The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If spiritual science shall be a kind of life-force for our souls, and it can be that, this spiritual science must also prove itself powerful and suitable to extend the spiritual ken of the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science in such times like ours in which a lot prepares which is so significant. One sees the events thereby in a wider perspective than other contemporaries often can do with their narrow view of materialism. One could see in that what our spiritual-scientific movement has nurtured during the years that one of the purposes has also consisted in extending the mood of soul, so that the human being frees himself from the bare thinking about his narrow self and about that what surrounds this narrow self and is really able to look at the big impulses, the big manifestations of forces which go through the whole evolution of humanity. If we have tried that way to extend the vigour of our feelings and sensations as it were, we also have to make the forces suitable which we have won by spiritual science, just in such times, on the one hand, the waves of which break so deeply painfully against the soul and, on the other hand, raise this soul to particular height because they bear such important matters in themselves. We must be able to come already to the position in such times to go along with that what is not so externally visible in the events, what the everyday mind is not able to see in these events. We must be able to ask ourselves: does that mean something prophetic for the whole earth development what as such a dreadful torch of war is burning above our heads?

Only that human being lives properly in the present events who sees these events in such a significant light as far as it is possible. Friends, who are in our circles, will often have asked themselves, why I have spoken in our circle during the last years now and again of the fact that in decades of the 20th century times come for which we must look ahead with a particular attention because children and grandchildren of those who live now will have to experience important and immense, but also tragic and painful events. Those upon whom it is incumbent today to give something to keep the souls of the children and grandchildren upright towards that what the humankind of the 20th century experiences must be aware that this gift must be a strong internal spiritual force. Even more than we can imagine already today in our everyday life, our offsprings of the 20th century will need strong internal forces keeping up the soul to pass on the achievements of humankind, which were accumulated in the human development throughout centuries. To quite other storms of life the offsprings of humankind now living on earth will be exposed. I said that someone could be surprised when that was said within our circles that way. Now, however, a sensation of that may arise if we consider that we are in the most dreadful war events which concerned human beings, since humankind experiences history consciously on this earth.

It would be absolutely wrong if we did not penetrate ourselves so intensely as possible with the importance of the moment and present the question to ourselves: with what does that have actually to do that we strive for out of internal longing of the soul, what spiritual knowledge does have to do with that which should come in the development of humankind? Don't we see, even if we look only cursorily, a tempest breaking out which got up from the East since long ago menacing modern education and civilisation of Europe? You have at least to know that in the lap of this East immense forces are working from which you can already see that they make themselves noticeable; so that they now intend to dismember, destroy the European civilisation. You can only anticipate now to which extent this is the case.

Our European civilisation is in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It is the culture of the consciousness-soul in whose middle souls are among us who have to give something to humankind. Looking back at what was the Greek-Latin culture, this Greek-Latin culture was basically, even if in another arrangement, an echo, a recapitulation of that what already lived in the old Atlantis but on a higher level. It lived there still differently. In the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch a kind of recapitulation happened. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we stand is a new formation, is something absolutely novel what has been added to the current development of humankind. We should not conceive that only as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intensive human sense of responsibility. We should also be clear to ourselves about the fact that in the earthly evolution still long times will have to run off, until everything has come out of the human hearts and souls what the divine cosmic order has to give to humankind in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.

In the fourth culture-epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha took place as the most significant event of the whole earth development. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha had an effect in the fourth culture-epoch, it does not merely continue working in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. This fifth culture-epoch is incumbent to go to meet the Mystery of Golgotha gradually with full knowledge of spirit, with full understanding, with all forces of knowledge of the soul; not only with the forces of the reason, the forces of devoutness. It has to comprehend Christ, Who went through Death and Resurrection, bit by bit with everything the soul can produce from itself of knowledge and understanding forces. So that the word of Paul¹ is true, indeed, in a new way: “not I, but Christ in me.” Every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognising forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch.

Now we may imagine what it means, actually, if such efforts are expected from the fifth culture-epoch. Let us put before our souls the way how the Christ Impulse has worked since the Mystery of Golgotha in humankind. If the Christ Impulse could have worked only by that what the human beings understood about this Christ Impulse in the course of the centuries, since the Mystery of Golgotha has taken place, then the Christ Impulse could have worked only a little among the human beings. But it is not such an impulse which has spoken only conceptually to the human understanding or to the feeling understanding, but it is a real impulse which flowed into the course of history with living forces. The external symbol of the blood flowing on Golgotha represents the living force flowing into the history of humankind.

We will try to get clear in our mind with the help of a historical event in which way this Christ Impulse has worked, without being understood already by human beings, in which way it has worked as a living driving force in the evolution of humankind. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch has a vocation to make conscious the whole internal nature and being of the Christ Impulse. But that has already worked as a living force in the subconscious soul forces, before it became fully conscious in humankind. One of those figures the Christ Impulse selected to work through them, to work something significant is, for example—one could still give others—the figure of the Maid of Orleans. If we pursue the history of Europe up to the event that is connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans, we must say, even if we look only externally at history: with that what she accomplished in those days when she struck back the English, in the midst of the French people rising up,—she did that really,—the map of Europe was arranged as it was just arranged gradually. Any other historical consideration is basically a fairy tale for the last centuries, in so far as it concerns the distribution of nations and states in Europe. It is something unconscious that the Christ Impulse as a living impulse with the help of the Maid of Orleans caused the distribution of the European nations and national forces in those days.

I may say: while the learnt people argued about a lot, already started to argue about the question whether one has to take the Communion in this or that form whether this or that has to be interpreted according to this or that formula, and while the learnt people showed that they were not yet able to comprehend the Christ Impulse, this impulse worked through the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, worked as a formative force in European history.

Because the effect of the Christ Impulse is just not dependent on the understanding which somebody shows for it. By his Michaelic representative the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans. Now, however, the Maid of Orleans had to go through something that is similar to an initiation. We talk of initiation today and give the rules to the consciousness of the human being which I have collated in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds But such an initiation of the Maid of Orleans is out of the question, of course. You can only talk about an initiation which was as it were a relic of the ancient initiation which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of the human beings. Now just these ancient initiations have reproduced like elementary forces up to the modern time. In old legends and fairy tales a lot is told: that this or that happened to this or that person by which he got the internal soul-force. That is why he has seen this or that of the spiritual world. Such matters should be only an indication of it, like without any help of the human being, by the effect of divine-spiritual forces permeating the world, certain human beings, who are suitable for that because of their karma, are natural initiates, by the place on which they are put by karma where the karma of humankind flows together with the personal karma. A good echo of such a natural initiation, as one would like to call it, gives us a poem which speaks of the fact, that the “solar son” Olaf Åsteson was in a kind of sleeping state during thirteen nights and days—the interval between Christ's birth and His Epiphany, up to the 6th January. The name Olaf Åsteson already indicates that subconscious hereditary forces of knowledge are included in it, because somebody is called Olaf Åsteson through whom the blood of his forefathers runs. The solar son Olaf Åsteson sleeps through and dreams for thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year or contain at least the biggest force of the earthly annual darkness in them, from the first Christmas Day up to the 6th January, to Epiphany.

That is not only superstitious nonsense what goes back to these nights in such legends. Since, indeed, there are two seasons which are in a certain way like two opposite cosmic poles for the soul-life of the living human being. If we take the season around the St Johns-tide in summer, this is the time when the human soul with all its passionate impulses is united with the universe through the external physical sun force whose energy then reaches its peak. Hence, the St Johns-tide festival of the old time was intended to put divine-spiritual forces, permeating the universe, into the human soul when the human beings forgot themselves and were wrapped up in the external strong physical forces of the universe. However, when the solar force is physically the weakest, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces which have an effect in the darkness reaches its peak in return. And rightly, one can say, according to the cosmic laws the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is in this time. When the physical surroundings are the darkest, the soul can have the profoundest experiences if it feels united with the forces permeating the aura of the earth.

That is why Olaf Åsteson keeps on sleeping during these days, and experiences everything we call Kamaloka, soul-world, and, finally, spirit-land. The Norwegian legend tells us that Olaf Åsteson, when he awoke again after thirteen nights, knows to tell about his experiences that he has met the souls in the soul-world and in the spirit-land. Indeed, these are pictures which correspond to an Imaginative knowledge, but they point to that what really living possibilities of the human soul are if these souls feel transported in that time of physical darkness which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, if they feel transported to that what flows and weaves in the earth's aura. At the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ Impulse which get hold of the subconscious understanding of Olaf Åsteson. In such legends one speaks—as it were—of natural initiations which were still possible in olden times, of beholding the spiritual world. In these times the earth's aura really has a force which it does not have in other times when it is flooded and outshone by the physical sun force. Because Christ is united with the earth's aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the force of the Christ Impulse is also able to work into the souls particularly during these days if the souls are susceptible for it.

Hence, one may assume, before one investigates something historical, that—also with such a figure like the Maid of Orleans—the Christ Impulse would have worked subconsciously in her soul during thirteen days. The fact that also she would have gone through something like enlightenment by the Christ Impulse in the subconscious soul forces—what Olaf Åsteson has gone through during thirteen days and nights in the sleeping state. Then, however, the Maid of Orleans would have been in a kind of sleep once during the thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January, and then on the 6th January the Christ Impulse would have grasped this soul after it had been in a kind of sleeping state. That what one can assume did really exist in a peculiar way, only in a quite particular time when the human being can be, indeed, in a kind of sleep. Namely, before the human being does the first gasp in his earth-life, before he is released from the body of his mother and receives the first earthly-physical beam of light, he spends a time as a nascent human being in a true sleeping state. Just as you get a dreaming sleep in the evening, you are in the body of the mother in such a dream-like sleep.

Those days in which the dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unaware influence of the spiritual world are just the last days which the human being spends in the body of his mother. That is why it could also be that just these days would have been used with the Maid of Orleans to plant the Christ Impulse to her, before she saw the physical sunlight with physical eyes and did the first gasp outside the body of her mother. This was the case, because the Maid of Orleans is born on the 6th January. On the 6th January, it took place that the whole village gathered because something uncertain was in the aura of the village. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Maid of Orleans was born. Behind such matters a lot is hidden. Only if humankind gets round to seeing this mysterious fact once in the right light, will understanding of that also exist what really takes action in the human development under the surface of the external sensory world. The divine forces look for the most manifold ways for themselves to get into the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suitable that such a thing could happen.

But while the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on the 6th January, the historical chance was given that the Christ Impulse had a particular effect on her and gave Europe a new formation. These are matters which you can examine if you observe the course of history with some understanding. These are the matters which the spiritual understanding resumes in future when this fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch really gets every knowledge force out of the souls. Then the soul experiences the existence of the Christ Impulse more and more consciously. But it experiences this only if humankind is able to regard spiritual science not as a mere theory, but to feel it as living, to experience it internally. Then spiritual science is able to achieve its actual mission in the development of humankind.

In such a time like ours, we must be clear to ourselves in particular about the fact that the chasm must be bridged which opens for a materialistic age more and more between the human souls, who are here incarnated, and those who have already gone through the gate of death. More and more one will get round to regard also the souls which stand in the life between death and a new birth as belonging to the whole humankind, like those who are in the physical life between birth and death. The consciousness must become stronger and stronger, that we all are united on earth, also those who have gone into the supersensible realms before us who work only with different forces among us than we do who are incarnated. This consciousness must become more and more intense. However, just understanding of the spiritually effective forces is necessary. It is necessary that we learn to look at the connections of the earthly phenomena in that new light spiritual science can give.

Only because spiritual science should be something that touches our hearts at the same time, while it helps our souls in knowledge, want I to talk to you about something that has concerned us during the last weeks. I do that to explain something about the way which goes back at the same time to something that occupied us in the farther vicinity of our spiritual-scientific current during the last weeks. I could also take other cases, indeed, but these cases are connected with our karma immediately, so that I can speak about them just today again. You can extend that what I say here also to other persons who stand within and beyond our spiritual-scientific movement with their destinies and their relation to death in a similar relation as in the cases about which I want to speak.

Last autumn we have experienced a distressing case in Dornach in the vicinity of our construction. Dear friends had moved with their children to Dornach, settled there near the construction to manage the garden. And the oldest, seven year-old child, a spiritually infinitely bright boy who was something quite peculiar, however, also concerning his heart qualities was really a little bit like a sunny child. One had the most intimate interest in the soul of this child, even if one could see it only briefly here and there. When then the father joined the armed forces to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, there was the seven-year-old boy with his heart, I would like to say, already in the whole situation of life that he made particular efforts to substitute the father, as well he was able to do, to help his mother, while he managed everything possible. He went into the city, made purchases, the seven-year-old boy quite on his own. One evening the boy was missed. It was just an evening lecture. A person friendly to us came possibly at ten o'clock and said that the boy would be missed. It could not be unclear in the end at all that this had to do something with a removal van which had toppled over near our construction at a place where perhaps a removal van has never gone before and and will probably also not go for a long time. The van had toppled over a small embankment in a meadow that the carters said, it would be out of question that one could lift the van in the evening. They unyoked the horses about which they were very anxious, and left the van to lift it the next day because they believed that they had to work for a whole day to be able to lift the heavy carriage. Now it was ten o'clock in the evening. We had to assume that the boy was missed because the carriage had toppled over. All possible tools were brought, and everybody who could work worked, and in two hours the carriage was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the removal van.

Now if one takes only externally into account and considers, how from longer time, before this had happened, everything pushed itself together, so that the boy who had always gone, otherwise, a somewhat different way by which he would have passed the van on the right side, however, at that time he went so that he passed the carriage on the left side where the carriage just had to topple over him. If you imagine that he was detained a little bit in the most benevolent way, so that he left possibly a quarter of an hour later—he got something for the supper in the so-called canteen,—so that he has left later than he wanted, actually. If you imagine that the whole accident took place that it depended really on some, even not some minutes that the boy was just here where the carriage toppled over, and nobody noticed the accident. Not far away from that place people noticed that the carriage fell down, but they did not see the boy. If you imagine everything, you will recognise already externally that this is a most remarkable example of logical delusion which may occur easily to human beings.

I have often shown clearly, also to you, that the human being can already delude himself in the external life, so that he mistakes cause and effect. I have said: imagine that you see a person from the distance going along a riverside. You see him suddenly staggering and falling into the river. He is pulled out dead not long afterwards. Now you are quite justified to suppose according to all external reasons that the person has fallen into the water and has just drowned. If you do nothing else, you adhere to this judgment. In this case it only requires external means to convince you of the opposite. One has still found a stone where the person has fallen into the river, and you are supported in your judgment. If one opens the corpse, one will find out that the person suffered a stroke that he has fallen consequently into the river and that he has met his death not because he fell into the river, but that he fell because he was dead. So cause and effect were completely mistaken. However, somebody who understands the matters observes that at many places above all in science. In our case where the boy met his death, we must say: the karma of this boy ordered the removal van; karma brought the van just to that place. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance played a role. The boy should only arrive just at the seventh year in this incarnation. I would like to say, the whole arrangement was made for that. We must completely get used to exchange cause and effect compared with the way of judging matters in the everyday life.

If we look now with the glance of the seer at the life of this soul, something stupefying becomes apparent to us that at the same time lights up the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Not long after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach construction changed. While I say this, I say something to you that is connected with my experiences. If anybody himself has to work for the Dornach construction of the Anthroposophical Society, if one has to instigate what is to be carried out there, then one knows what one has to thank the supporting forces for working from such an aura into one's soul. Since those days, the still unused etheric body of the boy is really connected with the aura of the Dornach construction. After the human being has taken off his etheric body, he goes on with his ego and astral body; this is something different. But the etheric body if it is taken off at such a tender age has forces in itself which could still have supplied the physical body and its life for decades. Now these forces have gone unused through the gate of death. They are taken off after some days. These forces just co-operate with the aura of our construction. One is not allowed to say that it is the soul itself of this individuality, but it is the unused etheric body. Nothing gets also lost in the spiritual world. The physicist knows that nothing of physical forces gets lost that the forces only change. Also in the spiritual world we have to look for transformed forces, unused etheric forces which ascend from early-deceased human beings to the spiritual world. We approach these matters if we observe them in concrete cases. That is why I may talk to you only about such concrete cases today.

A dear anthroposophical friend (Sibyl Colazza) died before some weeks in Zurich after a life which had brought her some ordeals, and the karma of our movement brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation. The time from death up to cremation lasted from Wednesday at six o'clock p. m. until Monday at eleven o'clock a. m. This interval was a little longer than usual. That is why the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already happened, while the cremation took place. Now the peculiar was that in the time, in which the soul had already separated from the etheric body during the days between death and cremation, the necessity arose to me to speak certain words before and after the obituary. My own ability of coining words had really to do a little with the way these words were coined. However, by identifying with the soul of that personality the necessity resulted to characterise this personality as if an inspiration came from her soul itself. The soul said as it were: coin your words, so that they characterise my soul.—But the soul was still unconscious. The words came not consciously from the soul, but from the being of this soul. I had to characterise her as she wanted not to mirror herself in selfish way, but as she appeared to herself if another soul looked at her. For this other soul the necessity arose to speak the following words at the beginning of the funeral speech and to coin each single word. The words had to be spoken as an address to the soul who had gone through the gate of death:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

As I said, in the beginning and at the end of the funeral these words had to be spoken. Now, indeed, this soul was as it were like sleeping during the whole process, during the funeral ceremony. Then the cremation followed. Strangely enough the soul experienced a first flashing of consciousness, which later passed again, at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but the heat seized the corpse. There one could say: now this soul has gone through the gate of death, it had taken off its etheric body, and it now appeared how such a soul looks back. In this retrospective view, the whole funeral ceremony stood before the soul, looking at the spoken words. Someone could see there the secret of time effectiveness for the soul, after it has gone through the gate of death. One could always have seen this in such a case. If one here in the physical body looks at something spatial and then leaves it, this object does not leave, but is left, and one can always look around—one sees that it is left. However, that does not hold true of something we experience in time in the physical life. There we have a memory picture of the events only. If one looks back after death at past events, they are left; one looks at the events like through space. Thus the words had been left; the soul looked back at them like at spatial things through the course of time. This is the way to look at the things of the Akasha Chronicle. Then a kind of sleeping state happened again. But particularly in this case it was rather clear that the fear of the materialistic soul is unfounded that the consciousness of the soul is reduced when it goes through the gate of death.

We do not have no consciousness or not enough consciousness after death when we sink in a kind of sleeping state, but we have too much consciousness. When we have taken off the etheric body, when the life tableau is taken off, we are full of consciousness that blinds us at first, and the human being must orientate himself first.—I gave more details in my talks of the Vienna cycle The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and New Birth.—The soul orientates itself, while it looks back at its own earth-life and at its character in this earth-life. It has to orientate itself by means of self-knowledge. The force of orientation must take hold there, and then the abundant consciousness is reduced as far as the human being is able to endure it, depending on what he has gone through in his last incarnation. It is, actually, reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the degree which the human being can endure. But that may happen in stages. When the body was seized by the heat, the first flashing of real consciousness took place in the soul of this personality friendly to us.

It appeared to me especially clearly in another case that the soul, when it has gone through the gate of death, wants to summarise its being. I said that you can experience these matters at every death, but I give you typical examples of the most recent time. It appeared to me with quite particular clearness in another case when a friendly personality, after it had reached higher years, has gone through the gate of death. During the last years which it lived through on earth it was given away with all feelings in a rare way to the impulses of spiritual science. It felt the details of spiritual science more than it grasped them with the mind, that it united with its soul the kind of feeling which gives not a theoretical, but a true view of spiritual science. Shortly after the hour of death, while the soul experienced the life tableau with its etheric body, it tried now to grasp its self where it had taken off its body. This process seemed likewise to ray forth to me, and I identified with it. I had then to note words shortly after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric body, which I have also not coined with the help of my human knowledge. These words are nothing else than a reproduction of that what the soul worked internally in itself to summarise what it had been able to get from spiritual science and came to an internally complete self-awareness that way. There the words sounded from the soul which I had to speak then also, following an inspiration, before and after the funeral speech. You will immediately notice the great difference to the whole tone of those words I gave for the other personality before.

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares,
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfil my human duty;

May I live in anticipation
Oriented toward my soul's star,
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

The soul speaks of itself as “I.” In the former case, the considering soul had to characterise the other soul interchanging with it. In this case, the considering soul had nothing else to do than to transport itself completely into the soul which still tried to grasp, enriched by spiritual science, with the forces of the etheric body to become clear that it has now to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

These are cases again in which one realises that the human being, after he has gone through the gate of death, is dependent on looking back at himself in self-knowledge. One could see clearly that somebody who is still in the physical body can help the dead to formulate in words what works and weaves in him. Of course, the times, when the human being sees his weaknesses and mistakes, his sins, come later in the soul-world. But we have to retain: as much as death is feared now and again by those who are still in the body, death is something completely different seen from the other side in the retrospective view. Here in the physical life nobody can look so far back with his everyday human forces to the hour of his birth. Actually, nobody who does not have clairvoyant forces has the possibility to look at his entry into the world; only later the point in time up to which one can look back takes place.

Just the reverse is the case with that birth for the spiritual world which we call death. The human being looks at this point in time permanently in the life between death and new birth. This moment belongs to the most marvellous, greatest at which one can generally look in the spiritual world. Death is always an immediate proof of the fact that the spirit incessantly celebrates his victory over the physical nature. And you experience this in yourself. That is why the soul wants to experience that which one can be also really in the soul after death. Hence, it is a help if a soul living in the body expresses that in words what the soul strives for, so that the soul clearly sees itself with the best it has before its own spiritual view after it has gone through the gate of death. I just could see in this case that such words came to me with an internal necessity which referred to the soul in question when I had to speak at the funeral and did not speak out of arbitrariness, but obeyed the divine voice which told me what I had to do.

In still another case that appeared to me by the karmic course of the last times, when one of our friends died as young man who gave rise to great hopes just for our movement. He died in the thirtieth year of his life. On the 26th February he would have been thirty years old, he died shortly before. This friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher, has been somebody who was able to summarise that spiritual-scientifically what he had gained in learning—he had a disposition to scholarship,—with infinite, sacrificing devotion, and thus, indeed, he stood before something our movement needs so much: taking up our extensive science in oneself, so that one penetrates it spiritual-scientifically and reports it spiritual-scientifically, so that one stands completely on the ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for that. Even if now the karma runs a way that such souls go early through the gate of death, this has its significance in the whole world course. Like in the other cases—because I was urged just by karma to speak at the funeral,—it was there also that I had to speak words in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech which had to be spoken again in the same manner, transporting myself into the soul's being, so that I coined the words again not arbitrarily, but grasped them in the lively being together with the deceased. There I had to say then:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

Already in the next night I could experience that the following sounded from this soul from the spiritual realm:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I assure you, when I had written down these verses, I did not think, not in the least, that in both stanzas each “you” can be transformed to “me,” each “your” to “my.” I took notice only, when both stanzas sounded back from the other soul like an answer in the next night. So that the stanzas could just remain, only the second person was replaced by the first person.

I mention this, because a heart understanding can arise to us that in the future of the human development the possibility remains to speak from soul to soul, when the mouth is no longer the tool. In the same way we get answer here for the everyday life from the mouth of the other soul, it was here at an example where the soul gave answer still even from the unconscious of its being, saying as it were: I have now understood, because it was to me really that way in life; now I understand what I have aimed at in life, after I have taken off my body.

It does not only depend on the fact that we take up concepts, ideas and mental pictures of the spiritual worlds, but that we live in a certain life, in a certain way of life as human beings, while we go as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch towards the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. It depends on the fact that the chasm is bridged really which separates the living human beings from the so-called dead that humankind becomes one more and more not only in so far as it is incarnated in the body, but also as it has taken on those forms of existence which the human being lives through between death and new birth. Spiritual science has not only to bring that to humankind, but for the life which the earth needs for the rest of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the first, I would like to say, still stammering attempt, because what can be given in spiritual science is basically only a stammering compared to that what future generations experience of spiritual science.

My account tried to make that comprehensible by the force of heart what we can think about the relations of life and death, referring today to spiritual science facing life, so that you get another understanding than the head understanding, the lively heart understanding which we seek for, actually, through the spiritual-scientific deepening. That is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The sixth and the seventh epochs follow it. However, you understand only what is to be defended as Central European culture if you just feel this Central European culture intimately connected with that which must be gained in the fifth culture-epoch for humankind. Something may then begin from that which I have mentioned in the beginning of this consideration: a widening of the view beyond that what our destiny-burdened times have in their lap.

In the East, a kind of human life prepares which will be significant for the future. You only need to read up about that in the series of talks about the mission of the folk-souls² I held once in Kristiania (= Oslo). But totally different from the soul kind which is just that of the Central European is already the soul kind of the Eastern European not to speak at all of the Far Eastern—totally different. We have already to get on by that what spiritual science should be for us to create an open spirit eye for such things. What is often told that once the Varangians were invited by the Russian-Slavic population that they would have said to them: we have a nice country, but we have no order, come to us and make order. Arrange something like a state for us. What is told sentimentally as a starting point of the Russian history is nothing else as a legend without any historical background. This has never taken place that way. In truth, these Varangians came into the country as conquerors and were not called really. Nevertheless, what is told in history has more significance, even more than it would have if it corresponded to a historical truth. Because it means something prophetic, something really prophetic, something that has not yet happened that happens, however, in future. What should develop in the East, has to develop so that the abilities of the eastern peoples are used to take up what the western civilisation has created, and to process it in itself to get fertilised with that which the West has created. This is the task of the eastern peoples in future.

One can just characterise the nature of the Russian eastern nation briefly. When we look at the real nation—not at that dishonest society which now governs the Russian nation,—then we have to be aware of the fact that the Russian soul has an immense lot of talents that it is gifted as it were for everything; but just while it unfolds its mission in the world human development more and more, will appear that something can be there in humanity what one can call: talent without productive power. The talent will still become greater and greater. That, however, what distinguishes, for example, the Central European, that he has combined his talent with the spiritual force that he produces that “for him whose striving never ceases ...” and lives intimately with his folk-soul. He wants to produce that what he wants to understand at the same time what is there so splendid in Fichte's philosophy where the ego to understand itself wants to produce itself perpetually—one will see only later which significance this philosophy has,—just that what distinguishes Central Europe. The opposite of that is in existence in Russia, in the east of Europe. These Russian souls are receptive first of all: they have the biggest gift for taking up, and if one speaks of productiveness, one is mistaken. They have a vocation to develop talents without productiveness. Today even the concept is difficult to grasp because something like that has not yet existed in the development, but has to develop only bit by bit. In future it happens that from the East over here to the West the call goes out: we have a nice country, but no order—for disorder increases more and more,—come and make order.—Central Europe has a vocation to bring spiritual productiveness to the East. What happens now means that they defend themselves unreasonably against that which must still happen in future. One wants to crush that to which once one will have to come and say: come to us and make order.—It is thus in the historical evolution of humanity that that is thrown back mostly, pushed back mostly what one has to long for in the end. The biggest misfortune would be that the east of Europe, if Russia were victorious in this process. That would not be the biggest misfortune for Central Europe, not at all, but for Russia herself, the biggest misfortune, considered internally, because this victory would have to be cancelled again. This victory could not last with its effects. Thus we stand before the tragic moment of the historical evolution of humanity that the East defends itself against something it will long for in future, will long for with all its forces. Because it would experience an entire decline if it could not be fertilised by the spiritual life of the directly bordering West. In the further course of its culture this West has to produce a lively cultural life, not only idealism, but lively cultural life. This lively cultural life will be like a spirit sun which moves from the West to the East, opposite to the movement of the sun. The external Russian human being will see more and more how little he is able to do by himself how he is dependent on arranging himself really in the whole evolutionary process of humanity; how he commits the biggest sin assaulting the west-European culture.

I would like to say we could feel strange pre-flashes of it. Something appeared in this East that was impossible in the West: the so-called world view of the discalced friars,³ a type of philosophy of the discalced friars which has quickly spread over big circles, while it was not there some years ago at all. Being discalced! The world view of those who make the absolute unbelief in human beings and humanity a philosophy, because they cannot believe that the human being is really something different than that what there walks around between birth and death under tribulation and fright, that the words liberty, fraternity, compassion and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise one is who walks as a pilgrim barefoot through the world, who the whole culture, the whole putrescent west-European culture—as the discalced friar says—feels as a big deception and regards the tattered clothing, the musty room and broad street as something through which the human being walks, when he forced himself to the discalced friars' world view. When a poet allows to express this discalced friars' world view by one of his persons with characteristic words, this must touch us quite strangely who always try to find out that of the Central European world view which can kindle the light of the future for the human beings. If a poet allows to express a person that what is, however, basically a kind of a summary of the discalced friars' world view and their philosophy how does it seem to us?

”Yes what does this person mean to you? Do you understand? He collars you, quashes you under the nails like a fleeing! Then you may feel sorry for him ... Certainly! Then you may manifest your whole stupidity to him. He will stretch you on seven instruments of torture for your compassion; he wraps your intestine over the hand and pulls all your veins out of the body, an inch per hour ... Oh you ... Compassion! Pray to God that one may thrash you simply without any compassion, and finish ... Compassion ... Bah!”

And Gorki of whom you have already heard something says to such words: “Cruel, but true,” while he returns now not only the world view of a poetic personality, as the poet expresses it, but he expresses his own world view which results for him as the consideration of the world. This is the world view of a discalced friar, a world view about which one can just talk like about other world views now in existence. It is the world view which has lost the possibility to come out of itself to something that rays light to life. It has to wait, until it is fertilised by this light, and then it can fulfil its mission in the human evolution. However, now it rebels against that what it just must do. One could experience many phrases in the world, but I say that from the most tragic feeling:

Such phrases, as they were spoken by the most different parties in August 1914 on the war assembly of the Russian Duma, such a sum of phrases exceeds the peak of phraseology. Such a thing is only spoken when any lively productive force of the soul is exhausted. In the East one stands in reality in the eve of that what should become first, and unfolds a force that is opposite to that what will once make this East great. We in Central Europe have to say to ourselves: nevertheless, this East waits just for the spiritual wisdom which has to arise in the middle of Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform that into feelings what I has suggested to you with grievous feelings, I would like to say, in single words that it can light up that what we are able to see as spiritual scientists with enlarged sensations and with which we should familiarise ourselves to understand the real necessity and also the contemporary historical necessity of the spiritual-scientific world view. Then we penetrate ourselves with thoughts which ascend from our souls to cosmic distances. Thoughts which meet then what works down from these spiritual worlds, when peace prevails on earth.

Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls work which free themselves as unused etheric bodies from the souls, which could work still for years, still for decades here in the physical bodies, for the physical lives. The idea must become apparent to us how many such unused parts of etheric bodies ascend into the spiritual world—still except that what human beings going through the portal of death on the battlefields take with their individualities into the spiritual world. However, these etheric bodies represent a big sum of spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which should help forming a spiritual world view from the spiritual spheres which should seize humanity more and more. It is necessary that thoughts ascending from earthly human beings to the spiritual spheres meet these forces of the unused etheric bodies which are able to work down from the spiritual spheres. These human thoughts have to show understanding for the secret work of the spiritual world into which the forces of these unused etheric bodies are woven.

However, this should be an encouragement for us that we penetrate ourselves with the profundities of spiritual science. Since these profundities stimulate thoughts in us which have an effect then more and more also in other human beings. Depending on what develops as destiny-burdened contents of our days, days full of peace will come when that what the souls have planted of spiritual science in themselves will ascend. It will meet the forces that have collected from the etheric bodies of those who went through the gate of death on the battlefields and flow down. Then this will happen what I would like to subsume in some words as a result of this spiritual-scientific consideration. If we are able to put the fruits of spiritual science in our time rightly, then that will happen what I would like to express in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Galatians 2:20
• 2. The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology 11 lectures in Kristiania (today Oslo, June 1910), Steiner's Collected Works volume 121
• 3. the following quotation from the dramatic poem The Lower Depths by Maksim Gorky (1868–1936) stems originally from a writing by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941)

A kind of nightmare-like oppression can weigh on the soul of anyone observing the current cultural life of humanity, a kind of contraction of the tortured heart, when one realizes that there are still relatively few people who want to see with an unbiased eye how we are on a slippery slope with regard to the most important branches of our cultural life. This downward slide has become sufficiently apparent through the events of recent years, through everything that has befallen people. But we still often find today that people are of the opinion that, unless drastic action is taken, things must remain at least as chaotic as they have become, and that we can continue to work from what is already there; the rest will take care of itself. Over the years, I have repeatedly had to speak out against these feelings of temporariness and point out the necessity of relearning and rethinking in order to find the inclination to think about a real renewal of our public affairs and public life from the deepest foundations of our intellectual and cultural life. And even though there are already a small number of people today who have become aware of this, and all signs indicate that without such decisive action the downward spiral will have to be continued and continued, even these few people will find little understanding for what is necessary for a new metamorphosis of the human spirit to emerge from the ice, in order to lead to a recovery, to a healing of many an ill, who are living out their lives on the slippery slope of our cultural life.

Three phenomena stand out, from which the most important for understanding our time and what is necessary in it can be seen. The first I would call the main defect of our time. For decades, the lectures on spiritual science have endeavored to point out this main defect and also to point out the many things that must follow from this main defect of insufficient knowledge and insight into spiritual life itself for the development of humanity in the present and the near future. The second thing that speaks loudly and clearly from the facts of the present, I would call the main demand. And this main demand has been sounding in many hearts for more than a century, since Schiller, in his “Don Carlos”, had the words spoken: “Give freedom of thought!” Those who look more deeply into the social and spiritual life of our time will be able to see how, behind many of today's consciously formulated social demands, the demand for free activity of the innermost human being, of human thought, is actually hidden. Many people sigh under the compulsion of their thought life, which comes either from old existing institutions or from the new economic conditions. They find themselves either officially existing beliefs or the constraints of economic life in their free development of thought inhibited. What actually lives in the soul, remains largely unconscious, but what rises to consciousness, comes in the fact that one can not be satisfied with anything, there is something that does not let people openly and freely confess before himself: I may lead a dignified human existence. And so the most diverse programs arise, which contain very beautiful things, but do not reach down to the bottom of the soul to see what is actually living there. If one searches for what is living there: it is the longing for the freest activity of the innermost human being, for what could be summarized with the expression of the time's demand for freedom of thought. And one need only utter the words “social forces” – and it can be felt how this indicates that modern intellectual, modern legal and political, and modern economic conditions have brought us to an age in which the productive forces of life operate in a complicated way, and how we are not able are unable, from what we have intellectually mastered, from what we want to process programmatically, to organize these social forces, in which human beings are interwoven, in such a way that within this organization the individual human being, who has come to the awareness of his humanity, can satisfactorily answer the question: Do I lead a dignified existence?

I may assume that the majority of the listeners gathered here today have been able to gather from the lectures and the writings, which further elaborate on the content of these lectures and which I have published, over the course of many years, what the inner meaning and spirit of the spiritual science referred to here is. This spiritual science believes that it must, out of a sense of the necessity of the times, place itself in the present-day cultural life. Today, since I can refer to the numerous lectures already given here, I will only need to touch on some fundamental points. Above all, however, I would like to touch on one introductory point again, which has already been discussed in the most diverse forms.

When spiritual science is mentioned, the outside world often associates it with all kinds of complicated mysticism, complicated theosophy, and so on. Although spiritual science does what it can to educate people about its true meaning, it is still spoken of in such a way in the broadest circles that it represents the exact opposite of what this spiritual science actually wants to be. First and foremost, the representatives of this spiritual science feel that for three to four centuries a way of thinking has emerged within humanity that dominates our entire lives and that has found its most significant expression in the way of thinking of modern natural science. Please do not misunderstand me on this point. I do not want to awaken the belief that I assume that only those people who have undergone some kind of scientific education are imbued with that school of thought. It is not like that. People from the widest circles, right down to those with a very primitive culture and education, who today want to be enlightened about the nature of man, about the nature of social life, and about the nature of the universe, think in such a way, they present in such a direction as it has been expressed mainly by natural science. And it is no wonder that this is so, because our whole life, which surrounds us and in which we are interwoven throughout the day, is basically a result of this scientific way of thinking.

Those who have heard me speak often know that I do not underestimate this scientific way of thinking, and that I recognize its great triumphs. But it has achieved these triumphs precisely because it has been able to take hold of part of our practical life in such a magnificent way, because over the last three to four centuries it has become magnificently one-sided. Everything that people think in this direction is based on an understanding of inanimate nature, of the physical and chemical, which then passes into technology, into everything that underlies our life institutions, and which, for example, is also incorporated into our healing methods, that is, into those insights that are intended to help human life from a certain point of view. But anyone who recognizes, without prejudice, the tremendous progress that has been made in the biological, physical and chemical aspects of the natural sciences, and who is able to appreciate the significance of what conscientious methodology has achieved in this respect, is precisely the person who, at the same time, is also able to fully grasp the limitations of this natural scientific way of thinking. I have explained this countless times here, and I would now like to summarize it in the words: Those who penetrate more deeply into what we today call genuine natural science will find that this natural science provides excellent insights into inanimate nature and into that in the living that, I might say, consists of inclusions in this inanimate nature. But there is one thing that we must stop at when we survey the scope of knowledge of the natural scientific way of thinking: We must stop before the actual essence of man. There is no way, if one does not want to indulge in self-deception, to believe that these views, which have led us so deeply into the inanimate, which have “brought us so gloriously far” in our technical achievements, that these views can provide any insight into the essence of man. This knowledge of the human being – that can be known by the one who does not cling to that fable convenue, which is not history but is called history – this knowledge of the human being was something instinctive for man up to three to four centuries ago. A certain knowledge of the human being lived out of an original, elementary instinct of humanity. However, just as the individual human being undergoes a development, so does all of humanity. And no matter how much we are deceived into claiming the opposite, humanity has now reached a point in its development where it can no longer judge the human essence from mere instinct. It is necessary for man to penetrate consciously into the essence of man himself, just as he must consciously penetrate into the phenomena of the outer life of nature, as Copernicus and Galileo did. When we come to the decisive point, where science and research must stop short before the insight into the human being, there is nothing left but to turn to what I have often mentioned: the intellectual modesty that is necessary for the human being, which can only provide the basis for the pursuit of true human development.

Those who cannot develop this intellectual modesty out of a genuine desire for knowledge will not be able to arrive at a true understanding of the human being. You have to be able to say to yourself: I see a five-year-old child, and I give him a volume of Goethe's lyrical poems. He looks at it and may well tear the book apart. He is going through the same process that an adult who has undergone development also goes through, so that he can really find what is meant to speak to him from this volume of poems. But just as one must admit that the child must first develop in order to relate to what is happening to him in the right way, so today one must also say: just as the human being is placed in existence by nature, he stands before human life itself like a five-year-old child before a volume of Goethe's poetry, if he does not have the will to guide his development beyond what is usually considered the only possible method today. One must take one's development into one's own hands. But then it becomes apparent that there are hidden forces in the human being that can be awakened and that give an equally rigorous scientific insight as only a natural science can give, but which go beyond the knowledge of the external world, the world of the senses, and lead into the supersensible, and only then lead to a true understanding of the human being. We must be able to admit: we cannot approach the human being with the ordinary powers that are sufficient for the knowledge of nature. We can only do so if we bring out the powers of knowledge that otherwise lie dormant in us, as the powers of understanding do in a five-year-old child, from the depths of the human soul.

And so the spiritual science referred to here represents the view that it is possible, from the standpoint that is sufficient to recognize external inanimate nature, to lead people to points of view of knowledge from which one can penetrate into the human being. This spiritual science does not want to be an idle brooding in inner mysticism; this spiritual science also does not want to handle any outer machinations to advance to the spirit, but wants to be something that builds so strictly on that for which the human being is really capable of developing, as, for example, the mathematician builds on the development of those abilities that are also brought forth entirely from within the human being. This spiritual science does not want to be as strictly logical as any other branch of science, but it does want to apply this logic only to what arises as a spiritual vision when what lies dormant within the human being is truly awakened in a natural way. In my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” I have pointed out that it is entirely through inward, soul-spiritual methods that this development of inner, spiritual-soul forces is brought about in man, and how, through this, , to use Goethe's words, a spiritual eye, a soul ear, a spirit ear, so that he can see and hear the spiritual and soul realm, for which we basically only have words today. It is pointed out that it is important to cultivate a certain strengthening of our thinking life. I have emphasized the necessity of a certain self-discipline, of taking our development into our own hands, for otherwise we simply abandon ourselves to life, so that the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear are closed.

Most people today are still quite hostile to anything that comes from this side. And yet, one need only point out how, in our time, when social demands are springing up everywhere, the most anti-social instincts prevail. Where do these come from? They come from the fact that people actually pass each other by without understanding and that they do not comprehend one another. And why do they not understand one another? Because their knowledge, what they call knowledge, does not engage the whole person, because it remains in the head, because it is limited to the mere intellect. The peculiar thing about the spiritual science meant here is that the knowledge it provides through the developed forces engages the whole person, that it not only speaks to the intellect, not only to the intellect, but that they imbue feeling and will, that they infuse understanding of human nature, understanding of all that lives and moves beside and beyond us, that they pulsate with ethics, with morals, with a social attitude that simultaneously impacts directly on practical life.

This spiritual science does not know the unfortunate division that is discussed on every street corner today, the division into mental and manual labor. After all, what is our manual labor? It is nothing more than the use of the bodily tools at our disposal in the service of our will. But when we are clear about the fact - and I have often spoken of it - that this will, as a spiritual force, pulses through everything we do as a whole human being, and in turn radiates back to the intellect in our head, - when we really have the whole human being in mind, only then will we understand the innermost impulse of this spiritual science.

Please excuse me for mentioning something personal on this occasion. But in this case, the personal will serve to clarify the matter. The spiritual science that is being discussed here is to be served on the Dornach hill in northwestern Switzerland, a piece of Jura, the Goetheanum built there, which is intended as a university for spiritual science. When the time came to found this School of Spiritual Science and to dedicate the outer structure to it, it was not a matter of going to someone who, based on old architectural or artistic ideas, would have built a structure into which one would then have moved in order to pursue this spiritual science. No, it had to be something else. From the very beginning, this spiritual science was conceived in such a fruitful way that it can intervene in the whole of external cultural life, that it can truly infuse anew that which has become old in our art, in our architecture, in our life, in our work. So one could not simply give someone the commission: Build me a building in the Greek, Romanesque, Gothic or some other architectural style. Rather, out of this spiritual science itself, just as out of the other thoughts of life, just as out of the other impulses of life, so too did the architectural thoughts arise, which suggested: this is how this building must be in every line, in every single form. And so the building was undertaken that in every single form, even the smallest, it will indeed be the external crystallization of what underlies this spiritual science as a way of thinking, as an attitude.

And so perhaps I may say the following about myself: It was in the fall of 1913 and in the winter of 1914 that I myself worked out the model of this building, the whole building in miniature. Now that I have worked out the model, I ask about which even the architectural drawings are made: Was what I worked out in manual labor, was it manual labor or mental work? It was something where both came together and worked as one. I know this because I just did the thing. Then again, there is hardly anything about this building where I, like every single worker, did not lend a hand here and there. And for anyone who might be interested, I would like to say: we are working as the central figure of this building, a nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, which is supposed to represent the human enigma of our time, but in an artistic way. The task was to create a sculpted woodwork. Although the work is artistic, it is, if I may use the expression, a wood-chopping, and I could show the calluses on my fingers, which provide evidence that here mental work in direct manual labor from morning to evening itself is executed.

Recently, we had to decide on a certain financial matter; we needed to make the chairs. We got the cost estimate. The price was outrageous. So we made the model of a chair ourselves in our artistic studio, working together with a worker who is indeed extraordinarily skilled. When the model was finished – the chair will cost only two-fifths of what it would have cost according to the other proposal – again, one could not tell where the intellectual work ended and the manual labor began.

One may even say: in the way we work together in social life with our co-workers, who are made up of friends of our movement on the one hand and workers on the other, there is actually only one obstacle without which it would become apparent that mental work and manual work flow together everywhere. For example, we have a lady who is a certified medical assistant and who sharpens knives for our sculptors from morning till evening. And we can ask: What prevents what the wit, who are called spiritual workers, do, from simply flowing into what the workers do, to the complete satisfaction of both sides, to the most completely satisfying social collaboration? Yes, I do understand everything that has come about as social phenomena. Nevertheless, I must say that if I am to speak of the only obstacle that makes it impossible to hand over both manual labor and mental work to the manual laborer, it is the fact that the workers are organized and view everything that comes from the intellectual workers with mistrust, even though they are actually doing the same thing.

Why is it that today there is such a deep abyss between what lies in our art, in our science, in short, in our spiritual life and also in the spiritual direction of our social life, and in the external work that the proletarian movement in particular is dealing with today? This gulf has come about because what concerns the whole human being has fled from our way of thinking. A recovery for this lies only in spiritual science, not in a one-sided, complicated mysticism or theosophy, which idle people may pursue in their little rooms, without any momentum. The healing power of this spiritual science lies in the fact that it engages the whole human being. And I have said this now in order to make the following comment: I know that the insights that I am presenting to the world today with full responsibility would not have come to me if I had only worked with my head, if I had not had to devote my whole life to something that is usually called manual labor; because this also has a certain effect on a person. What is only the so-called brainwork, what only engages the intellect, does not reach to the spirit. And something that will seem highly paradoxical to many people today, I would like to mention here. Today, out there in practical life, we say: manual labor, practice; inside, from the intellect: intellectual work! Oh no, it is not at all as these words would lead us to believe. We have the separation between outer life practice and the so-called spiritual life because the spirit has fled from both, because today we are caught in the mechanical treadmill of technology, because the worker stands at the machine and merely performs mechanical tasks according to the instructions of the intellect, and because, on the other hand, those who are educated for an intellectual life are not sufficiently involved in real practical work. Our practical life is spiritless, and so is our intellectualized spiritual life. Only when the full activity of the human being in the world flows back into our heads, into our thinking, which can only arise from the harmonious activity of the whole human being, only when we do not only think with our heads, but think as one thinks when one has once formed something with one's hand and felt how it radiates back into the head, only then will the thought be so fully saturated with reality that there is spirit in it. That which is merely thought out is just as spiritless as that which is spiritlessly worked on a machine.

The spiritual science referred to here should not practise mysticism that is alien to life. It should arise from full engagement with life and should be much more saturated with reality than what is usually meant by intellectual life today. Or is what is meant today as spiritual life saturated with reality? Do we not see how powerless science is to really grasp the spirit? People who are generally immersed in our modern culture believe that they are doing unprejudiced natural science. But how did this unprejudiced natural science actually come about? Through the fact that for many centuries everything that people longed to know about soul and spirit, about that which extends beyond birth and death, was dependent on what the confessions monopolized, due to social circumstances. When the spirit of modern science arose, what did social life actually look like? Everything that people were allowed to know about soul and spirit was monopolized in the dogmas of the confessional societies. One was not allowed to think about soul and spirit, one was only allowed to think about the external world of the senses. And in this, people who have pursued natural science have found themselves. They got into the habit of thinking and researching only about the external world of the senses because research into spirit and soul had been forbidden for centuries. They translated this into certain ideas, they only pursued external sensory science. Then, through a grandiose self-deception, this has become the belief that exact science can only decide something about the external world of the senses, and that research into soul and spirit lies beyond the boundaries of knowledge. But this is also rooted in the soul life of modern man and permeates all life. One can gain fruitful thoughts about nature with such a view. But as soon as one wants to penetrate into social life, this way of thinking is not enough. There it is necessary, for the foundation of a real people's science, a real social science, that we imbue ourselves with a view of the whole human being. And that is lacking because the influences I have characterized prevented it.

So it has come about that people have said: Spirit and soul is something that has been established by dogmas for centuries. It cannot be researched. It is something that only through human will moves like smoke and fog over real life, and there, as the real thing, one forms nothing other than the economic forces themselves. Unbelief arose: the spiritual reigns in what the external economic forces are. And out of unbelief arose what has fatally taken hold in the hearts and minds of men. The belief arose that spiritual life could develop out of economic forces by itself, if only these were organized in a certain way. There is no realization that everything that has arisen economically is originally the result of intellectual life, but that our intellectual life has become unworldly, that there is an abyss between it and the outer life, and that for a recovery of our life we need a real spiritual science that penetrates into the essence of man, that penetrates man just as outer natural science penetrates the machine, but that must be built on the developed powers of human nature. In short, it is extraordinarily difficult to realize that spiritual science must become the basis for the understanding and mastering of social life. That is what the representative of spiritual science believes he recognizes: that the human intellect does not have enough impact, not even where it pulsates in today's social life, to immerse itself in real life, and that the latter must increasingly end in chaos if the impulses that reach into feeling and will, that can place human being next to human being in such a way that social forces can be organized, are not enlivened. No matter what natural scientific methods you take from the exact natural science that has reached its zenith in our time, you cannot establish a social science with them. The ideas that one gains without spiritual science behave in relation to social science in the same way as a color that one wants to paint on an oily surface. Just as the oily surface rejects the color, so life rejects what merely rules among us as intellectual science.

Thus external life cries out for the kind of depth that spiritual science provides. Spiritual science will have to provide the foundations for what people unconsciously express in their social demands today, what they cannot formulate clearly because the power of thought is not available. It is therefore necessary to understand this spiritual science not as something that one could devote a few thoughts to on the side, but as something that is among the most necessary conditions for the recovery of our lives. I know full well — for I truly do not believe I am an impractical person — that people say: We have our professions, we cannot devote ourselves to this spiritual science, which is quite extensive after all. Should not a little more thought also enter into the hearts and souls of people: Doesn't the present downward path on which we are walking show us — however much we are still in our profession — that we are only helping to shape the path into chaos? And shouldn't we consider it necessary to devote every hour that we can spare to such views, which now really and radically raise the question of recovery?

And what is meant here as spiritual science is intimately connected with that call in our time, which, as I have explained, is far older than a century, with that call, which I would like to describe as the call for freedom of thought. But this call is actually the call for social freedom. It is remarkable that when one tries to see through to what is rising to the surface in the waves of the so-called social demands in our present time, one repeatedly encounters the necessity to recognize how it actually relates to human freedom, to that impulse that expresses itself in one form or another as the impulse of human freedom. That this is an important point was recognized even by the man whom I consider the most unfortunate among the so-called outstanding people of our time who have gained influence over the shaping of conditions – even Woodrow Wilson recognized this. Since I never spoke differently about Woodrow Wilson even in neutral foreign countries during the war, while he was so adored by all sides, I may also speak about Woodrow Wilson today as I always have. There are numerous passages in his writings in which he points out that a recovery of the situation - he is primarily familiar with the American situation - can only come about if people's striving for freedom is truly taken into account.

But what is human freedom for Woodrow Wilson?

This brings us to a very, very interesting chapter in contemporary human thought - for Woodrow Wilson is, after all, a kind of representative thinker - where you will find the following view in his writing about freedom: You can form the concept of freedom by looking at a machine and how a gear wheel is attached. If it is attached in such a way that the mechanical device can move without hindrance, then one says that the gear wheel runs freely. When he looks at a ship, he says that the ship must be constructed in such a way that the machinery engages with the swell, so that it is not hindered, so that it moves with the swell, so to speak, is adapted to it, runs freely in the swell. Woodrow Wilson compares what the impulse of human freedom should really be to what a cogwheel in a machine or a ship in the waves of the sea is. He says: A person is free when he functions more or less like a wheel in a machine, when he functions freely in his external circumstances, so that he moves within them, so that he engages with his powers in what is going on around him, so that he is not hindered.

Now, I think it is very interesting that this peculiar view of human freedom can arise from the present-day scientific way of thinking and attitude. For is it not the opposite of freedom when one is so adapted to circumstances that one can only move in their sense? Does not freedom demand that one be able to stand up to external circumstances if necessary? Would not what lives as freedom have to be compared to what could, if necessary, behave in such a way that the ship turns against the waves and stops?

Where does this strange view come from, from which a healthy, statesmanlike insight can never arise, but at most the 14 abstract points of Wilson's pronouncements, which unfortunately were also admired here to some extent at a certain time? Hence it is that in our time it is not realized how one must go back to the human idea itself, to that idea which is conceived as an idea and which, if one really speaks of freedom, can provide the only real free impulse for human life. This is what I tried to present more than thirty years ago in my Philosophy of Freedom, a new edition of which has recently been published with corresponding additions. There, however, I tried to understand this impulse for freedom in a different way than it is currently being done. I tried to show how the question about human freedom has been wrongly formulated. The question is: Is man free or is he not free? Is man a free being who can make decisions out of his soul with real responsibility, or is he harnessed into a natural or spiritual necessity like a natural being? This question has been asked for thousands of years, and it is still being asked. This question alone is the great error.

One cannot ask the question in this way. Rather, the question of freedom is a question of human development, of a human development such that in the course of his youth or perhaps his later life, man develops powers within himself that he does not simply have by nature. One cannot ask: Is man free? By nature he is not, but he can make himself more and more free by awakening forces that lie dormant in him and that nature does not awaken. Man can become more and more free. One cannot ask: Is man free or unfree, but only: Is there a way for man to achieve freedom? And this way exists. As I said, thirty years ago I tried to show that when man develops an inner life within himself, so that he grasps the moral impulses for his actions in pure thoughts, he can really base his actions on thought impulses, not just instinctive emotions – thoughts that merge into external reality as the lover into the beloved. Then man approaches his freedom. Freedom is just as much a child of the thought, which is grasped in spiritual clairvoyance - not under an external compulsion - as it is a child of

of true devoted love, love for the object of our activity. What German spiritual life strove for in Schiller, when he confronted Kant and sensed something of such a concept of freedom, befits us to further develop in the present. But then it became clear to me that one can only speak of that which underlies moral actions – even if it remains unconscious in people, it is still there – and that one must call it intuition. And so in my “Philosophy of Freedom” I spoke of a moral intuition.

But this also provided the starting point for everything I later attempted to achieve in the field of spiritual science. Do not think that I now have an immodest opinion of these things. I know very well that this 'Philosophy of Freedom', which I conceived more than thirty years ago as a young man, has, to a certain extent, all the teething troubles of the intellectual life that emerged during the 19th century. But I also know that out of this intellectual life has sprung what is a leading up of the intellectual life into the truly spiritual. So that I can say to myself: When man rises to the moral impulses in moral intuition and represents a truly free being, then he is already, if I may use the frowned-upon word, “clairvoyant” with regard to his moral intuitions. In that which lies beyond all sensuality lie the impulses of all morality. Fundamentally, the truly moral commandments are the results of human clairvoyance. Therefore, there was a straight path from that “philosophy of freedom” to what I mean today by spiritual science. Freedom arises in man only when man develops. But he can develop further so that what is already the basis of freedom also drives him to become independent of all sensuality and to rise freely into the realms of the spirit.

Thus, freedom is connected with the development of human thinking. Freedom is basically always freedom of thought, and especially when we look at such representative people as Woodrow Wilson, we have to say: because such people have never grasped what the thought of something truly spiritual is, how it must be rooted in the spiritual if it is not to be abstract, that is why they can invent such paradoxical definitions as Woodrow Wilson has invented for freedom. From such things we see the inadequacy of the present spiritual life, the main defect of which is that it does not recognize the spiritual nature of man. We see what the main demand is: freedom of thought, and what the main need is: the mastering of social forces, if this life is to develop into the basis for these three great demands in the present for the near future. Thus, what is a truly original impulse in man does not depend on what can be achieved in man through scientific thinking, but on what can only be achieved through spiritual contemplation.

So much has been argued about freedom because people want to decide on it without entering the ground on which the knowledge of the immortality of the human soul arises. And no one who does not approach the question of the realization of human immortality, of the eternal in man, in an unbiased way is able to understand the essence of human freedom. If one does not seek the essence of this freedom in the flashing forth of the thought that is not merely given by nature, then one does not find this essence of freedom. But only when it has been found does it permeate and pulsate through the human being in such a way that he can become a truly social being, for it carries him alongside other human beings into the social order in such a way that social forces can be released from within. And we need this sense of social forces.

I mentioned earlier that in Dornach, where we are building, we are able to place people who have even reached certain heights in spiritual training and who do the most ordinary, dirty work, which in fact is in no way inferior to that of those who are usually called manual laborers. In social terms, however, the construction of Dornach is based on foundations that are not necessarily the same as those of an enterprise geared towards material gain. But if you take on board what I have set out in my “Key Points of the Social Question” and in the lectures on threefolding, you will find that it is possible to create similar foundations for the whole of life as those that have been created in Dornach for the building that is to represent our spiritual scientific movement. It is a pity that many people in other countries cannot visit this building today, because unfortunately we have come to a point where crossing national borders has become almost impossible.

But why is it possible, after all, to release social energies in such a way that the ideal of the proletarian movement is fulfilled, albeit differently than one dreams? Because everything that is done there is based on the conception of life, on this whole-hearted attack on life, which results from the impulses of spiritual science, because every single thing is done on the basis of spiritual science. What is done on a small scale on the basis of spiritual science can also be done on a large scale in social life on the basis of a spiritual-scientific understanding of life. Every factory, every bank, every external undertaking can be organized in a way that only someone who is able to think about practical life with a science that descends so deeply into the human being that it grasps not abstract thoughts and natural laws but living facts can organize. These living facts can be found if one only descends deeply enough into the human being through the indicated methods. It is not an abstract mysticism that is sought, but the facts of life through which the human being stands in reality. And by recognizing the human being, one finds at the same time through this spiritual science that which can bring the social forces into the corresponding organization, so that the people living in this organization can answer the question satisfactorily: Is human life worthy of a human being?

So the three things are connected: social forces, freedom of thought and spiritual science. Spiritual science is truly the opposite of what it is often portrayed as. A life of leisure, people think, the dream of idle people. No, spiritual science wants to be a way of life, precisely the way of life that our time lacks most. It wants to immerse itself in life, to master life in science and practice, because it wants to immerse itself in the reality of the human being, not just in the humanly conceived life. There are well-meaning people today who say: the mere mind, the mere intellect, which has developed over the past centuries and into our time, is no longer good for the recovery of our lives. But when asked what is useful, they give general answers: a re-fertilization of the soul through the 'spirit'. When it comes to true spiritual science, they reject it because they are still afraid of it, or use the strangest excuses. So you will always find people saying: Not everyone can become a spiritual researcher. Certainly, not everyone can do it, I have emphasized this again and again here. For although one can take those first steps into the spiritual worlds, into the supersensible existence, as I have described them in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second part of my “Secret Science” , anyone can do them at any time, but the advance to those questions that deal with the beings of the supersensible worlds in a deeper sense is indeed tied to a variety of experiences that not everyone is ready for today. Those who want to look into the spiritual world, who want to become spiritual researchers in the truest sense, must undergo many struggles. You need only consider that at the moment when you really enter into a realization that does not make use of the senses, at the moment when you enter into a body-free cognition and the familiar outer world is no longer there, - that you are then in a world that presents all sorts of unfamiliar things: All the things that usually support you, the secure external experience, the ordinary intellect, have to give way to other, inner powers of judgment. You are like over an abyss and have to hold on by the center of gravity of your own being. Many people have an unconscious or subconscious fear of this, which they then express in logic when it comes to spiritual science. You may hear the most beautiful arguments; but in truth it is only the fear of the unknown.

But then you must also bear in mind that you, as you are as a human being, are not adapted to the spiritual world, that you are only adapted to the outer world of the senses. You enter into a completely different world for which you have not developed any habits of life. When one penetrates deeper, this causes those terribly painful experiences that must be overcome in real spiritual knowledge. Then, when they are overcome, insights follow from the innermost part of our being that provide information about what is eternal in human nature, what the spiritual is that underlies the world. Not all people can go through this path to such an extent. But I also had to assert time and again that it is not necessary to go through this path, but that all that is needed is common sense. For this common sense, if it is not misled by the prejudices of external views, can distinguish whether the one who presents himself as a spiritual researcher and speaks of initially unknown worlds speaks logically or like a spiritualist or otherwise. Logic is at hand, and one can judge whether the person in question is speaking logically and in such a way that the way he speaks indicates that the experiences he is talking about are being undergone in full mental health.

If one repeatedly objects: Yes, everyone can convince themselves of what external science says, that is correct. One need only discuss laboratory methods to be able to do so. But one can also say: Everyone can convince himself that what is described in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds” and “Theosophy” is correct; one can deduce the inner value of the knowledge from the nature of the spiritual researcher. Then these insights are as valuable for life as they are in the soul of the spiritual researcher himself. The researcher is checked in external science by the external facts; the insights are checked by the way of speaking, the way they are clothed, the way the spiritual researcher has to say. He can be checked by common sense.

Consider what social forces will be unleashed when more and more people emerge as witnesses for the spiritual forces that can only be found in the supersensible, and which other people who cannot be spiritual researchers themselves – not everyone can be a chemist or a physicist – accept out of their common sense and trust, which is based on common sense. What kind of social life arises from this evaluation of the human being is precisely one of the most important points for awakening social forces of trust. They are undermined in our time, when everyone, without taking their development into their own hands, wants to judge everything as soon as they come of age. And that this spiritual science can really provide practical impulses in social life, we have tried to do so here with the establishment of the Waldorf school, which we owe to our dear Mr. Molt, in which the school system is to be built on true knowledge. We want to solve a social question in the right way; because we want a human being to grow in every child, who receives that guiding force for later life, so that social forces are developed in a fruitful way from the human being, not from a dull, inadequate knowledge, as it often dominates social thinking in our time. We really want to develop social thinking that is built on human trust, on the secure foundations of the human soul. And by seeing the developing human being in every child who attends this school, by trying to develop him or her through insights that can enliven the pedagogical foundations, we see something that is necessary, as in everything we try to bring out of this spiritual science.

Of course, I can only describe this spiritual science as a necessary requirement for present and future development from a few points of view. Thus it happens that antagonisms arise from such one-sided allusions because one does not see the whole picture. But now, at the end, I would like to come back to the beginning and point out how heavy the heart can become when one sees how few people there are who appreciate the downward slide; how one does not look for the foundations for a new structure of our spiritual, moral and other cultural life.

This can be seen from many things. Let me give you a few examples in conclusion. Even people who are thought to be firmly established in the external life, what view have they come to based on the facts? The words written by the Austrian statesman Czernin in his latest book deserve to be heeded:

"The war continues, albeit in a different form. I believe that future generations will not call the great drama that has dominated the world for five years the World War at all, but the World Revolution, and will know that this World Revolution only began with the World War. Neither the Peace of Versailles nor St-Germain will create a lasting work. In this peace lies the disintegrating seed of death. The struggles that are shaking Europe are not yet diminishing. Like a violent earthquake, the subterranean rumblings continue. Soon the earth will open here and there, hurling fire against the sky. Again and again, events of elemental force will sweep devastatingly across the lands until everything that reminds us of the madness of this war is swept away. Slowly, with unspeakable sacrifice, a new world will be born. Future generations will look back on our time as if it were a long, evil dream. But day always follows the darkest night. Generations have sunk into the grave, murdered, starved, succumbed to disease. Millions have died in the pursuit of annihilation and destruction, hatred and murder in their hearts. But other generations will arise, and with them a new spirit. They will build up what war and revolution have destroyed. Every winter is followed by spring. That, too, is an eternal law in the cycle of life, that resurrection follows death. Blessed are those who will be called upon to help build the new world as soldiers of labor.

Now, here too there is talk of the new spirit; I know that if one were to speak to this Czernin about the new spirit, he would shrink back, would consider it a fantasy. In abstracto people speak of the new spirit, they know that it must come. But they run for dear life when faced with the concrete spirit. But it is a serious matter to look at the concrete path of this new spirit. There are many today, for example, who attack spiritual science from the standpoint of their supposed Christianity, who do not want to recognize how this spiritual science provides the most vital foundations for a revival of Christianity; how Christianity will live into the future precisely because spiritual science will again teach the living Christ and the event of Golgotha as a historical fact from spiritual scientific research. A large number of theologians have come to the point of no longer teaching this Christ as the actual meaning of the earth, but rather to make him the “simple man of Nazareth”. Spiritual Christianity will be re-established through spiritual science. But those who are afraid today, precisely because of the Christian foundations, should be told: Christianity is built on such firm foundations that there is no need to fear it in the face of spiritual science, any more than there is need to fear the discovery of the air pump and other things — and thus also not the teaching of repeated earthly lives or the doctrine of fate, as spiritual science presents them. Christianity is so strong that it can absorb everything that comes from spiritual science. But whether all of today's 'bearers of the Christian faiths are so strong is another question, but also a serious one.

We have to think in global terms, that's what this so-called world war has drummed into us. Many people think similarly about our Europe and its culture as a Japanese diplomat, whose words I would like to share with you. This Japanese diplomat, who is an educated man, said:

One may think of this content as one wants: This is how one thinks in the world, and we have every reason to look at these thoughts as at facts. It is truly most unfortunate when, on the part of those who ought to be familiar with the conditions of spiritual life – allow me to characterize them – the objections that have been so often and repeatedly described keep coming up, for example, the objection: You can't check what the spiritual researcher says. For example, a booklet was recently published by a gentleman who lives not far from here: 'Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist'. I would just like to point out one aspect of the spirit and logic that prevails there. There is a nice sentence: 'I may have to become a historian, physicist or chemist in order to be able to check things independently. But I cannot verify the theosophical truths unless I am clairvoyant'. That is, he says, historians, physicists and chemists claim all sorts of things; if you want to check these, you just have to become a historian, physicist or chemist. I say: if you want to check spiritual-scientific things, you have to become a spiritual scientist. What does the gentleman say? “I just might have to become a historian, physicist or chemist in order to be able to check things independently. But I cannot verify the theosophical truths unless I am a seer.” Of course! I cannot verify the results of chemical research either unless I become a chemist. But one can become a chemist. But one does not want to become a spiritual scientist. So one says something very strange: I must be able to test, but to be able to test without somehow getting involved in the methods of testing. The question for this gentleman, as he himself says, as you will soon hear, is not whether one can decide when one has appropriated the reasons for the decision, but: “The question is whether they have been or can be verified by me, and that, apart from the formal logical criticism, I must deny.” Well, I readily admit that he must deny it. But just as I admit that one must become a chemist in order to be able to verify the results of chemical research, so everyone must set out on the path of spiritual research in order to verify spiritual scientific truths. But that man rejects that. His whole writing is actually characterized by this logic. And much of the distorting influence brought to bear on spiritual science is based on this logic. There really are better things to do than to concern oneself with such objections.

But it would be particularly fitting for this German nation, this sorely tried German nation, to think about how it should relate to the very foundations of intellectual life. I can point to a few sentences that P. Terman Grimm, the brilliant art historian, wrote in 1858 in his essay on Schiller and Goethe. He wrote more than 60 years ago: “The true history of Germany is the history of the intellectual movements in the nation. Only where enthusiasm for a great idea has stirred the nation and set the frozen forces in motion, are deeds done that are great and luminous.” Should we not be able to take such words to heart today? Or the words that Herman Grimm - certainly no revolutionary - wrote in 1858: ”The names of German emperors and kings are... not milestones for the progress of the people.” He meant that the milestones for the progress of the people are the deeds in the field of thought, of thought that goes into the spiritual.

Never has the German been more in need of adhering to this than in this time of hardship and trial. And that is why we can ask our contemporaries today to look to their great ancestors so that we can become their worthy descendants. Should the beliefs of the German people's ancestors, which they expressed in their spiritual life, not apply to the present day? Should we not continue to develop this spiritual striving instead of stopping at mere words and quoting them? Those who merely quote Goethe today do not understand him; only those who develop him further understand him. Those who merely quote Johann Gottlieb Fichte are doing something nonsensical if they do not develop him further in the spiritual life. You have heard how the world speaks about European intellectual life. In the world, one must learn to recognize that the German, in turn, has the will to look at the actual milestones of the progress of his people. In this world our ancestors, the great pillars of German intellectual life, were often called dreamers. They were misunderstood, just as today what speaks of the spirit is described as fantasy or something else. But there were still people who knew how what was striven for in the spirit was based in reality. And at an important moment, Johann Gottlieb Fichte said to the people: What the others say, that ideas cannot directly intervene in practical life, we idealists know that as well, perhaps better than the others; but that life must be oriented towards them, we know that in advance. - He pointed to the practice of life and said: Those who do not understand this belong to those who are not included in the plan of the world. So may these people be granted sunshine and rain in due course and a good digestion and, if possible, some good thoughts.

It depends on the spirit in which one looks up to the spiritual life of the great bearers of the German spirit. Reality, not abstract judgment, will decide this. If the descendants of these German ancestors have a sense of the true practice of the spirit, then the people who preceded us in this practice of the spirit will not have been dreamers. But if we fail to penetrate into the realities of the practice of the spirit, then they will not become dreamers through themselves, but through us or through our descendants, who want to know nothing of the true German spirit. Let the German people beware lest they make their great ancestors, of whom the world has so often said that they were dreamers, into dreamers through our fault, through our lack of appreciation for the spirit that has been invoked and conjured up in German intellectual life! May he gain followers! This is the last word I wish to speak to you in the context of my current disputes.

In our last lecture we showed the period of Art which finally merged into that of the great masters of the Renaissance. We ended by revealing the connecting threads in the artistic world of feeling, which finally led up to what was so wondrously united in Leonardo, in Michangelo and in Raphael. Yet at the same time, in these three masters we must also see the starting point of the new age, in an artistic sense. It is the dawn of the 5th post-Atlantean age, which is heralded in the realm of Art. All three were living, at the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantean age. Leonardo was born in 1452, Michelangelo in 1475 and Raphael in 1483; Leonardo dies in 1519, Raphael in 1520, and Michelangelo in 1564. Here we find ourselves at the starting point of the new age. At the same time, something is contained in these artists which we must undoubtedly regard as a culmination of the spiritual stream of preceding ages, inasmuch as they poured their impulses into the realm of Art. It is true, my dear friends, that in our time people have little understanding for what is important in this respect, for in our time—I do not say this as mere criticism—art has been far too much expelled from the spiritual life as a whole. It is even considered a failing of the historian or critic, if he seeks once more to give Art its place in the spiritual life as a whole. People say that our attention is thus diverted unduly from the artistic or aesthetic impulses as such, attaching an excessive value to the content, to the subject-matter, and yet, this need not be the case at all. Indeed, it is only in our own time that this distinction has acquired so much importance. It had no such direct significance in former epochs—epochs when the artistic understanding was more developed in the ordinary common sense of the people. We must not forget how much has been done to extirpate a true artistic understanding by all the atrocities which have been placed before the human mind of men in recent times, by way of pictorial representation and the like. True understanding for the manner of representation has been lost. European humanity, in a certain sense, no longer cares how a given subject-matter is presented to it. In wide circles, artistic understanding has to a large extent been lost.

Speaking of former epochs, and especially of the epoch to which we are now referring, we may truly say artists such as Raphael, Michelango and Leonardo were by no means one-sidedly artistic, but carried in their souls the whole of the spiritual life of their time and created out of this. In saying this, I do not mean that they borrowed their subject-matter from the spiritual life of their time. I mean far more than this. Into the specifically artistic quality of their creation, in form and colouring, there flowed the specific quality of the world-conception of that time. In our time, a world-conception is a collection of ideas which can, of course, be represented in sculpture or in painting and it is frequently embodied, needless to say, in forms and colours and the like which to the true artistic sense will nevertheless be an atrocity. In this respect, unfortunately, we must repeatedly utter warnings, even within our anthroposophical stream of evolution. The feeling for what is truly artistic is not always prevalent among us. I still remember with a shudder how at the beginning of the theosophical movement in Germany a man once came to me in Berlin, bringing with him reproductions of a picture he had painted. The subject was: Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. It is true there sat a huddled figure under a tree, but the man—if you will pardon me the apt expression—understood as little of Art as an ox, having eaten grass throughout the week, understands of Sunday. He simply thought, here is the subject; let us paint it, and it will represent a work of Art. Of course, it represented something. Namely, he who imagined the scene to himself—“Buddha under the Bodhi Tree”—could see it so, no doubt. But there was absolutely no reason why such a thing should ever have been painted.

It is a very different thing when we say of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, that they bore within them the whole way of feeling which permeated the Italian civilisation of their time. For this civilisation entered livingly into the artistic quality of their work, into their whole manner of presentation; nor can we fully understand these artists if we have no feeling for the civilisation in the midst of which they lived. Today, indeed, people believe the most extraordinary things. They will believe, for instance, that a man can build a Gothic church even if he has not the remotest notion of High Mass. Of course, he cannot do so in reality. Or they believe that one can paint the Trinity even if one has no feeling for what is intended to be living in it. In this way, Art is expelled from its living connection with the spiritual life as a whole. At the same time, on the other hand, people fail to understand the artistic element as such, imagining that with aesthetic views and feelings which happen to be prevalent today they can set to work and ciriticise Raphael or Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose whole way of feeling was quite different. It was only natural (though I should need many hours to say in full what should be said on this point), it was only natural for them to be living in the whole way of feeling of their time. We cannot understand their creative work unless we understand the character which Christianity had assumed at the time when these artists blossomed forth. You need only remember that at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century Italian Christianity witnessed the rise even among the Popes, of men who truly cannot be said to have satisfied even the most rudimentary demands of morality, nor need one be in any way a pietist to say so. And, of course, the whole army of priests were of like character. The idea that a specific moral impulse must be living in what goes by the name of “Christian” had been lost sight of, comparatively speaking. And when in later times it emerged again—in pietist and moralising forms, by no means identical with what I described the other day when speaking of St. Francis,—it was imbued with quite a different feeling of Christianity than inspired those who lived, for instance, under an Alexander VI, a Julius II or a Leo X. If, on the other hand, we consider the Christian traditions, the concepts and ideas (and when I say ideas I include “Imaginations”) connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, we find them still living in the souls with an intensity of which the man of today has little notion. Human souls lived in the ideas connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, as in a world that was their very own, and they saw Nature herself in the midst of this same world. We need but call to mind: In that time, even for the most educated, this Earth, of which the Western half was still unknown (or was only just begining to be known and was not fully really reckoned with),—this Earth was the centre of the whole Universe. Going down beneath the surface of the Earth, one found a subterranean kingdom; going but a little way above, a super-earthly. We might almost say, it was as though a man only need lift his arm, to grasp with his hand the feet of the heavenly beings. Heaven still penetrated down into the earthly element. Such was the conception—a harmony, an interplay of the spiritual above and the Earth beneath it, with the world of the senses which contained mankind. Even their view of Nature was in this spirit.

Those, however, among whom we find the three great masters of the Renaissance were striving forth from yonder age. And the one who harbours within him, as in a seed, all that came forth since then—nay, much that is still destined to come forth,—that one is Leonardo. The soul of Leonardo was equally inclined to the feelings of the former time and of the latter. His soul had most decidedly a Janus head. By his education, by the habits of his life, by all that he had seen, he lived with his feelings still in the olden time. Yet he had a mighty impulse to that conception of the world which only came forth in the succeeding centuries. He had an impulse, not so much towards its width as to its depth. From various indications in my other lectures, you know that the Greeks—and even the men of later times during the 4th Post-Atlantean age—knew life quite differently than we do,—that is to say, out of a different source of knowledge. The sculptor, for example, knew the human figure from within—from a perception of the forces that were at work within himself, the forces which we today describe in Anthroposophy as the etheric. Out of this inner feeling of the human figure the Greek artist created. In course of time this faculty was lost. Another faculty now had to appear: the power to take hold of things with outward vision. Man felt impelled to feel and understand external Nature. I showed you last time, how Francis of Assisi was among the first who sought to perceive Nature through a deep life of feeling. Now Leonardo was the first who endeavoured in a wider sense to add to this feeling of Nature, a conscious understanding of Nature. Because it was no longer given to him, as to the men of former ages, to trace from within outward the forces that are at work in man, he tried to know these things by contemplation from without. He tried to know by outward vision what could no longer be made known by inward feeling. An understanding of Nature as against a feeling for Nature: this is what distinguishes Leonardo da Vinci from Francis of Assisi, and this determines the whole constitution of his spirit. He was all out to understand. And though we need not take it word for word—for the sources, as a rule, relate only the current legends—nevertheless, the legends themselves were founded upon fact, and there is truth in it when we are told how Leonardo took especial pains to study characteristic faces, so that by dint of outward contemplation the working of the formative forces of the human organism might become his own inner experience. Often he would follow a character about for days and days, so that the human being might become as if transparent to him, revealing how the inner being works into the outer form. Yes, there is truth in this,—and that he invited peasants to his house and set before them tasty dishes or told them stories, so that their faces assumed every possible expression of laughter and contortion and he could study them. All this is founded upon fact. And when he had to paint a Medusa he brought all manner of toads and reptiles into his studio, to study the characteristic animal faces. These are legendary anecdotes; and yet they truly indicate how Leonardo had to seek, to discover the mysterious creation of Nature's forces. For Leonardo was truly a man who sought to understand Nature. He tried in an even wider sense to understand the forces of Nature as they play their part in human life. He was no mere artist in the narrower sense of the word; the artist in him grew out of the whole man, standing in the very midst of the turning-point of time. The church of San Giovanni in Florence had sunk a little, owing to a subsidence of the soil. He wished to raise it again—a task that could easily be carried out today; but in that time such a thing was considered absolutely hopeless. He wanted to have it raised bodily, as it stood. Nowadays, as has justly been observed, it would only be a question of the cost; in his time it was an idea of genius, for no one beside Leonardo thought such a thing was possible. He also thought of constructing machines whereby men would be able to fly through the air; and of irrigating great areas of swamp. He was an engineer, a mechanic, a musician, a cultured man in social intercourse, a scientist according to his time. He constructed apparatus so unheard-of in that age that no one else could make anything of them. What poured into his artist's hand was working, therefore, from a many-sided understanding of the world. Of Leonardo we can truly say, he bore his whole Age within him, even as it came to expression in the profound external changes which were then enacted in Italy. Leonardo's whole life—his artistic life included—bears the stamp of this his fundamental character. In spite of the fact that he grew out of the Italian environment, he was not altogether at home there. True, he was a Florentine, but he spent only his youth in Florence, and then went on to Milan, having been summoned thither by the Duke Ludovico Sforza—sommoned by no means (as we might naively imagine) as the great artist whom we recognise in him today, but as a kind of court entertainer. From the skull of a horse, Leonardo constructed an instrument of music, from which he enticed various notes, and was thus able with great humour to entertain the ducal house. We need not say that he was intended as a kind of “fool,” but as an entertainer to amuse the Court, most certainly. The works of Art which he produced in Milan, to which we shall presently refer, were certainly created out of the very deepest impulse of his own being. But he had not been summoned to the Court of the Sforza's for this purpose; and though he entered well into all the life at Milan, we find him afterwards, on his return to Florence, working at a battle-picture, intended to glorify a victory over Milan. Then we see him end his life at the French Court.

The one dominating impulse in Leonardo is to see and feel what interests the human being of his time; the political events, complicated as they were, more or less swept past him. He only skimmed off them, as it were, the uppermost and human layer. Indeed, in many respects he rather gives us the impression of an adventurer, albeit one endowed with colossal genius. He bears his whole Age within him; and out of this feeling of his Age as a whole, his creations arise. We shall present them not in chronological but in a freely chosen order, for in Leonardo the main point is to see how he creates out of a single impulse, and for this reason the chronological sequence is less important.

An altogether different nature, though possessing the characteristics of the Renaissance in common with him, was Michelangelo. If we can say of Leonardo that he bore the whole forces of his time within him (and for this very reason often came into disharmony with it and remained misunderstood, just because he understood it in its depths, in the forces that only found their way to the surface during later centuries), of Michelangelo, on the other hand, we may say: he bore within him, above all, the Florence of his time. What was the Florence of his time? It was, in a sense, a true concentration of the existing order of the world. This Florence he bore within him. Unlike Leonardo, he did not stand remote from political affairs. The complicated political events around him—and the whole world-order of that time played into these politics—entered again and again into the soul of Michelangelo. And when again and again he went to Rome, he bore his Florence with him, and painting and sculpting a Florentine element into the Roman setting. Leonardo bore a universal feeling into the works he created; Michelangelo carried a Florentine feeling into Rome. As an artist he achieved a kind of spiritual conquest over Rome, making Florence arise again in Rome.

Thus Michelangelo entered intensely into all that was taking place through the political conditions in Florence during his long life. We see this in the succession of his life-periods. As a young man, when his career was only just beginning, he witnessed the reign of the great Medici, whose favourite he was, and by whose favour he was enabled to partake in all that the Florence of that time could offer to a man's spiritual life. Whatever of ancient Art and artistry was then available, Michelangelo studied it under the protectorate of the Medici; and it was here that he produced his earliest work. Indeed, he loved his protector, and grew together in his own soul with the soul-nature of the Medici. But presently he had to realise that the sons of his patron were of quite a different kind. He who had done so much for Florence—out of an ambitious disposition, it is true, yet cultivating largesse and freedom—died in 1492; and his sons proved themselves more or less common tyrants. Michelangelo had to experience this change in comparatively early youth. Whereas at the beginning of his career the mercantile spirit of the Medici had allowed free play to Art, he must now witness this mercantile spirit itself masquerading as a political spirit, and striving towards tyranny. Yes, he witnessed on a small scale the rise in Florence of what was afterwards to take hold of all the world. It was a terrible experience for him, and yet not unconnected with the whole surrounding world of the new Age. It was now that he first went to Rome, and we may say: In Rome he mourns the loss of what he has experienced as the true greatness of Florence. We can even recognise how the plastic quality of his work is connected with this great change in his feelings: Into the very line we notice what the political changes in Florence had brought about in his soul. Any one who has a deeper feeling for such things will see in the Pieta in the Vatican a work which in the last resort is born out of the mourning soul of Michelangelo—Michelangelo mourning for the city of his fathers.

Then, when better times returned and he went back to Florence, he stood once more under a new impression. He felt uplifted in his soul,—Freedom had entered into Florence once again. He poured out this new feeling into the indescribably great figure of his David. It is not the traditional David of the Bible. It is the protest of free Florence against the encroaching principle of “great powers,” of mighty States. Its colossal character is connected with this very feeling.

Again, when he was summoned by Pope Julius to decorate the Sistine Chapel, now in a far fuller sense than before, he bore his Florence with him into Rome. What was it that he bore with him? It was a whole world-conception, of which we can say that it shows the rise of the new age, just as truly as we can say, on the other hand, that in the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, representing the creation of the World and the great process of Biblical history, we have the twilight of an ancient world-conception. Thus Michelangelo carries with him a whole world to Rome,—carries with him something that could never have arisen at that time in Rome itself, but that could only arise in Florence: the idea of one mighty cosmic process with all the Prophetic gifts and Sibylline faculties of man. You will find further explanations on these things in earlier lectures. These inner connections could only be felt and realised in Florence. What Michelangelo experienced through all the spiritual life that had reached its height in the Florence of that time, cannot, in truth, be felt today, unless we transplant ourselves through Spiritual Science into former epochs. Hence the usual histories of Art contain so many absurdities at this point. A man can only create as Michelangelo created if he believes in these things and lives in their midst. It is easy for a man to say that he will paint the world's creation. Many a modern artist would credit himself, no doubt, with this ability,—but one who has true feeling will not be able to assent. No one can paint the evolution of the world who does not live in it, like Michelangelo, with all his being.

But when he returned once more to Florence, he was already driven, after all, by the new stream, which—to put it bluntly—replaces the sacramental by the commercial character. True, he was destined still to create the most wonderful works, in the Medici Chapel. But in the background of this undertaking was an element which could not but inspire him with melancholy feelings. The purpose was the glorification of the Medici. It was they who mattered,—who in the meantime had become powerful, albeit less in Florence than in the rest of Italy. Then once more the political changes drove him back. The betrayal of the Malatestas, their penetration into Florence, drove him back again to Rome. And now he painted, as it were, into the Last Judgment, the protest of a Florentine, the great protest of humanity, of the human individual against all that would oppose it. Hence the real human greatness of his Last Judgment, the greatness which it undoubtedly breathed forth, as it proceeded from his hand. For now, also, parts of it have been completely spoiled.

But he still had to undergo experiences which entered very, very deep into all the impulses of feeling in his soul. How many events had he not experienced, how much did they not signify for the development of his picture of the world: For the things I have indicated were of great importance to him. They may be taken abstractly today, but in the soul of Michelangelo they worked without a doubt as very deep soul-impulses. But we must add that I have mentioned the fact that he witnessed, too, the great change which came over Florence through the appearance of Savonarola. This was a protest within the life of the Church against what was characteristic of that time in Christianity. So free an Art as was developed in Leonardo and in many others like him could only unfold in this way inasmuch as the ideas of Christianity were lifted out of their context and taken by themselves. I mean the ideas connected with the Mystery of Golgotha—the conception of the Trinity, of the Last Supper, of the connection between the earthly and the spiritual realms, and so forth. All these conceptions, lifted right out of the moral element, assumed a free imaginative character which the artist dealt with at his pleasure, treating it like any worldly subject, with the only difference that it contained, of course, the sacred figures. These things had been objectified, loosed from the moral element; and thus the Christian thought, loosed from the moral element, slid over by and by into a purely artistic sphere. All this took place quite as a matter of course, and the gradual elimination of the moral element was a natural concomitant of the whole process. Savonarola represents the great protest against this elimination of the moral element. Savonarola appears; it is the protest of the moral life against an Art that was free of morals,—I do not say, void of morals, but free. Indeed, we must study Savonarola's will if we would understand in Michelangelo himself what was due to Savonarola's influence.

But this was not all. You must imagine Michelangelo as a man who in his inmost heart and mind could never think in any other than a Christian way. He not only felt as a Christian; he conceived the order of the World in mighty pictures, in the Christian sense. Imagine him placed in the midst of that time, when the Christian conceptions had, as it were, become objectified and could thus slide so easily into the realms of Art. Such was the world in which he lived. But he experienced withal the Northern protest of the Reformation, which spread with comparative speed, even to Italy; and he also witnessed the great and revolutionary change which was accomplished from the Catholic side as a counter-Reformation, against the Reformation. He experienced the Rome of his time,—a time whose moral level may not have been high, but in which there were free and independent spirits, none the less, who were decidedly agreed to give a new form to Catholicism. They did not want to go so far as Savonarola, nor did they want it to assume the form which afterwards came forth in the Reformation. They wanted to change and recreate Catholicism by continuous progress and development. Then the Reformation burst in like another edition, so to speak, of the Savonarola protest. Rome was seized with anxiety and fear, and they parted from what had pulsated through their former life. Michelangelo among others had built his hopes on such ideas as were concentrated, for example, in Vittoria Colonna, hoping to permeate with high ethical principles what had reached so great a height in Art. With a Catholicism morally recreated and renewed, they hoped to permeate the world once more. Now, however, there arose the great Roman powers, the strong Catholic ideas, the Jesuitical principle, and Paul IV became the Pope. What Michelangelo was now to witness must have been terrible for him, for he saw the seeds of an absolute break with what had still been known to him as Christianity. It was the beginning of Jesuitical Christianity. And so he entered on the twilight of his life.

Michelangelo, as I said, had carried Florence into Rome. With Raphael once again it was different. Of Raphael we may say, he carried Urbino—East-Central Italy to Rome. Here we come to that strange magic atmosphere whose presence we feel when we contemplate the minor artists of that region whence Raphael grew forth. Consider the creations of these artists—the sweet and tender faces, the characteristic postures of the feet, the attitude of the figures. We might describe it thus: Here there arose artistically somewhat later what had arisen earlier in a moralising and ascetic sphere in Francis of Assisi. It enters here into artistic feeling and creation, and leaves a strangely magic atmosphere—this tenderness in contemplating man and Nature. In Raphael it is a native quality, and he continues to express it through his life. This is the feeling which he carries into Rome; it flows from his creations into our hearts and minds if we transplant ourselves into the character they once possessed, for as pictures they have to a great extent been spoilt.

What Raphael thus bears within his soul, having evolved in the lonely country of Urbino, stnads, as it were, alone within the time; and yet taking its start from Raphael, it spread far and wide into the civilisation of mankind. It is as though Raphael with this element were carried everywhere upon the waves of time, and wheresoever he goes he makes it felt—this truly artistic expression of the Christian feeling. This element is everywhere poured out over the influence of Raphael.

Summing up, therefore, we may say: Leonardo lives in the midst of a large and universal understanding. He strikes us, stings us, as it were, into awakeness with his keen World-understanding. Michelangelo lives in the policical understanding of his time; this becomes the dominant impulse of his feeling. Raphael, on the other hand, remaining more or less untouched by all these things, is borne, as it were, upon the waves of time, and bears into the evolution of the ages a well-nigh inexpressible quality of Christian Art. This, then, distinguishes and at once unites the three great masters of the Renaissance; they represent three elements of the Renaissance feeling, as it appears to us historically.

Let us now give ourselves up to the impressions of Leonardo's works. We will first show some of his drawings, which reveal how he creates his forms out of that keen understanding of Nature which I sought to characterise just now. Thereafter, not quite in the historic order, we shall show those of his pictures which have the character of portraits. Only then will we go on to his chief creation, the “Last Supper,” Finally, we shall return and show him once more at his real starting-point. The first picture is a well-known Self-portrait.

This, then, is one of Leonardo's portraits. There follows the other one, still better known.

Here we have a picture from an early period of his development, showing how Leonardo grew out of the School of Verrocchio. Tradition has it that the finely elaborated landscape round this figure here was painted by Leonardo in the School of Verrocchio, and that Verrocchio, seeing what Leonardo could achieve, laid down his brush and would paint no more.

Here, again, you see how Leonardo drew—how he tried, even to the point of caricature, to extract the characteristic features by dint of studious contemplation, as I described just now.

We need not imagine that he stood alone in things like this; they had, indeed, been done by others in his time. Leonardo only stands out through his extraordinary genius, but it was altogether a quest of the time—this search for the strong characteristic features, as against what had come forth in earlier times from higher vision and had grown a mere tradition. It was characteristic of that time to seek for what appears directly to external vision, and thus bring out with emphasis whatever in the outward features of a being is most significant of individual character.

Far more important than the subject-matter, the point was to study and portray with precision the positions of the bones and so forth.

This is the portrayal of a thunderstorm.

The two pictures we now show are not attributed to him with certainty, nor are some others which we shall see presently, but they bear the character of Leonardo and are therefore not without connection.

In this famous picture we see the other aspect of Leonardo, where we might say he seeks to attain the very opposite pole from what was illustrated in the former sketches. There he tried to discover and bring out with emphasis the individual and characteristic in all details. People will often not believe that an artist who can create such a work as the Mona Lisa has any need of going in the other direction to the point of caricature. I have, however, often drawn attention to this fact. Think of the inherently natural impulse whereby our friend the Poet, Christian Morgenstern, went from his sublime, serene creations to the humorous poems with which we are familiar, where he seeks the very extremes of caricature. There is this inner connection in the artist's soul. If he desires to create a work so inwardly complete, harmonious, serene as this, he often has to seek the faculties he needs for such creation by emphasising characteristic individual features even to the point of caricature.

These pictures, which, as I said, are not in historic order, represent Leonardo in the quality of an artist seeking for inner clarity, completeness and perfection.

Here is the Dionysos figure, the God Dionysos. You will find indications on these matters in various other lectures. The painting is based on proven designs and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci. However, it is believed that it was carried out by an unknown student from the workshop of Leonardo and between 1683 and 1693 it was modified and painted to represent Bacchus.

We now come to the Last Supper—which he created, it is true, at an earlier time, and worked upon during a long period. We have often spoken of it. We know what an essential progress in the artistic power of expression is visible in this picture as against the earlier pictures of the Last Supper by Ghirlandajo and others. Observe the life in this picture; see how strongly the individual characters come out in spite of the powerful unity of composition. This is the new thing in Leonardo. The adaptation of the strong individual characters to the composition as a whole is truly wonderful. At the same time each of the four groups of disciples becomes a triad complete and self-contained; and, again, each of these triads is marvellously placed into the whole. The colour and lighting are inexpressibly beautiful. I spoke once before of the part of the colouring in this composition. Here we look deep into the mysterious creative powers of Leonardo. If we try to feel the colours of the picture as a whole, we feel they are distributed in such a way as to supplement one another,—not actually as complementary colours, but in a similar way,—so much so that when we look at the whole picture at once, we have pure light—the colours together are pure light. Such is the colouring in this picture.

We now come to the details of the picture. This is generally considered to be an earlier attempt at the Head of Christ. These reproductions are familiar.

This is Morghan's engraving, from which we gain a more accurate conception of the composition than from the present picture at Milan, which is so largely ruined. You are, of course, familiar with the fate of this picture, of which we have so often spoken.

This is a very recent engraving,—a reproduction which reveals the most minute study. It is frequently admired and yet, perhaps, for one who loves the original as a work of art, it leads too far afield into a sphere of minute and detailed drawing. Still we may recognise in this an independent artistic achievement of considerable beauty.

Here we have a fragment of the battle picture projected by Leonardo, which I mentioned a short while ago.

We will now go on to Michelangelo. Considering Leonardo once again, you will see there is something in him which comes out especially when, instead of taking the chronological order, which is in any case a little uncertain, we take his work in groups, as we have done just now. Then we see clearly what different streams are living in him. The one, which comes out especially in his Last Supper, aims at a peculiar quality of composition combined with an intense delineation of character. It stands apart and alongside of that other tendency in which he does not seek this kind of composition. This other _stream we find expressed in the pictures in the Louvre, and at St, Petersburg and London, which we showed before the Last Supper. It might have come forth at any time; one feels it is almost by chance that the pictures of this kind do not exist from every period in his life. That which comes to expression in these pictures is in no way reminiscent of the peculiar composition in the Last Supper, but aims at a serene composition while seeking to express individual character to a moderate extent.

We now come to Michelangelo. To begin with, his portrait of himself.

Here we have Michelangelo before he reached his independence, working in Florence, perhaps under the influence of Signorelli and others, still, in fact, a pupil.

And now we think of Michelangelo moving to Rome for the first time, under all the influences which I described just now.

Look at this picture and then at the following one; compare the feeling in the two.

Look at this work. Undoubtedly it is created under the feeling of his coming to Rome. A more or less tragic element, a certain sublime pessimism pervades it. Let us return once more to the former one, and you will see the two creations are very similar in their artistic character. They express the same shade of feeling in Michelangelo. We now return once more to the Pieta.

People who feel the story more than the artistic quality as such have often said that the Madonna, for the situation in which she is here portrayed, is far too young. This arose out of a belief which was still absolutely natural in that time and lived in the soul of Michelangelo himself:—the belief that owing to her virgin nature the Madonna never assumed the features of old age.

Here you have the work of which we spoke before. The figure strikes us most of all by its colossal quality, not in the external sense, but a quality mysteriously hidden in its whole artistic treatment.

We now come to the Sistine Chapel. To begin with, we have the Creation of the World,—the first stage, which we might describe as the creation of Light out of the darkness of night.

This picture bears witness to a tradition still living at that time as regards the creation of the World. It was that Jehovah created, in a sense, as the successor of an earlier Creator, whom He overcame, or transcended, and who now departed. The harmony of the net World-creation with the old which it transcended is clearly shown in this picture. Truly, we may say, such ideas as are expressed in this picture have vanished absolutely; they are no longer present.

This, then, is the creation of that which went before mankind.

Here we find the creation of man. There follows the creation of Eve.

We now move more and more away from the theme of World-creation into the theme of History—the further evolution of the human race. This is the fall into sin.

We come to the Sibyls, of whom I have spoken in a former lecture. They represent the one supersensible element in the evolution of man, which is contrasted with the other, the prophetic quality. We shall see the latter presently in the series of the Prophets. Here we have the Sibylline element. In my cycle of lectures given at Leipzig, on “Christ and the Spiritual World,” you will find the fuller description of its relation to the prophetic. That Michelangelo included these things at all, in his series of pictures, proves how closely he connected the earthly life with the supersensible—the spiritual. See now the succession of the Sibyls; observe how a real individual life is poured out into each one: in every detail, each one brings to expression a quite specific visionary character of her own.

Observe the position of the hand. It is no mere chance. Observe the look in her eyes, coming forth out of an elemental life; you will divine many things which we cannot express in words, for that would make the thing too abstract,—but they lie hidden in the artistic treatment.

And now we come to the Prophets.

These are examples of his scenes from the Old Testament.

Here we come to his later period in Florence: to the Medicis and the Chapel at which he had to work for the Medicis under conditions that I described before. I have spoken of these tombs of Juliano and Lorenzo in a lecture which I believe has also been printed.

This is the second tomb, with the figures of Morning and Evening.

Once again we accompany Michelangelo to Rome, where he creates, once more by comman of the Pope, the Last Judgment—the altar-piece for the Sistine Chapel. The greatness of this piece lies in the characterisation, the universal significance of the characters. Consider in this picture all that is destined, as it were, for Heaven, all that is destined for Hell, and Christ in the centre, as the cosmic Judge. You will see how Michelangelo sought to harmonise this cosmic scene. Majestically as it was conceived, with an individual and human feeling. Hermann Grimm drew the head of Christ from the immediate vicinity, and it proved to be very similar to the head of the Apollo of Belvedere. We will now show some of the details.

and another detail, the group above the boat:

And now, though in time it belongs to a somewhat earlier period, we give what Michelangelo created for the monument of Pope Julius; for, in fact, this was never finished, and Michelangelo was working at it in the very latest period of his life and finished portions of it.

It is significant that Pope Julius II, whose character undoubtedly contained a certain greatness, called for this monument to be erected to his efforts. It was to have included a whole series of figures, perhaps thirty in number. It was never completed, but there remained this, the greatest figure in connection with it—Michelangelo's famous figure of Moses, of which we have often spoken,—and the two figures now following:

This was completed in the very latest period of his life. It is hard to say exhaustively how it arose. One thing is certain: the group expresses an idea which Michelangelo carried with him throughout his life. Whether there was another group which has somehow been lost, in which he treated this scene at a very early stage in his career, or whether it was the same block at which he worked again, remodelling it at the end of his life, it is hard to say. But we see it here as his last work. Not only is it the one which he completed when he was a very old man; it corresponds to an artistic idea which he carried throughout his long life, and is connected far more deeply than one imagines with the fundamental feeling of his soul. True, he could not have created it thus at every phase of his life. It would always have turned out a little differently; it would always have reproduced the basic mood of his soul in a somewhat different way. But the deep and pure Christian feeling that lives in Michelangelo comes to expression especially in this particular relationship of Christ to the Mother, in this scene of the entombment. Again and again the idea of the Mystery of Golgotha arises in the soul of Michelangelo in this way:—He feels that with the Mystery of Golgotha a deed of Heavenly Love took place, of an intensity that will hover for ever before the eyes of man as a sublime ideal, but that can never be attained by man even in the remotest degree, and must therefore inspire with a tragic mood him who beholds these World-events.

And now imagine, with this idea living in his soul, Michelangelo saw Rome becoming Jesuitical. With this idea in his soul, he underwent all the feelings of which I spoke; and whatever he saw in the world, he measured in relation to this standard. Truly, he underwent much in his long life. While he was creating his earliest artistic works in Florence, the Pope in Rome was Alexander VI, the Borgia. Then he was summoned to Rome, and painted the Creation of the World for Pope Julius. We see the dominion of the Gorgias in Rome replaced by Pope Julius, and then by the Medici, Leo X. In this connection we must realise that Pope Julius II, although he worked with poison, murder, slander, etc., was none the less in earnest about Christian Art. Pope Julius, who replaced the political Borgia princes, strove for the Papal See in order to make it great through spiritual life. Although he was a man of war, nevertheless, in his inmost soul, even as a fighter, he only thought of himself as in the service of spiritual Rome. Of Julius II we must not fail to realise that he was a man of spiritual aims, thoroughly in earnest with all that lay in his impulse to re-erect the Church of St. Peter, and, indeed, with all that he achieved for Art. He was selflessly in earnest about these things. It may sot strange to say this of a man who in carrying out his plans made use of poison, murder and the like. Yet such was the custom of the time in the circles with whose help he realised his plans. His highest ideal, none the less, was that which he desired to bring into the world through the great artists. For a spirit like Michelangelo it is, indeed, profoundly tragical to feel how a perfect good can never find its realisation in the world, but must always be realised one-sidedly. Yet, this was not all, for he lived to witness the transition to the commercial Popes, if we may call them so—those of the house of Medici, who were, in truth, far more concerned with their own ambitions, and were fundamentally different in spirit from Julius II and even from the Borgias. Certainly, these were no better men. We must, however, judge all these things in relation to the time itself. It is easy nowadays to feel Pope Alexander VI, or his son Caesar Borgia, or Julius II, as human atrocities; for today it is permitted to write of them quite independently and freely, whereas many a later phenomenon cannot yet be characterised with equal freedom: But we must also realise:—The sublime works achieved at that time are not without causal relationship with the characters of all these Popes,—indeed, many things would certainly not have come to pass if Savonarola or Luther had occupied the Papal See. And now we come to Raphael.

Here is the picture of which I spoke last time. We will bring it before our souls once more. On the left we have the same subject treated by Perugino, and on the right by Raphael. It is the Sposalizio or Marriage of the Virgin. Here you can see how Raphael grew out of the School of his teacher, Perugino, and you can recognise the great advance. At the same time, we see in the picture on the left all that is characteristic of this School on the level from which Raphael began. See the characteristic faces, their healthily—as we today call it—sentimental expression. See the peculiar postures of the feet. A certain characterisation is attempted; yet it is all enclosed in a certain aura of which I spoke before,—which appears again in Raphael, transfigured, as it were, raised into a new form and power of composition. You recognise here the growth of this power of composition, too. But if you compare the details, you will find that in Raphael it is grasped more clearly and yet at the same time it is more gentle, it is not so hard.

This whole picture is to be conceived of as a world of dream. It is generally known as the “Dream of a Knight.”

We will now let work upon us a number of Raphael's pictures of the Madonna and of the sacred legend. These—especially the Madonnas—are the works of Raphael which first carried him out into the world.

In all these pictures you still have the old, characteristic postures and attitudes which Raphael took with him from his home country.

These are the Madonnas which bear witness to the further development of Raphael. Ile follow him now into the time when he went to Rome. It is not known historically exactly when that was. Probability is that he did not simply go there in a given year,—1500 is generally assumed—but that he had been to Rome more than once and gone back again to Florence, and that from 1500 onward he worked in Rome continuously. Now, therefore, we follow him to Rome and come to those pictures which he painted there for Pope Julius.

This picture is well-known to you all, and we, too, have spoken of it in former lectures. Many preparatory sketches of it exist. In the form in which you see it here, it was done to the order of the Pope,—the Pope who craved, as I said just now, to make Rome spiritually great.

We must, however, hold fast to one point, which is revealed by the fact that some elements of the motif of this picture appear at a very early stage, even in Perugia, representing this idea, this scene, or, rather, the motif of it.

Thus the idea was already living at that early stage, and was able to take shape in this remarkable corner of East-Central Italy.

We must conceive the motif of the picture as living in the very time itself. Below are the human beings—theologians, for the most part. These theologians are well aware that everything which human reason can discover is related to what St. Thomas Aquinas called the “Praeambula Fidei,” and must be permeated by what comes down from Spiritual Worlds as real inspiration, wherein are mingled the attainments of the great Christian and pre-Christian figures of history, and by means of which alone the secret of the Trinity is to be understood. This mystery, we must conceive, bursts down into the midst of the disputations of the theologians below. We may conceive that this picture is painted out of the will to unite the Christian life quite fundamentally with Rome—to make Rome once more the center of Christianity by rebuilding the derelict Church of St. Peter, according to the desires of Pope Julius. Under the influence of the Pope, wishing to achieve a new greatness of Christianity centered in Rome, such ideas are brought together with the fundamental concept; the secret of the Trinity. This fact explains what I may call, perhaps, the outer trimmings of the picture. (Even in the architectural elements which it contains, we see designs which re-occur in St. Peter's.) It is as though this picture were to proclaim: Now once again the secret of the Trinity shall be taught to the whole world by Rome. There are many preliminary sketches showing not only that Raphael only by and by achieved the final composition, but that this whole way of thinking about the inspiration, the Idea of the Trinity had been living in him for a long time. It was certainly not the case that the Pope said: “Paint me such and such a picture.” He rather said, “Tell me of the idea that has been living in you for so long,” and thus together, so to speak, they arrived at the conception which we now see on the wall of the Segnatura.

Now we come to the picture which, as you know, is commonly named the School of Athens, chiefly because the two central figures are supposed to be Plato and Aristotle. The one thing certain is that they are not. I will not dwell on other views that have been put forward. I have spoken of this picture, too, on previous occasions. But they are certainly not Plato and Aristotle. True, we may recognise in these figures many an ancient philosopher, but that is not the point of the picture. The real point is, that in contrast to what is called “Inspiration” Raphael also wished to portray what man receives through his intelligence when he directs it to the supersensible and applies it to investigate the causes of things. The various attitudes which man can then assume are expressed in the several figures. No doubt Raphael introduced the traditional figures of ancient philosophers, as, indeed, he always tried to make use of this or that tradition. But that is not his real point; the point was to contrast the supersensible Inspiration, the descent of the super-sensible as an inspiration to man, on the one hand; and on the other hand the attainment of a knowledge of the world of causes through the intelligence of man directed to the Supersensible. In this sense, the two central figures are to be understood as follows: On the one hand we have a man still in the younger years of life, a man with less experience of life, who speaks more as a man who looks around him on the Earth, there to perceive the causes of things. Beside him is the old, old. man who has assimilated very much in life, and knows how to apply what he has seen on Earth to heavenly things. And then there are the other figures who, partly by meditation, partly by arithmetical, geometrical or other exercises, or by the study and interpretation of the Gospels and the sacred writings, seek to discover the causes of things by applying their human intellect. I have already spoken of these things and I believe that Lecture, too, has been made accessible. I think if we take the contrast of the two pictures in this way, we shall not be misled into nonsensical speculations as to whether this one is Pythagoras or the other Plato or Aristotle—which speculations are at all events beside the mark and inartistic. Much ingenuity has been applied in deciphering the several figures: Nothing could be more superfluous in relation to these pictures. Rather should we study to observe the wonderful varieties expressed in the search for all that is attainable by the intelligence of man.

You may also compare the two pictures. In this present picture the whole thing is placed in an architectural setting, whereas in the other, the “Disputa,” the wide World is the setting. It is the difference between Inspiration whose house is the great universal edifice and the quest of the human intelligence which, as you see it here, goes on in an enclosed and human space.

We come to what is attainable in the human sphere, without the latter being influenced out of the supersensible.

This is like a commentary to the Disputa—the knowledge of the Divine Mysteries represented in a more allegorical figure, and leading on to the Disputa.

Here we have a picture taken from the whole complex which Raphael did for Pope Julius II in order to inspire the idea that Christianity must gain the victory and all that resists it must be overcome.

This is only another aspect of the same idea.

Also belonging to the same group.

Raphael's Sibyls. If you remember those of Michelangelo, you will observe the immense difference. In the Sibyls of Raphael—I beg you to see it for yourselves—human figures are portrayed, to represent beings standing within the cosmos,—Beings into whom the whole cosmos is working. They themselves are dreaming, as it were, within the cosmos as a very part of it and have not fully come to consciousness. The various supersensible Beings, angelic figures between them, bring them the secrets of the worlds. Thus they are dreamy Beings, living within the universal nexus. Michelangelo, on the other hand, portrays the human and individual in all that his Sibyls are dreaming, or evolving out of their dream-consciousness. Michelangelo has to create out of the individual, nay, we may even say, the personal character of each one. These Sibyls of Raphael, on the other hand, live and move and have their being over and above the individual. Even inasmuch as they are individual, they live and move in a cosmic life.

In this room we have the picture of the Transfiguration. (No picture of room available)

Here is the picture itself. It is even possible that Raphael himself did not complete it, but left it unfinished at his death. Christ is soaring heavenward.

To those who say that Raphael in his latest period painted visionary pictures, we need only reply by pointing to this figure (the figure of the boy). It is portrayed in a perfectly real, Occultly realistic sense, how the figure makes it possible for the scene to become visible to the others. Through what I would call the mediumistic nature of the unconsciousness of madness, this figure influences the others, enabling them to behold such a thing as this.

Here we have the figure of the Christ.

And now, my dear friends, think of all that Raphael had painted. All that has passed before you was contained between his twenty-first and his thirty-seventh year, in which he died. In his twenty-first year he painted the first picture which we showed—the Marriage of the Virgin—contrasting it with Perugino's painting. Hermann Grimm worked out in a beautiful way something that bears eloquent witness to Raphael's free and independent evolution, proving even outwardly to some extent what I just said before. Raphael, although he was carried on the waves of time, and learnt, of course, very much from the world, nevertheless took with him into Rome the peculiar nature of that Middle-Eastern part of Italy. In spite of his youth, he created out of his own inmost nature and progressed undisturbed, with perfect regularity in his evolution. Hermann Grimm pointed out that we come to the chief culminating points in Raphael's creative work if, starting from his twenty-first year, we go forward in successive periods of four years. From his twenty-first year we have his Sposalizio; four years later the Entombment, which we have not shown today—an exceedingly characteristic picture, which, especially when we take into account the related sketches and everything connected with it, expresses a certain climax in the work of Raphael. And then, once more, four years later, we have a climax of creative work in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican. Progressing thus by stages of four years, we see how Raphael undergoes his evolution. He stands there in the world with absolute individuality, obeying an impulse connected only with his incarnation, which impulse he steadily unfolds and places into the world something that takes its course with perfect regularity, like the evolution of mankind.

And now consider these three figures all together,—standing out as a summit in the life of Art, in the evolution of mankind. It lies in the deep tragedy of human evolution that this supreme attainment is connected with a succession of Popes—Alexander VI, Borgia, Julius II, Leo X,—men who occupy the first position as regards their artistic aims and who were called upon to play their part in human evolution as rulers in high places. And yet they were of such a character as to take with them into these high places the worst extremes which even that age could nroduce by way of murder, misrepresentation, cruelty and poison. And yet, undoubtedly—down to the Medici, who always retained their mercantile spirit,—they were sincere and in earnest where Art was concerned. Julius II was an extraordinary man, inclined to every kind of cruelty, never scrupling to use misrepresentation and even poison as though it were, in a world-historic sense, the best of homely remedies. Yet it was rightly said of this man that he never made a promise that he did not keep. And to the artists, above all, he kept his promise to a high degree; nor did he ever bind or fetter them, so long as they were able to render him the services which he desired, in the work which he intended.

Consider, alongside of this succession of Popes, the great men who created these works—the three great characters who have passed before our souls today. Think how in the one, in Leonardo, there lived much that has not yet been developed further, even today. Think how there lived in Michelangelo the whole great tragedy of his own time, and of his fatherland, both in the narrower and in the wider sense. Think how there lived in Raphael the power to transcend his Age. For while he was most intensely receptive to all the world around that carried him as on the waves of time, nevertheless, he was a self-contained nature. Consider, moreover, how neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo could carry into their time that which could work upon it fully. Michelangelo wrestled to bring forth, to express out of the human individuality itself all that was contained in his time; and yet, after all, he never created anything which the age was fully able to receive. Still less could Leonardo do so, for Leonardo bore within his soul far greater things than his Age could realise. And as to Raphael—he unfolded a human nature which remained for ever young. He was predestined, as it were, by providential guidance to evolve such youthfulness with an intensity which could never grow old. For, in effect, the time itself, into which all that came forth from his inner impulses was born, first had to grow young. Only now there comes the time when men will begin to understand less and less of Raphael. For the time has grown older than that which Raphael could give to it.

In conclusion, we will show a few of Raphael's portraits.

These, then, are the two Popes who were his patrons.

We have come to the end of our pictures.

In the near future, following on the tree great masters of the Renaissance, we shall speak of Holbein, Durer, and the other masters—the parallel phenomena of these developments in Southern Europe.

Today I wanted especially to bring before our souls these three masters of the Renaissance. I have tried to describe a little of what was living in them, and of their stimulus if, starting from any point of their work, you dwell on the historic factors which influenced and entered into them. You will perceive the necessary tragedy of human history, which has to live itself out in one-sidedness. We can learn much for our judgment of all historic things, if we study how the world-historic process played into that Florentine Age whose greatness is identified with Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo. Today especially I fancy no one will regret the time he spends in dwelling on a historic moment like the year 1505, when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were at the same time in Florence—Raphael still as a younger man, learning from the others; and the other two vying with one another, painting battle-pieces, glorifying the deeds that belonged to political history. Especially at the present moment, anyone who has vision for the facts of history in all its domains, and sees the significance of outward political events for the spiritual life, will profit greatly by the study of that time. Consider what was working then:—how the artistic life sought and found its place in the midst of the outer events, and how through these artistic and external events of the time, the greatest impulses of human evolution found their way. See how intimately there were interwoven human brutality and high-mindedness, human tyranny and striving towards freedom. If you let these things work upon you from whatever aspect, you will not regret the loss of time, for you will learn a great deal even for your judgment of this present moment. Above all, you will have cause to rid yourself of the belief that the greatest words necessarily signify that the greatest ideas are behind them, or that those who in our days are speaking most of freedom have any understanding at all of what freedom is. In other directions, too, much can be gained for the sharpening of our judgment in this present time, by studying the events which took place in Florence at the beginning of the 16th century, while under the immediate impression of Savonarola who had just been put to death. We see that Florence in the midst of Italy, at a time when Christianity had assumed a form whereby it slid over on the one hand into the realm of Art, while on the other hand the moral feelings of mankind made vigorous protest against it, was a form fundamentally different from that of Jesuitism which found its way into the political and religious stream immediately afterwards, and played so great a part in the politics of the succeeding centuries down to our day.

Of course, it is not proper at this moment to say any more about these things. Perhaps, however, some of you will guess for yourselves, if you dwell upon the chapter of human evolution whose artistic expression we have today let work upon our

Christian initiation has existed since the founding of Christianity. Through the Middle Ages and in our own time it has remained the same among a number of religious Orders as well as among the Rosicrucians. It consists of a spiritual training which culminates in certain identical and invariable symptoms. The Brotherhoods where, in profound secrecy, this training used to be given, are the home of all spiritual life and religious progress.

In certain respects the Christian initiation is more difficult of attainment than the initiation of ancient times. It is bound up with the essence and mission of Christianity which came into the world at a time when man had descended most deeply into matter. This descent was to imbue him with a new consciousness, but the struggle involved in rising from the depths of materialism demands greater effort and renders initiation more difficult. That is why the Christian masters demand intense humility and devotion of their pupils.

The Christian initiation has always consisted of seven stages, four of which correspond to four of the Stations of Calvary. The stages are:—

1. The Washing of the Feet
2. The Scourging
3. The Crowning with Thorns
4. The Bearing of the Cross
5. The Mystic Death
6. The Entombment
7. The Resurrection

The Washing of the Feet is a preparatory exercise of a moral character, relating to the scene where Christ washes the feet of the disciples before the Easter Festival (St. John 13): “Verity, verily I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.” Theology gives a purely moral interpretation to this act and looks upon it merely as an example of the profound humility and devotion of the Master to His disciples and His work. The Rosicrucians also held this view but in a deeper sense, relating the story to the evolution of all beings in Nature. The scene is really an allusion to the law that the higher is a product of the lower. The plant might say to the mineral: I am above you since I have a life which you have not; yet without you I could not exist, for the substances which nourish me are drawn from you. The animal again might say to the plant: I am above you, for I have feeling, desires, the capacity for voluntary movement which you have not; but without the food which you provide, without your leaves and fruits I could not live. And man should say to the plants: I am above you, but to you I owe the oxygen which I breathe. To the animals he should say: I have a soul and you have not; yet we are brothers and companions, involved in the great process of evolution. The esoteric meaning of the Washing of the Feet is that Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, could not exist without the Apostles.

The neophyte who meditates on this theme for months and years has a vision of the Washing of the Feet in the astral world during sleep. Then he is ready to pass to the second stage of the Christian initiation.

The Scourging,—At this stage man learns to resist the scourgings of life. Life brings sufferings of all kinds—physical, moral, intellectual, spiritual. Life is felt to be a dreadful and incessant torture. The disciple must endure it with perfect equanimity of soul and heroic courage. He must cease to know physical or moral fear. When he has become fearless, he sees, in dream, the scene of the Scourging. In another vision he sees himself in the Christ Who is scourged. Certain symptoms in physical life accompany this event. There is an intensification of the life of feeling, a wider sense of life and of love. We have an example of heightened sensibility transferred to the world of intelligence, in the life of Goethe. After lengthy osteological studies of the skeleton of man and of the animals, as well as comparative embryological research, Goethe came to the conclusion that the intermaxillary bone must exist in man. Before his time, science denied the existence of this bone in the upper jaw of man. Goethe himself says that he was overcome with joy and a kind of ecstasy when he actually discovered the intermaxillary bone in the human jaw, adding that it was one of the most wonderful experiences of his life. During his Italian journey he again had the same experience. He was looking at a fragment of a sheep's skull, and another idea came to him—an idea still more significant in regard to human evolution—that the human brain, the seat of intelligence, the centre of voluntary movements, is a development and a metamorphosis of the spinal marrow, just as the flower is a culmination and synthesis of root and stem. What faculty was it that enabled Goethe to make these marvelous discoveries which by themselves deserve to make his name immortal? It was his sublime intelligence on the one hand, but also his intense sympathy with all living beings and the whole of Nature. Such sensitiveness is a refinement and an extension of the forces of life and love. It corresponds to the second stage of Christian initiation and is the recompense for the trial of the Scourging. Man acquires a feeling of love for all beings and this gives him a sense of living in the heart of Nature herself.

The Crowning with Thorns,—At this stage man must learn to brave the world morally and intellectually, to desist from anger when all that is most dear to him is being attacked. The capacity to remain aloof when everything is tumbling about our ears, to say “Yea” when the rest of the world says “Nay”—that is what must be acquired before the next step can be taken. This gives rise to a new symptom, namely a dissociation, or rather the power of a momentary dissociation of three faculties which, in man, are united: the faculties of willing, feeling and thinking. We must learn to separate and to re-unite them at will. So long, for example, as some outer event carries us away with uncontrolled enthusiasm, we are immature, for such enthusiasm comes from the event, not from ourselves, and we may even exercise a shattering influence of which we are not master.

The enthusiasm of the disciple must have its well-spring in the depths of his inner life. He must therefore be able to remain impassive in the face of any event, no matter how catastrophic. That is the only way to reach freedom. The dissociation of feeling, thinking and willing produces in the brain a change that is symbolised by the Crown of Thorns. If this test is to be passed without danger, the powers inherent in the personality must be sufficiently intense and in perfect equilibrium. If the disciple has not reached this stage, or if he receives wrong guidance, the change in the brain may lead to insanity. Insanity is nothing but an involuntary separation of these faculties without the possibility of their re-union by dint of the inner will. The disciple brings about the separation by an act of conscious volition. A flash of his will re-establishes the link between the organs and the activities of soul. In the lunatic, the cleft may be incurable and produce a physical lesion in the nerve-centres.

In the course of the stage in the Christian initiation known as the Crowning with Thorns, there arises the phenomenon known as the Guardian of the Threshold—the appearance of the lower double of man. The spiritual being of man, composed of his impulses of will, his desires and his thoughts, appears to the Initiate in visible form. It is a form that is sometimes repugnant and terrible, for it is the offspring of his good and bad desires and of his karma—it is their personification in the astral world, the Evil Pilot of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This form must be conquered by man before he can find the higher Self. The Guardian of the Threshold which has been a phenomenon of astral vision from times immemorial, is the origin of all the myths concerning the struggles of Heroes with monsters, of Perseus and Hercules with the Hydra, of St. George and Siegfried with the dragon.

The premature appearance of the astral world and the sudden apparition of the Double or Guardian of the Threshold may lead a man who is not fully prepared or who has not taken all the precautions necessary for the disciple, to madness and insanity.

The Bearing of the Cross refers, symbolically, to a virtue of the soul. This virtue which consists in a sense of having ‘the world on one's conscience’ as Atlas bore the world on his shoulders, may be called a feeling of indentification with the whole Earth, or in the words of oriental occultism the cessation of the feeling of separateness.

In general, and above all in modern times, men identify themselves with the body. (In his Ethics, Spinoza says that the basic and fundamental idea of man is the idea of the body in action.) The disciple must cultivate the idea that in the sum-total of things, his body in itself is of no more importance than any other body, whether it be the body of an animal, a table or a piece of marble. The self is not bounded by the skin; it is united with the great organism of the universe as the hand is united with the rest of the body. The hand alone would be as dust and ashes. What would the body of man be without the soil on which he rests, without the air he breathes? It would die, for it is but a tiny organ of the Earth and the air. That is why the disciple must sink himself in every other being and identify himself with the Spirit of the Earth.

Goethe has given a marvelous description of this stage at the beginning of Faust. The Spirit of the Earth to whom Faust aspires, appears before him and speaks these words:

“In the tides of life, in Action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth and the Grave,
An eternal sea,
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowing;

Thus at Time's humming loom 'tis my hand prepares
The garments of Life which the Divinity weaves.”

To identify oneself with all beings does not mean that the body is to be despised. It must be borne as some exterior object, even as Christ bore His Cross. The Spirit must wield the body as the hand wields the hammer. At this stage the disciple is conscious of the occult powers lying latent in his body. In the course of his meditations, the stigmata may even appear on his skin. This is the sign that he is ripe for the fifth stage, where, in sudden illumination, the Mystic Death is revealed to him.

The Mystic Death,—In the grip of the greatest of all suffering the disciple recognises that the world of the senses is illusion. He is actually aware of death and of descending into the world of shades, but then the darkness breaks and a new light—the astral light—shines out. The veil of the temple is ‘rent in twain.’ This light has nothing in common with the physical light of the sun. It rays forth from the inner being of man. The impression it makes is wholly unlike that made by outer light. The following comparison will give us some idea of what is meant. We imagine that we are leaving a turbulent city behind us and entering a dense forest. The noises gradually cease and the silence becomes complete. We finally begin to be aware of what lies beyond the silence, to pass the zero point at which all external sound has ceased. And now sound arises again for the inner ear from the other side of existence. Such is the experience of the soul of one who enters the astral world. He is then in contact with the inverse quality of the things with which he was familiar, just as in arithmetic, beneath the zero point, we enter into the growing series of negative numbers.

Thus do we need to lose all in order to regain all, and this applies to our own existence. In the moment of losing all we appear to die to ourselves and it is in the world around us that we begin to live again.

Such is the Mystic Death. When a man has passed this stage, the time has come for the next:

The Entombment,—Man feels that he is freed from his own body and is one with the planet. He is one with the Earth and finds himself again within the planetary life.

The Resurrection,—This is a sublime experience, impossible of description unless it be within the walls of the sanctuary. The last stage of Christian initiation transcends all words and all analogy fails. At this stage man acquires the power of healing. Yet it must be realised that he who possesses it, possesses at the same time the inverse power to bring about disease. The negative invariably goes in hand with the positive. Hence the tremendous responsibility attaching to this power which may be characterised by the saying: The creative word issues from the soul aflame.

Yesterday we came to know a little about the nature of Devachan; now we have to ask how the bliss of Devachan comes about. Most of the activity there is creative, and though it is difficult to give an idea of the bliss that goes with it, a comparison with something that occurs on Earth will perhaps bring us nearer to it.

Let us observe the feeling that pervades the activity of a being engaged in the creation of another being: for instance, a hen sitting on her eggs. This is really a very appropriate comparison, grotesque though it may sound, for the brooding hen experiences an immense and blissful sense of well-being. Transfer this feeling to the spiritual level and you will have some conception of Devachan.

In the first region, the continental, where everything physical is spread out in negative, but like a vast tableau, a man is under an obligation to create the image of his new body. He does this free of all hindrance, and in so doing feels the bliss of creation.

In the second region, the universal life which under physical conditions is tied up with the forms of man, animal and plant, flows freely like the waters of the sea; and a man sees this flow as something both external and internal. Externally he sees it flow in a reddish-lilac stream from one plant form to another, one animal form to another, all embraced in the unity of life. All forms of spiritual life, for example that of Christian communities, are seen as belonging to the universal flow of life. Hence the first rule for a Theosophist, which is to look for the one life in everything, can be truly practised; for the universal life, common to all things, is seen in flow.

In the third region one sees realised in visible form all the relationships that arise between human beings on the level of the soul. If two people love one another, one sees the love as a real being whose body is love. If you can make a picture of all this for yourselves, you will have some idea of the bliss of Devachan; but anyone who has any knowledge of it will use few words, for the spiritual cannot be rendered in physical language.

But you must not think a man is inactive in Devachan, or is concerned only with himself. He has something else to do there.

The countenance of the Earth with all its flora and fauna, is continually changing: how different, for instance, must things have been in northern Siberia when the mammoth, still to be found as though frozen alive in the ice-fields, lived there. How different things must have been here, when primeval forest still covered the ground, when wild animals of the torrid zone lived here and a tropical climate prevailed. Who is it that brings all this about? Who changes conditions on the Earth? How is it with the souls and spirits of animals, and with the souls of plants?

If we are talking only of the physical plane, we are quite justified in saying that man has his Ego and his dwelling-place here, and that man is the highest of the beings who live on the Earth. On the astral plane things are quite different. As soon as an Initiate enters that plane, he comes to know a whole range of new beings who are not present on the physical plane, but appear on the astral plane as beings like himself. Among them are the species-souls or group-souls of animals, and one associates with them as one does with other people on the physical plane. On the physical plane animals have only a physical, an etheric and an astral body; they have no Ego there, for their Ego is to be found on the astral plane. Just as your ten fingers have a common soul, all animals of one species have their common soul on the astral plane. The Ego of the species lion, dog, or ant, and so on, is to be found there as a real being. It is as though the Ego hovered in astral space and held the individual animals on strings like marionettes. Plants also have group-souls of this kind, but their Ego is in Devachan; the “strings” go still higher. And all the minerals, such as gold, diamonds, rocks and so forth, have their group-soul in the upper region of Devachan.

The various beings, then, are ranked in the following way:

When a man dies, his Ego is to be found together with the Egos of the animals, and the work he can be engaged on is similar to that of the Egos of the animals—to produce gradual changes in the animal world. In Lower Devachan he finds the Egos of the plants as his companions, and there he can alter the forms of the plant-world. In this way he can collaborate in the transformation of the Earth. Hence it is man himself who brings about the great changes in the countenance of the Earth, and also the greatly altered scene in which he lives during his next incarnation. But he carries out this work under the leadership and guidance of higher Beings. Thus it is true to say, when we look at the continually changing plant and animal worlds, that this change is the work of the dead. The dead are active in the transformation of flora and fauna, and even in changing the physical form of the solid Earth. Even in the forces of nature we have to see the activity of discarnate human beings; and we know how powerfully these forces can work on the face of the Earth.

All activity, all work, had its beginning at some time long ago. There were as yet no pyramids, not even any tools. Everything existed in the form given to it by gods, or, as materialists would say, by the forces of nature; and man was set into the midst of it all. Now, however, most of our surroundings are the work of man. Thus the Earth is always being transformed by man. This will go on increasingly, and what man cannot accomplish here, he carries out in the period between death and rebirth. Thus our own evolution is tied up with the changes of the whole Earth. The structure and evolution of the Earth are the work of men on higher planes, and the more highly man succeeds in developing himself, the more quickly and perfectly will the transformation of the physical Earth, and of its flora and fauna, advance. The more highly developed a man is, the longer is the time he can spend at work in the higher regions of Devachan. A savage sees little of it. In many stories and legends the human spirit—apparently childish but in reality inspired by lofty powers has given expression to these facts.

Now how do the forces act which bring man down to a new incarnation? As we saw, there is an interval of about I,000 years between death and the next incarnation, and during this period the soul is making itself ready for its journey to a new birth. It is exceedingly interesting for a clairvoyant to explore the astral world. He may, for example, observe astral corpses floating about, in process of dissolution. The astral corpse of a highly developed man, who has worked on his lower impulses, will dissolve very quickly, but with undeveloped persons, who have given free rein to their impulses and passions, the process of dissolution goes slowly. Sometimes the earlier astral corpse is not wholly dissolved when its original bearer returns to a new birth, and he will then face a difficult destiny. It can also happen that through special circumstances a man returns soon and finds his astral corpse still present. The corpse is then strongly drawn to him and slips into his new astral body. He does indeed create a new astral body, but the old one combines with it, and he has to drag both of them along throughout his life. And then in bad dreams or visions the old astral body comes before him as a second Ego, playing tricks on him, harassing and tormenting him. This is the false, counterfeit Guardian of the Threshold. An old astral corpse finds it easy to withdraw from a man because it is not firmly united with the other members of his being, and then it appears as a Double, a Doppelgänger.

Besides these astral forms, the clairvoyant sees another particularly remarkable set of shapes. They are bell-shaped and shoot through astral space with enormous speed. They are germinal human beings not yet incarnated but striving for incarnation. Time and space hardly matter to these beings because they can move about very easily. They are variously coloured and surrounded by an aura of colour: at one point they are red, at another blue, and a shining yellow ray flashes out from inside them. These germinal human beings have just come from Devachan into astral space. What is happening here?

After a man has taken with him into Devachan his higher astral body, and the causal body made up of the fruits of his former lives, he now has to gather round him new “astral substance” rather as scattered iron filings are brought into order by the pull of a magnet. He collects this astral substance in accordance with the forces within him: the substance collected after a good previous life is different from the substance collected after a bad one. The bell-shaped forms are made up of the causal body, the forces of the earlier astral body and the new astral body. The germinal human being ought not to encounter the old astral body; his task is to build up a new astral body out of undifferentiated astral substance, so that the whole process depends on the man himself. The form and colour of the new astral body are determined by the forces of his previous life: this is a fact to be kept thoroughly well in mind. The reason why the germinal human beings dart about with such enormous speed is that they are seaching for parents with suitable characters and family circumstances. Their speed helps them to find the right parents—they can be here at one moment and in America the next.

For the next stage, help is needed. Higher Beings, the Lipikas,²²guide the germinal human being to the chosen parents; the “Maharajas” form the etheric body to correspond with the astral form and with the contribution by the parents to the physical body. The clairvoyant can descry astral substance in the passion experienced by the parents during the act of impregnation, and the passional nature of the child is determined by the intensity of the passion felt by the parents. After this, etheric substance shoots in from north, south, east and west, from the heights and from the depths.

Parents who will be exactly right for the germinal human being cannot always be found; all that can be done is to search for the most suitable. Similarly, a physical body cannot always be built so as to match exactly the incoming etheric body. There can never be complete harmony. This is the reason for the discord between soul and body in human beings.

Immediately before incarnation a very important event occurs, parallel to the event which follows the moment of death. Just as immediately after death the whole memory of a man's past life appears like a tableau before his soul, so is a kind of preview of the coming life given to the soul immediately before it incarnates. Not all the details are seen, but the circumstances of the coming life are made evident in broad outline. This is of the utmost importance. It may happen that a person who went through a great deal of suffering and hardship in his previous life receives a shock from the glimpse of the new circumstances and destiny now in prospect, and holds back the soul from complete incarnation. Only a part of the soul then enters the body, and this will result in the birth of an epileptic or an idiot.

At the moment of incarnation, immediately after conception, the yellow thread in the causal body darkens and disappears. It persists through all stages only in Initiates.

We must not imagine that the higher members of a man's being unite completely with the embryo from the beginning. The causal body is the first to be active, for it works on the earliest formation of the physical body.

Development goes on after birth by stages, in the most varied ways; specially important for education is the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year. We shall see tomorrow how Theosophy bears on these problems of education, which point to an important chapter in human evolution.

• 22. Lipikas, Maharajas. High spiritual Beings concerned with birth and destiny.

It has to be emphasized repeatedly that Theosophy must be lived, that, by way of Theosophy, the human being not only learns this or that, but that he learns to think differently, to feel, to perceive emotionally in regard to his whole environment. This will become a reality for someone who accepts the theosophical impulses in the right spirit. He has to learn to feel empathy, to experience living with all beings, but mostly this needs to apply in relation to other human beings. However, we learn best to empathise with human beings when we first learn to do this with the rest of the world.

Slowly man learns to know the whole world that surrounds him. He slowly learns, that he is surrounded everywhere by spiritual beings, that he walks through spiritual beings everywhere. He learns to understand this in regard to feeling and in regard to sensation. He learns to know what surrounds us in the three realms of nature. He learns to know the beings in the mineral realm, the plant realm and the animal kingdom. He strides differently through the meadows and forests, over the fields and open country from someone who has not gone through theosophical training.

When looking at the other beings, one could at first believe that the animal beings do not have a soul like human beings. The Ego of man, man’s soul, is certainly different from an animal’s Ego, in that the Ego of man lives on the physical plane. When we look at an animal as such, then each individual animal has a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. Human beings have in addition to these three bodies an Ego. During his waking state man’s Ego is contained in him. The animal, however, does not have an Ego on the physical plane. For this, we have to go a bit deeper into the so called astral world. On the astral plane we will find a population of animal Egos, just like we have a human population here on the physical plane. Just as one man meets another here, a clairvoyant is able to meet self-contained personalities on the astral plane—these are the animal Egos.

One has to imagine it thus—imagine the ten fingers of a human being stretched through a wall. They are moving. We can see the ten fingers moving, but not the human being himself. He is hidden behind the wall. We are not able to explain to ourselves how the ten fingers can get through the wall and move. We have to assume that there is some being to which they belong. It is the same with animals in the physical world. All animals of similar shape have one group-Ego. Here in the physical world we see the animals roam about, and what we are seeing has a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. If we see here in the physical world, for example, lions, then these lions are externalized organs of those lion-Egos that live in the astral world. The lion-Ego, the group-Ego of physical lions, is a similarly self-contained being on the astral plane as we are self-contained beings here. Thus each group of animals has an Ego on the astral plane: a lion-Ego, a tiger-Ego, a vulture-Ego are on the astral plane. The single animals exist here in the physical world like fingers stretched through a wall.

When we observe the individual animals here, many of them appear to be extraordinarily smart. These animals are being managed from the astral plane where the animal-Egos, the group-Egos, are located. The population of the astral plane is much more clever than human beings. The animal group-Egos on the astral plane are very wise beings. Observe the bird-migration, whereby the birds migrate through the various regions, how their flight is arranged, how during autumn they move to warmer regions and how they gather together again in spring. If we deeply look into these wise arrangements, we have to ask ourselves: who is hidden behind the wall, who arranges all of this?—These are the group-Egos. When we watch a beaver building, then we will see that the beaver built more wisely than the greatest engineering art.

One has observed the intelligence of bees at work by giving sugar instead of honey to them. Then they were watched. They cannot take along the sugar, so they go and fetch other bees. First they fly to a source of water, from which each bee carries a drop of water, drenches the sugar with it and transforms it into a kind of syrup. This is then carried to the hive. The spirit of the beehive is behind the work of the bees. The individual bees belong to a single bee personality, just like our limbs belong to us. Only it is the case that each bee is more separate from the others, and our individuals limbs are closer together, more compact. We walk everywhere through entities invisible for us, through the animal group-Egos, who evade physical observation.

As we begin to empathise with beings of which man has not the slightest idea, we can also empathise with the plant souls. The plant-Egos live in an even higher world than the animal-Egos. The plant-Egos, those self-contained group-Egos, to each of which a series of plant belongs, are on the so-called Devachan plane. We can also tell the place where these plant-Egos actually are—all plant-Egos are at the centre of the Earth. The animal Group-Egos are circumventing the Earth like the trade-winds, while the plant-Ego’s are in the centre of the Earth. They are beings that all penetrate each other. In the spiritual world the law of permeability holds sway—one being passes through another. We see the animal group-Egos pass across the Earth like the trade-winds and observe how they, out of their wisdom, perform what we consider to be the deeds of the animals. When we observe the plants, then we see the head of the plant, the root, is extended to the centre of the Earth, because there, at the centre of the Earth, is their Group-Ego.

The Earth itself is an expression of soul-spiritual entities. The plants appear to us, from a spiritual viewpoint, to be something like the nails on our fingers. The plants belong to the Earth. One who observes the individual plants, can never see them completely. Each plant belongs to the sum of entities, that make up the plant-Egos. Thus we can immerse ourselves into the feelings and emotion of the plants themselves. The part of the plant that grows out of the earth, that strives from within the earth to the surface, has a different nature from what grows under the earth. If you cut off the bloom, stalk and leaves of a plant, then that is something different from pulling out the root. If you cut off a plant this will create a certain type of well-being, like a pleasure for the plant soul. This pleasure it similar to what is felt, for example, by a cow whose young calf suckles at its udder. The plant part that grows out of the earth really is something similar to the milk of animals.

When we walk through the fields in autumns and the stalks are falling under the scythe of the reaper, when the scythe strikes the sheaves, then feelings of well-being, akin to ecstasy, breathe across the fields. It is something immensely significant when the reaper goes through the field with his scythe, and we not only can watch the falling sheaves with our physical eyes, but we can see feelings of pleasure stroking the Earth.

However, when you rip out a plant by its root, this causes pain for the plant soul. The laws that apply in the physical world are not the same as those in the higher worlds. We will gain different insights when we ascend to the spiritual worlds. Sometimes also here in the physical world the principle of beauty contradicts the principle of pain or joy. It is possible that someone, driven by beauty concepts, rips out a few white hairs, although it will hurt him. This applies to plants too. It might look more tidy to rip out a plant by its root, it might be more beautiful, but it will still hurt the plant.

The stones are also lifeless only in the physical world—in the higher worlds they too have their group-Egos. In the upper areas of Devachan, the group-Egos of the minerals exist. They too experience joy and pain. We will not find out anything about this by way of speculation, but only through the Science of the Spirit.

If we observe a worker in a quarry breaking up stone by stone, we could believe that this would cause pain to the stone soul. But this is not so. Just when a stone is blasted, then feelings of pleasure burst forth from the stone in all directions. Out of the quarry, where rock is blasted apart, strong feelings of well-being stream out on all sides. When we have a glass of water and add salt to it, and the salt dissolves, then feelings of desire and pleasure will stream through the water. Joy streams through the water when the dissolution of salt is being observed from a spiritual viewpoint. But if we allow the dissolved salt to settle and harden again, then this happens under pain. Likewise, it would cause pain to the stone soul if we could amalgamate the rock again that was blasted apart.

In their secret writings, in their religious scriptures, the seers have always shared their secret knowledge with human beings. But the people have lost the ability to understand these secret scriptures. Let’s imagine ourselves back into the ancient periods of time of our earthly evolution. We see the stones of our solid mountain ranges, that are built up from various clay strata, basaltic stones and so on. When we go even further back, we find that things on Earth become more and more soft. Then we come back to a time, where the Earth was filled with mighty masses of fiery warmth, where the iron, where all metals, all minerals, were dissolved in the spiritual. The human being was also a spiritual being at that time. To allow man to develop further, to receive his current shape, those soft masses needed to solidify. The mountain ranges emerged, the mineral masses dissolved out of the soft substance, and the Earth became the dwelling place of today’s human beings. The lifeless rock masses crystallised themselves out of the fiery liquid Earth like the salt out of the salt solution. Everything shaped itself so that the firm masses were formed out of the liquid state. This did not happen without pain. The whole hardening process of the globe was connected with the pain of the stone soul.

In the future Earth will become spiritualised again. The Earth will again fragment, as is already indicated by radium today. The process of dissolution of the Earth will begin, a spiritualisation, a deification, an adoption in the place of children will happen. Let us hear what the Apostle Paul says, “The whole Earth, all beings, are sighing under pain, waiting to be adopted as children”.¹

What we have got here is a representation of what happens on Earth, where the stone soul suffers under pain until the condition occurs when the stone soul will be adopted in place of a child. One could feel pain within one’s soul when those, who are announcing the religious scriptures to man, dream all sorts of things into them, because they do not want to make an effort to penetrate deeply into these records. Those people who are leading mankind are really violating their duty if they do not want to penetrate deeply into the religious scriptures.

The apostle Paul knew what the processes on Earth meant. Theosophy must lead mankind in our modern time into the depth of religious scriptures. It is sad if those who are called upon to be the representatives of the scriptures, make no effort to immerse themselves in them—they do not even have the will to understand them. All the arrogance of the present that says, “we’ve finally made such magnificent progress”,² must disappear. There are so many who believe that our ancestors knew nothing! Then people come and interpret the scriptures of Paul—religious scriptures—as they want to, but filled with arrogance they feel that they know more than our ancestors. But how do these words affect us, “All creatures are sighing under pain, awaiting to be adopted as children”? when we allow the insight of the feeling stone soul to affect us, how it awaits in pain to be adopted in place of a child? Human beings with a materialist mindset believe that when they walk outside they walk through air, wind and fog, through oxygen and nitrogen. But a person who has spiritual knowledge, knows that he is walking through spiritual beings everywhere, that with every breath he takes in spiritual beings and absorbs them.

So we have seen, how the animal-Egos circumvent the Earth like the trade-winds, how the plant-Egos are gathered together in the centre of the Earth, how the Earth itself feels something when we rip out plants, and how the Earth itself is alive and ensouled and has feelings. Everything outside is ensouled and imbued with life.

In the same way as the physical body is born out of the physical substances and powers, our spiritual limbs are born out of the vast cosmos. Then we begin to see a small world within us that rests inside the vast world. This creates a blissful feeling in us. Only when we learn to empathise with the minerals, plants and animals, will we learn to feel how our Ego rests within the whole cosmos.

Thus we can see how Theosophy leads us into the spiritual foundations of existence. It is something that transforms our sense of life, our life impulses in such a way that through it we become different human beings. The theosophical concepts are seeds, will-impulses for real experiences.

• 1. St Paul says, “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain.” In Luther’s translation it literally says: “The creatures are fearfully awaiting the revelation of the children of God”, Letter to the Romans, VIII,19
• 2. Goethe, Faust I, Scene 1, night; “Excuse me, but it is a great delight, On the spirit of the ages to set our sight, To see how wise men have thought before us, and we’ve finally made such magnificent progress.”

A meditation chamber. Prevailing colour violet. Serious, but not gloomy atmosphere.

Benedictus, Maria, then the Spirit-Figures representing soul-powers.

Maria:
Great conflicts in my soul bid me invoke
Wise counsel from my master in this hour.
Gloomy forebodings rise within my heart.
And I am powerless to withstand the thoughts,
That overwhelm me ever and again.
They pierce me to my being's inmost core;
They seek to lay upon me a command
Which to obey doth seem like sacrilege.
Deceitful powers must be obsessing me;
Oh, I implore thee—lend me aid ... that I
May exorcise them.

Benedictus:
Never shalt thou lack
What thou dost need of me at any time.

Maria:
I know how closely to my soul are knit
Johannes' life and aims. A stony road
Of fate brought us together; and God's will
Hath hallowed in high spirit-realms our bond.
All this stands out before me e'en as clear
As only truth itself can be. And yet—
Horror o'erpowers me that these lips of mine
Must utterance give to sacrilegious words—
And yet—deep in my soul I hear a voice
Which tells me plainly and repeatedly
Despite my utmost will to fight it down:
‘Thou must give up Johannes, let him go.
No longer mayst thou keep him at thy side
If thou wouldst not work evil to his soul.
Alone he must proceed along the road
On which he travels to his longed for goal.’
I know that if thou dost but speak the word
This lying dream will cease to haunt my soul,

Benedictus:
Maria, noble grief leads thee astray
To see the truth, yet call it counterfeit.

Maria:
What I have seen—is truth ... It cannot be!
Between my master's utterance and mine ear
Delusion steals. 0 speak to me again.

Benedictus:
What I have spoken, thou hast heard aright:
Thy love is noble, and Johannes stands
Close-knit to thee. But love must not forget
That she is wisdom's sister. Long indeed
For his salvation hath Johannes been
With thee united. Now his soul demands,
For its own progress, freedom to pursue
Its aims unhindered. Fate doth not decree
That ye shall be no longer outward friends;
But this it doth demand with strict decree—
Johannes' freedom in the spirit-realm.

Maria:
Still do I hear delusion: so let me
Alone continue speaking, for I know
That thou must understand me without fail.
For sure it is no lying shape will dare
To change the words unto thine ear addressed.
My host of doubts were easily dispersed
If earth-life's tortuous course alone it were
That knits Johannes' soul unto mine own.
But to our bond was lofty sanction given
Which knits soul unto soul eternally.
And spirit-powers did speak with blessings meet
The word that bans all doubts for evermore:
‘He hath won truth within the eternal realms
Because in worlds of sense his inmost self
Already was united with thine own.’
What can this revelation mean to me
If now its very opposite is true?

Benedictus:
Thou hast to learn that even one to whom
There hath been much revealed, may yet be found
Lacking perfection still in divers ways.
Tangled the paths that lead to higher truths:
And only those may hope to reach the goal
Who walk in patience through their labyrinth.
Thou didst but see one part of what is real
In that great realm of everlasting light,
When with thine inner vision thou didst gaze
Upon a picture of the spirit-land.
Not yet hast thou seen full reality.
Johannes' soul is knit unto thine own
By earthly ties of such complexity,
That it may be allotted unto each
To find his way into the spirit-realm
Through forces borrowed from the other one.
But nothing hitherto hath clearly shown
That ye have conquered each and every test.
To see a picture hath been granted you
Of what the future holds for you in store
When ye can pass unscathed the full ordeal.
That ye have seen the ultimate reward
Of unremitting effort is no sign
That ye have reached the end of all your strife.
Ye have beheld a picture, which your will
Alone can turn unto reality.

Maria:
Although thy words just spoken fall on me
Like bitter pain that follows hours of bliss,
There is at least one lesson I have learned,
Which is to bow my head to wisdom's light
When it doth prove itself through inward force.
Already something is becoming clear
Which up till now lay hidden in my heart.
But when in highest bliss delusion's snare
Doth wear the mask of truth to human minds,
Darkness of soul is difficult to ban.
I need still more than that which thou hast given
To plumb the depth of meaning in thy words.
Thou once didst lead myself to those soul-depths
Wherein a light was then vouchsafed to me
By which I could behold the lives I spent
In previous incarnations long ago.
Thus was it granted me to learn the way
In which my soul was linked unto my friend's.
My act of bringing, in those days of old,
Johannes' soul unto the spirit-fount
I felt and recognized to be the seed
Which grew and bore such cherished friendship's fruit,
As was found ripe for all eternity.

Benedictus:
Thou wart accounted worthy to retrace
Thy path on earth in days long since gone by.
But thou must not forget to look and see
If thou canst be assured with certainty
That of thy past lives none concealed doth stay
When backward thou dost turn thy spirit's eye.

Maria (after a pause betokening deep reflection):
How, could I be so blinded, so misled?
The rapture which I felt on looking back
Over a period of bygone times
Deluded me to vain forgetfulness
of manifold shortcomings. Not till now
Did I foresee that I must turn my gaze
Into the darkness ere I comprehend
The road that leads back from this present life
To olden days when my friend's soul sought mine.
To thee, my master, will I make my vow
Henceforth to bridle my soul's arrogance ...!
Now for the first time do I realize
How pride of knowledge leads the soul astray;
So that, instead of its imbibing strength
From freely offered stores of spirit-wealth,
It misapplies the gift in wanton use
And only holds the mirror up to self.
I know at last from my heart's warning call,
To which thy words lend added power, how far
I am to-day e'en from the nearest goal.
No more will I be overswift to read
A meaning into words from spirit-lands.
I will esteem them power wherewith my soul
May shape its course—, not as some message sent
To free me from the need of finding out
The goal of action in my daily life.
Had I paid earlier heed unto this truth
And gone my way in due humility,
I had not failed to see that only then
When he decides to tread a path not traced
By me beforehand, can my friend unfold
To fullest bloom his richly-gifted soul.
And now that this is clear I shall not fail
In finding strength sufficient to fulfil
What love and duty may require of me.
Yet do I feel assured this very hour
More clearly than I ever was before
That some grave testing of my soul draws nigh.
For mostly, when men tear from out their hearts
That of themselves which in another lives,
Love hath been changed into its opposite.
Themselves they change the ties that coupled them,
Yet passion's impulse gives to them the power.
Whilst I must of mine own free will uproot
The workings of my soul's life, which I saw
Accomplishing themselves in my friend's acts;
And still unchanging must my love abide.

Benedictus:
If thou wouldst steer thy course direct, thou must
Become aware of what thou most didst prize
In this thy love. For once thou knowst the force
That leads thee all unknown within thy soul,
Thou wilt find power to do what duty bids.

Maria:
By saying this thou giv'st e'en now that aid
Of which my soul so sorely stands in need.
I must investigate mine inmost self
With earnest questionings: and so I ask,
What potent cause impels me in my love?
I see my own soul's life and strength at work
In my friend's nature and activities.
So that which I desire to satisfy
Is nothing but the hunger of myself,
Which I, deluded, call unselfishness.
Thus it hath been concealed from me till now
That in my friend I mirror but myself.
It was the dragon Selfishness who veiled
The truth from me in wrappings of deceit.
And selfishness can take an hundred forms:—
see it clearly now. And when one thinks
The enemy subdued, behold him rise
Out of defeat and stronger than before.
Moreover 'tis a foe with added skill
To hide the truth with cloak of counterfeit.

(Maria sinks into deep thought.)

(The three Spirit-Figures of the soul- owers appear.)

Maria:
O ye my sisters, whom
I find in Being's depths,
Whene'er my soul expands
And guides itself within
The cosmic distances:
The powers of sight for me
From ether's heights release
And lead to earthly paths
That I may know myself
As I exist in Time
And may direct my course
From out old ways of life
Unto new spheres of Will.

Philia:
I will myself imbue
With soul's aspiring light
From my heart's inmost depths:
I will breathe deep within
Will's might that giveth life
From out the spirit powers:
Dear sister, that thou may'st
Experience the Light
I thine old ways of life.

Astrid:
I will weave self-hood in
All conscious of itself
With Love's submissive will;
I will release forthwith
The budding powers of Will
From fetters of desire
And change thy yearning weak
To spirit certainty;
Dear Sister, that thou may'st
In distant paths on earth
Unravel thine own self.

Luna:
The self-denying powers
Of heart will I call forth,
And will make hard and fast
Enduring soul-repose
Then shall they wed, and raise
The powerful spirit light
From out the depths of soul.
They shall impenetrate,
And force Earth's bounds to heed
The listening spirit ear;
Dear Sister, that thou may'st
Find in Time's vast expanse
The traces of thy life.

Maria:
If I could only tear
My 'wildered self away
And give myself to you
That ye from cosmic space
Might thus reflect my soul;
Then could I loose myself
From out this sphere of life
And find myself again
In other states of being,

(Long pause, then the following:)

In you, my sisters, I see spirit-beings
Quickening the souls of men from cosmic founts,
Ye bring to fruitage in the self of man
The seedling forces from eternity.
Through my soul's gates oft have I found the way
Into your, kingdom, and have there beheld
The primal shaping of this earthly globe
With inner vision. Now your help I crave
Since I am bidden to retrace the way
That stretches back far from my present life
To long past ages of humanity.
Release my soul from consciousness of self
In time-enclosed existence, and reveal
The duties laid on me by former lives.

A Spirit-voice,—the spiritual conscience:
Her thoughts are seeking now
For Clues in Time's vast space.
What as debt she still loth owe,
What as duty is imposed,
Arise from out her inmost depths of soul,
From whose deepness dreaming
Mankind doth guide his life,
In whose deepness straying
Mankind himself doth lose.

Curtain falls; everybody still standing on the stage

Among the literary works of the present day that seek to point the way to a deepening of our spiritual culture, Bruno Wille's book “Revelations of the Juniper Tree: A Novel of an All-Seeing Eye” (published by Eugen Diederichs in Leipzig in 1901, 2 volumes) is arguably one of the most significant. The book has something “representative” for our time: the word “representative” used in the way the great American Emerson speaks of “representative” personalities in world history, meaning those who, as it were, harbor typical feelings and thoughts in their person. Those, incidentally, that are distributed among many, but still constitute a certain coherent aspect of human endeavor, a necessary tone, as it were, in the great symphony of human activity. In this sense, Wilee's “Novel of an All-Seeing Eye” is representative of our time. It expresses, in compressed form, the feelings and thoughts of all those of deeper nature in the present day, who are filled with a striving for spiritualization in our culture, which is absorbed in purely external life. — And he expresses these feelings and thoughts in a genuinely artistic form. This is particularly appealing because the pursuit of knowledge and of a new kind of religious devotion is interwoven with a personal life story, so that in the “hero” of the novel we are presented with a human being in all aspects of his existence. From the immediate events of the emotional and passionate life, which plays out in everyday life, to the highest spheres of all-pervasive knowledge and free, dignified devotion and piety, we are presented with the full gamut of the personal life of a person thirsting for wholeness and harmony. And no less appealing is the introduction of nature into the novel. The beings of nature, especially the juniper tree, reveal the depths of their essence themselves, and reveal their soul, which the science of the present, directed at the merely factual and sensual, wants to deny them. Since Wille is a true poet, he is able to depict the dialogue and the whole interaction and empathy between man and nature in a way that is poetically effective in the most beautiful sense and that gives the novel greatness and artistic perfection.

One sentence from the book is enough to show how the basic feelings of deeper natures in the present are captured here. “What is truth? Must not the truth be united? But what do all these wise men do, each of whom boasts that he possesses the truth? The researcher shrugs contemptuously at the priest. The priest fights back like a snake and hisses: “Your knowledge is sacrilegious; it is cursed!” The scientist now leans towards the poem, smiling: “Nice – but unfortunately a lie!” The poet replies: “And your science? It may be correct, but I find it distasteful!” – So what is truth? Where does that unified vision flourish, which is at once science, devotion and beauty?” (Volume 1, page 6). Wille points to a unity in the human soul that finds truth in a sublime and beautiful guise, so that it - at the same time spiritualizes the poet's art, and is so lofty, so divine that it urges the heart to pious devotion, to a religious mood. How, on the other hand, modern science relates to poetry is vividly expressed in the world view that a professor of anatomy develops. The natural scientist, who is at the “height of scientific knowledge,” says to his students: “So, gentlemen, as a result of our science, we get a view of the world whose basic features would be bleak if they did not have the one consolation of being true. We may regard the sentence: “The world is a theater!” as a gain and a mentor worth heeding. ... We who know stand behind the scenes; through peep holes we look at the audience and wonder whether to laugh or cry. ... Yes, the world is a theater, and here, gentlemen, in this corpse... yes, here we see a prima donna of the conjuring trick of life. ... This body, which seems to be all beauty and poetry, presents itself to the unmasking science as a mere bandage of bones and ligaments, muscles, nerves, blood and skin. And like this woman, so the whole world. Let us go behind the scenes of the great game of deception, hand in hand with science. We see the sun shining brightly and benignantly. But behind the scenes, the loving mother is a soulless fireball. The happiness of childhood, innocence, hope tremble in the spring buds; presentiments and wondrous dreams shiver through the forest. So say the poets; they imagine they are eavesdropping on nature and, in doing so, have grasped some great truth. Theater-making is all that! Subjective mood transferred to soulless objects. One deceives oneself, there is present what only exists here in the mind... Gentlemen! From this corpse, I have removed the skull and show you a gray mass, rich in convolutions and tangled fibers, which consists mostly of protein. That spiritual world is nothing but a process in this substance. Mind and emotion are functions of the brain. Without nerve mass, there is no feeling, no imagining and thinking, no feeling and willing. ... Gentlemen! This world view may seem dull to some of you. Indeed, it destroys the naive belief in beauty, in the reality of beauty. But before all poetry, it has the advantage of being scientific. Science is ruthless, it must be, it has the duty to destroy even the most charming illusions in order to erect the sober structure of truth on the ruins of fantasy.” ... In the novel, this speech is followed by: ‘The professor bowed, the students trampled and applauded...’ (Volume 1, pages 43 ff.).— And so do many of our contemporaries. They applaud “sober science,” the destroyer of illusions, and build an opinion of the world on this soberness, which is their only truth, their only religion. And the more profound natures, who cannot believe that the Supreme is so soulless, so sober, so arid of intellect in the face of the “illusions” that appear on its surface, who ascribe beauty, sublimity, and : these deeper natures feel doubt sinking into their souls and say to themselves what the hero of our novel says to the “scientist,” his friend: “Oh, of course, it is good manners to tolerate poetry. But who believes in it? Who believes the poet when he says that the sun smiles – that it really smiles, not just as it were? But your science objects that the sun has no smile muscles. And in front of Böcklin's mermaids, it argues that a human body with a fish's tail is anatomically absurd. ... This kind of science is a tyrant! It looks bleak and dull under her sceptre. I want to turn my back on her – my heart is with the Cinderella of poetry – I long for my childlike faith, the lost paradise.” And what ‘Friend Oswald’ would probably do today is the same as any ‘true’ scientist when confronted with such deeper natures. “Oswald shrugged his shoulders impatiently and walked around, repeatedly clearing his throat. With him, this was a sign of nervousness."

Out of such doubts, the following idea can arise in the one who is pondering: is the poetic sense really obscuring your perception of reality? Could it not also be the case that, on the contrary, your intellect is obliterating the higher reality that lies in things, making you a bungler at perceiving them; and that the poetic sense is the only one that opens up these higher realities to you? Could not realities quite different from those admitted by your intellect lie behind the realities that your intellect admits, realities that do not condemn this world to “scientific” desolation, but that. wring pious devotion from your soul and give it a true religion? These are the representations that take place below the threshold of our all-seeing creator's consciousness and that finally lead him to no longer seek the secret of the world exclusively in the dry words of the anatomist, but to let it be revealed to him by the rustling of the trees in the forest, by the beings of nature itself. For he comes to the conclusion that there could be just as much soul in the movements and rustling of the trees as there is in man, whose inner life, after all, also becomes clear to him not directly but in gestures and sounds. He says to himself: I hear the sounding words and see the movements of my fellow man, and say to myself: he sends me sounds as I myself give them; he makes gestures as I myself make them: so he will have an inner life as I experience it myself within me. And only in me can I perceive such an inner life. All other inner life is only revealed to me through external signs. If I now interpret the external signs on other people's inner life, why should I not be able to relate the creeping movements of the hop plant, the crackling sounds of the trees, to an inner life? — Inspired by such ideas, our all-seeing person learns to understand the language of the juniper tree; it reveals an inner life to him, just as human language reveals an inner life to him. And so, for him, the whole of nature becomes the outer expression of its inner soul. What is given to man as perception is in itself an experience, a soul, even if it is of a different kind from that of man. And just as plants and seemingly inanimate beings are ensouled, so are entire world bodies. Man's organism is composed of innumerable cells. And each of these cells has its soul. The harmony of all these cell-souls is built into the common soul, as which man experiences himself. But he is only one link in a comprehensive organism. Am I not, the All-Seer reflects, a soul-link in the earth organism, just as the soul-cell of my blood corpuscle is a link in my organism? And must not the earth organism, like mine, be an experience and a soul in itself? Thus Goethe's Earth Spirit becomes a reality before the meditating soul. The way in which poetry can give rise to convincing truth in this way, and how the perception of this high truth in the heart of the All-Seer becomes religious devotion to the world soul: that is the content of Will's novel, which seeks to unite in unity: art, science and religion. Science is raised from the realm of the intellect to that of the imagination, an imagination that seeks to be not an organ of illusion but of higher knowledge. And life, which in the light of rational science appears to be a purposeless game of deception, acquires meaning and order in the context of the soul of the universe. A tragic experience of the hero is clarified when he views its causes and consequences from the point of view of his thus formed belief. He himself feels meaningfully integrated into a meaningful world. And he devoutly submits to the all-pervasiveness of the world spirit, recognizing his will in this pervasion as a member. “Foolish human brothers and sisters! From your fearful narrowness, turn soon to the boundless expanse! Stop confusing a part with the whole, mistaking your petty, fickle, cowardly, mercantile ego for your deepest, cosmic self! If you feel only as fragments of nature... Redeemed are those who, having penetrated the narrow barriers of the ego, feel their community with the whole and enter into the great order with devotion! They have accomplished the highest human art, have shaped their lives into devout music – have become a blissful voice in the symphony of the world (Volume 2, page 391).

This “novel of the All-Seer” may be called a book of longing. On the last pages, there is the sentence: “Every ideal means burgeoning high-altitude life, the early spring of a world Pentecost, prophetic reaching into the better world, awakening, inspiring dawn that precedes the new sun, reflection of the Heavenly Kingdom that cannot fail to appear.” The “all-seeing” person clearly ascends to this ideal. He looks into the past of man. He has developed from lower conditions. “That the future extends into the present is the nature of all development – just as the past extends into the present. The individual human being passes through the stages of development that his species had to go through before it reached the threshold of humanity. In my mother's womb I was a worm — and a fish — a newt and a lizard — a platypus, a marsupial and a monkey. My germ history is a brief repetition of the tribal history. This fundamental law can be extended beyond the present so that it also applies to the forthcoming stages of human development. Just as man in one respect still is what he once was, so in another respect he already is what he will later be. If, therefore, a higher development is to come out of him, then the germ of the higher must already be found in humanity (Vol. II, p. 396f.). Here stands Wille before the gates of the temple in which the creed matures, the cultivation of which the theosophical spiritual currents of all times have made their task. And he remains standing at the entrance. For anyone who feels the full significance of his above sentences will see that the next step is necessary: he must put them into living action. If the “germ of the higher” lies in man, then this germ must be developed. One cannot be satisfied with the mere fact that man's soul is his inner experience, but one should go further and see what can be experienced inwardly. Then one enters completely new realms of a higher reality. Our “all-seeing” friend repeatedly points out that the external facts that unfold before our senses point to inner experiences, and he repeatedly emphasizes that this inner life is the soul. Soul, soul, and again soul: we hear him say this in countless repetitions on his fascinating paths of knowledge and life. But is it not as if someone were to lead us through the entire animal kingdom, repeating over and over again, 'animal, animal, animal,' instead of explaining the special forms: worm, fish, newt, duck-billed platypus, and monkey? No, the soul is just as structured, rich, and diverse, and has just as many powers and laws as the physical. And into these realms of the soul lead the higher cognitions, which are called the theosophical views. Before the entrance gate to them, the will stops. Therefore, there are beautiful vantage points: the eyes, to see from these points, are given by theosophy. This can be seen everywhere in the book. This will be shown for the interesting sections: the “deed body” and “the all-phonograph” in the next issue, where, in reference to Leadbeater's “astral plane,” reference will be made to the realms to which Wille points without opening the eye for them.

The first two chapters of Genesis can be better understood if we are familiar with the various things we have already covered. The first chapter presents the development of our planet through the first three earth rounds into the fourth round, up to the moment when man is created. It thus concludes with the creation of man, with man of the fourth round in the third root race entering into the first incarnation. In a very similar way, the Mosaic Genesis is depicted in Greek mythology. It is only more clearly expressed in Greek mythology, which has three currents flowing from the three Logoi: Uranus, Cronus and Zeus. In the beginning of our earthly development, Uranus represents the first Logos, who brings about the split from the undifferentiated state that existed in the preceding Pralaya. The driving force was Uranus; his opposite was Gaia. The origin of the earthly planet is rooted in them. Thus, Uranus, in connection with Gaia, is the creative force. One could therefore also say: In the beginning were Uranus and Gaia. The second current is the soul current, Kronos, which represents the purely psychic moment of the soul. Then what is referred to as the pilgrimage of the soul occurs, the connection with Zeus, the god of Kama-Manas.

And what does it say in Genesis?

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

That is the Arupa state; it has no form.

And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.
And God saw that the light was good.
Then God separated the light from the darkness
and called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

This is the first form, the beginning of the Rupa state. The second globe has arrived.

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters,
and let it be a division between the waters.
So God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.
And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.
And the evening and the morning were the second day. (Genesis 1, 6-8)

When the Book of Genesis speaks of water, it always means astral matter.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.
And it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called the Sea.
And God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let the Earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the Earth: and it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herbaceous plants, and the seed-bearing plant after its kind, and the tree bearing fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind: and God saw that it was good.
And there was evening, and there was morning, the third day. (Genesis 1:9-13)

This was the time when the plant kingdom came into being. In the beginning, the plant kingdom was a jumbled mass; individual plants had not yet emerged. Therefore, each shall now have its seed according to its kind. Only now are the individual plants emerging.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them serve for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights;

And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light on the earth: and they ruled the day and the night: and they divided the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

This is the astral world, the third globe – the sea of stars, the symbol of the astral existence.

Now we come to the actual earth globe. Here matter formed little by little. First the etheric matter. During the first two epochs we are dealing with etheric matter. This condenses during the third root race, during the Lemurian period. At the same time, a condensation of materiality takes place, so that in the Lemurian period we have an ever-increasing density of physical materiality.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, with which the waters bring forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind:
And God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. (Genesis 1, 20-23)

This is not the animal kingdom that natural history tells us about, but what is found in the Dzyan stanzas in the second part of Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine”.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

And God made the wild animals of the earth in variety, each according to its kind, and the livestock according to their kind, and all the creatures that move along the ground in their kind. God saw that it was good.

He made the animals separate, whereas they had previously swayed about in confusion.

And God said, “Let us make man in our image, in the likeness of ourselves; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; (Genesis 1, 26-27)

And God created him male and female, that is, asexual.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Multiply in a non-sexual way, not by reproduction, but simply by coming apart, as in the astral.

And God saw all that He had made; and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

We are now at the point in time when the third root race of the fourth round begins, the third main age of the Earth.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it,... (Genesis 2, 1-3)

"He rested means that he has now transferred the task to man. Before that, he had stimulated everything from within that needed stimulating. Now the cosmic Pentecost occurred: the spirits descended and continued the work.

... therefore by him were all things created, that were created God, visible and invisible,

Thus the heavens and the earth were created, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it had sprung; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

(Genesis 2: 3-7)

Now man was there.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

This describes the transition from the ethereal races to the physical races. These are brought together from the four sides, from east, west, south, north, and from the four elements, which correspond to the abilities of the spirit-soul. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the symbol for the higher self that has connected with man.

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads.
The name of the first is Pison, because all the land of Havilah, where there is gold, is a land of Pison.
And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. (Genesis 2, 10-12)

The other waters are called Gehon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates. The four waters are the symbols for the four astral forms of matter that flow together. Water always means the astral in the esoteric language. In the esoteric language, gold is the symbol of the spiritual; onyx is the symbol of matter that goes deepest down. Onyx is the symbol of how the living must transform before it can be absorbed into the higher principle. The living, the prana, must pass through a state of purification; this is called the onyx state. The transformation of the pug into an onyx can also be found in Goethe's “Fairytales”.

And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You shall eat from every tree of the garden;

but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

And the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:15-18)

Now the fourth round begins; before that there was a small pralaya. When the fourth round begins, the ethereal human races only end. Man is the firstling of the fourth round. And what is now emerging is emerging through man; it is a product of decadence, it is falling away.

For when the Lord God had made every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air, he brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that should be the name thereof.

And man gave names to every animal, and to the birds of the air, and to the beasts of the field; but for man no helper was found to be with him.

Then the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. (Genesis 2, 19-21)

Sleep signifies that transition which must be understood very precisely. We imagine a light in the middle [of the room] that is reflected in the most diverse ways all around. Let us imagine that the light in the middle goes out, and the outer lights continue to shine. This is how the sinking of Manas into the bodies, which now begin to glow from within when Manas ceases to irradiate the human beings from without. Dream consciousness forms the transition between the inner radiance and the disappearance of the light in the outer. Sex is the counterpole for Kama-Manas, just as the south pole is the counterpole of the north pole.

So he took one of his ribs and closed up the place with flesh.

And the LORD God built the woman out of the rib he had taken from the man, and he brought her to him.

And Adam said: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Every man will leave his father and mother, which is to say, he will leave that which formerly constituted him.

The first two chapters of Genesis contain the Egyptian secret doctrine. Moses was initiated in Egypt; he then brought the secret doctrine with him and gave it to his people.

Spiritual science is theosophical in nature because it leads man back to his original source. People today fight against theosophy and are therefore anti-theosophical in their thinking.

The entire soul and spiritual being is engaged in the first years of childhood in order to develop the physical organization, especially the nervous system; all forces are consumed in this work. From a certain point on, the human organism has become harder and more determined. This is the moment when self-awareness arises in the child. The spiritual and mental powers are reflected back upon themselves; before that, he [the human being] threw them all into the organism. Now the spiritual and mental is thrown back upon itself. At first we see as through a pane of glass, but then the organization becomes like a mirror that reflects the spiritual and mental life back upon itself. Then he says to himself “I”. From then on, life proceeds in self-awareness.

The fact that in early childhood our physical organization is transformed into a mirror and our spiritual and soul life is reflected back into itself is how the human being owes his entire earthly destiny and essence. The forces he has brought with him from his previous lives he has worked into his physical organization. In life, the forces are poured into the organization. At first, the child has no self-awareness because the spiritual and soul forces are still flowing into the physical and material organization; this must face us like a mirror. Man would be born a theosophist if he could see this working into the physical organization himself. A new germ is also forming in man, as in plants, that future life demands.

The child would have to remain stunted if it were conscious, because then the spiritual-soul forces would not all pour into the bodily organization. In the spiritual-soul forces, through which we raise our self-awareness, germinal forces for our next life are formed. These, however, must not rise up into our self-consciousness; they must remain asleep, for they are constructive forces and may only unfold their character in our next life. If man were aware of these germinal forces, he would have to fall into a dream or sleep; if we knew of these germinal forces, we would know ourselves in the divine, we would be born theosophists.

The forces that can develop our self-awareness ever more strongly must be formed out of the soul-spiritual world. During our earthly life, we must swim through a stream, on one bank of which lies the transition from theosophical to self-awareness and on the other, the transition from self-awareness to theosophical consciousness. It is precisely from our being set apart from our divine-spiritual mood that we draw the forces of our self-awareness. Our earthly mood must be anti-philosophical.

After the preparations, he [man] can penetrate to these germinal forces, as was explained in the previous lecture. The human being would believe that his self-awareness would be endangered, undermined, and therefore the human being is afraid to let the germinal forces arise for his next life, hence the anti-sophistic mood. The human being has a revulsion for the fact that the germinal forces could overwhelm his self-awareness and throw him into world consciousness. The human being has a secret fear of letting the connection emerge from the foundations. The soul must first become strong and energetic before it can confront the deeper forces, just as a self-confident person confronts this mirror. Man can make his future into a mirror to see his spiritual self, just as we have a mirror in the physical body through which our self-consciousness arises.

By having the secret human being within himself, the spiritual researcher has a guarantee that he is immortal, that he is preparing a life in immortality; just as the germinating powers of the plant guarantee the emergence of a new plant.

We must cultivate those forces most strongly that lead us away from our divine spiritual connection; we cultivate an anti-sophical mood. Humanity has to develop between opposites. Just as man oscillates between freedom and bondage, so he also oscillates between theosophy and anti-theosophy. But there are moments when man becomes aware of his original source, and this mood can grow and lead him to theosophy. Our present culture in its complexity was favorable for the anti-sophical mood. When life was much less complicated, the time was favorable for the theosophical mood. King Leon of Phlius, as Cicero tells us, once asked Pythagoras what he considered his life's work. “I see myself as a philosopher,” he said. ”I can express it in a comparison. I see life as a kind of fair. People come from everywhere to enjoy the festivities, to buy and sell things, for the sake of profit. But there are also those who come just to watch and see everything.” He feels the same way about the fair of life. He leads an inner life that is of no external use to anyone, that exists for its own sake; Pythagoras, a philosophos, was considered such a person.

Now a strange philosophical worldview is coming over from America to Europe. James, Schiller and so on are its representatives, and it is called the pragmatic worldview. This wants to say: What people acquire in ideas that go beyond sensory observations has no basis in truth. One only forms the ideas that are useful; what is useful for life is seen as truth. We form the concept of breath because it is useful to imagine something like this; one cannot perceive it. It is useful to imagine life in terms of ideals and to organize life according to ideals, which is why ideals are true. For our view of the world, it is useful to imagine a God and to bring order to the world. The “Philosophy of the As If” is the European edition of the American one. After its author ceased to be a professor, he published this philosophy. You can't find security, so you act as if there is a God, as if there are ideals, not that they are there in any way. This philosophy is also called fictionalism. Under the ownership of the former and the current religion, it was possible for a “philosophy of as if” to arise, and no matter how much this old religion is renewed, it will continue to develop as a “philosophy of as if”.

In his Ignorabimus speech, Du Bois-Reymond, the great physiologist, sought to define the field that science is capable of grasping. He shows that it is impossible for this science to comprehend sensation, the simplest psychic phenomenon. Regarding everything that is spiritual and mental, Reymond says: We will never recognize it. This attitude makes people materialistic and monistic. At the end, Reymond says: Science must limit itself to what exists and happens in space and time, and therefore must remain incomprehensible to everything that looks beyond spatial and temporal events, because only supernaturalism could know about that, but that is where science ends. If this sentence were true, then no logic could exist, no speech could be there. Spiritual science seeks to explore the question: How do people come to say: Where the sensory ends, science must end?

The soul is greater than consciousness. Many people cannot give clear reasons for their actions, and this is recognized by psychology. The unconscious reasons can be imaginative or affect- and drive-like. The hidden person in us still has power, still beats; man is under his influence.

So man is under the influence of fear; it can be conscious or unconscious, he acts accordingly. The Danish scientist Lange has written a paper “On the Expression of Emotional Movement”. Under the influence of fear, a person turns pale and their eyes become cloudy. The person cannot find a way to find their footing. The vessels contract and with them the muscles. Then the person cries: Where is something I can hold on to, or I will fall over? Thinking directed outwards brings the person into the same state in his nervous system, in his vascular system, as fear. This fear does not come to the consciousness, it remains subconscious. On the one hand we see the timid person who is too weak to stand on his own, who needs external support; on the other hand, the thinker who, through his outward-looking thinking, comes into the same situation. All materialism is an unconscious fear; its clamor for matter is a result of its subconscious fear. They need the material world to support them. When I enter the supersensible world, I fall over; may something hold me – so they unconsciously call out to the material world out of fear. What Reymond said last was an expression of horror of thinking.

Today the human pendulum is swinging in the direction of anti-Sophian sentiment. The consequence will be that Theosophy will also grow strong. Anti-Sophia is one-sidedness; the whole soul must do justice to the consciousness of self and of God. The soul finds rest only where its power is bound to the divine power. The best people, those who have advanced humanity, have sensed Theosophy. Goethe was imbued, aglow and warmed by the theosophical mood. Once, an anti-theosophical mood met him; anti-theosophists can also be great minds. One of them was Albrecht von Haller. He said:

No created mind can penetrate the innermost nature,
Happy the man to whom she shows only the outer shell.

To remain in the shell is anti-philosophy in the most eminent sense of the word. Goethe's answer is well known:

Nature has neither core nor shell, [...]
Only thou, thou, examine thyself,
Whether thou art core or shell.

Fichte says from his theosophical mood: Whoever recognizes himself in his real self is already standing in the spiritual world. - In his lecture on “The Destination of the Scholar,” Fichte expresses himself as follows:

I raise my head boldly to the threatening rocky mountains, and to the raging waterfall, and to the crashing clouds floating in a sea of fire, and say: I am eternal and I defy your power. Break down on me, all of you, and you earth and you sky, mingle in wild tumult, and you elements all - foam and rage and grind in wild struggle the last sun dust of the body that I call mine call mine; my will alone with its firm plan shall float boldly and coldly over the ruins of the universe; for I have seized my destiny, and it is more enduring than yours; it is eternal, and I am eternal, like it.

To those who are anti-Sophian, he says:

That ideals cannot be represented in the real world is something we others perhaps know as well as they do, perhaps better. We only claim that reality must be judged by them and modified by those who feel the strength to do so. Even if they cannot be convinced of this, they lose little by doing so, once they are what they are; and humanity loses nothing by it. It merely makes it clear that they are not counted on in the plan for the ennoblement of humanity. The latter will undoubtedly continue on its way; let kind nature prevail over the former, and give them rain and sunshine, beneficial nourishment and an undisturbed circulation of the fluids, and, in due course, wise thoughts! Question

Question: Can reincarnation be linked to facts, or does it have to be accepted as dogma?

Rudolf Steiner: It is no more a dogma than memory is. After all, memory is also an inner fact. You can't pump out and look at what you need to remember. Thus, we cannot prove past memories of previous earthly lives other than by experiencing them.

This is how it is with all supersensible truths. To understand them, only an unprejudiced contemplation of life is necessary; to investigate them, one needs clairvoyance. Between death and a new birth, the decisive point of view is the striving to perfect oneself and also the whole world, not the question of whether it is pleasant or unpleasant or causes pain. One can come to an understanding of reincarnation if one behaves as if strokes of fate are not random, but [as if] one has inflicted them on oneself. These are soul proofs, so we must be there ourselves.

Question: [What about the] seven-year periodicity, and what deeper causes [does it] have? [What about] suicide?

Rudolf Steiner: Regarding the question of suicide, the [Schopenhauer] saying applies: “It is easy to preach morality, but difficult to explain it.” One should do good because it is absorbed into one's soul. (?)

Question: Which is the best prayer? Is it the Lord's Prayer?

Rudolf Steiner: The Lord's Prayer is indeed a universal prayer for the most primitive and the most developed mind. It has this power in itself, even if one does not know its laws, just as a plant grows according to laws that it does not know. Every prayer must be carried by a devotional mood, otherwise it can also be of evil. “Not my will, but Thine, be done.” It is only through this mood that every prayer becomes a true prayer.

Question: The point where man simply feels the connection with the higher worlds, how does he express himself? Please give me more details.

Rudolf Steiner: This is similar to the question: How can I imagine the spirit? - Just spiritually. No spiritual materialism! In the Theosophical Society one could hear such expressions [as]: Today there are wonderful spiritual vibrations in the room. The spiritual researcher would simply say: There is a good atmosphere in the room today. In the theosophical books, the spirit is described as follows: First there is matter, then it becomes thinner and thinner, but matter never actually ends. You should imagine the spirit without leaning on anything material. Feeling is something that has its center within itself.