels, archangels, and archai, and through this upward extention wished to attain to the Light-giver and Ruler of the World. What is the Christ in contrast to this? The Christ is He who took upon Himself for the evolution of the earth all that is bound up with angels, archangels, and archai; that is, all that chains man to the earth. He bears the sins of the world, those sins that have come into the world through human differentiation. He is a being in whose presence we must say, “I belong to a single human community, but because I belong to a single human community, to something connected with the earthly, I separate myself from the divine. From this I can be redeemed only by a Being who has nothing to do with human differentiation. The Christ in me leads me beyond earthly differentiations, teaches me to feel that what has been produced by earthly differentiation is suffering, that it brings death. Only through such an understanding of the Christ in me do I find my connection with the spiritual world.” All that entered humanity through the fact that differentiations have come about has been removed from it through the entrance of Christ into the world. Christ could not, therefore, be a divinity like Mithras, who guides the human being beyond himself. He is the one God who descended to earth and took away the sins of differentiation and cleansed man of them. Mithras rushes through the world with a sword in his hand that he thrusts into the lower nature to slay it; under him the lower nature dies. Christ offers Himself as the Lamb of God, who takes the lower nature into Himself in order to redeem it.

Much lies in this comparison, immeasurably much! It is for this reason that the idea of Christ is not to be separated from the idea of death and resurrection. Only when we realize that what leads man to the earth brings him death, that there is more in him than what brings him into the earthly atmosphere, and that something is in him that is the Christ Who leads him away again: In Christo morimur—only then do we understand the Christ and know that we are united with Him. Thus, the representations of the ancient gods could set triumphant beings before us, but the Christ could only be presented by the joining of human beings in suffering and death because Christ endured all that enters into the differentiations of man throughout the earth. It is thus that Christ becomes the One Who leads man through death and back into the spiritual world, but this also makes Him the Divinity Who may be approached here on earth as we pass beyond maya or illusion. As the Christ is born here from the womb of maya, so must we draw near to Him by advancing beyond maya and appealing to Him in all the higher reality that projects into maya, but isn't maya itself.

If it is to turn to this worship of Christ, mankind will still need a long time on earth. Nevertheless, we must begin again to take Christianity earnestly. It is taken least of all seriously by the theologians who are frequently in conflict over whether or not Christ performed miracles and, for example, drove out demons through them. Well, it is entirely superfluous to argue over whether or not Christ drove out demons. It is more important that we learn to reproduce His miracles and thereby cast the demons out now where we can. We still have little power to cast out demons in the higher sense as antiquity knew how to do through its atavism. That is the destiny, the karma, of our epoch. But we can begin to drive out those demons of whom I spoke yesterday; they are there and it is negative superstition to suppose that they are not. How do we drive them out? Humanity will be convinced that they are being driven out when what is unholy service today becomes holy; that is, permeated with the Christ consciousness. In other words, this means that we must change to a sacramentalism in which man's deeds are imbued by the consciousness that the Christ stands behind him everywhere. Thus, he ought to do nothing in the world except that in which the Christ can help him. If he does something else, the Christ must also help him but He is thus crucified again and again in human deeds. The crucifixion is not merely a single deed; it is a continuing deed. So long as we do not drive out the demons through what lives in our souls by changing external mechanical actions into holy actions, we will continue to crucify Christ. It is from this point that our education to a true Christianity must begin. What was symbolically practiced in the ancient cults of Christianity and was once performed only on the altar must take hold of the entire world. Humanity must learn to deal with nature as the gods have done; it should learn not to construct machines in an indifferent way but to fulfill a divine service and bring sacramentalism into everything that is produced.

It is already possible to make a beginning in many things. Most of all, human beings can begin to develop sacramentalism in two areas. The first is that of educating and teaching children. We will begin to spiritualize what the religions call “baptism” when we look upon every human being who enters the world through birth as bringing his/her Christ forces with him/herself. Thus we will have the right reverence before the growing human being and can then direct the entire education and especially the teaching of the child in this spirit so that we bring in this teaching a sacramentalism to fruition. We can achieve the same end when we not only look upon educating and teaching the child as a divine service, but also make it such a divine service. Finally, when we endeavor to bring what we call our knowledge into our consciousness in such a way that, as our souls are filled with ideas of the spiritual world, we are aware that the Spiritual world is entering into us and that we are being united with the spiritual; when we look upon that as a “communion;” when we can realize true knowledge in a sentence you find expressed before 1887: “Thinking is the true communion of humanity,”¹²³ when the symbolic sacrament of the altar will become the universal sacramental experience of knowledge. It is in this direction that the Christianizing of man must move forward. You will then come to the knowledge that, everywhere in life, reality enters into maya in everything that is related to the Christ, and that to look upon reality after the manner of modern science with its world conception is in the most eminent sense unchristian.

It is strange how people nowadays are so easily able to adjust to what is unchristian and how little they can find their way to everything in Christianity that is appropriate to our time. As yet, we can see very little that counteracts materialism from, as I might say, a darkling inclination. If there are some beginnings, people embracing them proceed on false paths in that they, in a confused way, turn to old relations rather than to spiritual science.

Forgive me if I mention in this connection something that concerns me personally, but I am doing this only to cite an example. I may already have pointed out in these lectures that Hermann Bahr,¹²⁴ a contemporary personality whom I knew very well in my youth, is again in the process of seeking spiritual things. He is not seeking them in spiritual science because his interest for it is very limited. Take his very fine and intelligent book on expressionism and you will discover that he has only a marginal interest in spiritual science. But you can also see from the book itself that up to its publication he has informed himself about spiritual science only to the extent of his having read Levy's book¹²⁵ on my world view and on the people who oppose it. He has not found the way yet to really engage himself more deeply. However, it is interesting that he wrote a novel whose hero becomes acquainted with everything: contemporary chemical laboratories and so on, attending Oswald's¹²⁶ lectures in Leipzig, busying himself a bit with the theosophers in London, and so forth. His hero becomes exposed to everything which the present day offers in spiritual sensations, and he even dabbles in spiritism. And then he asks someone—I don't remember who it was—to give him esoteric exercises, which he practices for a while. But he is impatient, continues them only for a short time, does not achieve results and then abandons them; in fact, he gives up on all his endeavors after a short while. Then he has some strange experiences—the most interesting thing for me has been that, in a curious way, much in this book is reminiscent of what I have mentioned most recently in lectures, even about actual events, although I haven't seen Hermann Bahr for the past twenty-eight years except once, but then we definitely did not discuss questions related to our views of the world. Recently, Hermann Bahr also had a play of his staged which is entitled The Voice. One need not defend this play for the simple reason that Hermann Bahr just is not trying to find his way into spiritual science, which he finds too difficult, but is relapsing into orthodox, or let's say, more recent Catholicism. At any rate, he is in search of spiritual life.

It is interesting how the hero of this play is in search of spiritual life. He is married to a lady, the daughter of a very orthodox mother and herself very orthodox in view. This lady is deeply serious about Christianity—more so than can be expected of a human being. However, her husband, the hero of the play, is a disciple of Oswald and Haeckel and is quite a materialist. Since his wife and mother-in-law are serious Christians, they are, of course, pained by the fact that the husband is a disciple of Oswald and Haeckel¹²⁷ and does not want to hear anything about the spiritual world. The wife grieves so much about this that she dies. After her death, the husband, from an unknown dark feeling, frequently thinks his deceased wife is calling out one thing or another to him. One day, in the sleeping compartment of a train, he hears the voice of his wife with special clarity. This almost makes him insane; when the train stops at a station he rushes out and behaves like a lunatic in what I believe was the waiting room of a station. The train went on without him, and later, it was demolished in a railroad accident. The injured people are carried into the station and then he realizes that he had been saved by the voice of his deceased wife; she had caused him to leave the train in which he would have otherwise perished. This was the first time that he associated the voice of his wife with the conditions of reality. I do not want to condemn this; I simply want to tell you what a contemporary human being commits to paper these days. The hero of the play, by experiencing this apparent miracle and the after-effect of this woman's being beyond her death, realizes that he has been saved by her and this causes him to reflect anew about the connection of human beings with the spiritual world. Later, his wife continues to communicate with him frequently and the ensuing intimate friendship between his soul and the soul of his deceased wife leads him back to Christianity in the truest sense, and he overcomes his materialistic world view.

Even though we do not need to defend this play as such, we see that there are human beings nowadays who strive to instill the view into life that a truth of the spiritual world can manifest itself in maya, the great deception. Only a clear understanding of Christianity will build the bridge between the life here on earth and the life that exists in the spiritual world. Quite a few people today have a need for this spiritual world but we must admit that their number is insignificant in relation to the large number of those people who are either mired in traditional religions—and thus have fallen prey to materialism even if they don't admit it—or whose lives are directly determined by materialism and who do not have a real connection with the spiritual world. As I said before, we need not defend Bahr's play but it can nevertheless direct us to this important realization: Whoever wants to understand Christianity in its deepest meaning must get beyond the problem of death. After all, the most interesting thing in this play is that it takes as its point of departure the relation between the human soul and the human body which transcends the portal of death. To be sure, there is a basic error in all these things: instead of being led to Christianity—for which process spiritual science, as we understand it, wants to make a real beginning—we are again led back to an individual religious denomination.

If human beings would only understand the Christ in the way I have indicated today—and if we may still continue to speak here, I will deal with this matter more thoroughly—if they could so understand the Christ as the matter has been explained today in only the most elementary suggestions, then the feeling and conceptions that are developed in regard to Him could be conveyed to all human beings. Christ did not die only for those who belong to some Christian sect, but He died and rose again for all mankind. We must not associate some specific religious confession with the Being of Christ, but every religious confession is to be brought into connection with Christianity. If all people would come to understand how to conceive the Christ as has been indicated, Christianity would spread over the entire earth because the revelation of Christ and the revelation of Jesus are two different things.

If we go as missionaries to foreign cultures, or even to people in our own lands, and wish to force upon them the worship of Jesus within a religious denomination, we will not be understood since the knowledge of these people extends far beyond what is brought to them by this or that missionary. I should like to know, for example, what a Turk would say if a modern Protestant pastor should try to convey to him his conception of Christ. This conception as it is dealt with by modern Protestant pastors holds that there was once a Socrates, and then one who was somewhat more than Socrates, the Christ, the human being, the special human being, but still the human being—or any of those confused things that are said today in modern Protestantism about Christ. The Turk would say to him, “What! You tell me such a thing and you wish to be called a Christian? Just read the nineteenth chapter of the Koran;¹²⁸ much more is contained in it about the Christ than what you are telling me!” In other words, the Turks know a great deal more concerning Christ Jesus than what the modern Protestant pastors are prone to present because the Koran contains more about Him and Christ is represented much more as the Divinity in the Turkish confession than in that of the modern Protestant. This is simply not realized because nowadays people do not often go so far as really to read the original religious documents; rather, they utter much superficial nonsense regarding all possible religions.

The Jesus revelation, too, will touch men in the proper way, but they themselves must attain its truth by their own power. They will be able to do this after having passed through a sufficient number of incarnations. Everyone today is to some degree prepared to receive the Christ revelation; this is a distinction that must be made. However, many forces are at work to suppress the real Christ revelation and genuine spiritual science. In this regard you need only to remember some of the things I previously mentioned regarding my characterization of various endeavors which lay claim to being occult.

And now I would like to conclude today's lecture, but not without offering a short supplement which, for definite reasons that will become apparent to you momentarily, should not be considered as part of the lecture itself. What I have stated thus far I have said without reservations whatsoever; but what I am about to add I shall have to formulate, at least for the time being, with certain qualifications. That is why I am presenting these additional remarks separately. If I mention them today, it is because I consider them somewhat important within the framework of the considerations at hand.

I had indicated earlier that materialism reached its zenith in the middle of the 19th century. During that time, the people who knew that spiritual life would always be necessary for humanity considered teaching mankind that our environment really contains spiritual beings and effects. But I had also indicated that the leading occultists in those days branched off into two groups. One of them maintained that mankind was not yet ready to accept spiritual things, while the second one was saying in the middle of the century that mankind was indeed ready to be exposed in an elementary way to the most important concepts of spiritual life.

This second group, which advocates the teaching and the dissemination of the doctrine, has been reduced to a tiny number of people. However, the anthroposophical movement subscribes to the belief that the dissemination of the doctrine, as it is practiced by us in today's activities, is important for the transmission of spiritual knowledge to mankind. This question was first raised in the fourth decade of the 19th century, but those who held this view were, in a way, outvoted. After that had happened, they agreed to chart a new course and adopt the practice of spiritism. These people attempted to show that spiritualistic media—individuals who can be considered psychics—are able to receive messages from the spiritual world and that it would be possible by these means to get in touch with the realms of the spirit.

I have characterized these things before, and I also indicated that this entire attempt was a failure. It was a failure because in contrast to what I explained in my recent speech in Bern, the people involved in the experiments were unable to pinpoint the various stages of our connection with the dead. Yet, the people in question did not want to deal with that phenomenon and, thus, the entire attempt was unsuccessful. All of the psychics indicated in the most primitive and elementary way that they were in direct communication with the deceased persons, and people always wanted to receive direct pronouncements from some deceased person through these media. Please note, this is not to say that what passes through a medium in an experiment cannot in some way lead to a contact with a dead person. But it is another matter to decide whether or not this is an unconscious, a genuine, and a proper mediation, and whether the mediation is possible at all. Some entirely different results were expected from the experiments. The psychic media were expected to make people understand that not only sensuous, but also spiritual forces flow continuously into human beings. Moreover, the experiments were supposed to teach people that spiritual things were preferably to be sought in the immediate environment, and not in the announcements of this or that dead person.

Since the whole attempt has proven to be a blunder, the serious occultists withdrew from this spiritistic experiment, and mankind now has to pay for this in that the psychic media have been usurped by all kinds of occultists. The latter do not pursue purely occult endeavors, but they chart a course that serves some specific human purpose. I have often mentioned this before: The person who wants to be a genuine occultist cannot merely serve a specific human purpose; rather, he must serve general human purposes, and above all, he or she must never employ improper and incorrect means in order to reach any goals whatsoever. But what isn't called occultism these days! You could get a notion of this if you read the report of the last Theosophical Convention, which contained the speeches of Mrs. Besant¹²⁹ and Mr. Leadbeater.¹³⁰ In these speeches, the present situation is depicted as the big struggle between Lords of Light, on whose side Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater are naturally to be found, and the Lords of Darkness. In these speeches the opinion is expressed that any neutral person not taking sides with any of these opposite parties, or more properly, with Mrs. Besant's and Mr. Leadbeater's Lords of Light, is a traitor. But still other things were discussed in these meetings. Mr. Leadbeater, for example, related from one of his profound occult insights that Bismarck¹³¹ was supposed to have gone to France before 1870 and established magnetic centers in the North, South, East, and West of France. During the 1870/71 war, these magnetic centers established by Bismarck had been at work, according to Mr. Leadbeater, because otherwise the war with France would have been lost. This is the kind of stuff people listen to in theosophical meetings! Yes, they do listen to it, and one can only marvel at this or do something more drastic when one learns such things are mentioned. But as I said, there are many kinds of occultism in our age.

Now that serious occultists have withdrawn from spiritism, it is important to keep in mind that the latter has been taken over by people pursuing specific purposes. And it is quite easy to do this. Please keep in mind what I want to say in this supplement: Spiritism originated from an honest attempt to find out whether mankind nowadays is ready to accept spiritual truths. Also, remember that the attempt was a failure and that all kinds of movements, occult brotherhoods, as well as individuals—especially from America—have attempted to manipulate the psychic media one by one for their own specific purposes.

Following all this, I now want to speak about a report that our dear friend, Mr. Heywood-Smith, gave to me yesterday concerning the book that deals with the experiences of Sir Oliver Lodge.¹³² I repeat, I am relating this with every possible reservation because I only have a report in front of me; it, however, is revealing enough. I reserve the right to make further comments when I am in possession of the book itself. However, since I do not consider the matter unimportant, I would like to deal with it today. Should the report prove to be incorrect, I would, of course, clarify the things mentioned today. That is why I speak with reservations.

It is an extraordinarily significant fact, isn't it, that one of the most renowned scientific personalities of England, the great naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge, has written a book¹³³ containing things which, when accepted as he presents them, should be counted among the most significant pronouncements of the present time. We know, of course, that Sir Oliver professed in some of his other books that he acknowledges the existence of the spiritual world. But let me come to the facts:

Sir Oliver Lodge had a son by the name of Raymond who was born in 1889 and who, when the war broke out, volunteered for military service while Sir Oliver and his wife were in Australia. In March 1915 Raymond came to a vicinity of Ypern—and you can imagine how worried his parents were. Soon thereafter, Sir Oliver received a message from an American medium, a Mrs. Piper, which was dated August 15. This message from America had a peculiar content which, according to the report that I have in front of me, reads as follows: “Myers will take an interest in whatever fate has ordained for you and will protect you.” However, this message was couched in the classical form of a poem by Horace. To repeat, Sir Oliver was notified by an American medium in August that Myers, formerly chairman of the Society for Psychical Research in London¹³⁴ but deceased fourteen years prior to the date of the letter, would protect and support Sir Oliver Lodge during a difficult event of which he, Sir Oliver, would be a part and thus work toward his protection. Please bear in mind that this message mentions only that Myers would help Sir Oliver during a difficult event.

Now, when Sir Oliver's son Raymond was killed in action in September 1915, Sir Oliver at first related the message which had indicated that Myers would help him, to the death of his son. Subsequently, however, Sir Oliver's family was the subject of all kinds of pronouncements by the psychic media; in fact, several psychic media appeared on the scene simultaneously and delivered quite a few messages. Little by little, it turned out that all these messages had the following basic content: “Myers is united with your son”—Sir Oliver's and Lady Lodge's son, because seances were conducted with her as well. “Myers is helping your son, whose primary concern is that you receive word from him and, especially, that Sir Oliver should thereby be placed into a relationship with the spiritual world.”—If one reads the various pronouncements of the individual psychics as presented in this report, one thing stands out everywhere. Throughout, the pronouncements exhibit interesting examples of psychic elevation; everything happens at a precise time; questions are being asked and so on, and they are then answered by the media. The whole process is extremely interesting. Even a picture of Raymond Lodge that was unknown to his family is found because the deceased son points to it and describes it, and it is then found in exactly the same place that he pinpointed. In short, in this book there seems to be compiled with extraordinary precision and exactitude all that can be experienced in many a spiritistic séance and which could lead to the events narrated. It is known that Sir Oliver had always been somewhat inclined toward these practices, much to the displeasure of his sons. However, after these happenings they became believers, too. Sir Oliver himself seems to have described in the most detailed manner how this bridge to his deceased son was constructed through the various psychic media.

What is important and what is presented is the fact that such a highly respected personality is induced to transcend into the spiritual world through the use of psychic media. I have to say this: From what I know about the various séances, they themselves do not reveal too many new features.—But something else is very important. We have here a modern scientific personality of the first rank who, when writing in this fashion, can have a tremendous influence on the minds of human beings and who feels compelled to write in this way. That is very important because such writing influences many people and causes them to turn to the “media enterprise,” which seeks to relate itself with the spiritual world in this fashion.

We are, of course, presented here with the same mistake of wanting to attain access to the spiritual world through spiritism which I previously described to you. But now let me ask you to look at the matter more closely. In the first message by the medium Piper which Sir Oliver Lodge received from America, a forecast is made of only one event against which Myers would protect Sir Oliver. To be sure, this event could have occurred in several ways. Suppose the son hadn't been killed in action. In that case, the statement that followed would have been quite compatible with the content of the message: “Well, you have been told that Myers protects your son in the spiritual world and keeps him from dying on the battlefield.”—You will probably not doubt that the people in America could have known that Raymond Lodge had been stationed in an endangered zone of the battlefield and that, therefore, one could have made pronouncements similar to those of the old oracles: “Myers will protect your son.” And had the son come out of the war unscathed, one could have said after the fact: “Myers did protect him by getting him out of the battle zone alive.” Suppose, however, the son was killed in action, one could then easily relate the prophecy to Myers' role as a mediator in bringing father and son together from the spiritual world. Thus we can see that the original pronouncement was shrewdly phrased. The whole affair was contrived in America. Since such fellowships extend, of course, over the whole world, the next medium was then put in touch with Lady Lodge. It is not necessary to know how such an anonymous session, as it is called in the report, comes into being. The procedures are as is customary in those sessions. But by now the sad news of the son's death had been received and Lady Lodge's psyche harbors all the after effects that such a message evokes. It is not difficult to demonstrate that what dwells in one soul migrated into another and communicates through the medium. Moreover, the son survived beyond death in the soul of his mother, in the manner that we are all acquainted with. Therefore, the accomplishment of the medium was nothing more than a rendering of what was already present in the souls of Lady Lodge or her family. This can be nicely substantiated from the protocol of the seances, which in each case is modulated to allow for the character of the major participants in these sessions. The name Myers is mentioned even by the media who were not acquainted with him. That, however, is not all that miraculous because Sir Oliver Lodge was a very good friend of Myers and had worked with him and so on. In short, everything would have been fine if only Sir Oliver, aside from the personal interest he took in his son's fate, had been content with carrying out an experiment whose sole purpose it was to show that there are spiritual effects in our environment. This was the original intention of the occultists, but then they abandoned this path.

I do not want to make judgments as I am sure the book itself will explain this matter, too. However, it seems we are confronted here with the obvious. Some people want to use Sir Oliver in order to attain definite special purposes. By using the constellations at hand, one very sorry occult brotherhood is likely to cite our case as characteristic when it makes its thrust to possibly, if you will, win over science to spiritism. Spiritism always likes to be considered as being “scientific,” and it can be easily used to attain special purposes.

To mention just one example, the attempt had been made in another place in America to cure mankind of the idea of reincarnation. What took place? During the time when the events I characterized had already happened, that is, when the serious occultists had already left spiritism, a certain Langsdorff,¹³⁵ if I am not mistaken, organized all kinds of séances in several localities. When media were put in touch with the dead, the latter everywhere gave testimony that they were not at all waiting for reincarnation. And so the doctrine of repeated lives on earth was especially attacked in America. One can accomplish a great deal if one allows people to be approached in this matter by the pronouncements of the dead.

I wanted to discuss this matter quickly with you in a few words because I had talked about these things recently and because the example cited seems to be an especially good one. For how will the world be informed about this? The world will learn that a renowned scientist has confessed his allegiance to spiritism. Then, people will read the book, and most likely—we see this from our example—they will think that the case for spiritism has never been made so convincingly as in this book. As I said, I am speaking in this supplement to our lecture with qualifications because I reserve the right to come back to the matter after I have read the book myself. We are probably confronted here with an attempt by the so-called brotherhood of the left wing to attain special things by these very means. This may not be clear at first blush, but it is well known that there are numerous brotherhoods who wish to attain their special purposes in this fashion, and more is attained in this way than people are accustomed to believe. We will talk about these things some more later on.

• 118. Von Jesus zu Christus (Karlsruhe, 1911), Bibl.-No. 131, CE (Dornach, 1974). From Jesus to Christ, (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973).
• 119. Matthew 25:40.
• 120. Cf. the lectures in Die okkulte Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert und ihre Beziehung zur Weltkultur, Bibl.-No. 257, CE (Dornach, 1969). The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973).
• 121. Alfred Percy Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism (1883).
• 122. Rudolf Steiner, Vier Mysteriendramen [Four Mystery Plays], Bibl.- No. 14, CE (Dornach, 1962). Four Mystery Plays, (Steiner Book Centre, Toronto, 1973).
• 123. Cf. Preface to: Goethe's Scientific Writings, II, Rudolf Steiner, ed. (1887) in Kürchner's Deutsche National-Litteratur. Photomechanic reprint, 5 vols., Bibl.-No. 1 a-e, CE (1975). Goethe the Scientist, (New York, Anthroposophic Press, 1950).
• 124. Hermann Bahr (1863–1934), a Viennese writer who was the author of the book Expressionismus, 3rd edition (Munich, 1919) and of the play Die Stimme [The Voice] (Berlin, 1916).
• 125. Eugene Levry, Rudolf Steiners Weltanschauung und ihre Gegner [Rudolf Steiner's World View and its Opponents] (Berlin, 1913).
• 126. Wilhelm Oswald (1853–1932) was a chemist.
• 127. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a renowned zoologist.
• 128. The nineteenth sura of the Koran is entitled “Mary.“
• 129. Cf. footnote 99.
• 130. Charles Webster Leadbeater (1847–1934) was a prominent personality in the Theosophical Society.
• 131. Otto Furst von Bismarck (1815–1898) was the Prussian Chancellor who founded the Second German Empire in 1871.
• 132. Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) was an English physicist and a member of the Royal Society.
• 133. Oliver Lodge, Raymond, or Life and Death (1916).
• 134. Frederic W. H. Meyers (1843–1901), a spiritist and friend of Sir Oliver Lodge, was a co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research in London.
• 135. Georg von Landsdorff was a physician who had previously lived and worked in Freiburg i.Br.

It is my task at this time to explain certain matters directly related to practical life and to the outer existence of mankind in general. This is to some extent an interlude in our present studies, in order to bring out the quality which Spiritual Science in our time must above all possess—that of immediate relation to real life. We shall presently come to those parts of our subject which deal more with the inner life of man. All in all, this is the focus and aim of our present studies: On the foundations of Spiritual Science, to gain an idea of the individual man's position in practical life, even in his calling or profession. I would entitle the whole of this course of lectures (including the last three or four) ‘The Karma of Vocation.’ But it is necessary first to gain a broader basis; I must explain some other things, connected with our question in a wider sense.

As we have already seen, what man achieves for the world—no matter in what profession—is connected, intimately, even with the farthest cosmic future of mankind; it cannot be set aside as mere prosaic toil. Man enters into the social order of life in a certain way. His Karma impels him to some particular calling. While we are speaking of this question, no calling need be thought inherently prosaic or poetic. For we now know that what man does within the social order, is the first seed of something, which is not only of significance for our Earth, but will go on and on evolving when the Earth passes through the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan states. A living grasp of our several callings, a recognition of simple and straightforward human life in its significance, can be brought home to us most intensely through these spiritual studies. For it is the task of our spiritual-scientific movement not only to provide euphonious theories, but to bring to our souls that which will tend to place us rightly into life according to the Spirit of our Time—each in his place. Therefore, our Truths are always such as to be strong enough, for life itself really to be judged and understood through them. We will not just enthuse in a multitude of pleasing, comforting ideas; we will receive ideas which can carry and sustain us throughout life.

If you will remember something I have often emphasised, you will see how this spiritual-scientific movement tends to bring near to our souls what is of real significance for life. I have often pointed to an important fact of life; and if those whose task lies in the sphere of learning are not too obtuse, it may well be that this fact will play an important part in Science comparatively soon. Nowadays there is much emphasis on Heredity and all that is connected with it in man's life. Repeating as they generally do, like parrots, the scientific world-conception of to-day, educationists, when they speak of the choice of callings, will also tell us of the inherited qualities which the teacher must take into account if he wishes to pass judgment on the questions that so frequently arise as to the future calling of a young person who is about to enter into life. But the question of heredity is generally treated, nowadays, only in this wise:—Children, they say, inherit certain characteristics from their parents or earlier ancestors. And in this connection they are generally thinking more or less of physical heredity—that which is entirely contained in the physical line. For the external scientists of to-day cannot yet take the step of recognising the repeated earthly lives of man—the carrying-over of human qualities from former incarnations.

They talk of heredity; but they will only gain a right idea of the question of heredity when they consider it in conjunction with what you may already know, even if you only understand the content of the booklet on Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy Human life runs its course in this way: There is a first section, approximately to the seventh year—to the change of teeth; a second, lasting until the fourteenth year; a third, until the twenty-first; and so on. (For instance, there is another period until the twenty-eighth year.) You will find some further details in a booklet reproducing the content of my recent lecture at Liestal, where I pointed out once more, from another standpoint, these truths of human evolution between birth and death and its division into seven-year periods. Broadly speaking, as you know, the physical body is to some extent inwardly perfected between birth and the change of teeth, the etheric from then onward to the time of puberty, and afterwards the astral body.

Let us to-day consider this time of puberty, which takes its course from about the fourteenth to the sixteenth year. (It varies, as you know, with climate, nationality, etc.) At this time the human being becomes ripe to bring descendants into life. The study of this period is therefore immensely important—especially for a natural-scientific theory of heredity. For up to this time the human being must have developed all those qualities which make him able—out of himself—to convey such qualities to his descendants. He cannot wait until a later time for the development of these faculties. In a subordinate sense, no doubt, characteristics subsequently acquired can also be transmitted to the descendants; but speaking in the sense of natural science, man is undoubtedly so organised that at the age of fourteen to sixteen he becomes completely ripe for inheritance. We cannot therefore say that the main qualities which enter into his development after this time of life are of any great significance for the question of heredity. Natural Science will therefore have to find out the reasons why man ceases, from this moment onward, to develop in himself foundations of heredity. In the animal the thing is different. Throughout its life, the animal does not essentially get beyond this point of time. This is what we must really comprehend.

Without entering further into many things which would have to be considered in this connection, I wish to say at once what really underlies this matter from the point of view of Spiritual Science. Take now the moment of birth. Before it, we have a long period of time which man spends in the spiritual life between death and a new birth. There, the processes take place which I have so often described in outline in a certain way. Naturally, all that takes place in that time between death and a new birth influences the human being. But above all, that which takes place in the spiritual between death and a new birth contains much that is related to the development of the bodily nature between birth and the age of fourteen to sixteen. What man works out, on Earth, very largely in his unconsciousness, this above all he works out between death and a new birth from the standpoint of a higher consciousness. Here upon Earth, man looks through his eyes and other senses upon the mineral, plant and animal world. ... When he is in the spiritual world with the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and Exusiai, ... and with those human beings who have also passed through the gate of death and who in some way can be near to his soul, then, looking downward, his attention is directed above all to that which is connected with the life of humanity during this time. And from thence, as I have explained even in exoteric lectures, all that which underlies heredity is likewise determined. And as you know from an earlier lecture, the result of the past vocational life also emerges like a relic of the processes between death and a new birth—appearing physiognomically as it were, in the gestures and in the whole inherited tendencies too. In the human being at this time of life—even in the way he walks and moves his hands and in other respects deports himself—you can see the result of his vocational life in the last incarnation. Then comes the period from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, which is to some extent in opposition to the preceding one. During this period, the hereditary impulses cannot work on in the same way, for as we have seen, the point of time at which man has these impulses fully developed is already passed. External science takes no account of such questions; but it will have to do so, unless it wishes to be void of all reality.

Now this is also the point of time when man is led by vague unconscious impulses towards his new calling; and into this, the processes which lie between death and a new birth do not work nearly so much. For in this epoch the impulses of his former incarnation are especially at work. When circumstances work so as to drive him into this or that calling, the human being believes—and others around him too believe—that outer circumstances alone are in reality bringing it about. But the outer circumstances are subconsciously connected with what is living in the human soul—living in it directly from the conditions of the former incarnation. Observe the difference: In the preceding period—from the seventh to the fourteenth year—our former incarnation, fertilised by what takes place between death and a new birth, goes into our bodily organisation, making it the image of our former calling. But in the following period the impulses no longer work into us—no longer impress their gestures on us—but lead us along the paths of life to our new calling.

See what an infinitely fruitful thought will arise from these considerations, for the whole educational system of the future. If only our outer worldly culture could make up its mind to reckon with repeated lives on Earth instead of setting up fanciful theories—theories which cannot but be fanciful, because they do not reckon with the true reality but with a fragment of it—with the realities which are immediate and present between birth and death.

Here we can gain an outlook, of what untold importance it will be for Spiritual Science to enter into those circles which have to do with the human being's education and development, and with the influences which are brought to bear upon the life of man in the external social order. Of course we are here looking out upon wide perspectives,—but they have very much to do with the reality. For in the evolution of the world, chaos does not prevail. Order prevails—or, if it be disorder, even so it will always be explicable out of the spiritual life. He, therefore, who knows the laws connected with repeated lives on Earth, can meet life in a very different way with his advice and active help. He can say things and institute things, connected with the real course of life.

You must remember, in a certain sense everything in the world is cyclic. We know the great cycles of post-Atlantean time: the Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Latin, our own, and that which will follow it. The souls of men return in each of these cycles—more than once, or in some cases only once. But life on this Earth is not only cyclic in this all-embracing sense. It is also cyclic in the sense that certain conditions can be determined if we are able rightly to understand those that preceded them. For instance, if someone understands what was spiritually at work in the first centuries of Christian evolution—say, from the third to the seventh century A.D.—if he knows these spiritual impulses, then he can also understand what social needs can be at work in our time. There is a cyclic evolution, and if a man is destined to place himself into this cyclic evolution in a certain way, we make him unhappy if we advise him to behave differently. Now in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch men will have to place themselves into life more and more consciously. Therefore a knowledge of these laws will also have to emerge increasingly. It must be made possible for a man to see himself in real connection with all that is going on in his environment. It is not only that we should learn to choose the right callings for our children; but that we ourselves should be able to develop the right thoughts as to our own relation to the world, no matter where in life we may be placed. For as you know, thoughts are realities. In future it will matter more and more what a man thinks about his connection with all that is going on in the world around him—in the evolution of the Spirit of the Time. In these matters, more and more consciousness will have to take hold of the human soul.

Remember how I tried to characterise the streams of life that arose with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. I showed how there arose throughout the Western regions that stream which rather tends to make the human being a Bourgeois. (For so we called it, choosing a comprehensive and, as it were, approximate term). Bourgeoisdom has come to expression in Western Europe and in America. With this ideal of the Bourgeois we then contrasted the Eastern goal. (It is only a goal for the present: it is not so clearly expressed, for the Western culture is comparatively more advanced than the Eastern.) What is the Eastern goal? It is the ideal of the Pilgrim. These two ideals—Bourgeois and Pilgrim—stand over against each other. Unless we realise how much this signifies for life, we cannot possibly enter into that understanding of life which is dawning more and more. The people of former centuries and millennia—they could confront life without conscious understanding. For they were guided by the Divine-spiritual powers. We must approach life with conscious understanding—increasingly, the more we develop into the future which is now at hand.

Such things as I just now explained to you—the two streams, one of which is based on heredity and the other on salvation, liberation,—such things must be thoroughly understood if we would claim any judgment upon the life of present time. For these things force themselves upon us. It is not merely my statement; it can be said out of the realities of the time, for it has been felt and to some extent even known for a long time past by those who have confronted life not sleepily and obtusely but with full, wide-awake attention. I have already spoken of this peculiarity of our time: there are many human beings in our time who have a real feeling for the things which are emerging, but are unable (remember what I told you about Jaurès)—unable to rise to an understanding of reincarnation and Karma. Unable to take hold either of individual Karma or of World-Karma, they cannot penetrate what they so well perceive.

In many places in modern history, we find human beings who had an open eye for what was happening, though they could never rise to the point of explaining things from the standpoint of repeated earthly lives;—nay more, though they themselves, just because they could not accept repeated earthly lives, largely contributed to bring about the very things they criticised so sharply. That indeed is characteristic of the men of to-day, even of those who see most clearly. They criticise existing things, while they themselves are working to bring about the very things they judge so truly. So do unconscious impulses play into our human life.

Take for instance a man who saw many things with extreme clarity; a man who clearly observed the life around him, notably his own particular surroundings. I refer to John Stuart Mill, the famous English philosopher,—born in 1806 and died in 1873. Many people of our time regard him as the renewer or essential continuer of Logic; but he also developed social insight, far-reaching social ideas. He turned his attention to the social evolution of that world especially, with which he was familiar in his own environment. And he wanted to find an answer to the question, which for him assumed a tragic form: Into what harbour are we steering? What is the tendency and ultimate goal of that social character which has been stamped, to begin with, upon the life of the nineteenth century? The type of humanity, said Mill, which the nineteenth century developed, is essentially the Bourgeois. Wherein does the Bourgeois differ from the earlier types of humanity which evolved in the course of ages? He asked himself this question, and he replied, The Bourgeois differs in this respect: In former times the individual was of far greater importance. (I am clothing it now rather in our ideas; John Stuart Mill expressed practically the same in other words.) Through the man of former time, a stronger individuality was speaking; one felt the active rising of the soul beyond the immediate and outward physical realities. The Bourgeois type tends to reduce everything to a dead level—tends to equalise all men in the social order. And what is the upshot of this equalising process? Not the equalising in greatness of the human soul, but in nonentity,—so says John Stuart Mill. And he outlines a human future for this fifth post-Atlantean age. Human beings, in their social life together, will more and more become the mincemeat of Bourgeois nonentity. He felt this as a tragical conclusion.

Men feel such things in different ways, however, according as they are born out of the Western or the Eastern culture. The Russian thinker Herzen made himself thoroughly familiar with these observations by John Stuart Mill, but in his soul the thing worked differently. While the Western thinker describes this perspective of Bourgeoisdom with a certain nonchalance, the Eastern suffers terribly to think that Europe—as Mill and Herzen even said—should be steering towards a kind of Chinese state. Both Mill and Herzen (as you may see from Herzen's book, published in 1864)—the one with a more Eastern, the other with a more Western colouring,—regard what has arisen in China as a stage already attained, compared to which Europe is only tending in the same direction—tending to a new China, a senile civilisation where men are the mere mincemeat of Bourgeois nonentity. A narrowing of intellect will come, says John Stuart Mill,—a narrowing of intellect and vigour, a wearing down of individuality; in a word, all that will tend to a dead level,—a constant flattening of life, greater and greater superficiality, to the exclusion of the all-embracing human interests. So says John Stuart Mill, and Herzen only confirms it with a more tragic feeling: reduction of all things to the interests of the ledger, mercantile Bourgeois prosperity. Thus, in the 1860's, John Stuart Mill and Herzen! Mill, speaking in the first place of his own country, declares: England is on the way to become a modern China! Herzen replies: Not only England but all Europe! As you may see from Herzen's work of 1864, Herzen and Mill at that time were more or less agreed as to what Herzen thus expresses: If an un-awaited resurrection does not occur,—leading to a re-birth of human personality, giving it strength to overcome this Bourgeoisie,—Europe despite its noble ancestry and Christianity will become a modern China.

These words were spoken in 1864. But Herzen had no opportunity to reckon with repeated earthly lives and Karma. Such a perception, therefore, he could only receive in deepest tragedy, and he expressed it thus: We are not the doctors, we are the pains of our time. Conglomerated mediocrity—that is the state we are approaching. (It can perhaps better be expressed by the English term which Herzen and Mill employed—‘conglomerated mediocrity’—than by any German words.) And Herzen says, out of deep tragical feeling: The time will come in Europe, when modern scientific realism will have gone so far that men will no longer seriously believe in anything belonging to the other world—the super-sensible. People will say that the only goal we have to follow is in the outer physical realities. Men will be sacrificed for these realities, nor will there be any other perspective than that the human beings sacrificed are the mere bridge for those who follow after them. Thus will the individual be sacrificed to the polyp-state of the future.

Such words were really spoken at that time. Europe, says Herzen, has only one difficulty in becoming very rapidly a modern China, and that is Christianity. Christianity cannot so easily be overcome. But he still sees no hopeful outlook, for he finds even Christianity made flat and superficial—superficial in the Revolution, and the Revolution, he says, made still further superficial in the middle-class Liberalism of the 19th century—conglomerated mediocrity! ... Looking to what was said by Mill, and mindful of the downfall of ancient Rome, Herzen declares: I see the unavoidable breakdown of old Europe. At the portals of the old world (meaning Europe) there stands no Catilina, but only death.

There is another author, who learned very much from Mill and Herzen,—I refer to the contemporary Russian writer Merejkowsky. He, too, sees clearly many things that are there around him in the present time. But he cannot make up his mind to receive the sustaining ideas of Spiritual Science. Merejkowsky says, not without justification, The sceptre of former ages has been replaced by the yard-rule, the bible by the ledger, and the altar by the counter.

But the fault is, these things are merely criticized. For as you know, it is inevitable for the yard-rule, the ledger and the counter to play the part they actually play in this fifth post-Atlantean age. It must be so. It is according to an unavoidable World-Karma. The point is not to criticize or to condemn, but to pour into this world of yard-rule, counter and ledger the Spirit which alone can grapple with them,—that is, the Spirit of Spiritual Science.

These things are very serious. I want to let you feel, as I always do on such occasions: I am not setting forth what I myself happen to want to say. What I express, is said in agreement with those men who have observed life openly and un-asleep. Views and opinions everyone can have, but the question is: How do we stand in our time with our opinions, how are they rooted in the soil of our time? Can we confirm them by the facts? Our age is assuming a certain character,—a character clearly perceived by those who want to see. We cannot give to our age any character we like; that is out of the question. We must see how the spiritual evolution of mankind progresses, from cycle to cycle.

As I have told you, there are occult societies who have knowledge of these things out of old tradition—out of the ancient atavistic secret doctrine. And as you also know from former lectures, these societies, notably in the West—(but Eastern people have become their followers)—have assumed an impure character. That does not prevent them from preserving certain secrets of existence. But they preserve them in a way which is not allowable in our time. He above all, who, obedient to the spiritual message of the time, communicates that part of Spiritual Science which is now being made public according to the true spirit of our age,—he above all encounters opposition. Opposition which undoubtedly often proceeds from unclean sources. For the opposition is guided and directed everywhere by spiritual powers; that we must not forget.

So we can understand it, if opposition arises on all hands precisely to that form of Spiritual Science which has to live within our movement. These thing's are so easy to manipulate nowadays. Time and again they declare: ‘It must not be; it is not allowable for such a science to be created for wider circles.’ And then they summon up all kinds of powers which have the public ear to-day, so as to render Spiritual Science harmless. University Professors go from country to country proclaiming themselves in duty bound to stand up against my Spiritual Science above all, because—as they say—our time must concentrate on the Reality (meaning that Reality which they alone can see) and not on these things which divert men from it.

There is sometimes no little method in such attacks. Anyone who is not blind, can see how they select the right places according to the political constellations; the places where they think their reputations as Professors will be most effective, or where they think they will best be able to heave us out of the saddle. They think they will make most headway by choosing the right places and using the right words, (I mean not inherently right, but according to the passions of today).

These things, however, are all of them part of a larger whole. Nothing is more feared, nothing is more anathematised in certain quarters, than the possibility that a number of people might discover something of the real character of life in our time. For in those quarters especially, where the aforesaid occult brotherhoods exist, they have the deepest interest in keeping people in the dark, as to the things which are connected with the real laws of life. If one keeps people in the dark, one can work among them most effectively oneself. One can no longer work effectively when they begin to know how they are really standing in the present time. That is a danger for those who want to fish in clouded waters,—who want to keep their esoteric knowledge to themselves and apply it so as to mould men in their social relationships in the way they want to have them.

There are members of occult brotherhoods to-day, fully convinced within their brotherhoods that spiritual powers everywhere prevail in our surroundings, and that a bond exists between the living and the dead. Within their occult brotherhoods they speak in no other terms than of the real laws of the Spiritual World,—those laws of which we in our Spiritual Science possess a part which must be made public to-day. They speak of all these things, inasmuch as they have received them from old atavistic tradition. Thereupon, they will write newspaper articles against the very same things, branding them as medieval superstitions. Often they are the very same people, who in the occult societies cultivate Spiritual Science as a traditional doctrine, and in the public journals write against it, characterising it as ‘medieval superstition,’ ‘outworn mysticism’ and the like. They think it right that they should keep this knowledge to themselves, while other men remain stupid, ignorant of the principles by which they are being led and guided. (Of course there are also many very peculiar members of occult brotherhoods, who know about as much of the world as they can reach with the ends of their noses. They too join in the chorus, saying how impossible it is to make public in our time ‘the content of the Mysteries.’)

But there are many ways of keeping people befogged. Just as Spiritual Science gives us certain ideas and concepts as a true key to find our entry into the Spiritual World (I mentioned this in the Liestal and in other public lectures) so one can find certain concepts wherewith to ‘have on toast’ that part of the population which cannot abide the complete flattening of the intellect by the Natural Scientific outlook, whereof Mill and Herzen speak. It is always possible to form concepts in a certain manner. If only people knew how concepts are formed in public life to-day, in order to prepare the souls of men for what one wants! Many a man, if he knew this, would presently bestir himself to approach true spiritual science, which tells of these things in a honest and upright way. To-day I will not refer to all manner of lofty concepts which are being proclaimed to men as high ideals, not with the object of their attaining what these ideals imply, but with an altogether different purpose. I will not speak of that to-day, but will make clear by a simple example how easy it is to ‘have on toast’ people who feel a certain need to satisfy their mystic longings.

I will choose the silliest example I can. Someone might say: Number, even by the Pythagoreans of old, was held to contain the secrets of the World-order. Much is contained in the relationships of number. Take for instance these two sets of numbers. Nicholas II. of Russia—he was

born in the year	1868
came to the throne in	1894
has reigned for	22 years
and is now	48 years old
Add up the numbers:	3832
Halve it and we get:	1916,—

the most important year of the War. A very occult relationship of numbers; for now take George V. of England:

He was born in the year	1865,
his reign began in	1910;
he has reigned for	6 years
and he is	51 years old
Add up the numbers:	3832
Halve it:	1916.

How intimately the destinies of these two coincide! See how great a part the Pythagorean laws of Number are playing in the world! But that is not all, for there is Poincaré:

He was born in	1860,
he reigned since	1913.
That is,	3 years
and he is	56 years old
Add up the numbers:	3832.
Halve it:	1916.

See how the Numbers correspond among the three Allies!

One of the silliest examples, of course, for if I were now to step down and ask one of the ladies—needless to say, I shall not do so—when she was born, since when she has been a member of the Anthroposophical Society, how old she is (of course, I shall ask no such question), and how many years she has been in the Society, and if I were then to add up the numbers and halve the sum, I should get the very same number—exactly the same. An ideal example! Assume, for instance, some lady or gentleman, X. or Y,

was born in	1870,
joined the A.S. in	1912
has been in it for	4 years,
and is now	46 years old.
Add up:	3832,
Halve it:	1916.

A very silly example, no doubt. But I can assure you, many things, in which such ‘Mysteries of Number’ are sought out, depend upon no more than this. They are only a little less obvious. And it is just as easy in other spheres to put concepts together so as to throw sand in people's eyes. You only need skilfully choose your paths and not let people know what lies behind it. Even in the example I have just given, many people fall into the trap. How deeply significant, that destiny should choose the year 1916! But if we had reckoned it for 1914 it would have come out just as well. The fateful year for the three Allies would have coincided with the outbreak of the War. Any number can be put together on the same principle. Many a thing that is construed to-day—only out of somewhat different foundations of thought—is no more profound than this. Only, when it is a little more hidden, people do not see through it. If plenty of words are added—‘profound,’ ‘cosmic,’ ‘abysmal depths’ and so on,—and especially if all manner of numerical relations are adduced, one can gain countless followers and make it appear that one is speaking out of very special depths of human knowledge.

Nevertheless, there is something more in the methods chosen by certain people to throw sand in other people's eyes. Such and such ideas are proclaimed in this quarter or that, and certain statements are then added. The origin lies in some occult association which wishes to attain a certain purpose. One only need know the ways and means that are adopted.

Such things should become impossible in future; and to this end a number of people must develop, not the narrow, limited intelligence and vigour to which Mill refers, but the sustaining intelligence and vigour of life which come from Spiritual Science. This Science will fertilise our human intellect and energy of life. Then only shall we face the facts of life, in such a way that we cannot be deceived.

You see, it is not unconnected with these things:—There was a certain fear and horror when from the European East to the West there shone across the strange phenomenon of such an individuality as Blavatsky, who appeared as it were from the blue sky. (For her appearance made itself felt, long before it was fulfilled.) I have often pointed out how important this really was for the whole course of the nineteenth century. She appeared at the very moment when the conflict raged most furiously between the so-called ‘esotericists’ and the so-called ‘progressive’ occultists. It was the reactionarists who in this connection called themselves the esotericists. Those who wanted to keep everything from the world—those who wanted to keep all the occult secrets for themselves—called themselves ‘esotericists.’ They applied the word with this meaning. Into the midst of this conflict, the life of Blavatsky fell; and through her peculiar constitution—for immense forces were working out of her subconsciousness—there was a danger that the spiritual secrets might be revealed. People might discover something in the true and real sense; such was the danger. Beneath this danger they lived from 1840 onward—practically since Blavatsky was born, since her early childhood. And ever since that time, efforts were made so to arrange things as to enlist Blavatsky in the service of the Western Occult Brotherhoods. Had this succeeded, only what the Western brotherhoods considered suitable and in their interests would have emerged. But it all took a strange turn. I have told you how the ‘Grand Orient’ first made efforts to get hold of her. But she made conditions which could not be fulfilled. The effort failed. Thereupon she made a great deal of trouble for an American, Western brotherhood; for with her temperament, she constantly boiled over and eluded them,—escaped from what they wanted of her. Thereupon she was expelled, and they knew of no other resource than to condemn her to a kind of occult imprisonment and so bring her into an Indian occult brotherhood whose pursuit of occultism they considered harmless for the so-called Western brotherhoods, because it went along their lines. For they said to themselves: What if all manner of things are brought to light from Indian sources, that will not greatly disturb our circles. Most of the occultists who were working with serious occultism in those quarters said: What, after all, will emerge, now that we have surrounded Blavatsky with all the pictures which shut her off from a real knowledge of the Spiritual World! She will only absorb such things as may happily unite at their tea-parties so many old maids of both sexes (I am really quoting!) She will not greatly disturb our circles.

In reality, things only became unpleasant when our stream emerged, which took things in real earnest, giving access to the sources of a real Spiritual World. Here you will see how deep-seated were the foundations of the conflicts which resulted. For in fact there was something in Blavatsky of those impulses which must come from the Eastern World, and, moreover, there was a certain necessity for a kind of synthesis with the Western world. But the point was this:—In recent times they had fallen more and more in the pursuit of certain purposes and aims, which, as I indicated once before, were not the purposes of truth alone,—purposes which they pursued in the way I recently described to you. Of a truth, these were sometimes quite other aims than those of truth alone!

You must consider this:—If one knows how the cycles of humanity take their course,—if one knows what character the world to-day must have according to its Archai, this or that having prevailed in former times, each at its proper place in evolution,—if one is cognisant of these things, then one can work in a certain way. If on the one hand one possesses traditional Occult Science, while on the other hand in public journals and in public life one attacks the same Occult Science as mere medieval superstition, then indeed one can work in muddy waters and attain important objects,—whatever it may be that one desires to attain. For things in the world are connected, only people need not always know what the connection is. For many human beings, the connection can take place in the unconscious.

We must be able to turn our gaze, as I said before, in the right directions. Much depends on this. We must look to the right places. Often something quite insignificant will appear there; but the insignificant, seen in the right connection, often explains far more than is explained by what would seem important or significant. For in many things in the world it is indeed as Hamlet says of good and evil: Nothing in itself is good or evil, but man makes it so in thought. So it is with many other things. A thing is important not by virtue of what it appears to be, directly, in the outer Maya—in the great illusion. Things are only recognised in their true significance when we unite them with the right concepts. I will give you an example from the most recent times in Europe, without thereby wishing to encroach on any party or political tendency.

People to-day are fond of thinking at short range, and so there may be those who in their thought refer the outbreak of the present War in Europe to the murder of the heir apparent, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I do not say that that is wrong, I do not say that there is not some truth in it. They can explain certain events by referring them back to that assassination, which took place in July, 1914. But there may also be those who point out that it was printed in a Western journal in January, 1913, that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be murdered in the near future for the good of European humanity.

We can go back, that is to say, to the actual murder; but we can also go back to what was printed in a Western paper already in January, 1913, namely, the statement that he would be murdered.

Or again, we can go back to the murder of Jaurès on the eve of the war, which, as I indicated recently, will in all probability never be fully cleared up. But we can also go back further, and point to the time to which I just referred. Almost as far back as the other saying—that is to say, in the year 1913,—we can find this statement:—If the conditions in Europe should lead to war, Jaurès will be the first to die. We can look up a certain so-called occult almanac, which was sold for 40 francs. Here in this almanac, which, destined for the year 1913, must have been printed in 1912, we can read the following: In Austria, the man of whom it is commonly supposed that he will rule, will not come to the throne, but in his stead a young man, of whom it is not yet supposed that he will rule after the old Emperor. This was printed in a so-called occult almanac for 1913,—printed therefore already in the autumn of 1912. And in the same almanac for 1914 (printed, therefore, in 1913), the same remark was repeated. Evidently, in 1913, the attempted assassination had failed. In all these things the connections will be exposed, once people see things clearly. I mean the connection between what is there in the external reality, and what is brewed in unclean, hidden waves beneath. Some men will begin to recognise the threads that run from public life into this or that brotherhood. And they will recognise moreover, how foolish it is of other brotherhoods still to declaim, even to-day, that certain Truths of the Mysteries must be preserved in silence. These people may be quite innocent; for they are children, albeit they may be old members of this or that Masonic order for example, claiming also to have occult sources. They may be quite innocent. Nevertheless, they too assist the gloom and darkness which are prevailing among men.

I recently chose the example of a very ‘enlightened’ pastor and professor. I pointed out especially the discontinuity prevailing in his thought. (I mentioned it quite briefly here, and dealt with it further at St. Gall and Zurich.) He too, it must be admitted belongs to an occult brotherhood. But he is not one of those who work unfavourably, save by his limitations. For in their occult brotherhood they do acquire a certain limitation. They are purposely kept in a certain narrow sphere. This too, some heads of occult brotherhoods make it their task to bring about.

Above all, it is necessary for people to open their eyes. But our eyes must first learn to see. And we can only learn to see if we allow the direction of our sight to be guided by the understanding we have first received of the Spiritual World. These people always reckon upon qualities on which one seldom calculates in vain in human affairs. Thus, as I mentioned once before, they tried to put me off the track on one occasion. At the time when Alcyone was nominated, I also could have been nominated in a certain way. Thereby, all that pulses and flows through our movement could have been nicely swept out of the world,—if I had let myself in for what was suggested to me pretty strongly: I was to be nominated as the reincarnated St. John! In certain quarters they would then have undertaken to proclaim: Alcyone is so and so; and he—he is the reincarnated St. John. Then the whole movement would not have had to undergo what afterwards ensued.

Vanity, needless to say, is one of many things that make men stupid. Catch people's vanity, and you can attain much, especially if you also know the ways and means of joining certain concepts. As I said before, it was done in the Theosophical Society, but in a too amateurish way. The others do it more skilfully,—more in accordance with realities. One cannot do much to the purpose if one has to reckon with a personality like Annie Besant, who herself is full of passions, and under whom those who were near her heaved many a bitter sigh. One need only know the sighs of those who were in Annie Besant's environment for years, their sighs and their anxieties: what situation would she not bring them into through the fact that she, too, had now been caught in the aura of a certain Indian occultism. For in this connection she had brought with her some strange qualities, coming from strange foundations,—qualities which proved highly inconvenient to a number of people in the Theosophical Society. Many people (men especially) sighed bitterly when they had tried again and again to bring Annie Besant into a sensible line. And there were women too, who sighed, but they subjected themselves time and again. They wanted to cultivate Theosophy in the way that is customary in those circles. But they pursued it in such a way, that it also became—in the theosophical domain—rather like ‘conglomerated mediocrity.’ They tried to carry what John Stuart Mill describes as conglomerated mediocrity, into the pursuit of Spiritual Science. I myself experienced it. A missionary of the Theosophical Society was working in a town belonging to the Section of which I was General Secretary. I went there to give lectures; indeed, I was invited by the said missionary. But when I arrived there, she said to me: We will gradually learn to do without the lectures. After all, they are of no real use. We must arrange afternoon tea-parties and invite the people. They will learn to know each other at afternoon tea—and, she opined, especially over the bread-and-butter. But the lectures (and she said all this with a certain gesture of deprecation)—the lectures will in time grow less and less important. She too, one must say, was wrapped in a regular veil from certain quarters; and indeed there are many such, who. work as missionaries and often do not know what wires they are pulled by. Sometimes not even wires are necessary; very thin cords or even strings are sufficient. Truly, it is piteous, to see how the most sacred and solemn affairs of mankind are sometimes treated.

Now they were especially afraid of this: What would happen if Blavatsky remained sound and healthy, and yet brought to light that which was there in the depths of her nature? Then, they thought, the situation might become very dangerous even politically, owing to her special constitution and her peculiar connection with her own, Russian nationality. So they made a very special effort to eliminate—to put out of action—the object of their fears. And indeed, if what was living in Blavatsky had been able to come forth effectively already at that time (beginning in the 1860's and 70's) many things would have taken a different course—things with respect to which people like Mill and Herzen saw quite truly. But alas, Ahrimanic powers succeeded at that time in eliminating or side-tracking many things. Well, we shall presently see how our own Spiritual Science may yet be treated under the present sorrowful conditions. Those who can recognise its significance for the great tasks of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch will think rightly about it. For it is really true, this Spiritual Science reckons only with the interests of pure humanity. You, by this time, should be in a position to know that this is so, and to perceive the true distinctions. Take for instance the way we have frequently discussed Goethe's Faust, and even presented it on the stage. One need have absolutely no national motives in the background, to present Goethe's Faust to mankind in its occult depths. On the other hand I leave it to you to judge, whether or no one need have national motives in the background, and very peculiar ones at that,—to do as Maeterlinck did recently: to represent Goethe and Schiller and Lessing as ‘mediocre minds’ and write long articles upon their mediocrity, for which articles one gains the support of the great newspapers in the world to-day. Whether or no there are national motives behind such an action, I leave to you to judge. (Nay, perhaps there are motives far deeper than merely national ones.)

But I will ask you now to place two things side by side. I have told you in these lectures of a book recently written by the Chinese author Ku Hung Ming—a work of genius in some respects. In this book Ku Hung Ming explains that it is the only salvation for the Europeans at the present time to turn to Chinese culture. For, says Ku Hung Ming, the Europeans will then be able to replace their worthless ‘charters of liberty’ by the ‘charters of faithfulness’ which can only come out of the Chinese spirit. Ku Hung Ming is a brilliant and incisive thinker, and he confirms at this point what was long ago foreboded by John Stuart Mill and Herzen; confirms it, moreover, out of a deep knowledge of the Chinese culture. Not only so; we find the same foreboding in a thinker who came forward, not as a philologist or schoolmaster or theologian, but as a man of practical affairs. I refer to Max Eyth, of whom I spoke the other day, who was a business man to begin with, passed through several other callings and had a real knowledge of life.

Ku Hung Ming describes the Chinese life and culture, and from his graphic descriptions we can gain a vivid idea of what it is. And we get this impression: How right were John Stuart Mill and Herzen (you need only read Herzen's work of 1864)—how right were they when they described the doctrines of Confucius and Laotze as the final and logical consequence which must result if Europe is taken hold of by the so-called positive realism, born of the conglomerated mediocrity of Bourgeois nonentity. For the logical conclusion of what is pursued in our Universities to-day and passes thence into the people as the modern World-conception, is the Chinese spirit; with the sole difference that the latter found its way to this conclusion, out of an earlier history and civilisation, 600 years before the Christian Era. Ku Hung Ming clearly outlines what the Chinese spirit is. Mill and Herzen described the path which is being trodden by that civilisation of Europe which will only take its stand on external, positivist realism. There you have it from both sides at once: from the one side, the prophecy that the Chinese spirit will take hold of Europe, and from the other side the dictum that the Chinese spirit is Europe's only salvation.

Maybe there is yet a third side! I may perhaps raise this very question now at the conclusion of this lecture: What if there be yet a third side, where they may find it very convenient and in their interest that a Chinaman of all people should now be giving the Europeans good advice, to choose the only possible salvation? What if it were no mere matter of chance that the teaching of Ku Hung Ming, of all people, should now be thrown into Europe?—a teaching, however brilliant from the Chinese standpoint, well enough adapted to confuse those who do not receive it with clear and open minds—minds awakened by Spiritual Science. A teaching, I repeat, only too well adapted to confuse men, and, maybe, to lead them in the very direction in which one wants them to go,—into a Chinese state. John Stuart Mill and Herzen recognised quite truly how the sails are set, by certain occult brotherhoods, in this direction. They really want a Chinese system. For the intentions of certain brotherhoods can most readily be instilled into a Chinese Europe. Why should it not be according to the will of such a brotherhood that a Chinaman of all people should now be advising Europe to lend an ear to all the good that might come to them out of the Chinese spirit? May they not well expect that even the most ‘enlightened’ will be carried away by the good advices which a Chinaman can give, now that in Europe herself they no longer know which way to turn?

I have told you how important is this Chinese book. But I also feel obliged (from the standpoint which must always be maintained in our Spiritual Science) to draw your attention to this fact: Such publications as the book—or rather, books—of Ku Hung Ming (for two have already appeared) should be followed with attention, but one should also know that there are definite purposes behind them—far-reaching purposes. We do wrong not to make ourselves acquainted with them, but we do equally wrong to be ‘taken in’ by them. And it is especially important to observe with care and attention all that sets itself up to-day as mysticism or occultism, arising frequently from very cloudy sources. Those who will bear in mind what I have frequently set forth, will certainly endeavour to see truly in these matters. For the modern world stands in the midst of many other streams. And the question is whether individuals have the goodwill to see clearly and openly.

For instance we must be able to appreciate the difference between the stream we have already mentioned and a certain other stream, which to this day possesses far more power than is commonly imagined. I mean the stream proceeding from certain Roman Catholic sources, behind which there are often real principles of Initiation, though, needless to say, those who are brought out into the world from this quarter are led by the leading-strings. Let us now contrast what may well be contrasted: On the one hand the Roman Church, and on the other hand those Occult Brotherhoods of which I spoke—the Roman Church which works in the way that is well known to you, and on the other hand the Brotherhoods, which, needless to say, attack the Roman Church to the knife. Yet they themselves go to such lengths as I described: While they possess the occult knowledge and make use of it, in public they stigmatise it as ‘medieval superstition,’ in order to keep men in the stream which they desire,—in order to make use of them. Contrast with this the Roman Church. You need only take such an event as the Encyclica of the 8th December, 1864, where the standpoint of the Roman Church concerning freedom of conscience and of religious ceremonies is proclaimed ex cathedra. The principles of freedom which are commonly believed are quoted and condemned somewhat in this fashion:—Some people say, Freedom of conscience and religious ceremony is the right of every man. That is delirium—madness, in other words. It is madness, delirium, for an orthodox Catholic—following the Roman see—to claim freedom of conscience and religious ceremony!

That is the one stream. The other finds it preferable not to say such things, but to do things whereby the freedom of conscience—and, above all, the freedom of individual conviction, the placing of individual convictions, into the general life of mankind,—shall be effectively annulled. There you have two contrasting movements—movements which are very important in the present time, and on which much depends.

Considerations such as these at the close of the present lecture, are given with a definite purpose, so that those who stand within our spiritual-scientific movement may resolve within their souls not to be among the sleepy ones, but to be among those who try to see life as it is. You are not a spiritual scientist by merely receiving the knowledge of Spiritual Science and believing in it. You are only a true spiritual scientist when the spiritual-scientific truths transform you into a man who sees clearly and has the will to observe with attention what is going on around him,—to observe it in the right way and at the right points in life, so as to gain a true judgment of the position into which he himself is placed in the world. This, too, is necessary, if we would speak in a fruitful way about the ‘Karma of Vocation.’

These studies we shall presently continue. Then will the necessary light be thrown on what belongs more to the every-day life—the immediate human life of the individual—the Karma of Vocation.

In the last lecture I sought to show how in the spiritual culture of the present day, it is due to misunderstandings when there is so little understanding between those who direct their research to the soul and to the processes within the soul's realm and those who direct their attention to the material processes in the human organism which run their course—however one wishes to call it—as accompanying phenomena, or also, as materialism maintains, as the necessary causes of soul phenomena. And I sought to show what the causes are of such misunderstandings. Today I should, above all, like to draw attention to the fact that such misunderstandings—as well as misunderstandings in other regards—necessarily arise in the search for real, for genuine insight when one fails to take one aspect into consideration, in the cognitive process itself, an aspect which forcefully reveals itself to the spiritual investigator. This aspect reveals itself more and more as an immediate perception during the course of further, extensive spiritual-scientific research. This is something which at first appears very odd when one expresses it: In the sphere in which world conceptions arise, that is in the sphere of insight into spiritual reality, when, I would like to say, one ties oneself down to certain points of view, there necessarily arises a way of regarding the human soul which can both be unequivocally refuted and can just as well be proven correct.

Therefore, the spiritual-scientific researcher more and more tends to abandon the habit of reinforcing one or the other conception by bringing to bear what, in ordinary life would be called a proof, or a refutation. For, in this sphere, as has been said, everything can be proved with certain reasons and everything can, also with certain reasons, be contradicted. Materialism, in its totality, can indeed be strictly proved correct, and, when it addresses itself to single questions about life or about existence can also equally well be shown to be correct. And one will not necessarily find it easy to refute this or that argument which the materialist brings forward in support of his views by merely seeking to refute his conclusion by bringing forward opposing points of view. The same thing holds true for the one whose point of view is a spiritual view of existence. Therefore, the one who truly wishes to conduct research in spiritual fields must, in regard to any world conception know not only all that which speaks for the point of view, but also all that speaks against it. For the remarkable fact arises that the actual truth only becomes evident when one allows to work upon the soul that which speaks for a certain thing, as well as that which speaks against it. And the one who allows his spirit to stare in fixation upon any constellation of concepts or mental representations of a one-sided world view, such a one will always be closed to the fact that just the opposite can appear to be valid to the soul, indeed the opposite must appear to be correct up to a certain point. And such a person can be compared with someone who might insist that human life can only be sustained by breathing in. Breathing in assumes breathing out, both belong together. So also, our concepts, our representations, relate to one another in questions concerning world conceptions. We are able to put forward, in regard to any matter, a concept which confirms it and we are able to put forward a concept which refutes it; one way demands the other, just as inbreathing requires outbreathing, and vice versa. And thus, just as real life can only reveal itself through breathing out and breathing in—when both are present—so, also, the spiritual can only manifest itself within the soul when one is able to enter in an equally positive manner into the pro as well as the con of a particular matter. The supportive, confirming concept is like a breathing out, within the living wholeness of the soul, the reflecting, denying concept like a breathing in, and only in their living working together does that element reveal itself which is rooted in the spiritual reality. It is for this reason that spiritual science is not concerned to apply the methods, to which one is so accustomed in current literature, where this or that is proved or is refuted. The spiritual scientist realizes that that which is brought forward in a positive form concerning world conceptions, can always in a certain sense be justified, but, equally so, what appears to contradict it. When one moves forward in world conception questions to that immediate life which is present in positive and negative concepts, just as bodily life lives in outbreathing and breathing in, then one comes to concepts which truly are able to take in the spirit; one comes to concepts which are equal to reality. However, in doing so, one must often express oneself quite differently than when one expresses oneself according to the habits of thought of ordinary life. But the way in which one expresses oneself arises from the livingly active inner experience of the spirit. And the spirit can only be inwardly experienced, not, in the manner of material existence, be outwardly perceived.

Now, you know, that one of the principal world conception questions is that which I dealt with in the first lectures which I held here this winter, namely, the question concerning matter, concerning physical substance. And I shall touch on this question by way of introduction from the points of view which I have indicated.

One cannot come successfully to terms with the question about substance or about matter if one attempts, again and again, to form mental images or concepts about what matter actually is; when one tries to understand—in other words—what actually is matter, what is substance. One who has truly wrestled in his soul with such riddles—which are very far from the beaten track for many people—such a one knows what is involved in questions of this kind. For, if he has wrestled for a time without yielding to this or that prejudice, he comes to a very different point of view in relation to such a question. He comes to a point of view which allows him to consider as more important the inner attitude of the soul when one forms such a concept as the concept of matter. It is this wrestling of the soul itself which is raised to consciousness. And one then comes to a way of looking at these riddles, which I might characterize in the following way.

He who wishes to understand matter in the way in which it is usually conceived resembles a person who says; I now wish to form an impression of darkness, of a dark room. What does he do? He turns on the light and regards this as the correct method to gain an impression of a dark room. Now, you will agree, this is just the opposite of the right way to go about it. And, it is in the same way, the opposite of the right way—only one has to come to realize this through the inner wrestling which I have pointed to—if one believes that one will ever come to know the nature of matter in setting the spirit into motion in order to illuminate matter, to illuminate substance, by means of spirit. The one and only place where the spirit within the body can silence itself is where an outer process penetrates into our inner life, that is in sense perception, in sensation, where the life of representation, of forming mental images, ceases. It is just by letting the spirit come to silence and by our experiencing this silence of the spirit that we can allow matter, substance, truly to represent itself within our soul.

One does not come to such concepts through ordinary logic; or, I would say, if one does come to them through ordinary logic, then the concepts are much too thin to call forth a genuine power of conviction. Only when one wrestles within the soul with certain concepts, in the way which has been indicated, will they lead to the kind of result which I have pointed toward.

Now, the opposite is also the case. Let us assume, someone wants to comprehend spirit. If he seeks it, for example, in the purely material outward formation of the human body, he is similar to someone who extinguishes the light in order to comprehend it. For it is the secret in this matter, that outer, sense-perceptible nature contradicts the spirit, extinguishes the spirit. Nature builds the reflected image of the spirit, in the same way that an illuminated object throws back, reflects, the light. But nowhere can we find the spirit, in whatever material processes, if we do not grasp the spirit in living activity. Because that is just the essential nature of material processes that the spirit has transformed itself into them; that spirit has incorporated itself into them. And if we then try to come to know the spirit out of them, we misunderstand ourselves.

I wanted to give this as a preface, in order that ever greater clarity can be brought to bear on what the actual cognitive attitude of heart and mind of the spiritual researcher is, and how it is that he needs a certain width and mobility in his life of forming mental images, to be able to penetrate into those things which require penetration. With such concepts it then becomes possible to illuminate the important questions on which I touched last time and which I will briefly indicate in order to move on to our considerations for today.

I said: as things have developed in recent spiritual education and culture, one has come ever more and more to a one-sided way of looking at the relationships of the soul-spiritual to the bodily-physical; a way of looking which expresses itself in the fact that one actually only seeks for the soul- spiritual within that part of the human bodily constitution which lies in the nervous system, that is to say within the brain. One assigns the soul- spiritual exclusively to the brain and nervous system, and one regards the remaining organism, when one speaks of the soul-spiritual, more or less as a kind of incidental supplement to the brain and nervous system. Now, I tried to make clear the results of spiritual research in this field by drawing attention to the fact that one only comes to a true insight about the relationship of the human soul with the human body when one sees the relationship of the entire human soul to the entire bodily constitution. But there it became clear that the matter has yet a deeper background, that is the membering of the entirety of the human soul into the actual representational thought life, into the life of feeling and the life of will. For only the actual representational life of the soul is bound to the nervous organism in the way in which it is assumed by more recent physiological psychology. In contrast, the life of feeling—let it be rightly noted, not in so far as it is represented mentally, but in so far as it arises—is related with the human breathing organism, with everything which is breathing, and which is connected with breathing, as the life of mental representation is related with the nervous system. Thus, one must assign the life of feeling of the soul to the breathing organism. Then further: that which we designate as the life of will, is in a similar relationship with that which in the physical body we must designate as the metabolism, of course into its finest ramifications. And in as much as one takes into consideration that the single systems within the organism interact and interweave—metabolism, of course, also occurs in the nerves—they interpenetrate, I would say, the three systems interpenetrate at the outermost periphery. But a correct understanding, however, is only possible when one regards matters in such a way that one knows: will impulses belong with the metabolism in the same way that the experiences of forming mental images belong with the human nervous system, that is to say, with the brain.

Matters of this kind can, of course, only be indicated to begin with. And just for this reason, objection after objection is possible. But I know quite definitely: when one no longer approaches that which has just been presented out of merely partial aspects of today's natural scientific research but rather out of the whole spectrum of anatomical, physiological research, then the result will be a complete harmony between the assertions which I have made from the spiritual scientific point of view and the assertions of natural science. Regarded superficially—allow me to cite the following objection only as a characteristic example—objection after objection can be brought forward against so comprehensive a truth. Someone could say: Let us agree that certain feelings are connected with the breathing organism; for no one can really doubt that for certain feelings this can be very convincingly demonstrated. But someone could also say: Yes, but what do you have to say to the fact that we perceive certain melodies, that melodies arise in our consciousness; and the feeling of an aesthetic pleasure connects itself with melodies. Can one, in this case, speak of any kind of connection of the breathing organism to this which quite evidently arises in the head, and so obviously is connected with the nervous organism according to the results of physiological research? The moment one considers the matter rightly, the correctness of my assertion becomes evident with complete clarity. Namely, one must take into consideration that with every outbreath an important parallel process occurs in the brain: the brain would rise with the outbreath if it were not prevented from rising by top of the skull—the breathing carries forward into the brain—and in reverse, the brain sinks with the inbreath. And since it cannot rise or fall because of the skull, there arises, what is well known to physiology: there arises the change in the blood stream, there occurs what physiology knows as brain-breathing, that is to say, certain processes which occur in the surrounding of the nerves run parallel with the process of breathing. And in the meeting of the breathing process with that which lives in us as tone through the ear there occurs what points to the fact that feeling, also in this realm, is connected with the breathing organism, just as the life of mental representations is connected with the nervous organism.

I want to indicate this because it is a relatively remote example and can, therefore, provide a ready objection. If one could come to an understanding with someone concerning all the details given by physiological research, one would find that none of these details contradicts what was presented here last time and has been brought forward again today.

It should now be my task to extend our considerations in a similar way as was done in the last lecture. And, to do so, I must enter more closely into the manner in which the human being unfolds the life of sense perception, in order to show the actual relationship between the capacity for sense perception, which leads to representations, and the life of feeling and of will, indeed, altogether, the life of the human being as soul, as body, and as spirit.

Through our sense life we come into connection with the sense- perceptible environment. Within this sense-perceptible environment natural science distinguishes certain substances, let us rather say, substance-forms - - because it is on these that the matter depends; if I wished to discuss this with the physicist I would have to say aggregate-conditions—solid, fluid, gaseous. Now, however, as you all know, natural scientific research comes to assume—in addition to the above-mentioned form in which physical substance appears—also another condition. When natural science wants to explain light, it is not satisfied only to recognize the existence of these substance- forms, which I have just mentioned, but science reaches out to include that which at first appears to be finer than these sorts of substance; it reaches out to that which one usually calls ether. The idea of ether is an extraordinarily difficult one, and one can say: the various thoughts which have been developed about the ether, what can be said about it, are as different, as manifold as one can imagine. It is, of course, not possible to go into all these details. Attention should only be drawn to the fact that natural science feels impelled to postulate the concept of the ether, which means thinking about the world not only as filled with the immediate sense perception of the more solid substances, but to think of it as filled with ether. What is characteristic is that natural science with its current methods fails to ascend to an understanding of what the ether actually is. Natural research for its real activity always requires material bases. But the ether itself always escapes, in a certain sense, from the material foundations. The ether appears in union with material processes, it calls forth material processes; but it is not to be grasped, so to speak, with those means which are bound to the material foundations. There has, therefore, developed in recent times a strange ether-concept, which, basically, is extraordinarily interesting. The concept of the ether which one can already find today among physicists, goes in the direction of saying: the ether must be—whatever else it may be—something which at any rate has no attributes such as ordinary matter has. And in this way, natural scientific research points toward the recognition of something beyond its own material basis, when it says of the ether, it possesses aspects which research, with its methods, cannot find. Natural scientific research comes to the acceptance of an ether, but with its methods is unable to come to fill out this representation of the ether with any content.

Spiritual science yields the following. Natural scientific research proceeds from the material foundation; spiritual research from the spirit-soul basis. The spiritual researcher—if he does not arbitrarily remain within a certain limit—is also, like the natural scientist, driven to the concept of ether, only from the other side. The spiritual investigator attempts to come to know what is active and effective within the interior of the soul. If he were to remain standing at the point where he is able to experience inwardly only what takes place in the ordinary life of the soul, he would actually in this field not even advance as far as the natural scientist who postulates the concept of an ether. For the natural scientist at least forms the concept of an ether; he accepts it for consideration. The soul researcher, if he fails to come to a concept of ether, resembles a natural scientist who says: Why should I trouble myself about what else lives? I accept the three basic forms: solid, fluid, gaseous bodies; what is finer than that, about that I do not concern myself. This is, for the most part, just what the teachings of psychology in fact do.

However, not everyone who has been active in the realm of soul research acts in this way; and one finds especially within that extraordinarily significant scientific development which is based on the foundation laid in the first third of the nineteenth century by German Idealism—not in this Idealism itself, but in that which then evolved out of this Idealism—one finds the first beginnings leading toward the concept of the ether from the other side, from the spiritual-soul side, just as nature research ascends to the idea of ether from the material side. And, if one truly wishes to have the concept of the ether, one must approach it from two sides. Otherwise, one will not come rightly to terms with this concept. What is interesting is that the great German philosophical Idealists, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, despite their penetrating power of thinking—an ability which I have often characterized here—despite this, they did not form the concept of the ether. They were unable to so enstrengthen, to empower, their inner soul life in order to conceive of the ether. Instead, there arose within those who allowed themselves to be fructified by this Idealism, who, in a sense, allowed the thoughts which had been brought forth to work further within their souls - - despite the fact that they were not as great geniuses as their Idealist predecessors—this concept of the ether arose out of their research into the soul's realm. We first find this ether concept in the work of Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was also his father's pupil. He allowed that to continue to work within his soul which Johann Gottlieb Fichte and his successors, Schelling and Hegel, had accomplished. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, allowing this thought to become condensed to an even greater effectiveness within him, came to say: When one contemplates the life of soul and spirit, when one so to speak, traverses it in all directions, one comes to say: This soul-spiritual life must flow down into the ether, just as the solid, fluid, gaseous states flow up into the ether. So must, in a sense, the lowest element of the soul flow into the ether, just as the highest element of matter flows into the ether above. Characteristic also are certain thoughts which Immanuel Hermann Fichte formed about this matter, by means of which he, indeed, penetrated from the spirit- soul realm and came to the boundary of the ether. You will find this passage from his book Anthropology, 1860, quoted in my most recent book, Of the Human Riddle:

“One cannot find, within the material elements of substance ... that which truly endures, that uniting formative principle of the body, which reveals itself as operative during our entire life.” “Thus, we are directed to a second, essentially different causative principle in the body.” “Inasmuch” as this “contains that which actually persists, endures in the metabolism, it is the true, inner, invisible, but in all visible substantiality present body. That other, the outward manifestation of it, built up out of incessantly active metabolism, may from now on be designated ‘body,’ which is, in fact, not that which persists and is not the enduring whole, and which is the mere result or the after-image of that inner bodily presence, which casts him into the constantly changing world of substance, in a way similar to the way the magnetic force prepares an apparently solid body out of the particles of the iron filings, but which dissolves in all directions when the force which unites them is withdrawn.”

For I. H. Fichte there lived within the ordinary body, consisting of outer material substance, an invisible body, and this invisible body we might also call the etheric body; an etheric body which brings the single substantial particles of this visible body into their form, which sculpts them, forms them. And I. H. Fichte is so clear about the fact that this ether body, to which he descends out of the soul realm, is not subject to the processes of the physical body, that the insight into the existence of such an etheric body suffices to enable him to transcend the riddle of death. In this context I. H. Fichte says in his Anthropology:

“It is hardly necessary still to ask, how the human being finds himself in the process of death. The human being remains after this last, for us still visible act of the living process, he remains in his essential being entirely the same in spirit and in organizing power as he formerly was. His integrity is preserved; for he has indeed lost nothing of that which was his and belonged to his substance during his visible life. He only returns in death into the invisible world, or better said, as he never left this world, as it is that which actually endures within all that is visible—he has simply stripped off a particular form of the visible. ‘To be dead’ only signifies, to be no longer perceptible to the usual comprehension by the senses, just as in the same way, that which is actually real, the final ground of bodily manifestation is imperceptible to the senses.”

I have shown in the case of I. H. Fichte how he advances from the soul realm to such an invisible body. It is interesting to note that in a number of instances in the after-glow of the spiritual life of German Idealism, the same thing appears. Some time ago I also drew attention to a lonely thinker, who was a school director in Bromberg, who had occupied himself with the question of immortality, Johann Heinrich Deinhardt, who died in the sixties of the nineteenth century. At first, he concerned himself with the question of immortality as others had also done, seeking to penetrate the question of immortality through thoughts and concepts. But more resulted for him than for those who merely live in concepts. And it was there possible for the publisher of the treatise about immortality which J. H. Deinhardt had written to quote a passage from a letter which the author had written him, in which J. H. Deinhardt says, that, although he had not come so far as to publish it in a book, his inner research had, nevertheless, resulted clearly in the recognition that the human being, during his entire life between birth and death, works on the formation of an invisible body which is released into the spiritual world at death.

Thus, one could draw attention to a variety of other instances within German spiritual life of such a direction of research and of a way of seeing and comprehending the world. They would all show that in this direction of research there lay an urge not to remain limited by mere philosophical speculation, which results in a mere life in concepts, but rather to so enstrengthen the inner life of the soul that it presses forward to that degree of concentration that reaches through to the etheric.

Along the paths on which these researchers entered, the real riddle of the etheric cannot yet be resolved from within, but one can, in a certain sense say: these researchers are on the way to spiritual science. For this riddle concerning the etheric will be resolved when the human soul undergoes those inner processes of practical exercise which I have frequently characterized here, and which are described more exactly in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The human being, when he undergoes these inner soul processes, does indeed gradually attain to the etheric from within. Then the etheric will be directly present for him. Only then, however, is he really in the position to understand what a sense perception is, to understand what actually occurs in the perception by the senses.

In order to characterize this today, I must seek access to this question, in a certain sense, from another side. Let us approach that which actually occurs in the metabolic processes for the human being. Simply expressed, we can think of the metabolic processes in the human organism as occurring in such a way that, essentially, they have to do with the fluid material element. This can be easily understood if one acquaints oneself, even only to a limited extent, with the most easily accessible natural scientific ideas in this field. What constitutes a metabolic process lives, one can say, in the fluid element. That which is breathing lives in the airy, gaseous element; in breathing we have an interchange between inner and outer processes in the air, just as in the metabolism we have an interchange between substance processes which have occurred outside of our body, and such which occur within our body. What happens then when we perceive with our senses and then proceed to form mental representations? What corresponds to this actually? In just the same way that the fluid processes correspond to the metabolism, and the airy processes correspond to breathing—what corresponds to perception? What corresponds to perception are etheric processes. Just as we in a sense live with our metabolism in the fluid, and live with our breathing in the air, we live with our perceiving in the ether. And inner ether processes, inner etheric processes, which occur in the invisible body, about which we have just been speaking, occur, come into contact with external etheric processes in sense perception. When it is objected: Yes, but certain sense perceptions are self-evidently metabolic processes!—this is especially obvious for those sense perceptions which correspond with the so- called lower senses, smell, taste. A more accurate consideration shows that along with that which is substantial, that belongs directly to the metabolism, along with every such process, also with tasting, for example, an etheric process occurs, by means of which we enter into relation with the external ether, just as we enter into relation with the air with our physical body when we breathe. Without the understanding of the etheric world, an understanding of sense perception and sensation is impossible.

What is it that actually happens? Well, one can only really know what happens there when one has gone far enough in the inner soul process that the inner etheric-bodily element has become a reality for one. This will happen when one has achieved what I called imaginative thinking in lectures which I recently gave here. When one's thinking has been so strengthened, by means of the exercises given in the book already mentioned, that they are no longer abstract concepts, such as we normally have, but are thoughts and mental representations filled with life, then one can call them imaginations. When these representations have become so alive that they are, in fact, imaginations, then they live directly in the etheric, whereas, if they are abstract representations, they live only in the soul. They grasp the etheric. And then, if one has progressed far enough, one might say, in an inward experimentation that one experiences within oneself the ether as living reality, then one can know, through experience, what happens in sense perception, in sensation. Sensation as it arises through sense perception—1 can only present this today in the form of results—consists in the fact that the outer environment sends the etheric from the material surroundings into our sense organs, thus making those gulfs, about which I spoke the day before yesterday, so that that which is outside also becomes inward within the sphere of our senses. We have, for instance, a tone between the life of the senses and the outer world. As a result of the fact that the external ether penetrates into our sense organs, this external ether is deadened. And as the outer deadened ether enters our sense organs, it is brought to life again through the fact that the inner ether from the etheric body works towards the deadened etheric coming from outside. Herein we have the essential being of sense perception and sensation. Just as the death process and enlivening arise in the breathing process, when we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, so also a process of exchange takes place between the dead ether and enlivened ether in our sense experience.

This is an extraordinarily important fact which can be found through spiritual science. For that which no philosophical speculations can find, and on which the philosophical speculation of the last centuries has ship-wrecked countless times, can only be found along the path of spiritual scientific research. Sense perception can thus be recognized to be a fine process of exchange between the outer and the inner ether; to be the enlivening of the ether that is deadened in the sense organ by the forces of the inner etheric body. So that that which the senses kill for us out of the environment, is inwardly made alive again through the etheric body, and we come, thereby, to that which is indeed the perception of the outer world.

This is extraordinarily important, because it shows how the human being when he devotes himself to the sensations arising from sense perception, does not only live in the physical organism, but rather in the supersensible etheric, and shows how the entire life within the senses is a living and weaving in the invisible etheric. It is this which, in the time mentioned above, the more deeply insightful researchers have always sensed, have inwardly divined, but which will be raised to certainty through spiritual science. Among those who recognized this significant truth, I would like still to mention the almost totally forgotten J. P. V. Troxler. I have mentioned him here in earlier lectures, in earlier years. He said in his Lectures about Philosophy:

“Already in earlier times the philosophers have differentiated a finer, purer soul organism from the coarser body. ... a soul, carrying a picture of the bodily organism, which they called Schema, and which was for them the higher, inner human being. ... In recent times, even Kant in his Dreams of a Spiritual Seer, dreams earnestly, but jokingly, a whole inward soul man, who bears all the limbs of the outer body in his spirit body; Lavater composes poetically and thinks in a similar vein. …”

These investigators were also clear, however, that in the moment when one ascends out of the usual materialistic way of seeing things to the perception of this supersensible organism in us, one has to move from the usual anthropology to a way of recognition of such a kind that it achieves its results through an intensification of our inner capacities. It is, therefore, interesting how, for example, both I. H. Fichte as well as Troxler are clear that anthropology must ascend to something different, if it wishes to comprehend the whole human being. I. H. Fichte says in his Anthropology:

“Consciousness based in sense perception ... together with the whole, human life of the senses, has no other significance than to provide a place in which that supersensible life of the spirit occurs, by introducing—through a free, conscious deed of one's own—the spiritual content of the ideas (which lives beyond ordinary consciousness) into the world of the senses ... The fundamental comprehension of the being of man in this way thus raises ‘Anthropology’ in its final result to ‘Anthroposophy.’”

We see within this stream of German spiritual life which tends to drive idealism out of its abstraction toward reality, the premonition of Anthroposophy. And Troxler says, that one must assume a super-spiritual sense in union with a super-sensible spirit, and that, thereby, one can grasp the human being in such a way that one no longer has to do with a usual anthropology, but with something higher:

“If it is indeed highly welcome that the most recent philosophy, which ... in every Anthroposophy ... must reveal itself, climbs upward, it is, nevertheless, not to be overlooked that this idea cannot be the fruit of speculation, and the true ... individuality of the human being may not be confused, either with that which it postulates as subjective spirit or as finite I, nor confused also with that which it places in opposition with it as absolute spirit or as absolute personality.”

What is brought forward as Anthroposophy in no sense arises arbitrarily. Spiritual life leads to it with necessity, when concepts and mental pictures are not experienced as mere concepts and mental pictures, but rather are—I once again wish to use the expression—condensed to the point where they lead into reality, where they become saturated with reality.

One does not, however—and this is the weakness, the lack, in this research—if one merely raises oneself from the physical to the etheric body, one does not really find one's way; rather one comes to a certain boundary, which must, however, be transcended; for only beyond the etheric lies the soul-spiritual. And the essential thing is, that this soul-spiritual can only come into a relationship with the physical through the mediation of the etheric. We thus have to seek the actual soul element of the human being, working and impulsating within the etheric in a fully super-etheric way; working in such a way that the etheric, in its turn, forms the physical, just as it (the etheric) is itself formed, impulsated, enlivened by the element of the soul.

Let us now try to understand the human being from the other pole, the pole of will. We have said that the will-life is directly connected with the metabolism. In as much as the will impulse lives in the metabolism, it not only lives in the external, physical metabolic processes, but as the entire human being is everywhere present within the limits of his being, so the etheric also lives in that which is active as metabolism when an impulse of will occurs. Spiritual science shows that what lives in the will impulse is exactly the opposite of that which is present in sense perception. In the case of sense perception, the etheric outside of us is, in a certain sense, enlivened by the etheric within us. That is to say, the inner etheric pours itself into the dead etheric from outside. In the case of an impulse of will the situation is such that when the will impulse arises from the soul- spiritual, the etheric body is loosened, is expelled out of the physical body in those areas in which the metabolism occurs, through the activity of the metabolism and everything which is connected with it. As a result, we have here the exact opposite: the etheric body in a certain sense pulls back from the physical processes. And it is just in this that the essential element in will actions lies. In such actions of the will the etheric body draws back from the physical body.

Those among my audience who have heard the earlier lectures will remember that, in addition to imaginative cognition, I have also distinguished inspiration and, finally, actual intuitive cognition. Just as imaginative cognition is an intensification and a strengthening of the soul's life, which enables one to attain to the life of the etheric, in the way I have indicated, so is intuitive cognition achieved through the soul's learning by mighty impulses of will to participate—indeed, actually herself to call forth—what one can call: the pulling back, the withdrawing, of the etheric body from the physical processes. Thus, in this realm, the soul-spiritual penetrates into the bodily-physical. If an impulse of will arises originally from the soul-spiritual, it unites itself wit^h the etheric and the consequence is that this etheric is withdrawn, pulled back, from one or the other area of metabolic activity of the physical-bodily organism. And by means of this working of the soul-spiritual, through the etheric, upon the bodily organism, there arises that which one can designate as the transition of a will impulse into a bodily movement, into a bodily action. But it is just here, when in this way, one takes the whole human being into consideration, that one attains to one's actual immortal part. For as soon as one learns how the spirit-soul weaves in the etheric it becomes clear to one that this weaving of the spirit- soul in the etheric is independent also of those processes of the physical organism that are encompassed by birth, conception and death. Thus, along this path it becomes possible to truly raise oneself to the immortal in the human being, to raise oneself to that which unites itself with the body, received through the stream of inheritance, and which continues when one passes through the portal of death. For the eternal spirit is connected through the mediation of the etheric with that which is here born and dies.

The mental pictures, the ideas, to which spiritual science comes, are powerfully rejected by the habits of thought of the present day and human beings, as a result, have great difficulty in finding their way into an understanding of them. One can say that one of the hindrances which make it difficult to find one's way into this understanding—along with other difficulties—is that one makes so little effort to seek the real connection of the soul-spiritual with the bodily organism in the way which has been indicated. Most people long for something quite different from that which spiritual science can offer. What actually happens in the human being when he or she forms mental pictures, forms representations? An etheric process occurs, which only interacts with an external etheric process. What is necessary, however, in order that the human being remains healthy in soul and body in this regard, is that he or she becomes aware where the boundary lies in which the inner etheric and the outer etheric come into contact with each other. This occurs in most cases unconsciously. It becomes conscious when the human being ascends to imaginative cognition, when he inwardly experiences the stirring and the motion of the etheric and its encounter with the external ether, which dies into the sense organ. In this interaction between the inner and outer etheric, we have, in a sense, the furthest boundary of the effectiveness of the etheric on the human organism. For that which is at work in our etheric body affects the organism primarily, for example, in its growth. In growth it forms the organism from within. It gradually organizes our organism so that the organism adapts itself to the outer world, in the way in which we see it, as the child develops. But this inner formative grasping of the physical body by the etheric must come up against a certain limit or boundary. When it passes this boundary, as a result of some process of illness, the following occurs: that which lives and weaves within the etheric and which should remain contained within the etheric, overreaches and lays hold on the organism so that, as a result, the organism is permeated by that which ought to remain a movement within the etheric. What happens as a result? That which should only be experienced inwardly as mental representation now occurs as a process within the physical body. This is what one calls a hallucination. When the etheric activity crosses its boundary towards the bodily—because the body is unable to resist it in the right way, due to a condition of illness—then there arises what one calls a hallucination. Very many people who want to penetrate into the spiritual world wish, above all, to have hallucinations. This is, of course, something which the spiritual researcher cannot offer them; for a hallucination is nothing other than a reflection of a purely material process, of a process which from the viewpoint of the soul occurs beyond the boundary of the physical body, that is it occurs within the body. In contrast, what leads into the spiritual world consists in the fact that one turns back from this boundary, returning into the realm of the soul, attaining to imagination instead of to hallucination, and imagination is a pure soul experience. And inasmuch as it is a pure soul experience, the soul lives in imagination within the spiritual world. Thus, the soul penetrates the imagination in the fully conscious way. And it is important that one understands that imagination—that is the justified way to achieve spiritual cognition—and hallucinations are the direct opposite of each other, and, indeed destroy each other. He who experiences hallucinations, due to a condition of organic illness, puts obstacles in the way to achieving genuine imagination, and he who attains true imagination protects himself in the surest way from all hallucination. Hallucinations and imagination are mutually exclusive, destroy each other mutually.

The situation is similar also at the other pole of the human being. Just as the etheric body can overreach into the bodily organism, sinking its formative forces into the body, thereby calling forth hallucinations, that is calling forth purely organic processes, so, on the other side the etheric can be drawn out of the organism—as was characterized in relation with the action of the will—in an irregular way. This can happen as the result of certain pathological formations of the organism or also as a result of exhaustion or similar bodily conditions. Instead of the etheric being drawn out of the physical metabolism in a certain area of the body, as in a normal, healthy action of the will, it remains stuck within it and the physical metabolic activity in that area—as a purely physical activity—reaches into the etheric. In this case, the etheric becomes dependent on the physical, whereas in the normal unfolding of the will the physical is dependent on the etheric, which, in its turn, is determined by the soul- spiritual. Should this occur, as a result of such processes as I have indicated, there then arises—I would say, like the pathological counter picture of a hallucination—a compulsive action; which consists in the fact that the physical body, with its metabolic activities, penetrates into the etheric, more or less forces its way into the etheric. And if a compulsive action is called forth as a pathological manifestation, one can say: compulsive action excludes that which, in spiritual science, one calls intuition. Intuition and compulsive action are mutually exclusive, just as hallucination and imagination exclude each other. Therefore, there is nothing more empty of soul than—on the one hand—a hallucinating human being, for hallucinations are indications of bodily conditions which should not be; and, on the other hand, for instance, one can have the whirling dervishes. The dance of the dervish arises through the fact that the bodily-physical forces itself into the etheric so that the etheric is not effective out of its connection with the spiritual-soul element, but rather those characteristic compulsive actions occur. And he who believes that revelations of a soul nature manifest in the dance of the whirling dervish, such an one should consult spiritual science in order to become clear that the whirling dervish is evidence that the spirit, the spirit-soul, has left the body and he, therefore, dances in this way.

And, I should like to say, that for instance automatic writing, mediumistic writing, is only a somewhat more comprehensive example of the same phenomenon as that of the dervish dance. Mediumistic writing consists in nothing else than that the spirit-soul nature has been completely driven out of the human organism and that the physical body has been forced into the etheric body and has there been allowed to unfold; to unfold itself after being emptied of the inner etheric under the sway of the outer etheric which surrounds it. These realms lead away from spiritual science, they do not lead towards the science of the spirit, although no objection should certainly be raised from those points of view from which generally so many objections are raised against these things. Just in relation to the whirling dervish one can study what a truly artistic dance should be. The art of dance should consist just in the fact that every single movement corresponds to an impulse of will which can fully rise into the consciousness of the individual involved, so that she or he never is engaged in a mere intrusion of physical processes into processes of the etheric. Artistic dance is only achieved when it is spiritually permeated by mental pictures. The dance of the dervish is a denial of spirituality. Many, however, may object: But it just reveals the spirit!—That it does, but how? Well, you can study a mussel shell by taking up the living mussel and observing it; but you can also study it when the living mussel has left, and you study its shell: the form of the mussel is reproduced in the mussel shell, this form is born out of the life of the organism. Thus, one might say, one also has an after-image of the spirit, a dead after-image of the spirit, when one has to do with automatic writing or with the whirling dervish. For this reason, it resembles the spirit as closely as the mussel shell resembles the living mussel, and, therefore, can also so easily be confused with it. But only when one really penetrates inwardly into the genuine spirit, can one achieve a true understanding for these matters.

When we take our start from the bodily, ascend through sense perception and sensation to the activity of forming representations, to thinking, which then carries over into the soul-spiritual, we come along this path to the spiritual-scientific recognition that that which is stimulated through sense perception and sensation, at a certain point is brought to an end and becomes memory. Memory arises as the sense impression continues on its way into the body, so that the etheric is not only effective within the sense impressions themselves, but also engages itself with what is left behind in the body by the sense impression. Thus, that which has entered into memory is again called up out of memory.

It is of course not possible to go into more detail concerning these matters in an hour's lecture. But one will never come to a true understanding of the reality of mental representation and of memory and how they are related to the soul-spiritual if one does not proceed along the spiritual-scientific path here indicated.

At the other pole there is the whole stream which flows from the spirit- soul life of our will impulses into the bodily physical, as the result of which outer actions are brought about. In ordinary human life the situation is that the life of the senses goes as far as memory and comes to a halt with memory. Memory places itself, so to speak, in front of the spirit-soul so that spirit-soul is not aware of itself and how it works when it receives sense impressions. Only an indication, a confused indication that the soul weaves and lives in the etheric, arises when the soul—living and weaving in the etheric—is not yet so strongly impelled in its etheric weaving that all of this ether weaving breaks against the boundary of the bodily-physical. When the soul-spiritual weaves within the etheric in such a way that that which it forms within the etheric does not immediately break against the physical body, but rather so restrains itself in the etheric that it is as if it came to the boundary of the physical body, but remains perceptible in the etheric, there dream arises. When dream life is really studied it will prove itself to be the lowest form of supersensible experience for the human being. For the human being experiences in his dreams that his soul-spiritual cannot unfold itself as will impulses within that which appears as dream pictures because, within the dream life, it lacks strength and forcefulness in its working. And inasmuch as the will impulses are lacking, inasmuch as dreaming spirit and soul do not penetrate the etheric sufficiently for the soul herself to become aware of these will impulses, there arises this chaotic tapestry of dreams.

What on one hand the dreams are, on the other hand are those phenomena in which the will—which comes out of the spirit-soul realm—takes hold of the outer world through the etheric-bodily nature. But, in doing so, the will is as little aware of what actually is going on, as one is aware in the dream—because of the weak effect of the spirit-soul—that the human being weaves and lives in the spirit. Just as the dream is in a way the weakened sense perception, so something else occurs as the intensified effect of the spirit-soul element, the strengthened effect of the will impulses; and this is what we call destiny.

In destiny we have no insight into the connections, just as in the dream we have no insight into what actually weaves and lives there as reality. Just as material processes which flow up into the etheric are always present as the underlying ground in dreams so there storms up against the outer world the spirit-soul element which is anchored in the will. But the spirit-soul element in ordinary life is not so organized that it is possible to perceive the spirit in its effective working in what unfolds before us as the sequence of the so-called experiences of destiny. In the moment in which we grasp this sequence, we learn to know the fabric of destiny, we learn to know how, just as in ordinary life the soul conceals for itself the spirit through the mental representations, so also it conceals for itself the spirit active in destiny through the feelings, through the sympathy and antipathy with which it receives the events which approach it as the experiences of life. In the moment when one—with the help of spiritual scientific insight—sees through the veil of sympathy and antipathy, when one objectively takes hold of the course of life experiences with inner equanimity—in this moment one notices that everything which occurs as a matter of destiny in our life between birth and death is either the effect of earlier lives on earth or is the preparation for later earth lives. Just as, on one hand, outer natural science does not penetrate to spirit and soul, not even to the etheric, when it seeks for the connections between the material world and our mental representations, so also, in regard to the other pole, natural science today fails in its cognitive efforts. Just as, on one side, science remains bound to the material processes in the nervous organism in its attempts to explain the life of mental representations, so also, science remains caught at the other pole in unclarity, that, is, I would say, science teeters in a nebulous way between the physical and the realm of soul.

These are just the realms where one must become aware how concepts within world conceptions allow themselves to be proved as well as to be contradicted. And for the one who clings rigidly to the proof, the positive position has much to be said for it; but one must also—just as breathing in belongs necessarily with breathing out—be able to think one's way through to the experience of the negative. In recent times there arose what has come to be known as analytical psychology. This analytical psychology is, I would say, inspired by good intimations. For, what does she seek? This analytical psychology, or as it is generally known, psychoanalysis, seeks to descend from the ordinary level of the soul to that which is no longer contained in the generally present life of the soul, but which remains from the soul's earlier experiences. The psychoanalyst assumes that the soul's life is not exhausted with its present soul experiences, with that which is consciously experienced by the soul, but rather can dive down with consciousness into the subconscious. And in much that appears in the soul's life as disturbance, as confusion, as this or that one-sided lack, the psychoanalyst sees an effect of that which surges in the subconscious. But it is interesting to note what it is that the psychoanalyst sees in the subconscious. When one hears what he enumerates in this subconscious it is, to begin with, disappointed life expectations. The psychoanalyst encounters one or another human being who suffers from this or that depression. This depression need not have its origin in the current consciousness of the soul's life but may originate in the past. Something occurred in the soul's experience in this life. The human being has overcome the experience, but not completely; in the subconscious something is left over. For example, he or she has experienced disappointments. Through his education, or through other processes, he has transcended these disappointments in his conscious life of soul, but they live on in his subconsciousness. There these disappointments surge up, in a sense, to the boundary of consciousness. And there they then bring forth the indefinite soul depression. The psychoanalyst seeks, therefore, in all kinds of disappointments, in disappointed life hopes and expectations which have been drawn down into the subconsciousness, what determines conscious life in a dim, unclear way. He seeks this also in what colors the soul's life as temperament. In all of that which colors the soul's life out of certain rational impulses, the psychoanalyst seeks a subconsciousness which, in a certain sense, only strikes up against consciousness. But then he comes to a yet further realm—I am only reporting here—which the psychoanalyst seeks to grasp by saying: That which plays up into conscious life is the fundamental substratum, the primeval animalistic residual mud, of the soul. One can certainly not deny that this primeval mud is there. In these lectures I have already drawn attention to the fact that certain mystics have had experiences which result from the fact that certain things, for example, eroticism, are subtly refined and play up into consciousness in such a way that one believes that one has had especially lofty experiences, whereas actually only the erotic, “the primeval animalistic mud of the soul,” has surged up and has sometimes been interpreted in the sense of profound mysticism. One can document, even in the case of such a fine, poetic mystic as Mechthild von Magdeburg, how erotic sensibilities penetrate into even the single details of her mental representations, of her thoughts. One must grasp just these matters clearly, in order that one does not fall prey to errors in the sphere of spiritual scientific investigation. For it is just the one who wants to enter into the realm of the spirit for whom it is a special obligation to know all the possible paths of error—not in order to pursue them—but rather just in order to avoid them. But the one who speaks about this animalistic primeval mud of the soul, who only speaks about life's disappointed hopes and other similar matters, such a one does not go deep enough into the life of the soul; such a one is like a person who walks across a field in which there is nothing yet to be seen and believes that only the earth, or perhaps also the fertilizer is present in it, whereas this field already contains all the fruits which will soon spring forth from it as grain or as some other crop. When one speaks of the primeval mud of the soul, one should also speak of everything which is embedded in it. Certainly, there are disappointed hopes in this primeval mud; but in that which is embedded there is hidden also a germinating force which represents, at the same time, that which—when the human being will have passed through the gates of death into the life which runs its course between death and a new birth, and which then enters into a new life on earth—makes something very different out of the disappointed hopes than merely a depression. It makes something in the next life which leads, one might say, to an “appointment,” not to a “disappointment,” which leads to a strengthening of soul initiative. There lies in that which the psychoanalyst seeks in the disappointed life-hopes in the soul's deepest levels, there lies—if he only goes deeply enough into it—that which prepares itself in the present life to take hold in the next life according to the laws of destiny.

One thus finds everywhere, when one digs over the animalistic primeval mud—without thereby dirtying one's hands, as, regrettably so often happens with the psychoanalysts—the spiritual-soul weaving of destiny which extends beyond birth and death within the spiritual and psychic life of the soul. It is just in analytic psychology that we have a realm in which one can so well learn how everything can be right and everything can be wrong when it comes to questions of world conceptions, looked at from one point of view or from another. But there is a tremendous amount which can be brought forward in support of the one-sided assertions of the psychoanalysts, and, therefore, the disproving of these assertions will not greatly impress those who swear by these concepts. But if one learns to form one's judgments in accordance with the method of gaining knowledge which was characterized at the outset of this lecture, in which one recognizes both what speaks for a point of view and what speaks against it, then just out of this for and against the soul will experience what is truly at work. For, I would like to say, between that which one can only observe in the soul realm, as the psychologists do who only concern themselves with the conscious realm, and that which the psychoanalyst finds down below in the animalistic primeval mud of the soul, just between these two realms of research lies the sphere which belongs to the eternal spirit and soul and which goes through births and deaths.

The penetration of the whole human inner realm leads also to a right relationship with the outer world. More recent natural science not only speaks in vague, indefinite ways about the etheric, but also speaks about it in such a way that just the greatest world riddles lead one back to it. Out of etheric conditions there is thought to have formed itself what then took on fixed shapes and became planets, suns and moons, etc. That which occurs as the soul-spiritual in the human being is regarded, more or less, as a mere episode. Before and behind is dead ether. If one learns to know the ether only from one side then one can come to a hypothetical construction of world evolution about which the sensitive thinker Herman Grimm—I have frequently quoted his statement, but it is so significant that it may well be brought before the soul again and again—says the following. As he became acquainted with the train of thought which asserts that out of the dead cosmic etheric mist arose that wherein now life and spirit are unfolding, and as he measures this against Goethe's world conception, he comes to the following expression:

“Already in his (Goethe's) youth, the great Laplace-Kantian phantasy of the origin and the eventual destruction of the earth planet, had for a long time asserted itself. From the rotating cosmic mist—with which children already become familiar in school—the central gaseous drop forms itself, out of which the earth emerges, and undergoes, as a rigidifying sphere, in the course of unimaginable epochs of time, all those phases—including the episode of its habitation by the human race—in order, finally, to plunge back into the sun as a burned-out slag: a lengthy, but for the public in our (Goethe's) time an entirely comprehensible process, for whose origin no other outer intervention is needed than the effort of some external force, to maintain the sun at a steady temperature of heat. No more fruitless perspective for the future can be imagined than this which is to be forced upon us today in the expectation of its scientific inevitability. A bone of a carcass, around which even a hungry dog makes a detour, would be a refreshing, appetizing object in comparison with this ultimate excrement of creation, as which our earth would finally plunge back into the sun. The intellectual appetite with which our generation takes up something of this kind and feels impelled to believe it, is a sign of the sick phantasy, which learned scholars in future ages will need much cleverness to explain as an historical phenomenon of our time.”

What arises here once again within German spiritual life as a feeling born out of a healthy life of soul, just this is shown in a true light by spiritual science. For, if one learns to know how the dead etheric is enlivened through the soul element, through the living ether, then, through inner experience one distances oneself from the possibility that our universal structure could ever have arisen out of the dead etheric. And this world riddle takes quite another aspect if one becomes acquainted with the corresponding riddle of the soul. One comes to know the ether itself in its living form, one comes to know how the dead ether must first originate out of the living. Thus, as one returns to the origins of world evolution, one must return to the soul, and to the recognition that one must seek the origin of all that develops today in the realm of the spirit and the soul. The spiritual-soul will remain a mere hypothesis, something merely thought out, in relation with the outer world riddles as long as through spiritual science one does not learn to know the whole living and weaving of the etheric by experiencing how the living ether from within meets with the dead ether from without; only along the path of spiritual science the world mist itself will be recognized as being alive, as being of the nature of spirit and of soul.

So you see, also for the world riddles, a significant perspective is gained just through an understanding of the riddles of the soul. I must close today with this perspective. It is, you see, just through a genuine consideration of external and of inner life from the viewpoint of spiritual science that one is led by way of the etheric into the spirit and the soul, as well within the soul as within the outer world.

There stands in opposition to such a cognitive attitude of soul, indeed, the point of view expressed by a man to whom I referred last time and whom I named on that occasion. We can today at least have the feeling that from the way in which spiritual science thinks about the bodily nature of man, the bridge leads directly to the spirit-soul realm, in which ethics and morality are rooted and which stem from the spirit—just as the sense perceptible leads into the spirit. But in its preoccupation with the purely external material world, science has developed an attitude of mind which completely denies that ethics is anchored in the spirit. One still is embarrassed to deny ethics as such, but one today speaks about ethics in the following way, as it is expressed in the conclusion of the lecture by Jacques Loeb, which in reference to its beginning I brought forward last time. There he who comes through natural scientific research to a brutal disavowal of ethics says:

“If our existence depends on the blind play of forces and is only the work of chance; if we ourselves are only chemical mechanisms—how can there be for us an ethical reality? The answer to this is that our instincts form the roots of our ethical being, and our instincts are as subject to heredity as the constituent forms of our body. We eat and drink and reproduce ourselves, not because metaphysicians have attained the insight that this is desirable, but rather because we are mechanically predisposed to do so. We are active because we are forced mechanically to be so through the processes in our nervous system, and if human beings are not economic slaves, nevertheless it is instinct which determines the direction of their activity in regard to their successful triggering, or to their successful work. A mother loves her children and cares for them not because metaphysicians had the bright idea that this would be a lovely thing to do, but rather because the instinct to care for the offspring is as firmly implanted, presumably through the two sexual chromosomes, as is the morphological character of the female body. We enjoy the company of other human beings because we are compelled to do so by the conditions of our human inheritance. We fight for justice and truth, and are ready to make sacrifices for them, because, instinctively, we desire to see our fellow human beings happy. That we possess an ethical trait, for this we have solely to thank our instincts, which are determined for us chemically and through heredity in the same way as the form of our body.”

Ethical action leads us back to instinct! Instincts lead back to the effects of physical-chemical activity! This logic is indeed most threadbare. For, certainly as a matter of course, one can say, that one should not wait with ethical action for the metaphysicians, until they have spun out some metaphysical principles, but that is the same as if someone were to say: Should one wait with digestion until the metaphysicians or the physiologists have discovered the laws of digestion? I should once like to recommend to Professor Loeb that he not investigate the physiological laws of digestion as he storms with brutality against the metaphysical laws of ethical life. But one can say: One can be a significant investigator of nature today—but the habits of thought tend in the direction of cutting one off from all spiritual life, tend to prevent even a glance in the direction of the life of the spirit. But parallel with this there is always the fact that one can document a defect in thinking, so that one never has the full effectiveness which belongs to a thought.

One can have peculiar experiences in this regard. I recently brought forward such an experience; but I would like to present it once again because it links with the statements of a very significant natural scientist of the present time, who belongs with those whom I attack just because in one sphere I value them very highly. This natural scientist has earned great achievements in the field of astrophysics, as well as in certain other fields of natural scientific research. When, however, he came to write a comprehensive book about the present-day view of the universe and about the evolution of this world view, he comes, in his foreword, to a curious statement. He is, in a certain sense, delighted how wonderfully advanced we are in that we can now interpret all phenomena from a natural scientific perspective, and he points with a certain arrogance, as is customary in such circles, to earlier times, which had not yet advanced so far. And, in this regard, he calls upon Goethe, by saying: Whether one can truly say that we live in the best of times, that we cannot determine, but that we live in the best of times in regard to natural scientific knowledge in comparison with earlier times, in this regard we can call upon Goethe, who says:

Forgive! It does seem so sublime,
Entering into the spirit of the time
To see what wise men, who lived long ago, believed
Till we at last have all the highest aims achieved.
Faust, translated by Walter Kaufman

Therewith a distinguished natural scientist of the present day concludes his exposition by calling Goethe to witness. Only he forgot, in doing so, that it is Wagner who makes this assertion, and that Faust remarks to this assertion, after Wagner has left:

Hope never seems to leave those who affirm,
The shallow minds that stick to must and mold—
They dig with greedy hands for gold
And yet are happy if they find a worm.

To reflect on what Goethe actually says, the distinguished researcher neglected to do in the moment in which he called upon Wagner in order to lend expression to the thought of how splendidly advanced we are. In this, I should like to say, we can catch a glimpse of where it is that thinking fails in its pursuit of reality.

And we could cite many such examples if we were to explore, even a little, the scientific literature of the present day. It will surely not be held against me—as I have said that I greatly value the natural scientist whom I have just quoted—if, in relation with such natural scientific research, which prides itself on being able to impart information about the spirit, I seek to bring to expression the true Goethean attitude of mind and of heart. For, we can forgive one or another monistic thinker, when, out of the weakness of his thinking he fails to come to the spirit; it is dangerous, however, when the attitude of soul, which arises in Jacques Loeb and in the natural scientist just quoted, who presents himself as Wagner, while believing to characterize himself as Goethe, when this attitude of soul gains authority more and more in the uncritical acceptance of the widest circles. And this is what is happening. The one who penetrates into that which can arise as an attitude of mind and heart out of spiritual science, such a one, perhaps—even though it may not appear sufficiently respectful in the face of such a statement as that natural scientist made, in connection with Goethe—may come to the genuinely Goethean attitude, when he connects himself with those words of Goethe's which I would like to paraphrase in closing this lecture

Forgive! It is a shock indeed
Entering souls that in their greed
Cling to matter with all their might
And for the spirit have no sight.